Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / Nigel Farage, Graham Linehan and the (Christian) History of Free Speech || SLP602

Transcript

Nigel Farage, Graham Linehan and the (Christian) History of Free Speech || SLP602 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_08: You can say what you like, I don't care.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_08: Because that's what free speech is, and in a sense, this has all been going wrong now for a couple of decades.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_05: Free speech is in the news.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_05: Nigel Farage has been in the US, the land of the free, where the very first amendment of the Constitution enshrines the right to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_05: He was before the House Judiciary Committee, and as far as he was concerned, he was raising the alarm about free speech restrictions in the UK.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_05: Here's what he said.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_08: We've kind of forgotten the Voltaire principles that we'll fight and defend to the death your right to say something that we fundamentally disagree with.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_08: That is the absolute foundation, if you think about it, of free speech, of democracy, of living in freedom.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_08: It's kind of why we fought two world wars at massive, massive cost to defend that very principle for ourselves and for many, many others around the country.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_08: And I first became worried about all this with cancel culture.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_08: You know, the idea that we can't have this speaker go to a university because some people might be offended by what he or she have to say.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_05: During his testimony, Farage raised the case of the comedy writer Graham Lineahan.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_05: It's a story that's been developing just this week.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_08: And we, of course, have the extraordinary events that we understood yesterday of uh Graham Lynan, the comedy writer, comedic writer, and he put out some tweets months ago when he was in Arizona.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_08: And months later, he arrives at Heathrow Airport to be met by five armed police.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_08: Armed police, not a big deal in the USA, a very big deal in the United Kingdom.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_08: Five of them.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_08: And he was arrested and taken away for questioning.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_08: He's not even a British citizen.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_08: He's an Irish citizen.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_08: This could happen to any American man or woman that goes to Heathrow, that has said things online that the British government and British police don't like.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_08: It is a potentially big threat to tech bosses, to many, many others.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_08: This legislation we've got will damage trade between our countries, threaten free speech across the West because of the knock-on rollout effects of this legislation from us or from the European Union.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_08: So I've come today as well to be a klaxon to say to you, don't allow piece by piece this to happen here in America.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_08: And you would be doing us and yourselves and all freedom-loving people a favour if your politicians and your businesses said to the British government, you've simply got this wrong.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_08: At what point did we become North Korea?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_08: Well, I think the Irish comedy writer found that out two days ago at Heathrow Airport.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_08: This is a genuinely worrying, concerning, and shocking situation.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_08: And I thank you for the opportunity to come here today.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_05: In this video, we will discuss the Graham Linehan case.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_05: We will talk about free speech, what it is, how we came to believe in it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_05: Spoiler alert, Christianity is right at the heart of it.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_05: We will figure out some post-Christian developments about free speech.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_05: We will watch three minutes of a fascinating conversation between Constantine Kisson and Alex O'Connor on the subject of free speech, and we will try to chart a way forward for speech that truly liberates.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_05: I'm Glenn Scrivener from Speak Life, and we like to see all things through the lens of Jesus.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_05: Please do subscribe to our channel and you'll get lots more content about the intersection between faith and culture.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_05: Who is Graeme Linehan?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_05: He is a comedy writer responsible for such sitcom classics as Father Ted's, the Irish sitcom that pokes genial but relentless fun at the Catholic Church.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_10: Any doubts you've been having about any aspects of belief?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_10: Anything like that?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_09: Well, you know the way God made us all, right?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_09: And uh he's looking down at us from heaven and everything.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_09: Uh-huh.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_09: And then his son came down and saved everyone and all that.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_09: Yes.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_09: And when we die, we're all going to go to heaven.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_10: Yes.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_09: What about it?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_09: Well, that's the bit I've trouble with.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_05: That is uh Father Ted.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, he's also responsible for Black Books, a wonderful little gem of a sitcom from the 2000s.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yes?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: Hello, we were wondering if we could talk to you about Jesus.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_03: Great, come in!
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_05: What?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_11: I'd love to hear about Jesus.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_11: What's he up to now?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_11: Come on in! Come on! It's a trick!
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_05: He's also responsible for uh the IT Crowd, a sensational comedy, which coincidentally had a very controversial trans episode.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_11: It bothers you that I used to be a man.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_11: I love that you used to be a man.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_11: It's your thing.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_11: I love thinking about that operation that you had.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes, please.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Look at me.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a woman.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is a woman in front of you.
