(Nov 27, 2015) Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report talks to Christina Hoff Sommers (Host of The Factual Feminist) about feminism, free speech and trigger warnings, Gamergate, cultural libertarians, and much more. Gender politics and discussions about equality have dominated the national conversation for the last few years. Is it possible to achieve perfect gender equality? What issues are trying to be addressed by feminism in the 21st century? If you’d like to hear about the current state of the feminist movement in the US as well as the state of human rights in other parts of the globe check out this playlist:
BONUS TOPIC: WAGE GAPS Oldest to Newest
The Gender Wage Gap Uses Bogus Statistics | FACTUAL FEMINIST — The gender wage gap came into focus this week, but not in the way the White House wanted. A reporter asked about AEI’s study showing that Obama administration female staffers make only 88% of their male counterparts’ salaries. Christina Hoff Sommers examines spokesman Jay Carney’s response in this premiere episode of her video blog, “Factual Feminist.”
Is There Systematic Wage Discrimination Against Women? | FACTUAL FEMINIST — The Factual Feminist is back to answer your questions in this week’s mailbag! This week: Is there evidence of system-wide discrimination against women? Also, Christina responds to commenters who question her research because of where she works, and other questions.
Gender Activists Dismayed By This New Reason For The Wage Gap | FACTUAL FEMINIST — It is just not true that, for the same work, women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. Factors such as college major, occupation and length of time in the workplace explain most of the pay gap. AEI’s Sally Satel explains the discovery of another factor contributing to that gap.
World Cup Pay Gap: Here’s Why It’s Justified | FACTUAL FEMINIST — Critics are up in arms about the World Cup gender gap. The prize money for women is far less than for men. Commentators attribute the gap to sexism and structural inequities. Could they be right? Let’s review the evidence.
Okay, let’s get this party started… right? I had seen a blip of Dawkins admitting — and it really is an admission of sorts — that what Christ wrought [as a worldview] is CULTURALLYwhat he [Dawkins] prefers to live under. He says he prefers this over Islam, but note, he didn’t mention he would rather live under some atheistic program.
“If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I’d choose Christianity every single time.”
Because when dialectical materialism comes about as a worldview embedded into government, what do we get? (PDF version of the below)
A recent comprehensive compilation of the history of human warfare, Encyclopedia of Wars by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod documents 1763 wars, of which 123 have been classified to involve a religious conflict. So, what atheists have considered to be ‘most’ really amounts to less than 7% of all wars. It is interesting to note that 66 of these wars (more than 50%) involved Islam, which did not even exist as a religion for the first 3,000 years of recorded human warfare. Even the Seven Years’ War, widely recognized to be “religious” in motivation, noting that the warring factions were not necessarily split along confessional lines as much as along secular interests.
CHRISTIANITY (Crusades)
9 Total Crusades from 1095-1272 A.D;
The crusades lasted about 177 years;
bout 1-million deaths – this includes: disease, the selling into slavery, and died en-route to the Holy land;
… a minimum of 28 million African were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. Since, at least, 80 percent of those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave market, it is believed that the death toll from 1400 years of Arab and Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been as high as 112 Million. When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the trans-Saharan and East African slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 million people. – John Allembillah Azumah, author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue
As an aside… about 5.714 [yes, point] people were killed a year by the Spanish Inquisition [if you take the highest number] over its 350-year long stretch if you use the leading historian on the topic.
Another aside: the Crusades were largely an operation to free people, whereas Islamic caliphates [jihad] were to convert and enslave people.
Some Resources Used
Alan Axelrod & Charles Phillips, Encyclopedia of Wars, 3 volumes (New York, NY: Facts on File, 2005);
John Entick, The General History of the Late War (Volume 3); Containing It’s Rise, Progress, and Event, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America (Reprinted by Hard Press; date of publication was from about 1765-1766);
William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009);
Gordon Martel, The Encyclopedia of War, 5 Volumes (New Jersey, NJ: Wiley, 2012);
Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (London, England: Yale University Press, 1997);
(8-authors) The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999);
J. Rummel, Death by Government: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 (New York, NY: Routledge Publishers, 1997);
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (New York, NY: Anchor Books, 2005);
M. Davis, House of War: Islam’s Jihad Against the World (Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2015);
Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism, and Slavery (Bloomington, IN: iUniversity, 2009).
