extinguishing in. >> i hope people can pick up your work to provide a path to the future filled with light and joy. so thank you fog were here. >> thank you. >> thank you. joseph, kim, tara, and that was a really interesting conversation, and after having the uncomfortable conversations about dismantling systemic racism and de devriesing plans to -- disvising plans and i want to go back to something that joseph said that stood out. we're live fog a vary challenging time, and you can

still love your country and criticize it at the same time because you know there are better ways to not only govern but navigate in this just -- towards a more just society if really enjoyed this discussion. thank you all so much for >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday you'll find events and people that explore our nation's past on american history tv. on sundays booktv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. it's television for serious readers. learn, discover, explore. weekends on c-span2. >> sunday c-span series january

6th, views from the house continues. two more members of congress share stories of what they saw, heard and experience that date including pennsylvania democrat susan wilde who recounts what happened during those early moments on the house floor. >> i honestly don't remember how long we were in that situation between the time they barricade at the door and the time we finally got out. jason crow has told it was somewhere like 20 minutes. it could've been two hours. could've been five minutes but i had no sense of time whatsoever. but i remember when i got off the phone with my kids that i felt as though my heart was pounding out of my chest and i felt, actually was very worried i was having a heart attack. i'd never hard attack but my father had heart attacks. we got family history. so i was actually kind of worried about, , i was very worried about that. i must've put my hand up to my

chest because that photograph of me that was taken showed me lying almost all my back with my hand up to my chest. i don't remember remember lying on my back but i do remember jason taking my hand and just stroking it and kind of comforting me and telling me i was going to be okay. and being a little bit perplexed that he was reassuring me because i didn't realize that i was showing how upset i was. >> this week you will also hear from massachusetts democrat jim mcgovern. january 6th, views from the house sunday at 10 p.m. eastern on c-span, c-span.org or listen on the c-span radio app. .. >> eric. it's has published what he got his career and his writings have appeared in periodicals like the near times the "washington post"

economist "l.a. times" l.a. weekly previous books include punishment in the boundaries of desire comes to us today from our own san francisco. in conversation tonight he have judy miller and amy peabody award-winning television correspondent and "national public radio" commentator. working for abc news in 1990 she has covered among other stories the 1992 rodney king trial and the ensuing riots and the o.j. simpson criminal and civil trials for which he received an award. we have some very excellent guest that we have here tonight. thank you for coming out >> thank you for coming out everybody one last time. allow me to pass the show to eric and judy. welcome, everybody. >> thanks a lot for the lovely introduction. it is muller if that's okay.

you can correct it at the end of the show. thank you. [laughter] >> i'm thrilled to talk with eric berkowitz one of the finest writers i know, especially when tackling a number of subjects like the history of censorship in the west. i love this book. most authors would be intimidated i think by that huge subject matter, but eric has a great talent of taking a big subject and serving it up in delicious little morsels of history. he's a great storyteller, and these are page-turning stories, full of betrayal and heroism which is always helpful and burning at the stake, all those amazing dramatic things. one reviewer has called this book a masterpiece, astounding, a comprehensive entertaining historical account of censorship, and that was not his mother. that was a real reviewer.

[laughter] one of the major take aways for me, eric, and i love this book, after reading it, it seems to me a major theme is that censorship never really works, at least in the long run, is that how you see it too? i mean, you've got all these examples, but in the end, all these attempts to censor thoughts and words in whatever form fail, is that true? >> i think it's almost entirely true because there's a real difference between censoring a book or a picture or even shutting down a demonstration or even killing someone, from the idea that actually is embodied in what is said, and what we find repeatedly in one form or

another is that the efforts of authorities, either it is the mob or generally a government or the church, they're disturbed by an idea. they feel threatened by the idea so they run down and try to eradicate all copies, etc., etc., but copies always survive. even more than that, the idea in the copies survive. so when something is depressed, again, even -- i mean, take it from your own life, when something is banned, you want to look at it. [laughter] when something is buried, you want to dig it up. often times those who are suppressing are keeping copies for themselves, and so repeatedly that when an expression is locked down, it squeaks its way through. most recently, you know, china has the most comprehensive

