 So one of I think, I think one of the biggest threats to Western civilization as we know it is the attack really from all parties, all across the political spectrum and elsewhere on free speech. And it's a multifaceted attack. It comes in a variety of different disguises, hate speech laws in Europe by the right and the left. It comes in the whole discussion about fake news and trying to silence so-called fake news, the government doing it. It comes in riot form as we saw in Berkeley a week and a half ago where Milo, not somebody I particularly respect or admire, but Milo a gay, how does he describe himself? He's gay, he's Catholic, he's an immigrant, he's white and he just likes to make fun ridicule the left. And he was going to speak on the campus of Berkeley and there were protests. I have no problem with protests if they're done right, but the protests turned very quickly into a riot. People were beaten up. People were pepper sprayed who weren't doing anything other than speaking and the riot escalated to such an extent that at the end of the day Milo could not deliver his talk at Berkeley. He was invited there by college Republicans. So anyway from riots to government action, but also I would say things like when the president of the United States says about certain types of speech, well, you know, we don't want to antagonize the other sides that don't engage in it. Bush said that about the Danish cartoons. Obama said that. Bush senior said that when Solomon Rushdie, they went after Solomon Rushdie and of course Donald Trump said that after two years ago when Garland happened before he was president just at the beginning of the campaign. He said that when terrorist struck the cartoon competition in Garland. So free speech is being attacked throughout and this to me is one of the cornerstone values of Western civilization. I mean, this is so crucial to everything that America stands for, everything that we believe in. If you can't speak, then you can't think, then you're not free. We have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Liberty means the right to liberty means you have a right to think what you will and to speak, to produce, to write, to, you know, to put your ideas out there into the world, true or false, good or bad ideas. It's not the job of government. And it's not a job of other people with a club, with a gun, with a fist to determine whether you can publish your ideas or not. Now it doesn't mean you have a right to use my radio station or to use my publication in order to publish your ideas. If I own the radio station, if I own the publication, I get to decide which ideas to publish. So when Twitter or when Facebook decide we don't want this and we want that, that's within their right, private property. That's not a violation of free speech. Only violence, and particularly when the government doesn't protect you from their violence, is a violation of free speech. And only, and then the government of course, by prohibiting, by censoring, by passing hate speech laws can violate free speech. So this is the, this is, this is really crucial. I mean, you can't pursue the truth. You can't pursue what is right in terms of ideas. If you are afraid that if you come up with something that offends the authorities, you will be persecuted. You know, the fact that Galileo could come up with this theory, the theory was that the earth goes around the sun, not the other way around, not the sun goes around the earth. The fact that he could come up with that in spite of the fact that he knew he risked persecution, makes him a hero. Most people would walk away. I'm not going to think about that. I don't want to get burnt at the stake. I don't want to go into house arrest, which is what happened to Galileo, the Catholic Church put him out of house arrest, because what he found went against scripture. So if you, if there's a threat of riots, of physical force, or government censorship, or government condemnation, or government control over you, then that restricts people's ability to think, to produce a new work, and to really speak, and write, and discover new truth. And it holds us all back. And it, it, it makes people not think about certain issues, not think in certain arenas, because I might come up with something that might land up offending people. And if I can't actually write what I think, if I can't speak what I think, then what's the point of thinking it? So any kind of restraints on free speech, any kind of threats about free speech, unbelievably damaging, and even when the president of the United States says, you know, all the media, they're all corrupt, they're all wrong, they're all public fake news, I don't trust any of them. Remember who he is, he's the president of the United States. He has a gun at his disposal. He has tools at his disposal to silence these people. And for him to attack the media, to condemn the media, is just plain wrong. It is a mechanism by which to silence the media. So, granted, much of the media, if not all of the media, are biased. And there's a lot of fake news out there, fake news on the right, fake news on the left, fake news in the middle. There's a ton of fake news. The job of the government is to stay out of it. It's our jobs, the citizens. It's our job as consumers of news, of information to try to