• 5:09
  unknown: Excuse me.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_11: You're tearing me apart.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_05: Matt Berry, genius.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_11: I'm sorry, it's beyond my control.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_11: Please, don't let us please.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_11: Just go.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_11: You're making this harder for me.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_11: How could you do this?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_11: How could you do this?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_11: You bastard.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: And then they get over.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_05: And on and on it goes, you can get the clip.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_05: But uh Graham Linehan is a comedy writing genius, and he moved to London in the 1990s to be part of the metropolitan middle class elite.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_05: And he was very much a figure of the left, so much so that he was famous for denouncing a fellow comic, Count Dacula, who made some very shocking jokes.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_05: And when Count Dankula, aka Mark Meechin fell foul of some Scottish hate speech rules.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_05: And Graham Linehan absolutely took the side of the Scottish Government and the hate speech rules against the comedian who was falling foul of that legislation that was curbing his free speech.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_05: It's interesting how things have changed around, and Graham Linehan has since apologized to Mark Meachin because now he has fallen foul of the very same hate speech rules.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he did it in a way that I found a bit hacky.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: But, you know, because that's not a crime.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_05: Graham Linehan is now gender critical and he has opposed trans activists in the strongest possible terms, especially on social media.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_05: Now he is the one who is being denounced by others, critiqued by others, cancelled by others.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_05: Father Ted the Musical was going to be in the West End, it's been pulled.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_05: And Graham Linehan has ended up in the States where he has found freedom to pursue a comedy writing career and freedom to express very forcefully his transcritical views.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_05: Brendan O'Neill, the journalist, made a very insightful comment about Graham Linehan's travels from Britain to America.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: They have some historical resonances.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: I know you are not an English person, but people from England used to go to America so they could practice their religion freely or state their beliefs freely, and that's we're talking 400 years ago.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: And now, 2025, people are going to America so that they can say biology is real, sex is real, or that they can pursue their cultural uh interests uh free from kind of you know cancellation and and uh harassment.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: It is an extraordinary state of affairs.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_05: We might return to the place that the US has held in the free speech conversation.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_05: But on Monday, Graham Linehan flew back from Arizona where he's living to the UK.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_05: Why?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_05: Because he is on trial.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_05: And as of this recording, he is still on trial in the UK because of his interactions with a particular trans activist.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_05: But as he landed on Monday, he was met by five armed police.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_05: He was detained for 16 hours.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_05: His blood pressure went over 200, and he was raced to AE because he was in such distress at being arrested because of some tweets that date back to April.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_05: Here's what he said.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_05: The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_05: Not one, not two, five.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_05: They escorted me to a private area and told me I'm under arrest for three tweets.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_05: In a country where paedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women are assaulted and harassed every time they gather to speak, the state had mobilised five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for this tweet.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_05: And no, I promise you I am not making this up.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_05: And then he lists the tweets, three of them from April.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_05: Tweet number one.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_05: If a trans identified male is in a female only space, he is committing a violent abusive act, make a scene, call the cops, and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_05: A second tweet, he is commenting on a photo from a distance of a Brighton rally of trans activists, and his caption just says, A photo you can smell.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_05: He follows up with this tweet, I hate them, misogynists and homophobes, fum.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_05: According to Graham Linehan, these are the three tweets in question for which he was arrested.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_05: Now later on, Linehan says the police themselves, for the most part, were consistently decent throughout this farce.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_05: Some were even Father Ted fans.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_05: Thank God the Catholic Church never had with the police the special relationship granted to trans activists.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_05: I find that sentence fascinating because it raises the question, are trans activists in this instance the new inquisitors?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_05: Or are they using state power to make state power into a new kind of inquisition?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_05: When we think of banning speech, we might think of the church, banning the heretics and the blasphemers.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_05: In particular, we might think of the Roman Catholic Church.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_05: And perhaps you're expecting now a joke about the Spanish Inquisition.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_09: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_05: It had to be done, you know it had to be done, and we did it.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_05: Let's just move past this, shall we?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_05: So we we generally think of the Inquisitors in a religious frame, but what Graham Lineahan here is saying is that the Catholic Church have not been the grand inquisitors for him.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_05: In fact, when he wrote Father Ted, which was an incredibly genial yet relentless critique of Roman Catholicism, he was not cancelled at all.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_05: He talks about this on the trigonometry podcast.