Overcoming the Divide: Nonpartisan Politics
Fostering insightful political discourse and debate.
Episodes published bi-weekly on Tuesdays.
To receive updates, participate in polls and promotions follow 'overcoming_the_divide' on Instagram. Rate and subscribe if you enjoy the content!
Overcoming the Divide: Nonpartisan Politics
Brad Polumbo Talks Freedom of Speech and Fading Democratic Values
We've got quite the treat today, friends. Brad Polumbo, the sharp-witted libertarian conservative journalist and Host of Based Politics and Damage Control podcasts, joins us for a no-holds-barred discussion on free speech. We're peeling back the layers of irony as we tackle the hypocrisy that is often found among free speech warriors. We cast a critical eye on political factions that readily discard principles and values at the altar of immediate gain. The Israel-Palestine conflict serves as a backdrop to this discourse, particularly highlighting the recent clampdown on pro-Palestinian speech. But, this isn't about taking sides—it's about fostering an open battle of ideas over censorship.
As we wade deeper into the episode, we explore the increasingly evident erosion of democratic principles, a casualty of rampant short-term thinking. The enticing lure of instant gratification often leads to crucial democratic institutions being compromised, with long-lasting implications. You'll hear us talk about the Supreme Court packing debate, and the distressing indifference of younger generations towards privacy, exemplifying this perilous tendency. Finally, Brad, with his unique insights, wraps up the episode, advocating for a more nuanced political dialogue. He invites you to join him on his podcasts for richer discussions around these pressing issues. This episode is a wake-up call to reconsider our priorities and actions.
0:00 The Hypocrisy of Free Speech Warriors
15:05 Erosion of Democratic Principles
30:07 Closing Thoughts
Music: Coma-Media (intro)
WinkingFoxMusic (outro)
Recorded: 11/24/23
Hello everyone, thank you for tuning in today. Today's episode calls out the hypocrisy of certain free speech warriors, emphasizes the importance of simple civics education and scrutinizes political factions who sacrifice values and principles for short-term gains. This conversation is with special guest Brad Palumbo. Palumbo is a libertarian conservative journalist and co-founder of based politics. His work has been cited by top lawmakers such as Senator Rand Paul, senator Ted Cruz, senator Pat Toomey, congresswoman Nancy Mace, congressman Thomas Massey and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, as well as prominent media personalities such as Jordan Pearson, sean Hannity, dave Rubin, ben Shapiro and Mark Levine.
Speaker 1:Brad has also testified before the US Senate, appeared on Fox News and Fox Business and rimmed for publications such as USA Today, national Review, newsweek and the Daily Beast. He hosts the Based Politics podcast and has a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Massachusetts, amherst, and if you enjoyed this conversation, all I ask is that you share with a friend. Thank you. The past few weeks probably six weeks now we have seen across the country a lot of pushback on certain speech, specifically pro-Palestinian speech, and it's coming from a side that used to champion free speech. Nonetheless, do you see this now as free speech being more so an issue of the political homeless, rather than people who actually subscribe to one ideology or the other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I've spent the last several years working in conservative and center-right media and I've really seen the rise of free speech warriors, right People saying the left hates free speech. We oppose censorship, we love the open debate of ideas, but since October 7, and Hamas's terrible attack on Israel, we've seen a lot of that come up in jeopardy and I've seen cancellations of people for somewhat anodyne pro-Palestinian statements that people might disagree with but are hardly beyond the pale. But it's also complicated by the fact that I've seen people openly supporting violence against innocent civilians, which is kind of crosses the line, even for people who don't believe in canceled culture. So we've had to wade through a whole wide array of issues, some very clear cut as a question of free speech, like, for example, some European countries have just banned pro-Palestine rallies, just banned, and I think that's pretty clear cut. In the same way, not shutting down student groups that are pro-Palestine is pretty clear cut. But some of it's more complicated.