figure out what is right and what is wrong, what is true, what is not. You know, don't buy the newspaper that is, that you believe is evil and wrong. And don't, you know, don't buy those newspapers. But it is wrong of the government. And look, it is wrong of the government to intervene, to tell you what news to consume or what other news not to consume. It's wrong of the government to tell you what is true and what is false. That is not the government's job. The government was set up to protect our rights, to protect us from coercion, not to tell us what to think, not to tell us how to think. They are not the, you know, the thought police. It's no accident, the 1984, where there's a lot of discussion of false news, where you cannot speak against the government, where you cannot produce any news that is against what the government wants you to speak is so popular right now. The standard is not. The standards for speech is whether you're offended or not. Hey, I get offended every day by Donald Trump, by Hillary Clinton, by Bernie Sanders, by politicians left and right. They say stuff that offends me all the time. I get upset constantly. Do I have a right to shoot them because of that? Do I have a right to silence them because of that? That is, that is absurd. They have a right, they have a right, as long as they don't use force, they have a right to say whatever they want. Now, Cuffee disagrees with you. Go ahead, Cuffee, you think there should be limits to free speech. Hello? I can hear you now. Go ahead. As usual, absolutely, because I am an, I'm not an extremist. I'm a radical who is consistent. And absolutely, what is the purpose of my love? I don't know, but it's none of the government's business. What is the purpose of the New York Times spouting false news? I don't know, but it's none of the government's business. You don't like what the New York Times writes. Don't buy it. But when the government gets into the business of telling you what news you should consume and what news you shouldn't, what is false news and what is right news, then you're getting into totalitarian, authoritarian government territory. That's what the Soviet Union did. That's what the Nazis did. That's what authoritarians do. And that's what they're trying to do in Europe right now. I'll tell you about what's going on in Europe in a minute. When you try to say, we are the arbiters, we the government are the arbiters of what is the truth and what is falsehood, then you are giving power to the government over what we think and how we do things. And that's how we get to totalitarianism. Each individual American is a thinking adult. We can figure out what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. And we don't need to consume everything. We don't have to go to a Milo rally. Stay away. You don't have to go. If you're going to be offended, don't go. You get the last word, Kuffy. We've got just a few minutes here. A few seconds. Oh, no. Okay. So Kuffy's gone. Or at least I can't hear him. Look, I'm a believer in free speech and absolutist when it comes to free speech. You should be too because that's what America stands for. That's what the Declaration of Independence implies. I can't hear you. Do you mind writing it in the thing? Because my volume for the caller and for this is very weak. It's usually better. I don't know what's going on today. Although the ads are coming in fine. Did we lose one of the callers? I can't enjoy watching me drinking water though. Yeah, I know Kuffy. He plays devil's advocate. He actually agrees with everything I say. He always calls them. Usually he uses Nathaniel as his name. And usually throws out a grenade and then goes away. So yeah, I'm not surprised he hung up. It's actually Jonathan Honing who lives in Chicago and is on Fox all the time. So I don't know if you know who Jonathan is, but that's Jonathan. Yep. Kuffy was Jonathan. So we're talking about free speech today and you know I'm an absolutist when it comes to free speech. I believe you have a right on your own property through your own medium. And if somebody invites you to give a talk, you have a right to say pretty much anything. You can't incite violence because I don't really consider that speech. That's an action. That's violence. That's the essence of violence. You can't commit fraud. But other than inciting violence, other than fraud and inciting violence, I mean saying go out there and go burn the son of a bitch. I don't know if I can say that on radio. But anyway, other than saying that, right, go and do this and this, you can pretty much say anything and that's, that is, that is what free speech means. Because once we have the government deciding what is right and what is wrong, what is true, what is false, it's going to impose its willingness. And most of the time the government doesn't have the tools to know what's right or wrong. And it's not its job. The job of government is to protect us, to protect us from coercion. The essence of government is it's a gun. It's a gun. It's force. It's coercion. Force and coercion have no business in the business of truth. Force, coercion have no business in the business of truth seeking. Right? All right. We got Steve on the line. It looks like Steve might agree with me. Hey Steve, how's it going? I'm doing well. Absolutely. Yeah, let