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_05: I thought this was interesting.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And bear in mind, you were joking about Catholic priests in Ireland in the 90s.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah, exactly.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: But then again, it would I I don't want to give myself too much credit there.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: It was kind of safe.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: Catholic priests don't try and destroy your career, you know.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_05: Catholic priests do not try to destroy your life, but the claim is from Graham Lineahan that certain trans activists do, and they have been able to do so through state power.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_05: How?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_05: Well, free speech is protected in the United Kingdom.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_05: Under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act of 1998, everyone has the right to freedom of expression in the UK, but that freedom may be subject to formalities, conditions, restrictions, or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_05: These restrictions may be in the interests of national security, territorial integrity, or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputational rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_05: Now layered on top of this is various legislation about hate speech, and we'll get into that in a second.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_05: But rights to free speech in the UK have qualifications, and those qualifications are things like defamation, you can't just libel somebody, obscenity and indecency, hate speech, which will get to harassment and malicious communications, incitement to violence or terrorism, national security and official secrets, contempt of court, public order and breach of the peace, and copyright and intellectual property.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_05: Now, hate speech is perhaps the most controversial of these qualifications of the right to free speech, and it is defined as speech that is likely to stir up hatred on the grounds of race, religion, or sexual orientation.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_05: Now, this legislation follows certain intuitions that are very natural to have.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_05: You don't want people to be going around saying, that's the Swedish for you, I hate the Swedes, the Swedes are like this, the Swedes eat their children, the Swedes, like you don't want people going around making comments about whole people groups like that, especially about their protected characteristics, about their immutable characteristics, things that they cannot change about themselves, like the fact that if you're a born Swede, you can't help being a moral monster, right?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_05: You it's it's just it's just part of who you are.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_05: I know I I see you, Swedes.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_05: I see you, right?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_05: And but you don't want people to say that kind of stuff about and I've just picked on the Swedes because that is a non-controversial group of people to speak about.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_05: You can insert into that sentence other much more controversial groups of people where they have an immutable characteristic about their race, their religion, their sexual orientation, and we don't want people going around maliciously communicating about whole groups of people, speech that will stir up hatred.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_05: Um, there are a lot of good intentions to such law, but Nigel Farage has problems with hate speech laws.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_08: The Online Safety Act was put in place by the last Conservative government.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_08: I don't doubt for a minute they're good intentions, but sometimes the road to hell is paved with those good intentions.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_08: And we are now where we are.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_05: The road to hell is paved with good intentions, says Farage.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_05: And the Free Speech Union agrees.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_05: In the UK, they claim that there are 33 arrests every day in this country for social media postings.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_05: And as they seek to defend those in criminal cases who are accused of hate speech, they say that 40% of the defendants that they are supporting are gender-critical feminists who are being targeted over a trans issue.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_05: And that's why I ask, are these the issues over which we now have inquisitions and excommunication?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_05: We're declaring people to be vehemently suspect of heresy.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_05: We're declaring them to be blasphemers even as we cancel them or excommunicate them.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_05: Are these new blasphemy laws?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_05: And is that really what we want the state to be enforcing?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_05: And the Lineahan case has brought this issue to the attention of so many people.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_05: MPs this week have lined up to say how alarmed they are by these developments.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Can the Secretary of State confirm if it is now a crime in Britain to tell potentially offensive jokes and perhaps face armed arrest?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_05: And even government minister where streeting has said as much on TV.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_04: The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have been very clear that when it comes to the safety of our streets and our communities, we would rather see uh our police on the streets rather than policing tweets.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_04: Now, it's the easiest thing in the world for people to criticize uh the police.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_04: But they are enforcing laws that Parliament has passed and asked them to enforce.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_04: So if we haven't got the balance right as Parliament over successive governments, that is something that we need to look at.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_05: So, what is a way forward with this issue of freedom of speech?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_05: Because we all see it as a tremendous value, but we all see other competing values.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_05: So it's worth considering what are the transcendent values that are informing our intuitions over free speech.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_05: How did we get here?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_05: And then we can think about how we move forwards.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_05: And the first thing to say about how we got here is we got to our current Western liberal democratic vision of free speech via an incredibly Christian root.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_05: Here are four truths that are right at the heart of our intuition about freedom of speech, and all four of them are theological, all four of them are very much biblical.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_05: Might is not equal to right.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_05: The value of ideas is not equal to the value of persons.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_05: Sins are not equal to crimes, and words are not equal to violence.