Not only were students able to demonstrate the paucity of evidence for this claim, but we helped them discover that the facts of history show the opposite: religion is the cause of a very small minority of wars. Phillips and Axelrod’s three-volume Encyclopedia of Wars lays out the simple facts. In 5 millennia worth of wars—1,763 total—only 123 (or about 7%) were religious in nature (according to author Vox Day in the book The Irrational Atheist). If you remove the 66 wars waged in the name of Islam, it cuts the number down to a little more than 3%. A second [5-volume] scholarly source, The Encyclopedia of War edited by Gordon Martel, confirms this data, concluding that only 6% of the wars listed in its pages can be labelled religious wars. Thirdly, William Cavanaugh’s book, The Myth of Religious Violence, exposes the “wars of religion” claim. And finally, a recent report (2014) from the Institute for Economics and Peace further debunks this myth.
In other words, the culturally Christian West seems to diminish the propensity to “war.”
WHICH may be part of the issue, as well as culturally where we are headed with “gender,” “climate legislation/regulation,” “free-speech,” and the like that are bringing a consensus of sorts on the idea of the positive attributes of the Judeo-Christian worldview. Which leads me to my next example… a recent ATLANTIC article. Mr. Thompson starts the article thus:
As an agnostic, I have spent most of my life thinking about the decline of faith in America in mostly positive terms. Organized religion seemed, to me, beset by scandal and entangled in noxious politics. So, I thought, what is there really to mourn? Only in the past few years have I come around to a different view. Maybe religion, for all of its faults, works a bit like a retaining wall to hold back the destabilizing pressure of American hyper-individualism, which threatens to swell and spill over in its absence.
Here, ARMSTRONG & GETTY discuss the article, as two non-believers/cultural Christians themselves:
As they were discussing the issue, I was thinking of this well worn quote from G.K. Chesterton: “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.” You should read the entire ATLANTIC article.
Bill Maher recently noted the following:
For all the progressives and academics who refer to Israel as an outpost of Western civilization, like it’s a bad thing, please note: Western civilization is what gave the world pretty much every [expletive] liberal precept that liberals are supposed to adore. Individual liberty, scientific inquiry, rule of law, religious freedom, women’s rights, human rights, democracy, trial by jury, freedom of speech. Please, somebody, stop us before we enlighten again.
Western civ is basically the Greco-Roman/Judaica-Christianity stream of influence. The CHRISTIAN POST, after quoting Maher, finishes their story:
Which, in fact, brings up just what Bill Maher left out in his otherwise thoughtful and compelling monologue. As you might expect from the guy behind the faith-despising faux-documentary Religulous, he’s not quite ready to admit the role of religion in cultivating liberty and human rights. Because Voltaire and Rousseau were anti-religious, they are safe to mention. Locke and King are often praised almost in spite of their deep faith, which Maher never mentioned.
And it is this failure for community, freedom, and following the science (gender) that is chasing people away from secularism… into Western Foundations.
Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” talks to Frank Turek author of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist” about the collapse of the New Atheist movement; Richard Dawkins admitting that religion may be necessary for a flourishing society; the failure of atheism in providing a sense of purpose and meaning; what prominent atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris overlooked; how only religions like Christianity and Judaism can protect a society from the worst elements of radical Islam; the spreading of social justice and woke culture in America’s churches; the case for intelligent design as a part of the story of evolution; how morality always ends up being legislated; Jordan Peterson’s utilitarian view of religion; and much more.
CROSS EXAMINED NOTED: Yes, we know that Dave Rubin is an openly gay man. CrossExamined.org does not always agree with and affirm all the held beliefs of our guests. Dave did not agree with everything Frank said when he was on The Rubin Report last month either. However, it is good to have dialogue and ask questions of non-Christian guests to see if they are open to Christ, as you will hear Frank do with Dave. We also welcome guests who can add value to specific topics on which we do agree. Despite our noted disagreements, Dave gets a lot right.