Speaker 2:I mean like when you have somebody who's here on a visa who then expresses support for a terrorist group, like I can see both sides of whether that crosses a free speech line. And in terms of the canceled culture stuff, I can certainly. I certainly see, like I just saw that an actress from Scream was fired for an Instagram story that while you might disagree with because she says like Israel's an apartheid state, she says it's doing ethnic cleansing, like those are very hotly contested opinions people can fight, oh, fight against to their hearts content, but she didn't endorse violence against innocence. She didn't really cross any bright red lines. She just expressed one side of a hotly contested debate and she got fired and that's canceled culture to me. So I've been seeing a lot of the people on the right who were really leading the charge on these issues over the last few years suddenly either become very silent or actually openly defend cancellations or censorship efforts now in some cases, but I will acknowledge that it's not super clear cut in all the cases.
Speaker 1:I think that's a good point, especially when you spoke about student visas, and there is one college group in Florida specifically where they endorsed the Hamas fighters and there are pretty much terrorist attack they committed on October 7th. So there is some nuance to it and it's not. There's some gray as there is often is regarding issues, but when it comes down to calling this out, have you encountered much pushback? Now when you say like, hey, that's actress showing got fired or we showing just outright ban, propel sentient protests because people on the right that have noticed will come out and take such a strong stance and support Israel and that could be based on, you know, their sympathies for what happened on October 7th, but it doesn't exactly justify violations of free speech that kind of they'd be defending prior to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, definitely I have gotten a lot of pushback. There's a few issues that kind of cloud people's brains and they feel differently. One of them is abortion and another one of them is Israel, palestine, where people who might generally feel one way about a given issue just have super strong emotions and adopt a different position on something, and there might be valid human reasons for that. But that's just something I've observed. I've definitely got a lot of pushback because there's also this question. I would say there's widespread ignorance about a couple key concepts at play here. There are exceptions to the First Amendment for the concepts such as the incitement of violence, but those are defined Extremely narrowly. But a lot of people don't understand just how narrow those exceptions are. So according to our current Supreme Court precedent, you are allowed to openly endorse and advocate for violence under the First Amendment. You just can't engage in speech that could directly and Approximately lead to unlawful activity in the imminent moment. A good example I like to use is a really homophobic person could say I want, I think society should round up all the gays and kill them. But a Homophobic person leading a mob with pitchforks couldn't point at Brad Palumbo and say let's go kill that gay. The second one is not covered by the First Amendment, is not protected free speech, but the first one actually is. And so even when you have people advocating for the destruction of the state of Israel or Chanting things like from the river to the sea, palestine will be free, that many Jewish groups interpret as a call for ethnic cleansing. Even when they say those things, those actually are protected speech.
Speaker 2:But I keep hearing people say nope, that's incitement of violence. You're you, what are you talking about? That's incitement of violence because they're not actually familiar with this Supreme Court precedent and the specifics of how Constitutional law works in this country on these questions. But they've just heard oh well, you can't advocate for violence. You actually can. But of course, a lack of civic Understanding and education in this country is not a new problem and it's not one that's particularly germane only to one side of the political Equation. I mean, I love to bring up this poll that two and three Americans can't name the three branches of our federal government. And yeah, you're just. You're not set up for healthy and rational debate on Really impassioned issues like Israel, palestine and the free speech questions that are emerging when people don't even understand the most basic elements of our government and our constitutional system.
Speaker 1:So I've encountered a lot of pushback, much of which, I would unfortunately say it's just is rooted in in some degree of constitutional ignorance and Two things that you called out there, the one being under the guise of incitement of violence, which you know aptly point out, the aptly point out the difference between what's protected by the First Amendment and was not. And then, not too long ago you also heard Hate speech, which is not really. No one can really define it. It means a lot of different things, different people, and is completely protected by the First Amendment. Now, with that, under the guise of, say, hate speech or incitement of violence, you do see these justifications for, say, denouncing people, sharing people down, saying taking people off social media and even yourself have been taken off social media before for those things. Specifically the first one, incitement to violence. Could you speak on that a bit?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I would say I've never actually engaged in incitement violence, but I have.