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_05: Add together those four things, and you arrive at something like our modern Western liberal tradition regarding freedom of speech.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_05: Firstly, might does not equal right.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_05: Think about the Old Testament prophets.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_05: Think about uh the prophet Isaiah.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_05: There he is when King Uzziah died after fifty-two years of royal stability, uh the political power had been in place, and there's a destabilizing influence on all of Israel, and it's Isaiah who goes into the temple and is commissioned by the Lord to speak his disruptive words, his disruptive words first to his own nation and then out to the other nations.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_05: Because the real power and authority in this world is not the judicial or state power of the king, it is the spiritual power of the Lord Almighty reigning through his word, and it is truth that is really sovereign rather than political power.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_05: And the prophets were supremely those who were to speak truth to power.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_05: They held to account the politicians of their day, as it were, the kings and the priests of their day, and they actually hacked down their own people, their own nation, no matter how universal the convictions, prophets spoke truth to power because might does not equal right.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_05: And then along comes Jesus as the prophet par excellence.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_05: He is the Lord of Isaiah's temple vision in Isaiah chapter six, now come in the flesh to speak his own word as the prophet par excellence.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_05: And armed only with the truth, only with words, he is going to take down the great authorities, whether it's the Jewish authorities and the Sanhedrin, whether it's the Roman authorities and Pilate and Caesar, he does not come with an army, he comes only with the word of the kingdom.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_05: And being so very vulnerable, he is of course executed.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_05: He is, of course, crushed by state power, by religious authority, and by secular power.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_05: And he is crushed on that cross.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_05: But that is what happens to the truth, right?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_05: Um the truth will set you free, but first it will tick everybody off, okay?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_05: And and that is that is the pattern, right?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_05: Christ telling the truth ticks everybody off, is silenced on the cross, and then rises again.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_05: The truth is vindicated.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_05: That is the story at the at the heart of Christian faith, and it puts a question mark over all state power, and it puts a question mark even over religious power.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_05: It is the religious power of the Jews together with the state power of the Romans that actually put the truth to death.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_05: But the truth trusting not to earthly force, but trusting only to the spiritual power of goodness, beauty, and truth, that power is seen to carry the day.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_05: And in the resurrection of Jesus, uh the truth is vindicated, and earthly power is unmasked as something that is so often deceitful, so often corrupt, so often wrong, and therefore we must have the right to speak truth to power.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_05: It's a very biblical thing, it's a very Jesus-y thing, and it puts a massive question mark over anyone who just says might equals right, which would be the naturalistic assumption, isn't it?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, what could there be over and above the political power plays of this day?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_05: If there is no such thing as this God, as this God of truth, if there is no such thing as this God of truth, then all we're left with is might and not right.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_05: And yet we we don't have that moral intuition.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_05: We don't have that moral intuition today because Jesus, the truth, spoke his truth to power, was crucified for it, but the truth was vindicated, showing us all that might does not equal right.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_05: Secondly, the value of ideas is nothing like the value of persons.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_05: Um ideas can be garbage.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_05: Ideas can be utter trash.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_05: Persons are not utter trash.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_05: Persons are not garbage.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_05: Ideas can be utterly critiqued relentlessly and ruthlessly.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_05: Um persons are different.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_05: Persons are made in God's image, and no political idea is.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_05: And of course, this is on the first page of the Bible that we are made in God's image.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_05: There's nothing else in all creation that is made in God's image except persons.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_05: So there is an inviolable worth and dignity to humans, which our speech must honor, but no such protections exist over ideas, no matter how cherished those ideas must be.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_05: And from this we get our intuition about protected characteristics.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_05: If I have an immutable characteristic that I cannot change, that seems to be something that's part of me.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_05: And it it seems to be a different thing.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_05: If you challenge me for being Australian, or if you challenge me for being a white male, that that seems to be a different kind of a thing than if you challenge me over certain cherished beliefs I might have.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_05: And I might have certain cherished beliefs about freedom of speech or something.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_05: You can cherish those beliefs, and you can say that those beliefs are bunk, garbage, hot garbage, trash, you know, rubbish.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_05: You can say the worst things possible about those ideas.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_05: It seems to be a very different thing to saying that Australians are trash, right?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_05: That that seems to be a different thing.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_05: We we seem to share that intuition, and I would say it has uh a long Christian pedigree to it.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_05: So might does not equal rights.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_05: The value of ideas is nothing like the value of persons.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_05: Um sins are not the same things as crimes.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_05: There is overlap.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_05: Some sins are crimes, but not all sins should be crimes.