me say something, Steve. I want to pick up on something you said because I agree with you completely. And particularly I'm glad you raised the IRS scandal because of all of the scandals during the Obama administration. I think this one is probably the worst. And the fact that people didn't get more upset about it really upsets me because it was such a clear violation that IRS targeted conservative groups. They used the power, the gun of government, to restrict the ability of these groups to organize, to become nonprofits, to become organizations that advocated for an idea because they didn't like their speech. In the history of kind of America, this is one of those instances where government went after speech unequivocally using the power of the gun. And I think it's so sad that the American public wasn't more upset about it, that congressmen didn't make more of a deal out of it, that we didn't prosecute somebody as a consequence of this. And that ultimately people in America just shrugged, oh well what can we do? But once, because once you start on that road, you're heading towards Cuba. You're heading towards exactly what you described where the government tells you what to think and anybody who thinks differently or anybody who says differently is put in jail or shunned or silenced in one way or the other. So thank you for bringing it up, Steve. IRS scandal, big scandal. Yeah, thanks for calling Steve, appreciate it. And yeah, look, that's exactly what happens, right? When the government gets into the business of truth or falsehood, it might say Iran, your show, your show is full of false news, right? You know, as many of you know, I'm got, you know, I might get into trouble here, but I'm pro-immigration and I'm pro-trade. I love free trade, zero tariffs, right? Well, Donald Trump might decide if we gave him the power to say, well, Iran, that's false news. We have decided that free trade is a bad thing. And by you advocating that free trade is a good thing, you're disseminating false news and we're gonna silence you. We're gonna shut your radio down, your radio show down. Now, even those who disagree with me on trade and immigration on a lot of these issues, I hope, I hope, I hope Americans enough still, they, you would defend my right to say it, my right to say things you disagree with. That would be, that would be the American thing to do, not like at Berkeley. At Berkeley, when this Milo character showed up, now I'm not a big fan of Milo's, I don't like him. I think he's just a flamethrower. I think he does not promote any positive values. But he shows up and he's insulting and he, you know, but that's what he is, right? And these leftists organized and some of them wore, I don't know, wore these black uniforms with covered their faces. And any student who was defending Milo, who was talking about going to their van, why the van was a good event, they pepper sprayed them, they beat them with sticks, they, you know, there's some debate about whether they started a fire or not, but they started a fire, they broke windows and they said, who cares windows, just private property. You didn't break any bones. They also try to break bones. But in other words, they tried to silence Milo using force, using force. Now, I don't think at a public event, you have a right to silence anybody. I've been, you know, they've been two attempts recently to silence me too, right? One, in England, in the UK, I was doing a talk about free speech, pretty talk about free speech. And I get up to start talking and a student gets up and starts reciting something I'd written, calls me a racist, calls me a fascist, and starts waving the flag of the Palestinians. And then another student gets up and then another one, another one, another one. But a dozen of them get up and they start chanting, free Palestine, free Palestine. They wouldn't let me speak. And I was completely silenced. And we had to get security. We had to move into a different room. And then my time was shortened because I had to go catch a train. So in other words, they really disrupted what I had to say and they have, that is just wrong. That is what the police are there for, to stop them from doing that, to protect my right to speak and the right of the group that invited me to hear what I had to say. It was their event. It was their property in that sense. It's interesting that the girl who ran the group that invited me to speak, she was sympathetic to the pro-Palestinian side. She actually was quite a lefty, but she wanted a debate. She wanted to have actually hear me speak. And she was in tears because these people were stopping me. So it's hard to get me to shed a tear, but you know, it's possible, I guess, but not by doing that. You're never going to see me crying because somebody's trying to silence me or somebody's trying to intimidate me. But then the funny thing was, so these guys called me a racist and a fascist because I was pro-capitalism, pro-freedom, pro-free speech. And by the way, pro-Israel, pro-American, right to self-defense. Then I come to America five days later to the beautiful city of Chicago and I'm speaking at an AM560 event, right? The Freedom Summit or what it was called. And about 600 people tried to silence me there because I was critical of Donald Trump. Because again, this idea that