internet scheme in the world. they do everything that they can with incredible, millions of people, lots of money to bar the news. the reporters without borders found a way to funnel thousands of forbidden news stories through the on-line game minecraft, recorded stories in songs and put it in spotify. it goes on, so the examples are [inaudible]. >> i'm glad you brought up china. that's china today, still struggling with how to keep dangerous ideas from their people. but -- >> good luck with that. >> yeah, right -- this book begins with china, some of the first emperors in china, what did they do to suppress ideas that they thought were dangerous? >> touched on the opening anecdote of the book which is what i thought sort of

encompasses so many themes in the book. the first emperor of china was -- i'm going to butcher the pronunciation excuse me. we're now back in the third century bc. he's more of a warrior than just about anything else. he unifies china [inaudible]. what he wanted was history to start with him. okay? what infuriated -- he would travel through the kingdom. it killed him to hear people criticizing him. i mean he was a great achiever, but he was hated, particularly using [inaudible] it was really better then. these are the dark times. what he did was he realized that that was probably the source of all these ideas. he gathered together all books of poetry, literature, history,

philosophy, burned them all -- not them all. he saved copies for himself. again, censorship doesn't work. also took the philosophers who were the leading confucius philosophers, carried the ideas, buried them alive. buried 400 philosophers alive. from the point forward, even to discuss the past using confucius would get yourself killed along with your family. that worked for about three years. he had some mental problems. he died drinking an elixir [inaudible]. the truth is confucius thought

lasted. chinese poetry lasted. he didn't. >> so you bring up a good subject, though. he tried to keep it away from the masses, and this is another theme i see all the way through your book is that this is censorship is kind of a class struggle. it is the haves versus the riffraff -- you know, people they don't want to share stuff with, those with the church, with pornography, what really blew this apart, right, was the printing press, is that right? >> absolutely. i can talk about that, and we can go into it. we're sort of building on things. one, censorship doesn't work. there's always the ideas. then what do you do with it? if you are in the upper class and you're ruling things, what you're most concerned about is channelling knowledge, is channelling ideas rather than actually fully suppressing them. when books were just in written

manuscripts, there was almost self-censorship, there weren't that many books go around and they were expensive and difficult. the printing press blew that apart. all of a sudden what was in the exclusive province of the ruling classes became available to everybody. instantly, instantly in 16th century time, in a decade, the catholics -- the catholic church's index of forbidden books cropped up. censorship laws crept up repeatedly, and the whole thing was to keep knowledge away from the masses, keep them ignorant, keep them docile, and that really has been a main preoccupation. >> yeah. and i'm thinking of what they call the streisand effect. i've heard of this, and you can explain what it comes from. the idea that the more you try

to suppress something, the more appealing it is. >> isn't that the case with you? >> of course. you shouldn't look there. why is it named after barbara streisand, though? where does that come from? >> yes, barbara streisand objected very much to having -- there were some aerial pictures of her place in malibu. she made a big stink trying to stop it. everybody said what is this place in malibu? all of a sudden -- you know, yes, the forbidden fruit aspect of censorship never really stops, and so when -- for example, england was very consumed in the 19th century with keeping criticism of the king down, keeping the masses from criticizing the king and

the church in particular, so there's one example. this this guy who was a book seller, who wrote some parodies, wrote some jokes, sort of a book humor, but taking some hard bites at the ruling class and the church. what did the british government do? they put him on trial for blasphemy, liable, and everything else -- libel and everything else. nobody had heard of him before. he was just a guy. the trial brought him fame. there were three trials. before the trials were done, he was selling thousands and thousands of copies of his criticisms of the church. that was repeated. >> what happened to him? >> they finally gave up. he actually won the trial. >> okay. >> he didn't set out to be a warrior for free speech, but

that's what he became. >> i'm thinking about the story of [inaudible]. >> perfect, yes. >> talk about him because he didn't win in a sense that he, you know, he lost his life, but in the long run, what he was trying to do became a fact. so it was a case of actually a boomerang effect. talk about him a little bit. >> yeah. in fact, let's start -- let's start with tindale being now termed by the british library as the most important writer in the english language as shakespeare. he was a professor at oxford and cambridge. he read martin luther's illegal