Speaker 2:I have had accounts removed with that as the stated justification in a way that shows you actually just how widespread the ignorance is. So people might remember the Kyle Rittenhouse case, which was a young man who brought a gun to a Black Lives Matter protest slash riot and then got into an altercation and two people were killed and the question was, was he a murderer or did he engage in self-defense? And the jury ultimately found that he engaged in self-defense. And even after that verdict came out and he was found to have defended himself by a jury of his peers, I made a video explaining why I thought that was the correct decision. I never was fully on board with his actions because I think he made some irresponsible choices in the buildup to them, but I did think that legally, when he pulled the trigger of those in those in that moment he was defending himself and I made a video on this and I actually had it taken down from Tick Talk, with incitement of violence as the stated reason, which makes no sense because we're talking about a historical incident. You can't incite something that already happened. But it doesn't have to make sense because it's often a pretext for censorship and that's the, that's the same logic of why the notion of hate speech is so incoherent and dangerous, because all hate speech really comes out to meaning is speech that I hate. There's a great Michael Scott quote from the office where somebody says something he doesn't like, he says that's hate speech and they go no, it isn't, he goes. Well, I hate it. But that really is how hate speech works, because another man's hate speech is another man's biblical truth or scientific fact, so you really can't have any sort of restriction.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of misconception in America about hate speech. Hate speech does not exist as a concept in American law or constitutional rights, so there is no First Amendment exception for hate speech. Hate speech is a category that doesn't exist in America. In some European countries they have hate speech distinctions in their laws, all of which I think are deeply flawed and shouldn't exist. But it doesn't even exist in American law and in our society and there's really no way that it ever could.
Speaker 2:Because it's kind of like I was talking about this comedian who I kind of like, matt Reif. He made a pretty controversial domestic violence joke and a lot of people are upset about it and I didn't find the joke funny, but what I said was a lot of people will say I'm OK with offensive jokes, but only if they're funny. The problem with that logic, as my friend Kat Timp actually first explained to me, is that what's funny is pretty subjective. Everyone finds it differently. So if you can only make an offensive joke when it's funny, there's always going to be people that think any joke, even the best written joke in the world, there's going to be people who don't find it funny. So then you can never make an offensive joke.
Speaker 2:And it's the same kind of thing in terms of hate speech. Like apply hate speech to the abortion debate, for example. Just set your personal beliefs and feelings aside. I like regardless.
Speaker 2:I could make an argument from the pro-choice side that advocating for pro-life laws is hate speech. Right, I could say that they are advocating for women to become second class citizens. They are sexist, they're misogynist, they're trying to control women's bodies. It is hateful advocacy. And I could flip it around and I could say on the pro-life side that pro-choice advocacy is advocating for the death of the unborn. It is heartless, it is cruel, it is uncompassionate, it is hate speech.
Speaker 2:Both sides think the other's opinion is hate speech on the extremes of that issue, and so that's a great example of how you can't have any sort of democratically based system which requires that you hash out and debate what your government policies are going to be, if you start carving out exceptions for hate speech. Because there's a reason that many of the questions that so continuously divide the American public are ever present, like why is immigration a recurring issue? Why is abortion a recurring issue? It's because they're very complicated. If it was just an easy like, no one really disagrees that robbing nuns is bad, right, so it's not an issue because no one disagrees.
Speaker 2:There's a reason that the things that are the most stubborn disagreements in our politics are the way they are because they involve competing rights claims, because they're incredibly complex, because they pit different values against each other, and so when you have people passionate on either side, they're always going to view on the key issues of the day, the other side's position is hateful. So how can you have any sense of any sort of functioning democracy or debate when you declare some speech too hateful to be within bounds? I'd rather have a society where too much speech is in bounds than too little, because I ultimately trust people to decide for themselves, but I think there's an inherent arrogance and condescension among people who would carve out hate speech exceptions in that they think they know best, and in reality I don't think anyone individual knows best and can perfectly predict the future and what ideas will win in the market of ideas. I think it's got to be a decentralized, messy process and that requires allowing all ideas, even the most hateful ones to you personally, to be heard and to be attacked.