we are going to use force, we're going to use our voices to silence you in a public forum and you know, we don't care about property rights or anything like that. We're going to silence you. That is a phenomenon both of left and right. And I've seen it from Trump supporters in spades and I certainly saw it in Chicago that day. Maybe some of you were there. Maybe some of you were yelling to get me off the stage or to silence me or to shut me up or to order some of you even want to be deported from the country even though I'm a U.S. citizen. But that's what it gets to. That's the kind of attitude of I don't want to hear. I disagree with this person. He shouldn't be allowed to speak. He represents a point of view I don't agree with. He shouldn't be allowed to speak. Now to me, that suggests that you, whatever your views, left, right, middle, whatever, you're afraid. You're coward. Because I can't force my beliefs on you. I can't change your mind other than by reasoning with you. What is the damage of hearing me speak? Other than your ideas might be challenged and you might be afraid of that. That's certainly what dictators or dictators don't want free speech because they don't want to be challenged. People might start agreeing with the guy challenging them instead of with them. And when people go out and demonstrate and riot and protest and yell down speakers, what they're exhibiting is fear. Fear that their ideas are not solid enough. Fear that their ideas cannot stand up in the debate. Fear that their minds might be changed or that other people's minds might be changed. That their ideas are not good enough to stand up for it. So I view protest like this of somebody speaking, you know, where you're silencing the person. Now where you're just saying, you're wrong. I'm all for booing a speaker. I'm all for holding up signs. I'm all for not clapping, but cheering. I'm all for all that as long as you don't stop the speaker from speaking. All right, we're going to talk about hate speech laws, particularly in Europe. In Europe it's getting scary because this whole idea of fake news, the government is getting involved in starting to ban what they consider fake news. We'll be right back after this break. Now more useful as a bargaining chip to Russian President Vladimir Putin. This implies the Russians would give up the NSA whistleblower to the U.S. in return for something. President Donald Trump has called Snowden a, quote, terrible traitor and tweeted before he was president that Snowden deserves to be executed. Fox is Brian Yenis. Fox News, we report you decide. Can you get from here to there? We've got the answer from thewoodfieldneeson.com traffic I'm Ken Griffin taking a look at the roadways on the evenings. 27 Lake Hook to Montrose by 19 going back the other way on the Kennedy 41 where the downtown 23 to the junction and about 10 to Montrose 23 back on to old here on the Eisenhower 42. Thorndale to the post office 29 from Mannheim. I'm thinking about 22 to Mannheim and 35 to Thorndale. Stevenson slowing as you approach the downtown area up down from Ashland to Cicero. Dan Ryan is 23 coming in 17 going back out that's low 79 Bishop board 57 the board both okay. Lakeshore Drive is on break southbound north to Chicago and 18 to the Stevenson and northbound from Roosevelt to Jackson and from Whacker to Chicago. The toways are looking okay right now. No delays on IED in the roadways northwest Indiana are getting the all clear right now. AM 560 weather cloudy with a low 33 currently 45. 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Judging by the thank yous we get at the clinic I'd say we're doing the right thing with our retirement too. We're Tom and Cindy Thornton. We volunteer at our community free health clinic. We don't just wear the shirt. We live it. Give, advocate, volunteer, live united. Go to liveunited.org brought to you by United Way and the head council. No traditional conservative view nor the standard libertarian ones. Welcome back to the discussion of Ein Ranch radical fundamental principles of freedom. This is the Yaron Brooke show on a.m. 5 60 the answer. So today we're talking about free speech and the absolute value of free speech. And you know when you get free speech you're going to get a lot of bad stuff. You're going to get a lot of false news. You're going to get a lot of lies. You're going to get a lot of just mistakes. Just things that are wrong. And the fact is that in a civilized society, in a free society, we tolerate that. We have to tolerate that. You get a lot of Milo's. I don't like to listen to Milo. I would never go down Milo talk. I wouldn't invite him on my radio show because it's my radio show. But I would fight on the barricades for his right to speak and that's true of the people are crazy people on the left to speak every day. I mean, as I said, I'm offended by any time Obama opened his mouth that was offended. And for that extent I'm offended almost every time Donald Trump opens his mouth or Steve Banner know most people in politics as those of you who follow this show regularly know I don't consider myself left or right. I think they're pox on both houses. I'm an individualist. I'm a capitalist. I believe in free markets. I believe in the founding principles of America. I believe in the founding fathers. And it