I will end with this article I found to be an interesting and pleasant read… this is how it ends:
Society appears to have come a long way from initially professing relativism, which rejects any and all standards of truth including moral, to eventually embracing wokism – an utterly aggressive force of imposed “moralistic” judgment. Semantically different, these concepts are actually homogeneous. When objective truth is denied, its place does not remain empty; it is swiftly occupied by opinions and beliefs of the “self,” either formed by individuals themselves or, more commonly, enforced through educational, group and/or societal indoctrination. People who do not love truth or are precluded from seeking it will find themselves confused, easily manipulated and ultimately deceived.
Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” shares a clip of California’s Lori Wilson pushing to pass bill AB 957 which will mandate gender affirming care for trans kids even if it is against the parents wishes.
Scott Wilk, like Dave Rubin above, sounds a parental warning… get out of California! (THE DAILY WIRE)
A Republican California lawmaker warned families to escape from the Golden State after legislators advanced a bill on Tuesday that would accuse parents of child abuse if they refuse to “affirm” their children’s so-called gender identity.
Senator Scott Wilk (R-Antelope Valley) sounded the alarm during a hearing late Tuesday night when the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 8-1 to advance Assembly Bill 957, which rewrites much of the state’s family law and classifies “a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity as part of the health, safety, and welfare of the child.”
“In the past, when we’ve had these discussions, and I’ve seen parental rights atrophy, I’ve encouraged people to keep fighting,” Wilk said. “I’ve changed my mind on that — if you love your children, you need to flee California. You need to flee.”
The bill amends Section 3011 of the Family Code, which deals with child custody disputes, and requires that a court determining the “best interests” of the child must consider the affirmation of a so-called transgender identity. If a parent were to deny the child’s “gender identity,” it would be a violation of the child’s health, safety, and welfare — equivalent to child abuse.
Because the bill changes the definition of what constitutes the “health, safety, and welfare” of a child, any organization interacting with children — including schools, churches, and hospitals — would be required to affirm gender transitions in minors…..
Boston Children’s Hospital boasts about having the first pediatric transgender surgery center in the country offering a “full suite of surgical options for transgender teens.”
Boston Children’s Hospital promotes their surgeries through a video series on their official YouTube channel, with titles like “What You Need To Know Before Phalloplasty Surgery.” The 90 videos in the series paint a rosy picture of the genital, chest and face surgeries they offer, accompanied by upbeat background music.
Chris Elston, otherwise known as “Billboard Chris,” shared a tweet on Tuesday of a video in the Children’s Hospital playlist called “What happens during a gender-affirming hysterectomy?”
In that video, Dr. Frances Grimstad describes the process of getting a “gender affirming hysterectomy.”
It is “very similar to most hysterectomies that occur. Hysterectomy itself is the removal of the uterus, cervix, which is the opening of the uterus, and the the fallopian tubes which are attached to the sides of the uterus,” Grimstad says with a smile. Grimstad says that some “gender affirming hysterectomies will also include the removal of the ovaries,” in short, the entire female reproductive system.
[….]
A bulletin on the Children’s Hospital Gender Multispecialty Service (GeMS) homepage reads, “At Boston Children’s, we are proud to be home to the first pediatric and adolescent transgender health program in the United States” that has treated “more than 1,000 families to date.”
Boston Children’s Hospital founded the Gender Multispecialty Service (GeMs) program in 2007 and welcomes patients as young as 3 years old. “At GeMS, our mission is to assess and care for gender-diverse children, teens, and young adults.”
GeMS provides “a variety of options for medical transition” that include prescribing puberty blockers, testosterone, estrogen and plastic surgery from their surgery center. “Our skilled team includes specialists in plastic surgery, urology, endocrinology, nursing, gender management, and social work, who collaborate to provide a full suite of surgical options for transgender teens and young adults,” the website reads.
[….]