translation of the bible. kept people from reading it in their own languages. tindale thought i'm going to translate this into english. he went to the bishop of london, can i do this? the bishop said of course not. we'll kill you if you do that. he went to the continent, did it, did a brilliant job of it and began to smuggle it into england. thousands and thousands of copies began to get sold, again, because they were forbidden. and so the bishop was chasing all the illegal copies. he resorted to having to buy copies himself, in order to bring it back to england and burn them. and so tyndale was finally caught and murdered. now, what's the epilogue to this? his illegal bible was so brilliant that times changed

very very soon, and tyndale's version of the bible became the core of the king james bible, so this ultra forbidden document became mainstream -- >> best seller today. >> and lasting for five or six centuries because it is still part of the core bible. >> yeah. so there is this boomerang effect, and sometimes -- sometimes i think we don't know the full story. i'm thinking of rushti. people will say he wrote a book that offended islamic mullahs that put out a kill if you see him, and he had to go into hiding in england, and that looked bad. salman rushti was up in the

mountains where i live not long ago having dinner. at first i thought oh, should i move? but no anyway. [laughter] >> it looks as though salman rushti came out just fine. he's still writing and all of that. but isn't there a kind of lingering effect of something like that? there's a kind of censorship that people kind of watch themselves, on whether they are going to publish him? is there a lingering effect that censorship has on an author? >> it certainly does. there's a cumulative effect of it. it's sort of a step by step process. there's a writer that i want to give a shout out to in england who spent a lot of time on this, and he used the wonderful phrase which i wish i could claim --

just for our readers. salman rushdie produced a book that was offensive to islam and there was a death sentence put on him. the british government had a lot of pressure to shut him down as did his publisher. his book was never fully censored. he survived. we've internalized it now in the sense we're much more concerned with, a lot of plays that weren't produced, art exhibits that weren't staged, concerts that weren't put on because of our fear that perhaps there will be -- not necessary violence, but we've internalized this notion -- and we could talk about this if you want, that

free speech is fine so long as it doesn't bother anybody, so long as it doesn't offend anybody. that's not the free speech that we really care about. it is the larry flynts. it's the salman rushdies, the nutcase down the street who is protecting your speech, not you and me, okay? i mean, we just live or lives. so we've come to believe -- or at least many have come to believe that free speech itself is a risk. it's a source of harm rather than the reward of a free society. i think that the lesson of the lingering let's call it pulling punches from "satanic verses" and the danish cartoons is that in a diverse society offense is no longer the price we pay for freedom, offense is something to be policed and shut down, and i

personally believe that that is really incompatible with the real notion of what free speech is. >> since we're on this, have you ever personally self-censored or felt a need to? >> well, you know, there's -- yes, in fact, i think i know where you're going. i have self-censored on this book itself. >> right >> very painful way. you know, you taught me when you were my journalism professor that the reporter should never be the story, that the writer isn't the story, but in this case i was. i was writing about this, but this book is being published in the united states and in the u.k., and my u.k. publisher is run by an extremely brave woman who the whole time was saying don't pull punches. tell the truth. be bold.

okay. i was writing about this whole issue that you and i were just talking about, and there was a recent decision by the european court of human rights which i criticized very very heavily, and i will give you a quick -- on that. this woman had given a seminar in austria in which she called the prophet muhammad a pedophile because he had a young wife, a very young wife. he was prosecuted in this environment for inciting hatred, and the european court of human rights upheld that in saying well, the rules of discourse say that you shouldn't be gratuitously offensive, etc., and i was just astounded that the highest court protecting hue man rights in europe -- protecting human rights in europe, protecting free expression said, free expression unless you offend people, and i said something to the effect of this is horrible.

now we've internalized for all of europe. my publisher, this very very bold woman called me and said i can't do it. >> really? >> i can't do it. i cannot write that line. i cannot say that we have internalized. we've had death threats. we've had bricks thrown the window. i have a child. my employees have children. you have to rewrite it. for a minute, i thought i'm going to pull the book. i'm not doing this. i mean, i'm a hypocrite. and then i realized from my very safe hyperprivileged perch in san francisco where no one is threatening me for anything, very easy to be a 1st amendment absolutist and then i self-censored. i wrote around it. for those who want to read the american edition, it is all there. the u.k. edition, for the safety of others has been amended to that small extent. >> and yet, you know, in afghanistan, just last week, 50