is a tragedy that both left and right in America completely betrayed the principles upon which this country was founded. And this whole attitude towards free speech that Obama exhibited and now Donald Trump is exhibiting is just one indication of how far removed we have become from the ideas of the founders. So I'm here to protect American way, which is the way of individualism, which is the way of speaking and writing, whether you like and letting people speak and write, whether you like it or not, whether it offends you or doesn't. Emotions, emotions are not coercion. If I cause you to feel bad, that's not the same as punching you in the nose. We used to know the difference. We used to know the difference, but not anymore. I mean, I read the Berkeley student newspaper published a bunch of our ads, a bunch of editorials. A few days after the riots, this is on February 7th, defending the riots. And the students basically said, we were acting in self-defense. Why? Because Milo is going to offend us. The people supporting Milo were offending us. They represent a threat to us because they say things we don't like and we don't agree with. And therefore it's okay for us to use force, to use a fist, to use violence in order to try to silence them. That is the state in which our country is in. That certainly is the way the left views it. And as I told you, my experiences with the right are not much different, but I would love, I would love to get somebody to call in and defend this kind of attitude and defend the Freedom Summit, the trying to silence me and others at places like the Freedom Summit, because you guys, some of you, do the same thing. Some people on the right do the same thing. All right. I wanted to talk, there's an op-ed in the Western Post written by a good friend of mine and an important figure when it comes to defensive free speech. His name is Fleming Rose, Fleming Rose, F-L-E-M-M-I-N-G Rose. And Fleming is a very important person because he is the guy who published the Danish cartoons in 2005 that caused all those riots in 2006 and all the death and destruction as a consequence, right? And what did he do? Why did he publish those cartoons? He published those cartoons to show his fellow Europeans that they were self-censoring themselves out of fear of the Islamists and that they needed to stand up to Islam. They needed to stand up to the radical Islamists. They needed to stand up to the jihadis. And the only way to stand up to them is, in this context, is to speak, to draw and to say things they won't like. And in this case, drawing Muhammad was something they didn't like. But the only way, the only way to not, you know, let them intimidate us into silence, intimidate us into only saying what is agreeable to them, whether you like Muhammad or not, is irrelevant. I mean, people in America draw ugly cartoons of Jesus. They even draw ugly cartoons of the founding fathers. And they have a right to do that. And you have a right to draw a cartoon of Muhammad. And the fact that we don't draw cartoons of Muhammad, because we're so scared, is what Fleming Rose was trying to show. And indeed, he showed it in spades. He showed it in spades. Right after the Danish cartoons came out, and the riots happened, I invited Fleming Rose to come to the United States. And we went around the country. We did several events on college campuses where we blew up the cartoons, made them into big posters, and had them in the back of the room behind us. And we had a panel discussion about free speech with the cartoons in the background. Great events. At the NYU, New York University, they wouldn't let us show the cartoons. So we put the posters up, and we covered them in white sheets, and we did the event, which was in a sense more powerful, because we were basically saying, look, even at NYU, they won't let us show the cartoons. Even at NYU, at an American university, we are being silenced. This is a big issue. Now, he has this op-ed in our lasting post. I recommend you read it. I'll talk about it a little bit when we come back from the break. It's called Shutting Down Fake News. Could move us closer to modern day 1984. You're listening to your Unbrook show. We'll be right back. Weather cloudy with a 33, currently 45, next update in 15 minutes on AM560. The answer. 25% discount and conference registration fees until February 28. If you want to take advantage of the lower rates, now's the time to sign up. Experience the uniquely inspiring events only an objectivist conference offers. Register, and you'll have the opportunity to attend intellectually stimulating talks, panel discussions, and workshops with people who share your values. Visit objectivistconferences.com and sign up today. That's objectivistconferences.com. Students, you can apply for a scholarship to cover some or all of your expenses. See you at Ocon 2017. Thanks for calling New Biotics. Are you calling for a free trial of our belly flattening breakthrough? Actually, I've already got the free trial. It totally flattened my belly. Wow, that's great news. Here's one thing you can do. Only take New Biotics every other day. That'll keep up your results without making your belly too flat. And if you ever need to ramp up your belly flattening results again, just go back to taking it every day. To get your free trial of New Biotics, call 1-800-936-2994. You're going to love how you look. And if your belly flattening results are too dramatic, simply reduce use to every other day. But hurry and call now for details while they're still giving it away for free. Call 1-800-936-2994. That's 1-800-936-2994. 