But Safer cites a conceptually flawed study which he claims is proof that “gender identity is rooted in biology” that changed his mind. “Which makes it so logical that an option for people in 2016 is to change the external appearance to meet that gender identity,” he said.
The WPATH lists surgical complications of genital surgeries in their Standards of Care guidelines. Vaginoplasties may incur “complete or partial necrosis of the vagina and labia, fistulas from the bladder or bowel into the vagina, stenosis of the urethra, and vaginas that are either too short or too small for coitus.”
WPATH warns that patients who obtain phalloplasty may suffer “frequent urinary tract stenoses and fistulas, and occasionally necrosis of the neophallus. Metoidioplasty results in a micropenis, without the capacity for standing urination. Phalloplasty, using a pedicled or a free vascularized flap, is a lengthy, multi-stage procedure with significant morbidity that includes frequent urinary complications and unavoidable donor site scarring,”
Amir Taghinia, a plastic surgeon who is a member of Boston Children’s transgender surgery team, says that 30 to 50 percent of phalloplasty patients seek treatment for a blocked or leaking urethra.
“UNRELATED”
Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” shares a clip of detransitioner Chloe Cole sharing her heartbreaking story of how she was fast tracked into transgender surgery. Her testimony was given to fight Scott Wiener’s SB 107 proposal to make California a sanctuary state for trans kids escaping the trans healthcare bans in red states and provide gender affirming care for any kid who wants it.
Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” talks about Bill Maher’s explosive interview on the “Joe Rogan Experience” where he unleashes on the left for proving conservative like Dennis Prager right for advocating for things like pregnant men, looting, and wanting to abolish the police. Dave shares a clip of Maher complaining about the left pushing the idea of pregnant men. This is essentially the same idea that Dennis Prager was mocked for on Real Time with Bill Maher in 2019 when he claimed that the left was pushing the idea of menstruating men. Maher also takes Disney and other woke companies to task for pushing their woke agenda on an unquestioning public. Maher broke new ground with his scorching criticism of Dr. Fauci, and big pharma for not properly handling vaccine skeptics and expecting the general public to not even have questions about the COVID vaccine. Finally a look inside the Shanghai lockdown in China where the zero COVID policy is pushing people to the brink of madness. The China lockdown is resulting in people being trapped in their apartments for a week as they slowly run out of food. Meanwhile, in Florida Ron DeSantis is promising that no Floridian will ever be locked down again.
(First and foremost I must thank Dave Rubin for an excellent interview and channel. The original file can be found HERE) This will serve as the follow-up clip to the first: “Part 1: Jews are the Most Religious People (Secular or Religious)“. This is the very next part of the excerpted discussion/interview of Dennis Prager by Dave Rubin.
This video is worth teaming up with my previous posts:
It is worth clipping a portion from that 1st linked post to further Crowders point:
✂️ SNIP ✂️
…And yes, it appears that the Menstrual Equity Act is a real thing. H.R. 1882, otherwise known as the Menstrual Equity For All Act of 2019. Apparently Beto thinks women across America have never heard of a pharmacy. Oh but wait, this absurd legislation isn’t just for women! According to GovTrack, this legislation will “increase the availability and affordability of menstrual hygiene products for individuals with limited access, and for other purposes.”
Individuals. Because men have periods too! Duh! Beto may not have gotten that memo, but Cory Booker and Julián Castro did. …
Here is the bit by Julian Castro that got those who love science scratching their heads:
On Wednesday, during the Democratic presidential debate, Julian Castro, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under former President Barack Obama, decided biological men should be given the same rights to an abortion as biological women, stating, “Let’s also not forget someone in the trans community, a trans female, is poor, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the right to exercise that right to choose.”
Trans females are biological men who claim identity as women.
Castro’s answer was triggered by NBC News’ Lester Holt, who asked, “Secretary Castro, this one is for you. All of you on stage support a woman’s right to an abortion. You all support some version of a government health care option. Would your plan cover abortion, Mr. Secretary?”