young girls were killed, at a school. clearly an attempt to stop the education of young women in a very extreme islamic law kind of idea, and that obviously is going to have an effect in the same way that it had an effect on you when somebody said i would be in danger if you write this. all of it is -- it's not even subtle but it does have a censoring effect; correct? >> it does. the difference between afghanistan -- well, afghanistan is a much less diverse society than the one that we're living in. i think that what we're paying the price on -- i'm not sure it is right. i'm not defending it. i'm not defending the [inaudible]. i'm easily offended. i have a soft spot. when i hear things that hit my

soft spot, i feel pain. that doesn't necessarily mean i want to shut it down. to acknowledge that a lot of speech causes pain is not to say it should be barred. the universities were basically set up for white men. it is a lot different now. a lot of people are saying that, you know, the price of a diverse society is we have to be a little bit more careful. i'm not sure i agree with that. but, you know, that's what it comes down to. what happened in afghanistan is hideous by any perspective. >> yes. i want to get to academia in a minute. >> of course. i was just touching on that. >> i think most americans have asked would say yes, we believe in free speech. we're proud of the 1st amendment. and yet there are signs that they would like to tinker with the 1st amendment a little bit. i mean, it's maybe gone too far for some people. is there any evidence that americans are torn on this

issue, a little schizoid on this issue? >> oh my god. we're not a little schizoid. we're cut into pieces, on the fragments on the floor. we're proud of our traditions and free speech. but at the same time, surveys are showing that at least half americans and more millennials believe the 1st amendment is outdated. >> really? >> yeah. it's getting more and more. in fact, there's this group the fire which tracked a lot of ivy league students who thought that you could forcibly shut people down if they are speaking too much of what you don't want. we're touchy. we're becoming increasingly touchier. we can't bury the idea of an idea that doesn't fit ours. it's really really interesting. in my opinion, one of the signature achievements of this

country is the last 50 years is the freest free speech environment the world has ever known, by a large margin. okay? we have a supreme court that said, you know, the noise of free speech is powerful medicine for a society. it makes us responsible for ourselves. it makes us responsible for taking care of a free society. but now i think a lot of people are trained to government saying censor us, protect me. stop that person. when you ask whether we're torn, that's absolutely part of it. we're looking to, you know, social media, you know. allow me to say what i want, but stop him. >> and social media, facebook, twitter, et al., had been --

they've almost weaponized the kind of hate speech and professor -- hate speech and propaganda and lies that used to be censored there are those who say that facebook -- excuse me -- has become the biggest censor now in our country. i mean, how do you feel about how that is all falling out, with their oversight counsel, banning trump for another six months because of his inciteful speech? nobody has lied more on facebook and twitter than the former president, but yet, you know, has somebody who has written about censorship, you must be horrified at the idea that we would be censoring any kind of speech as a country. now facebook's a private

company, and they are allowed to do that. i mean -- but give me your thoughts on that whole issue. >> do you remember the disney cartoon from when we were kids that was called the sorcerer's apprentice? >> yes. >> i think -- you know, where you start something, and it looks good and you actually be careful what you wish for. there's the subtitle of what i talk about with respect to the internet. just a little bit of background. the way our country was set up is that the government at least at this point has almost no power to censor speech, unless it's a direct incitement to violence, unless it's a copy right infringement, you know, very very limited. whereas the private sector, we think about restaurants, you know, cafes, schools, things like that, has almost complete power to censor speech. you know, don't tread on me.

okay? and so we've -- because the normal model of censorship has been people versus the government, well, we have a sourcerer's apprentice where -- sourcer's apprentice where this private world has been expanded to encompass the world, facebook, twitter, the others are private companies, so they don't have to censor anything. and they can censor anything if they want. so in this country, hate speech, offense, things like that, they're legal. the government has no power. so what we want is people are increasingly and i think in many ways rightfully made crazy by what's going on on social media, particularly when we have a president himself and his minions shoving the hatred and the lies into the system, it is not just on facebook.

it is on tv. we want the social media companies to sort of do the dirty work that the government can't, and, you know, there's no one happier about this -- he might look concerned when he shows up in the senate every few weeks to get -- [inaudible]. no one's happier about this chaos than zuckerberg and jack dorsey, because every dispute makes them money. okay? they have set up the system to foster conflict because every -- because that keeps us on the platform and keeps us targeted. and so effectively the censorship was set up on this pure 1st amendment principle, but then as facebook went into europe and the other world, and they had to absorb much more restrictive rules of europe, we have reimported hate speech laws back into this country, and i think, you know, we can badger facebook all we want, but they are going to do what they want.