1-800-936-2994. Intrigued, inspired, and possibly even angered, Brooke Shaw on AM 560. The answer. So we're talking about free speech. We'd love to hear from you. 312-642-5600. What are your views? Do you think the President of the United States should be criticizing the media and critiquing them and telling them what they should write and what they shouldn't write and what's right and what's wrong? Do you think Donald Trump is good for free speech or, as I do, awful for free speech and just a flip version of kind of the left's attitude? Government should stay out of the business of truth, out of the business of media. It should tell us the truth. That would be nice. All right. I want to mention, before I forget, I want to mention an event in Chicago. You can come and protest me there. You can come and try to silence me there. It's going to be on March 11th at the W Hotel in downtown Chicago. So at the W Hotel in downtown Chicago. And it's called Building a Future of Reason and Capitalism. I'm going to be there. We're going to have a number of intellectuals from the Ein Rand Institute. Generally, the views you hear here, I hope, are consistent with the views of Ein Rand. I encourage you to read Ein Rand. If you haven't read Atlas Shrugged, you're just not hip. You're just not up to speed in terms of the philosophy of shaping the debate and shaping the world. I'd say almost all of the cabinet appointees, including Donald Trump himself, have read Ein Rand. So you should go out there and and go buy a copy and read it. So we'll be here on March 11th. You can get more information on EinRand.org, A-R-I dot EinRand, A-Y-N-R-E-N-D dot org slash events, right? You can click on the event button and you'll find this event March 11th in Chicago. And then for those of you listening in Miami, it will be there April 20th or I'll be there April 20th. I don't think we have the whole team coming, but I'll be in Miami April 20th for a similar event there. So come, you can come, you can argue against me. You just can't silence me. It's my event, but you can argue against me. And talking about arguing against me, we have Izzy. Izzy says I'm dead wrong about Trump. Hey, Izzy, how's it going? I'm good. I'm good. Tons on them. Sure. But look, there's a difference. There's a difference between you and me and the president of the United States. You and me can say whatever we want and we can criticize anybody and we can go out and even demonstrate certain news organizations, say that's fake news, get it off, all of that. But the president of the United States represents the U.S. government. He is no longer a private citizen. He is no longer somebody who can just talk. He is somebody who now every time he speaks, his speech represents the government, which means it represents a gun. And look, that's part of being a public figure. It's part of being a president. I mean, you know how many false stories there were about Obama, including, by the way, the false story that Donald Trump promoted about Obama not being born in the United States, right? Donald Trump was the number one promoter of false news. It's kind of rich for him to complain about false news. But everybody gets false news. Everybody gets accused of stuff. All of this happens. If you're a public figure, particularly if you're president, just grow a spine, get some thick skin, and live with it, and do your job. And your job is to protect the rights of people to produce false news, to produce any news they want, to say anything they want. That's your job, to protect them, not to accuse them. Go ahead. I do. I do expect him to lie down. I expect him not to comment on the media, expect him to stay silent because it is not his, it is against his responsibility, it is not his job, to decide what about all the news that doesn't relate to Donald Trump, some of it fake. What about all the news of Breitbart that is often fake? What about the news of Fox that is sometimes fake? Is he now going to be the police? Because that's what he is. He's president. There are no fake news of Fox? Sure. Well, sure, they can say that, but they can't say, you guys are promoting fake news and you're a bad media organization. And New York Times, you should stop doing this in Washington Post. We might go after your owner, Jeff Bezos, who's on Amazon. You just can't do all that stuff. Yes, you can promote, you can present what you view as the correct news on issues that are relevant. But by the way, fake news about the family of Donald Trump is not relevant to the fate of the United States government. You know, the real issues, the real, you know, stop making this about yourself. I'd say that to the president. Stop making it about, you know, if he started ignoring this nonsense, it would go away. The only reason people are doing it is to kind of get him, get him all wild up, get him all excited. Again, government, government thanks. He really appreciate the call. Thanks for listening. And I agree with you in the sense that fake news is bad. People who do fake news should