Castro answered, “Yes, it would. I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom, I believe in reproductive justice. And, you know, what that means is that just because a woman — or let’s also not forget someone in the trans community, a trans female, is poor, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the right to exercise that right to choose. And so I absolutely would cover the right to have an abortion.”…
(First and foremost I must thank Dave Rubin for an excellent interview and channel. The original file can be found HERE)
I had to isolate this point, it is excellent. A friend and I were just talking talking about the Jewish nation (people) being blessed of God. Chosen. Set apart. And we talked about the advances of the Jews that were so helpful and a blessing to themselves as well as the world.
Although Jews are only 0.2% of the world’s population, Jews were awarded 24% of the Nobel Prizes in science and medicine. Similarly, while Jews account for only 2% of the American population, they received 37% of the US Nobel Prize awards in these fields. (TIMES OF ISRAEL)
And that this was an evidence of God… but so too are the advances by Jewish persons that harm society. Take Hollywood as one example; or, Marxism as another… George Soros as yet another. The Jewish people seem to advance well, and both sides of the coin are evidences of God’s promises to the Jewish nation. (And His judgement, past and future.)
My friend and I talked last Sunday at Smokehouse on Main. I watched this 4-days after our getting together. Prager said it best:
Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” shares a clip of Bill Maher’s appearance on The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special where he explains how woke culture has tricked liberals into supporting crazy leftist ideas, like defunding the police and letting 3-year old’s choose their gender. He laments that they no longer care about important issues like free speech or debate. He explains how he hasn’t changed, but liberal culture most certainly has. Compare what’s going on today to the incident with Bill Maher, Sam Harris and Be Affleck from 2015 which seemed to be a sneak preview of the larger culture wars.
Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report shares a clip of MSNBC host Tiffany Cross using her show the Cross Connection to condemn ESPN host Sage Steele, Van Jones, and Carlos Watson for not being “real” black voices and accuse them of internalized racism. Their crime was simply not having the correct official black opinions that Tiffany thinks all black people should have.
(Watch until 6:50) Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report shares a clip of CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta making the mistake of appearing on The Joe Rogan Experience. Joe Rogan gives Gupta an absolutely relentless grilling concerning CNN’s lies about his using Ivermectin to treat COVID. Rogan points out that CNN intentionally misled their audiences by portraying Ivermectin as a horse dewormer despite it being used in humans as well. He refuses to back off, continually asking him how he feels that a news organization willfully lies to its audience. Dave also does a special “ask me anything” question-and-answer session on a wide-ranging host of topics, answering questions from the Rubin Report Locals community.
Let me say, I think Tulsi will distance herself more and more from the Democrats and affiliate more with people like Dave Rubin does — conservatives — who are the bulwark in protecting free speech and thought.
(TRANSCRIPT) The mob who stormed the capitol to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country. But let us be clear, the John Brennan’s, Adam Schiffs and the oligarchs in Big Tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally-protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style “surveillance” are also domestic enemies—and much more powerful, and therefore dangerous, than the mob which stormed the Capitol.
John Brennan said, “Members of the Biden team who have been nominated or have been appointed are now moving in laser like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas, where they germinate in different parts of the country and they gain strength and it brings together an unholy alliance frequently of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, Nativists, even libertarians.”
President Biden, I call upon you and all members of Congress from both parties to denounce these efforts by the likes of Brennan and others to take away our civil liberties endowed to us by our Creator and guaranteed in our Constitution. If you don’t stand up to these people now, then our country will be in great peril.
Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report talks to Tulsi Gabbard (former Congresswoman) about the Big Tech social media purge, Trump being banned from Twitter, the censorship of Parler by Google, Apple and Amazon and shares an exclusive announcement with Rubin Report viewers. Tulsi Gabbard shares her concerns with the amount of power that tech corporations hold over our ability to communicate with each other. She discusses the ramping up of social media censorship on the major tech platforms and how she is using Locals.com to protect her ability to communicate with her followers.