Speaker 1:I think you brought something, this underpinning kind of or overarching maybe theme of everything, where it's like what's best for a Democrat, principles and what you kind of have to buy by when you're in democracy, but you're kind of seeing less of that as being prioritized, whether this is good for a democracy, because when you are going after the other side it may not be best for you politically to acknowledge their points, to actually come to the debate and sparrow, just to point them out as evil or as this or that, and really form this tribe and bolster your support and go from there. And we have seen this, as I think it was Plato who called this as a flow of democracy where two people it was like saying in Athens are running for office, running for Senate, wherever it was, and the one's a doctor, the other one's a baker. The baker goes well, his platform speeches you elect me, I give you a cake, free cake, for 10 years. The doctor goes that's going to make you guys all sick, you guys are going to be sick, you're going to be fat. Now, no good Baker turns around and goes well, you just heard that guy. He doesn't want to give you cake, he wants to deprive you of X, y and Z, pointing him out to be evil, cruel.
Speaker 1:All this stuff and that's what I'm seeing a lot of now is that it's not to acknowledge the other side. I follow I don't know how your newsfeed is or social media, but I follow people on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict and I make every time they put things up and like you're just talking, like you just want to win this, and I can understand the emotions to it. I'm not personally tied to it, but it's the reason I mention all of this is I think Democratic principles such as free speech, individualism, civil rights, civil liberties are putting to the backseat in sake of winning. I want to win and I'm willing to do whatever that is to win.
Speaker 2:I think you're right, but I think that it's a short-term thinking problem. So, because oftentimes the pro-institutionalist or pro-democracy position is not in your best interest short-term, for your own side, but long-term it actually is. So let me give you a good example. There's a divide within the Democratic Party right now where the more extreme progressive members believe in packing the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has nine judges, nine justices, and that's not actually set in stone in the Constitution, though it's been that way for hundreds of years. So Congress could constitutionally it'd be deeply misguided, but they could add more judges in an attempt to course-correct the court's rulings. They basically hijacked it, and many more progressive Democrats want to do this, and the debate there is that well, right now the Supreme Court's balance is more conservative and it's blocking student loan bailouts, for example, or the things we support and we want. So it would be in our short-term benefit to rig the Supreme Court in our favor by adding new justices while we're in power. But the problem with that is it's extremely short-term thinking, because what would happen? So for the country overall it would be a disaster. But even from the Democratic perspective it would be bad, because what would happen is the next time the Republicans take power, they would pack the Supreme Court again even more, and then it would go back and forth a few times and before you know it, you would have a 500-member Supreme Court. That couldn't function and would have no legitimacy, and you would lose the Supreme Court as a branch of our government and as a check and balance in our constitutional system. And then think about how many times the Supreme Court, when Donald Trump was president, blocked the things he tried to do. It served as a check and a balance on Trump's executive authority. When he tried to do things like restrict Muslim immigration, his first two efforts to do that were blocked by the Supreme Court. Examples, then, were all about the Supreme Court like rah, rah, let's go. Yet if they went down this path based on their short-term political interest, they would destroy that institution and that would come back to haunt them and actually be worse for their own political prospects in the long run.
Speaker 2:So I think when you see people and I think the same can be I could give you examples that apply to Republicans as well.
Speaker 2:But when people are willing to throw away democratic principles or trample over the Constitution in pursuit of short-term political or partisan gain, they're often actually doing it at the detriment of their own agenda in the long run, because they're undermining the systems that will actually protect their own right to advocate for their ideas and actually have a fair opportunity to win the day in the long run. And so I think when we see people turning away from these basic values, it's often a problem that is rooted in short-term thinking, which is something humans are very prone to. We have this strong time bias for right now, but it's not actually logical and it can be really misguided to just pursue short-term. You even see this in business, like a CEO that will make decisions to maximize short-term profit that end up destroying the company in the medium to long-term. And I think that's what political parties do when they trample on constitutional institutions and restrictions in pursuit of a short-term gain, sometimes they set the stage for their own demise.
