Judging Freedom - A First Amendment Hit Job

Episode Date: April 28, 2022

The Department of Homeland Security set up a new Disinformation Governance Board to tackle misinformation in minority communities #Biden #freespeechSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here. Today is Thursday, April 28th, 2022. It's about 3.30, 3.35 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Thank you for watching, all my dear friends.

Thank you for subscribing. The numbers continue to go up, and of course, we need them to continue to move. Like and subscribe, like and subscribe. Get your friends and relatives to do so. This morning, the government announced something that you almost can't even believe. I mean, the name of this monstrosity, the Disinformation Governance Board in the Department of Homeland Security, sounds like it's right out of George Orwell's 1984, or maybe even out of George Orwell's Animal Farm. I'm kidding about the latter,

but it does sound as though it's coming from a totalitarian government. Look, the concept of the Department of Homeland Security is totalitarian. I opposed it and ripped into it, even though my colleagues at Fox supported it at the time. When George W. Bush created this monstrosity. It's basically a federal police force. Did you know that there are between 65,000 and 70,000 federal cops who work for the Department of Homeland Security? So it includes the TSA. It also includes cadres of young men wearing khaki pants and black shirts. They're a little terrifying to look at.

You usually see them in the streets whenever a federal official is present. If Joe Biden were outside CNN, you'd see CNN swarming with these DHS people. We don't need federal police. The idea of a federal police force, even including the FBI, is a dangerous one. And the framers knew that, which is why they left policing and law enforcement to the states. But all the fear and all the wars, we have all these federal agencies. They popped up right after World War II, and then they popped up right after 9-11, and we have them. It would take tremendous courage. I once had attempted to talk President

Trump into disbanding DHS. He hated it, but he felt he needed to spend his political capital elsewhere. Now DHS is creating this disinformation governance board. What a hit job this is on the First Amendment. I once had a debate with my late friend, great human being, brilliant constitutional scholar, maybe the smartest person I've ever known. I know that's going to upset Bill O'Reilly. Justice Hanson and Scalia, we argued over whether or not the government has freedom of speech. Justice Scalia says it does. The government needs to speak to people. Go 25 miles an hour. The library closes at nine o'clock. Here's the draft board. And I argued, well, government can tell people what the laws are, but government can't express an opinion. Only human beings have freedom of speech.

It comes from our humanity. It's a gift of God. It's a natural right. Government is not a naturally existing being. It is a creature based on geography and force. It's the king of the hill in a geographic area. It is not entitled to the freedom of speech. Well, obviously, Joe Biden agrees with Antonin Scalia because this disinformation governance board is about to tell us what is true and what's untrue.

My initial response is, who the hell cares what the government thinks is true or untrue? The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to keep the government out of the marketplace of ideas. The First Amendment presumes that we, that individuals, decide what to listen to and what to believe and how to challenge it. We don't need and we don't want the government involved. The government may not evaluate speech, it may not punish speech, it may not even reward speech, it may not correct speech. The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to encourage open, wide, robust, even caustic debate about the policies and the personnel of the government. I also argued to Justice Scalia in this debate that we had, and he's been dead for nine years, so this debate was a while ago,

that if government has the freedom of speech, it will drown out everybody else because government has the biggest microphone, the biggest megaphone on the planet, and it can always print money to support all of its projects, something that the rest of us would go to jail if we did. Do we really want to compete with the government in the marketplace of ideas? This is profoundly unconstitutional and be very difficult to challenge because of the way these people in DHS have crafted this, and because the Constitution requires a case or controversy before a federal court can hear a challenge. So someone is going to have to be harmed by this disinformation governance board,

and then they'll have a basis to sue the board and to argue that it's unconstitutional. It is profoundly unconstitutional. It is profoundly unconstitutional. However, Congress has given so much authority to the president. There's so much extra money in all these departments' budgets. He has the legal authority to create the board. The board can't make rules. If he wants this board to make rules, then it's got to be created by legislation, and Congress has to give it guidelines for the rules as if it were the EPA or the FDA or something like that. Rules for government on speech? Yeah, there's one rule. Shut the hell up. The government should have absolutely nothing to do with speech. The First Amendment. Congress shall make no law

abridging the freedom of speech. Today that means no government, Congress, the president, the courts, the states, local government, no government shall abridge the freedom of speech. When government enters the marketplace of free speech, it chills everybody else. It gives you pause and second thoughts. Do I really want to go through this before they jump down my throat? And chilling is unconstitutional because it interferes with free speech. Joe, everybody says you don't know what the hell you're doing. I don't know. Joe Biden, I knew when we taught together at Delaware Law School many years ago,

was a wonderful, decent guy. Not a law school professor, candidly, but a nice guy. But today, this is one of the most reprehensible assaults on the Constitution that you and the Democrats have ever pulled. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.