it is just basically saying look over there, we're taking care of it. >> i want to remind those of you who are listening, tuning in, that you can ask questions, put them up in the chat board, and if we have time, and we're going to try and make time, we will be sure to ask eric your questions. so just put it in the chat. i will keep an eye on it. so while we're on social media, do you see a role? do you see any kind of push for government regulation of the internet, social media companies? does that scare you? >> yes. it scares me terribly. that's not to say that i'm not made crazy by a lot of the terrible things i see on the net.

there's two words that arise when i think about government regulation of the internet, and that's donald trump. just think about -- it was the 1st amendment that effectively saves us from him. it was an absolute enemy of speech and absolutely ready to jail anybody who spoke against him. he called the press the enemy of the people, you know, 5,000 times. it wasn't hyperbole. he actually believed that. so as we talk about government regulation, a call to the government for censorship, and this is one of the lessons of my book reaching back 2, 3,000 years is you always have to look at who is doing the regulation. if we think that government can regulate hate speech or fake news or these other terrible things, to benefit us, we always have to think but what if donald trump had that power? what if jeff sessions had that

power? what if josh hawley had that power, etc.? so whereas i as much as anyone want the dirt, the filth, the horror off the internet, i'm very concerned about the solution being far worse than the problem. >> there are people who talk a lot about cancel culture, political correctness, and this is a reaction to a movement that's understandably worried about hate speech. we see -- >> they're all woven together. >> yeah, it is all together, but what do you think of that term cancel culture and political correctness and the impact it's having, for instance, in academia? >> the latest example of cancel culture that i've seen came out yesterday where out of the kentucky derby, that horse -- what's the horse's name?

flunked the drug test? >> yeah. >> the owner of that horse was pretty mad so he said cancel culture. you're cancelling out my horse. i have the tweet in front of me. >> what does that have to do with -- what? >> nothing. cancel culture is one of these terms like politically correct or woke, there are these terms that we use are bleached of all meaning. even the word unconstitutional. well, that's unconstitutional. you know, we use these terms to label things and developments that we don't like. okay? >> yeah. on the other hand, there's a very new renewed concern about the n word, about words that offend people, transgender attacks, and that kind of thing. but i've also seen such an overreaction in academia, professors being fired, for instance. a rutgers professor recently during a zoom meeting with a

couple of students, one student asked to read a case study, read it. it was a law student. in reading the case study, the n word was read from reading the case study. this created a huge -- it got leaked, a huge thing, and both the professor and the student have apologized, and it sounds like something out of the cultural revolution, where they are ordered to apologize or else, and he was reading and quoting. certain words now have become -- >> radioactive. >> pardon me? >> radioactive. >> radioactive, and they are words. isn't intention important? what kind of intention do you say something with?

for instance, take the word that you say in anger against a woman that's sexist and awful, but if you say it is a female dog, it is also just an expression, and there's a town in france called that, which as you know had to remove its name from facebook because facebook was upset that that word was in there, on the title of their facebook page. doesn't intention have some power here? have we lost our minds is what i'm asking, eric? >> yeah, yes, we have lost our minds. facebook is facing in europe massive fines, i mean huge fines for letting hate speech through, billions and billions of pieces of content roll through facebook every hour.

the human content moderators that they hire just filed a class action suit because they are made insane because the working conditions are so terrible. what facebook uses in addition to a human content moderator are programs. the programs do clean sweeps. so no human thought i'm going to off that town in france, where term was seen and it was gone. the town actually renamed itself. so there's a lack of intention on the social media platforms trying to keep up with regulations, and they overremove, that's a real problem, but also talking about cancel culture, and you were talking about the n word, i mean, yes, that word like the swastika, like a number of other things are simply radioactive. okay, is the swastika allowed here in germany?