Speaker 1:So I mean obviously, as you just detailed, those have serious consequences, whether it be a business or government. And how do you think people, especially younger generations, could see the consequences of this? You spoke at length about privacy, about how GenZ and site data, how they're not really too concerned about the government looking into what they're doing, and even TikTok, how that algorithm can be a little pernicious and track keystrokes on other apps and there's not really a care. It's like that's like the reaction, more so indifferent. And I think part of that, when I was hearing you talk about this and then just other people who know this as well, is there's like a lack of the visualization of that negative consequence. You can't really see what's going to happen. To oversimplify this, like if you have a hot pan on, you know if you touch a hot pan you're going to get burned, but if you say have a lot of just unhealthy food in the house, it may not be just immediately clear how this could affect your diet long term, being surrounded in an environment that's not good for your dietary needs. However, that's it's not as clear in the moment as how this is going to negatively affect you down the line, and I think we see that as well in our society.
Speaker 1:The Buckley Institute conducted each year a poll on free speech and for the first time in the post history they found that a plurality of the participants said it was appropriate 46% appropriate to shout down speakers time to time. That's not against the First Amendment, but it's kind of like anti, I would say, creating a culture of free speech and creating a culture of challenging ideas and intellectuals, especially on college campuses. But when you want to get this back to you when you like, think about this and discuss these issues, do you think of a possible solution to this too? Because right now it kind of seems like it's going on like a downward slope and I think a lot of the time stories, when and whoever has the best story and can create like a narrative unfortunately cannot be the winner of the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't have one perfect solution. I often go back to civic education and to critical thinking, which are things that I think have really fallen by the wayside in our education system. So I think the US citizenship test should be something every high school senior has to pass in order to get their diploma. I think that would be a good place to start, but even more I mean I would swap out more of what we're doing in college that I find frivolous and silly, with civics education, with education about the Constitution, with that kind of thing, even incorporating that into high school. I think more high school should teach economics than actually do. My high school did not have economics, and I was in Massachusetts, which has some of the best public schools in the country, so I would start there.
Speaker 2:But that's not. You know, there's no easy can't hit a big red button and fix these kinds of big picture problems. But the other thing is I just try to do is always encourage people to try to put the shoe on the other foot, because when you're talking about a principle, you have to establish a principle that applies to everyone. There's no such thing as a political principle that only works in your favor, but when the other side in power switches back. That's not how it works in a government, so for with the example, or even just in a society. So the example you've just cited about shouting down speakers. What I would say to these college students is I know, I know you hate Ben Shapiro, I know you think he shouldn't speak at your campus, but if you guys can get together in an angry mob and shout him down and prevent him from speaking, well, in a couple months, when you try to bring a leftist, pro-palestine activist to campus who wants to abolish the state of Israel, the college Republicans can come to your event and get in a big group and shout him or her down so they're not able to hear. So what I would ask them is there's no way to do this where only you guys are allowed to shout down speakers. Either shouting speakers down is allowed in the student conduct handbook or it isn't.
Speaker 2:And so I would say would you rather have both or would you rather have neither? And I think most people would rather have both than have neither. But they seem to think that they can just have it their way in their case and then, when it's not in their case, they can have it their way still, but it's not how real the real world works. And so I would stress to young people, but honestly just Americans across the spectrum that whenever you're thinking about a principle and it just applies to politics, but it also really just applies to life try to think about what the shoe. How would you feel about it when the shoe is on the other foot?