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_05: Immorality is a broader category than illegality.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_05: And it is interesting that in the Anglosphere where Protestant Christianity has had such sway, um, adultery is not a crime, largely, in the in the Anglosphere.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_05: Um it's a sin, right?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_05: It's it should not be done.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_05: It is immoral.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_05: But we've taken a view that to criminalize that is to treat it in a way that is inappropriate.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_05: It can be a sin, and it can be even worse than a crime, but it is not something that you call the cops for.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_05: And I think speech is something like that as well.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_05: Um you can say some very intemperate things that make you a vile human being, but is the right response to that to call the cops?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_05: Um, we have this intuition that sins do not equal crimes because we have this separation of church and state.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_05: And we have this separation of church and state because Christendom has invented for us this realm of the secular, in which the king is not the same thing as the priest, and therefore the church is not the same thing as the state, and what can be described as a sin is not necessarily at all a crime.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_05: What you say might be worse than a crime, and there might be all sorts of um social, spiritual, religious censure that you can bring to bear on somebody's speech.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_05: You can shame somebody.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_05: Social pressure and shame might be appropriate for such a person who uses speech in sinful ways.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_05: But perhaps calling the cops is not the right response to speech that you hate.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_05: And I would say that a long Christianization of the West over 20 centuries has ingrained that moral intuition in us.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_05: So might does not equal right, ideas don't equal persons, sins don't equal crimes, and words are not the same thing as violence.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_05: Jesus said, put away your sword, those who live by the sword will die by the sword.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_05: And he took the sword of violence into himself, he took the spear into himself and rose again and committed to his church not a sword of iron, a sword of steel.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_05: He committed to the church the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and we are to conquer the nations as a bloodless army bringing peace.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_05: And we bring peace with an offensive weapon.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_05: There is an offensive weapon in Ephesians chapter six that the soldier of Christ is to bear.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_05: We have one weapon of our spiritual warfare, uh, that is the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, according to Ephesians six.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_05: And therefore, words are a very different thing to violence.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_05: In the realm of the state, well, the magistrate bears the sword according to Romans chapter 13, and he does not bear the sword in vain.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_05: He has the monopoly of violence, and over the realm of the flesh, the state has a jurisdiction, and that jurisdiction can be enforced with violence, if you like.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_05: It's the constrained, proportionate, judicial, hopefully constitutional use of force, but it has the monopoly of violence in that way.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_05: The church has no such violence.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_05: The church does not forward its ends according to violence, according to force, but only according to argumentation, according to the word, according to reason, according to persuasion, according to proclamation, right?
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_05: And you think, but didn't the church absolutely violate that with the Inquisitions and the Crusades and those sorts of things?
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, absolutely it did.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_05: But our intuition that those things are wrong is itself a profoundly Christian intuition.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_05: And in the working out of Christian history, what has prevailed, by and large, in the West is the conviction that words are different to violence, and that you can forge your ends by very aggressively arguing for something, but you mustn't forge your ends by very aggressively wrestling somebody.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_05: So might does not equal right, ideas do not equal persons, sins do not equal crimes, words do not equal violence, and layer over the top of this a kind of a Protestant Catholic development as well.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_05: Because of course the entire church shares those convictions, but I think Protestants bring to bear on this subject a particular history and particular emphasis.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_05: A Protestant such as myself is going to look back at Luther standing before the Emperor and the Pope, armed with nothing but argumentation.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_05: At the Diet of Worms in 1521, Luther says, Unless I am convinced by scripture and plain reason, my conscience is captive to the word of God.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_05: I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience would neither be right nor safe.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_05: God help me, here I stand, I can do no other.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_05: And there's some controversy about whether he said those last two sentences.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_05: But what he did say is that his conscience is captive to the word of God, and he wants to be persuaded by scripture and reason.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_05: Like what what do you see there?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_05: You see a man up against ecclesiastical power and against state power who is clinging to a different kind of authority.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_05: And even though the state might say you are usurping the peace, and even though the church might say you are contradicting tradition, Luther is saying, I have something else called conscience, which is bound to a higher authority than either state peace or ecclesiastical tradition.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_05: There is a word of God, and the word of God is free, and I am captive to it.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_05: Luther is not making the argument here that I as an individual am free, and therefore I can just say whatever I like and screw you guys, right?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_05: He's not saying that.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_05: That's a very post-Christian, post-Protestant, hyper-Protestant, if you like, kind of argument.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_05: He is not saying I'm free to disagree with the Pope.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_05: He's saying the Bible is free to disagree with the Pope, and I am captive, not to the Pope, but to the Bible.