no. it will cleaned out. it won't happen. they are beyond what they signify. the case that you were talking about, the n word case, that was at a law school, and there was a student who was actually quoting from a judge's opinion that included that word, so her intention in quoting that was simply to discuss the case, but we've hit a point of touchiness where that can't be allowed. i think talking about cancel culture, i want to get a little bit more subtle than that because i was making fun of it with respect to the horse. a lot of people use cancel culture as sort of the revenge of the powerless, that those who don't have power can get together and call out or make someone accountable for doing something hideous or having done something hideous or saying something wrong, and this is a way for people to use social media to gather the power and bring people down when the power

structure [inaudible]. that sounds good in theory, but what emerges mostly is the good old fashioned mob. there's a lot of lives ruined. maybe some lives should be ruined, but a lot more are not. yes, professors are getting cleaned out. students are getting expelled because i think administrations are simply terrified of the mob, of getting cancelled. >> but it is censorship by mob, is it not? in a sense? by political correctness? i mean, i'm just making this argument because so many people do. i'm not saying it is my opinion. i'm just -- it really is as though you can't escape censorship in some way or

another. >> censorship used to mean exclusively actions bety government against people. that's how i understood -- that's what censorship typically means. you know, there's a judge or a cop or something else. in this case, i guess the better word with censorship is losing a lot of its real meaning is maybe sile silencing, you know? >> okay. i have a question on the chat that i want to get in before we -- i don't want to get away from social media right away. the question is, do you have an opinion on whether section 230 of the communication act needs to be modified or eliminated? first explain what section 230 is. >> yeah, sure. i've spent a lot of time thinking about this. section 230 is this obscure statute that's no longer obscure, it's been called the 26 words that made the internet. what it basically says is that

the platforms -- everything from facebook to yelp and to wikipedia, anything that involved user generated content, comments, contributions, the platforms themselves, the people that host, they're not liable for anything said. they're just letting it happen. now, if that was typically the old world of the newspapers, that wasn't the case by any stretch. it basically allowed interactive internet communications to happen. it blew up. the statute was passed in 96. [inaudible]. and section 230 has taken a lot of heat for being blamed for, you know, all the crud on the internet and the pervasiveness of hatred, on some level yes, on some level no. in answer to the question, should it be modified?

i guess my feeling would be no, a qualified no. here's why, it can't be really modified very well, because if the government starts to tinker with what the platforms can do with respect to speech, there's going to be 1st amendment problems. we still have a very strong 1st amendment, like it or not. companies such as facebook have speech writes. if they want to amplify something, if they want to not amplify something, that's their right to do it. there's a lot that can be done to clean up the internet. we can talk about that at some length. maybe now is not the time. i personally think briefly that we should get at where they breathe, and stop the targeting advertising model. there's weight loss ads or

[inaudible]. >> oh, yeah. >> facebook knows you are pregnant before you are. [laughter] >> before you do, and they target ads to it. the targeted ad model, the model that follows someone around and targets ads to them is really i think in many ways the culprit because keep you targeted with that, keep you agitated and keep you on the platform. i think we can do more with that after five years of litigation telling facebook and others allow this, don't allow that. do this, don't do that. that's going to lose in court. >> yeah. i think you are right. it is all about the money. it is about click bait. it is all about appealing to our worst selves. whenever i get somebody liking my opinion, of course that goes to an endorphin in my brain that says oh, they like me, and so -- >> or when you hear that

yourenmy is worse than -- or when you hear that your enemy is worse than you ever thought. i asked my publisher how did you target my book on social media? i was curious. they tell me, personality characteristics just for my stupid book. >> that's really funny. so nobody who marched with white supremacist groups are going to buy your book, is that what you are saying? >> they are not going to know it exists, and that's a terrible thing, because i would love for them to know. >> you talked about one of the fellows that were marching with the white supremacists in charlottesville. he was allowed to say what he wanted. >> he was more than allowed to, he was protected by police for

screaming those ridiculous hideous things. this low life was absolutely protected as much as you or i are, and he goes back to the hot dog restaurant where he works, and the door is shut. he doesn't have a job anymore. >> there you go. >> perfectly illustrates the public private thing that we have. i want to add one more thing. he goes back to the free speech center of the universe, berkeley, finds that his free speech isn't so respected there. it's called top dog. the owner of the hot dog place said we respect our employee's rights. they are free to make their own choices but must accept the responsibility, that is, no more job. that same week, these two tourists go to berlin. they were standing in front of [inaudible] in berlin. they raise a nazi salute. within ten seconds of their