Speaker 2:I mean, this actually goes back to like the golden rule you're taught in kindergarten or whatever treat others how you want to be treated, while in civil liberties you have to give others the rights you want for yourself, because if you undermine them for others, you're undermining the structures that preserve them for yourself. So it feels to me like there's a basic lack of understanding of civics of these basic principles and concepts, and unless we remedy that, it's only going to continue to decline these numbers, these polls, the support for American values that we kind of took for granted. It's only going to continue to decline.
Speaker 1:I unfortunately see a lot of the justification of why someone can have it their way but the other person can have it with their speaker or whatever case is, because it's a look through the lens of good versus evil, the press versus the oppressor, which seems to be more of a commonplace in today's discourse.
Speaker 1:Where you're just analyzing issues or analyzing the West and the history of the West, it's like, well, they're obviously the oppressor, they oppress this indigenous population or these people, and it's interesting and I would like to get your thoughts on this too kind of wrapping up, which is, I feel, for a large part of American history and just history overall.
Speaker 1:In societies they're always taught to be the good guys, they're always doing the right thing, and then, as time went on, you look back and like that was not the right thing, like I was probably doing these coups and land America probably wasn't right. But then what people do not exactly revisionist, but revisionist for lack of a better term will go back and flip the script and be like they're just oppressors, they're completely evil, and to that point say, well, you're just doing the same thing now. So I'm looking at the history of how it happened. You're just like switching the labels of who was good and who was evil, which is could be just as flawed, without kind of like looking about why someone did something and what just really occurred, rather than assigning, like, the good guys versus the bad guys that get Star Wars.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, I think good guys versus bad guys is a childish way to view the world, and we're supposed to grow out of it, but many people haven't, which is really quite unfortunate, because with very, very, very rare exceptions perhaps the Adolf Hitler's of the world there are very few humans ever to exist who are 100% bad or 100% good. We all have done things that are bad and we've all done things that are good. We all have positive and beneficial aspects of our personalities and negative and parasocial aspects of our personalities, and in the same way, our actions indeed reflect that. So I don't think people are. I don't think real life is ever as simple as the good guys versus the bad guys, and when you apply that frame to politics, it just leads you to silly places and silly conclusions.
Speaker 2:A good example is actually the Israel-Palestine conflict, because one could look at the state of Israel and the Jewish people who live there as the oppressors. But also, is there any group that's been more oppressed than the Jewish people? But at the same time, they have more power right now than the people of Gaza. They have more wealth, they are able to control their borders and restrict their borders in the West Bank. They're able to impose all sorts of restrictions on Palestinian people, and all of that you can debate whether it's necessary or not, but I'm simply saying they clearly are the more powerful person in this dynamic between Palestine and Israel in at least in a key sense. Yet also they experience anti-Semitism and have experienced some of the most grotesque atrocities in human history.
Speaker 2:It's like the real world is almost always more complicated than oppressors versus oppressed. For example, even from the social justice lens, the black community is oppressed Historical structural racism, all that stuff that progressives insist on. Yet they're also statistically according to polling more homophobic than white people. The black community is less accepting of gay people than society at large is, so they're simultaneously oppressed and oppressors. No one is as simple as black and white, good and bad. So when you try to look at the world in that way, you're always going to end up with distorted conclusions, because they're going to reflect the distorted prism through which you're looking at the world.
Speaker 1:Interesting, Interesting. Well, closing up, I really appreciate your insights on this and I think, as we first exchanged about, that culture is always upstream of politics and those effects can really come to be and you're kind of confused as to why whether it's regarding free speech or when it's looking through a different lens of history and why this is happening. Well, it's kind of looking at where the culture is gravitating towards. I want to thank you for your time today, Brad, and closing thoughts. Is there anything today that you wish I asked you or anything on top of mine that you like to communicate and also to part? How can people keep up with your work and how can they support you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me Very interesting conversation and if people enjoy listening to me, they should check out my podcast. I host two podcasts. One is the Base Politics Podcast, which is political news and analysis, and the other is the Damage Control podcast, which specifically focuses on reclaiming the debate over LGBT issues from insane people on both extremes.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, appreciate your time.
