Judging Freedom - Should the Government Control the Internet_

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

Joe Rogan Schools Rolling Stone Founder on Government Censorship Jann Wenner once fought The Man ... now he wants to give said Man the keys https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/joe-r... #JoeRogan #JanWenner #Rollingstone #censorshipSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, October 11, 2022. It's about 11.15 in the morning here on the east coast of the United States. My friend Joe Rogan is the king of the hill in podcast land. He has a fabulous, fabulous long form, usually three hour long podcast with great, wonderful, in-depth interviews with all kinds of interesting people. Just the other day, he interviewed Jan Wenner, the famous or infamous founder of Rolling Stone Magazine, which has made him very wealthy and very famous. He founded it when he was 21 years old. He now no longer runs it. A famously left-wing, famously avant-garde, famously bohemian, famously progressive and liberal magazine. But Jan Wenner basically said he thinks that the internet should be

regulated by the government, that somehow he trusts the government to regulate free speech. Watch this back and forth between Wenner and the great Joe Rogan. I love the internet. It's great. And I love social media, you know, but like every other industry in the United States, it has to be regulated. If you don't regulate it. But who regulates it? The government. Do you trust the government to regulate the internet? Absolutely. You trust the people that got us into the Iraq war under false pretenses to regulate the internet?

I would not. The people who got us into the Iraq war. It's the government. Whereas the politicians. It's the government. In the end, yes, it's the government. But who else is going to regulate it? Good job, Joe. and of course winner was scrambling he obviously though he is in the business or was in the business and made his name and fortune uh on the protections accorded to the media by uh the free speech clauses of the first amendment he obviously doesn't understand uh the nature of free speech clauses of the First Amendment. He obviously doesn't understand the nature of free speech. I remember Ronald Reagan's famous one liner, the nine most dangerous words in the

English language are, hi, I'm from the government. I'm here to help you. Obviously and thankfully in America, the government has no business whatsoever regulating the freedom of speech. The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to keep the government out of the business of regulating speech. The power of speech to rise or fall, to be accepted or rejected, to titillate or to please, to stir the pot or to reinforce whatever the purpose of the speech is, that power rests in the free market of ideas, which all of us have on programs like this, Judging Freedom, on Joe Rogan's show, and for the most part, in the media today. When the government interferes with speech by spreading lies, as the CIA does, or the CIA's version of what's happening, for example, in Ukraine, or when the government

co-opts various media entities, hey, we'll not let people sue you if you do some of our bidding, then we have a very serious problem. Then the media and the government are in what's called a symbiotic relationship, where you think you're accepting words from the media, but you're really accepting words from the government. When that happens, guess what? Then the courts will impose the First Amendment restraints that normally belong on the government onto the media. It doesn't justify what the media does, but it put, it doesn't justify what the government does, but it puts the media in the same straitjacket that the First Amendment is in. What do I mean? So if Mark Zuckerberg

doesn't like what I say, he can take me off of Facebook and there's not much I can do about it. Facebook is a bulletin board that he, that Meta owns, and Meta is a publicly traded but private, that is not government corporation. But if Joe Biden or New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy don't like what I say, they can't take me off of Facebook or YouTube or TikTok or Apple or any of the other platforms that host this show. Why? Because they are the government and the First Amendment prohibits the government from interfering in the freedom of speech. Jan Wenner and people like him, liberals who don't like the speech of libertarians or the speech of conservatives, want the government to crush that speech.

Thanks be to God, that will not happen as long as we have a First Amendment and the interpretations of the First Amendment that the Supreme Court in the modern era has given it. All speech is protected. All political speech is absolutely protected. All speech is absolutely protected. All speech is absolutely protected unless it calls for violence and there is no time for more speech

to negate the calls for violence. If there is time for more speech to negate the calls for violence, then even that speech is protected. It may be reprehensible. It may be disgusting. It may keep you up at night. It may cause harm. But it's protected speech. Get it? Mr. Wanner, Judge the Politano, we're judging freedom. Shh.