be called on it. I just don't think the president should be engaged in that because he brings the authority of the presidency of the United States with him, which means a gun. You're listening to your own book show. Thanks to SelectBlinds.com. SelectBlinds won't gouge you like those big, greedy lion corporations. Our loyal customers seem to agree. Just check the over 170,000 five-star reviews on our site with SelectBlinds. Do it yourself. Doesn't have to mean do it alone. In fact, if you can hang a picture, you can hang your own blinds. And for added peace of mind, our specialists will walk you through how to measure, choose, and install your new window covers. Choose from a vast selection of high-quality custom blinds, shades, and drapes. SelectBlinds.com really is the simple and smart way to get blinds. They've served over a million happy customers. What I'll be one of them. Shop today at SelectBlinds.com. Mention this show at checkout and get sample swatches of the room darkening blinds or shades of your choice. Absolutely free. SelectBlinds.com. SelectBlinds.com. Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute speaks to audiences around the world promoting Ayn Rand's ideas and talks and books. Now, he's on your radio here on AM 560. The answer. So we're talking today about free speech, free speech under attack by both left and right everywhere around the world. And Europe is particularly scary. And I'd like to read you just a little bit of this op-ed that was published February 10th by Fleming Rose in the Washington Post and Jacob Changma. I probably butchered his name. But anyway, just a couple of paragraphs I want to read you. European Union Commissioner, whatever his name is, has worn tech companies, worn tech companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, that if they don't find ways to eliminate hate speech and combat fake news, a law mandating action may be necessary. Commissioner Andrews Unsip or whatever. Reinforced that threat last month. Alibid and softile language promoting social media giants and traditional media to announce a flurry of initiatives aimed at combating fake news. So now the government is going to tell us to clean up our act from fake news. And again, this is the kind of thing that Donald Trump is on the verge of doing. He hasn't quite done this, but he's very sympathetic to this kind of stuff. Hey, Facebook and Twitter, clean up your act, right? And what does that mean when the government says it? It means here's a gun. If you don't do it, we're going to pass a law. We're going to control you. We're going to shoot you. We have this power over you guys. It goes on. Italy's antitrust chief, Giovanni something, has said that EU countries should set up a network of government appointed bodies, government appointed bodies to remove fake news and potentially impose fines on the media. So now we get the government deciding what fake news is. Was Galileo fake news? According to whom? According to the government at the time, the Catholic church, it certainly was fake news. So is that who we want? We want to have government bureaucrat to decide what we read and what we don't read, what's right and what's wrong. What difference then is it between us and Cuba and the Soviet Union and other authoritarian and dictatorial regimes? Set up a political body. It's unbelievable, right? This guy doesn't hide his political agenda. He wants to target his opponents on the populist left and right. Post truth in politics is one of the drivers of populism and is one of the threats to our democracies, right? Yeah. Post truth is nutty. There is no such thing as post truth. There's truth and truth and then there's untruth. But you don't force people to see the truth. You don't get to decide you with the gun, you the bureaucrat, you the politician, don't get to decide what the truth is and what it isn't. That is an authoritarianism and that's where we're heading if these guys continue. In Germany, politicians eager to counter Russian meddling and populist movements in upcoming parliamentary election. If he should similar cause, this justice minister argues that authorities need the power to impose prison terms for fake news on social media. Defamation and malice of gossip are not covered under freedom of speech. Yes, well, defamation isn't, but gossip certainly is and it's hard to prove defamation. Justice authorities must prosecute that even on the internet. Anyone who tries to manipulate the political discussion with lies needs to be aware of the consequences. This is dangerous territory. We're heading towards people. Dangerous, dangerous territory when the powers to be want to start influencing what we can say and what we can't. And yeah, I'm against fake news. The presentation of falsehood as if it's truth is wrong. It is evil. But that's our job. Our job is thinkers, our jobs and these individuals to figure out what's true and what's false, what's right and what's wrong. We're smart enough. We don't need government bureaucrats telling us what to think, what to read, and what to believe. All right, you've been listening to your Ron Brook show. You can follow me on Twitter, your Ron Brook, Y-A-R-O-N-B-R-O-K. Talk to you next week, same place, same time. Thank you. Talk to you next week. We'll talk to somebody next week. Thanks.