arrest, this really perfectly illustrates the difference. you can't do that in germany. even if you are a tourist. >> almost every day, we are hearing these examples. these stories are everywhere. censorship doesn't have to be about books. it doesn't have to be about movies. there were two young black kids who were sent home from school -- i'm trying to remember the state even. oh, well. >> i think it was oklahoma. >> oklahoma, because they were wearing black lives matter t-shirts. and the school said oh, this is outrageous. they can't wear this sort of propaganda. and the mother said but what these boys are saying -- i think they were like 7 and 9 or something, very young is that my life matters. what is so offensive about that? you know? and that's one example. then we have got a book publisher saying we don't want to rewrite history. we don't want to include any of that ugly stuff. we don't want to teach the 1619

project that the new york times has about black history in this country because it revises what we thought we knew. i mean, what do you think of that? that's censorship, is it not, the -- telling people what they can wear, telling people they can't read that? it's the same old thing. >> absolutely. i was -- you and i chatted about this a couple days ago. i mean, it was extremely sad to me -- that's the only word -- tell a 5-year-old kid that he can't wear a t-shirt saying his own life matters. that's an overaggressive school board. it's a school board that is responding to pressure that equates black lives matter with terrorism, etc., that it's scared of african american identity, i suppose? the 1619 project is more than

telling people that they can't [inaudible]. there's now legislation in another state that says you can't teach this. you can't teach for our viewers the 1619 project was this massive, magnificent piece of research and presentations from the new york times talking about how slavery was in the fabric of this country. in a number of states, it is hoping to forbid the teaching of that project in that school. they will lose on the 1st amendment grounds. that will happen, but what it means is -- well, it follows a long tradition, every regime seeks to rewrite history in order to bolster itself. that's in democratic societies as well as authoritarian. we're just seeing the latest manifestation of it. >> we do have a question from somebody who is watching. karen foley, do you have any suggestions for what citizens

can do on the topic of fighting censorship? i mean, what do we do? how do we as individual citizens in this country, which purports to respect free speech, do we speak up when we see a kid sent home from school? i mean, is it down to that point of view, that small of a place? is it about refusing to be on facebook if they continue to use algorithms to track our, you know, marketing desires? >> this isn't going to be a very good answer, and i really held back in the book and in appearances from trying to fashion myself some kind of, you know, judge and jury and prescriptor for how society can arrange itself. society is chaotic, and we're fullover a lot of conflict -- and we're full of a lot of

conflict. it didn't start with facebook. okay? we went into a war in iraq based on a fundamental lie that saddam hussein was behind 9/11, amplified by the new york times. there were decades and decades where we thought -- or it was taught that african americans have a different skull shape and that makes them -- the dark things that have been living with us for a long long time. to respond to this question, you have to do things that scare you. okay? and you have got to put yourself in harm's way just a little bit that when there's a professor in your school that you don't agree with, okay, whose views you find abhorrent is getting cancelled or getting fired or is getting put under review for something he or she said, you've got to speak out in favor of that person. you have to argue against your own interests because i really really deeply believe this, that without a free speech

environment, in which we hurt, in which we get a little bit dizzy, we're not going to expose the lies that we need to fight. honestly, you know, every day i would wake up and think what is trump giving me? i would read his tweets, and i would think oh get this guy off. i'm so pleased that he's off, but i also know him being on twitter exposed what a maniac he was and i think was a great reason why we got rid of him. >> i love the phrase you have to work against your own interests because i can remember when the nazis marched in the 60s, and the aclu, the aclu backed their right to do that. they were carrying nazi flags. >> they took a lot of grief for that. >> i know they did. i thought wow, that's true to your principles. that's true to free speech, and

you're a lawyer. >> think of the head of the naacp voted with the majority to protect the rights of a klu klux klanman calling for his own murder, calling for the murder of african americans. marshall was able to see i hate this. it scares me. but i can't -- i'm not going to take the role of shutting down another person's speech. so what can we do? absolutely we speak out against sile silencing. absolutely we speak out against these, but not to echo what we already believe, to do what sometimes feels -- if it doesn't hurt, it doesn't count, put it like that. >> i think the 1st amendment is so misunderstood, and the hardest thing, it's one thing to say yes, i have a right to speak. it is another thing to say you have a right to speak even though i hate what you are saying. when the founding fathers put

the 1st amendment in the constitution, it wasn't a snap deal. it wasn't the first thing they thought of, was it? and also it wasn't entirely free speech at the time. >> ben franklin of all people said that when they passed the 1st amendment, no one had any real idea what the hell they were doing. i forgot how he put it. but he put it beautifully. there was no debate about the 1st amendment during the constitutional convention. i mean someone brought it up. [inaudible]. you know, the idea of free speech was [inaudible]. the idea of what free speech is now is strongly different.