YOU CANNOT YELL “FIRE” IN A CROWDED THEATRE
Here is a responses to that quote trotted out often, for the curious. The first comes from [of all places] THE ATLANTIC:
Ninety-three years ago, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote what is perhaps the most well-known — yet misquoted and misused — phrase in Supreme Court history: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”
Without fail, whenever a free speech controversy hits, someone will cite this phrase as proof of limits on the First Amendment. And whatever that controversy may be, “the law”–as some have curiously called it–can be interpreted to suggest that we should err on the side of censorship. Holmes’ quote has become a crutch for every censor in America, yet the quote is wildly misunderstood.
The latest example comes from New York City councilmen Peter Vallone, who declared yesterday “Everyone knows the example of yelling fire in a crowded movie theater,” as he called for charges against pseudonymous Twitter @ComfortablySmug for spreading false information during Hurricane Sandy. Other commentators have endorsed Vallone’s suggestions, citing the same quote as established precedent.
In the last few years, the quote has reared its head on countless occasions. In September, commentators pointed to it when questioning whether the controversial anti-Muslim video should be censored. Before that, it was invoked when a crazy pastor threatened to burn Qurans. Before that, the analogy was twisted to call for charges against WikiLeaks for publishing classified information. The list goes on.But those who quote Holmes might want to actually read the case where the phrase originated before using it as their main defense. If they did, they’d realize it was never binding law, and the underlying case, U.S. v. Schenck, is not only one of the most odious free speech decisions in the Court’s history, but was overturned over 40 years ago.First, it’s important to note U.S. v. Schenck had nothing to do with fires or theaters or false statements. Instead, the Court was deciding whether Charles Schenck, the Secretary of the Socialist Party of America, could be convicted under the Espionage Act for writing and distributing a pamphlet that expressed his opposition to the draft during World War I. As the ACLU’s Gabe Rottman explains, “It did not call for violence. It did not even call for civil disobedience.”
The Court’s description of the pamphlet proves it to be milder than any of the dozens of protests currently going on around this country every day:
It said, “Do not submit to intimidation,” but in form, at least, confined itself to peaceful measures such as a petition for the repeal of the act. The other and later printed side of the sheet was headed “Assert Your Rights.”
The crowded theater remark that everyone remembers was an analogy Holmes made before issuing the court’s holding. He was explaining that the First Amendment is not absolute. It is what lawyers call dictum, a justice’s ancillary opinion that doesn’t directly involve the facts of the case and has no binding authority. The actual ruling, that the pamphlet posed a “clear and present danger” to a nation at war, landed Schenk in prison and continued to haunt the court for years to come.
Two similar Supreme Court cases decided later the same year–Debs v. U.S. and Frohwerk v. U.S.–also sent peaceful anti-war activists to jail under the Espionage Act for the mildest of government criticism. (Read Ken White’s excellent, in-depth dissection of these cases.) Together, the trio of rulings did more damage to First Amendment as any other case in the 20th century.
In 1969, the Supreme Court’s decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio effectively overturned Schenck and any authority the case still carried. There, the Court held that inflammatory speech–and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan–is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech “is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” (emphasis mine).
Today, despite the “crowded theater” quote’s legal irrelevance, advocates of censorship have not stopped trotting it out as thefinal word on the lawful limits of the First Amendment. As Rottman wrote, for this reason, it’s “worse than useless in defining the boundaries of constitutional speech. When used metaphorically, it can be deployed against any unpopular speech.” Worse, its advocates are tacitly endorsing one of the broadest censorship decisions ever brought down by the Court. It is quite simply, as Ken White calls it, “the most famous and pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech.”
Even Justice Holmes may have quickly realized the gravity of his opinions in Schneck and its companion cases. Later in the same term, Holmes suddenly dissented in a similar case, Abrams vs. United States, which sent Russian immigrants to jail under the Espionage Act. It would become the first in a long string of dissents Holmes and fellow Justice Louis Brandeis would write in defense of free speech that collectively laid the groundwork for Court decisions in the 1960s and 1970s that shaped the First Amendment jurisprudence of today.
In what would become his second most famous phrase, Holmes wrote in Abrams that the marketplace of ideas offered the best solution for tamping down offensive speech: “The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas — that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.”……