[inaudible]. i don't want to freeze history, but we also have to, you know, appreciate our achievements. no, the founding fathers -- i mean seven years after the 1st amendment was passed, we passed a sedition act which outlawed almost all dissent, you know, so the 1st amendment has e sol vol ved -- evolved. it was cast as sort of an intention, and it's taken shape. i'm just really worried in the fact that we are living in a highly partisan environment and people are hurting. i acknowledge that. i am as well. that we don't take that as an excuse to simply say oh, let's just rewrite the whole thing. we should move a little bit slowly and carefully. >> we do have a really good

question. we do have time to ask it, from lou judson who says do you have an opinion about mark twain and the n word as in huckleberry finn? i publisher didn't want to use the word in print, but it is historical and represents the time in which he lived. without it, it is not the same book, i believe. >> i mean, this really encapsulates the free speech censorship. time moves on. historical perspective, what was the intention? it's all there in that particular -- all across the country, boards of education are banning huckleberry finn from the schools. it is a classic. what do you think? >> i think as we were saying that word, you know, a word born in hatred, a word born of everything wrong is radioactive. >> i should point out to people who may not have read

huckleberry finn, that the character of jim, the n word is used in front of his name all the time because that was the style of the speech at the time. okay. >> yeah. and so if we went through huckleberry finn and that word is probably used 1600 times in that book, and we -- let's just say we took a sharpie to it. you know, one, that would only call further attention to the existence of that word. when you erase something, you simply highlight -- this goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning. if we said jim, it would make the word that much more loud in our heads. so the idea isn't going away. you can erase the page, but the idea is there. to get to what mr. judson said yes, i agree with you entirely. that book not only is a great

literary achievement. it's a great example of the mindset during that time. i think twain was very actively using that word to the extent that he was to highlight the injustices, and he was not using it in a way to call for violence or call for hatred. your comment to me about intention matters a lot here. in short, you can take a sharpie to the word, but the word is still there. we need to deal with the hatred behind the word, not the word itself. >> right. i think that's really important place to sort of wrap this up. and that was a great question in which to do it. there's obviously a debate that's going to rage on for centuries, because as you have shown, it never goes away. people tries to censor, and it never works, and here we go round and round. and now we have social media

which has just weaponized the whole debate. we shall see. we shall see. time will tell. all of those platitudes. so i see that nick has rejoined us. i want to thank you, eric, my dear friend, for writing this book. it is wonderful. i cannot emphasize how many stories we weren't able to get to, but they are there. they are wonderful. and it just reminds you that the history is full of heroes, who stood up against real oppression to keep freedom of speech going, and that for me is the great take away. >> there's some really great villains as well. [laughter] >> good, henry the eighth stands out. really good stories. thank you for writing it and being with us today. nick? >> absolutely. >> everybody, the book is

"dangerous ideas", our author tonight and judy, thank you for the conversation. thank you for everybody that showed up. it was an interesting discussion as well that happened in there. that was very very entertaining. thank you very much. i was glad to be a part of it. if you would like to purchase the book, you can do so from book passage.com. the link has been posted multiple times in the chat. you can go and follow it there, if you happen to live near a store, you can pick it up from us, if you would like. if you don't live near us, we will ship it anywhere in the united states directly to your doorstep, if that's what you would like to do. in addition to that, if you have a local bookstore, we won't begrudge you if you purchase from them. although, if you do want to purchase from us, we would be happy to have you. again, if you enjoyed the conversation tonight, please consider subscribing to the youtube channel. it's completely free.

it helps us out a ton. if you enjoyed the conversation a little bit more, you can click that button, it helps the glorious youtube algorithm recommend our videos just a little bit faster to everybody else. thank you again one last time for showing up. "dangerous ideas". thanks again to eric and judy. i had a great time. i will wave good-bye to everybody. thank you for coming. we will see you all again, i hope very soon. bye. ♪ ♪