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_05: So Protestants in that tradition have ever since had a real sense of the importance of conscience over tradition and of the individual and their right to appeal to higher power than simple consensus.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_05: The Catholic intuition is to foreground the whole community and to foreground tradition.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_05: The Protestant intuition has been to foreground the individual with their conscience.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_05: And that's why it has been a Protestant genealogy of ideas that we have followed in order to get us to our convictions about freedom of speech, with John Milton and with the Levelers and with John Locke and with the founding of the US Republic, a very Puritan kind of thing.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_05: Fleeing from religious persecution, we need the freedom of conscience that is captive to the Word of God, but I need to be able to worship God in the ways that I feel the scriptures have demanded, as opposed to ways that tradition and the community are enforcing.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_05: So no wonder the very first amendment of the US Constitution is about your freedom of speech and assembly and religion and freedom of the press.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_05: These ideas are all caught up together, but they all have profoundly Christian roots.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_05: What happens when you detach these intuitions from their Christian roots?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_05: You get to somebody like John Stuart Mill, who is a great defender of freedom of speech.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_05: And in his treatise on liberty, he says some amazing things about your ability to be able to contradict the narrative out there in the world and to have a freedom to speak your mind.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_05: He says in On Liberty, he who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_05: His reasons may be good and no one may have been able to refute them, but if he is equally unable to refute the reasons of the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_05: We need liberty so I can hear the other side, and so we can have an exchange of ideas, and in the marketplace of ideas, you know, we'll come to something like the truth.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_05: That is his liberal ideal, and we resonate with that, don't we?
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_05: He also says in On Liberty, all silence of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_05: And don't you s don't you see the Protestantism coming through there?
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_05: Um it's it's like he's up against the Pope, but he's kind of up against the Pope of tradition.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_05: And he wants to be able to not have a conscience that is captive to the Word of God.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_05: He wants to have a conscience that is utterly free.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_05: But in liberating himself even from the Word of God, um, what is he left with?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_05: Well, he he's left with, I think, a very atomized individual.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_05: He has rejected popes and councils, but he's also rejected the Bible and God and Christianity, and what is he left with?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_05: He's left with him as a free-floating individual, and it's just very important that he be heard.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_05: And that's how you get the kind of online discourse that we witness.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_05: We've got a lot of free-floating individuals whose one belief is I must be heard.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_05: We need a more positive vision, I think, of freedom and of speech.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_05: But before we get there, let's just have a look at this fascinating conversation between Constantine Kisson and Alex O'Connor.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_05: I'll just play three minutes of it as they get into this issue of freedom of speech.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_05: And I think actually the naturalism, the the atheism of Alex's worldview really very obviously undercuts our understanding of free speech and of this distinction between words and violence.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_05: Check it out.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_07: Do you not believe words are harmful, can be harmful?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_07: Do you think there's sort of a distinct category difference in the kind of harm that can be caused by words, absolutely?
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_06: Absolutely.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_06: Uh uh there is a cat a distinct uh category difference between physical violence and words that are hurtful.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_06: Uh you cannot reduce the impact of physical violence.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_06: If I smash you in the head with a brick, there is no way for you to be less affected by that because the impact is physical.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_06: Words uh are subjective.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_06: Your experience in relation to words that people say to you are subjective.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_06: There are things that people can say to me that I would find very hurtful, but you might not at all.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_06: And equally, there are things that you might say to me today that I wouldn't find hurtful, but before I did a huge amount of personal growth and personal development and worked on my psyche, which I think is very important, uh, that I would have found very difficult.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_06: So the problem with the idea that words are harmful is it introduces the subjective element of it, which is if I say something to you that you find offensive, well, you don't know that you know what my intentions were with that.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_06: You don't know, we don't know how much of the harm that's caused is caused by your interpretation of what I said.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_06: If I hit you in the head with a brick, we know that the damage is done by the fact that I physically did that.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_06: So that's the difference.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_07: Of course, I mean we we recognize that there would be some instances in which certain forms of words would be more harmful than certain forms of physical action.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_07: You know, I could sort of flick you in the side of the head and that would probably hurt maybe a little bit.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_07: But it might not hurt as much as, you know, my mum telling me that she's disappointed in me or something.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_07: So there seems to be there's of course a subjectivity, but uh it doesn't seem obvious to me that there's a this category uh distinction to make that physical harm is is always worse.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_07: And I wonder, is there a sort of moral question that can be raised here?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_07: Unless we believe in a soul, unless we're religious, if we're materialists and we think that the mind is just the brain, then to speak of psychological harm and physical harm is really to speak of the same thing, because the mind is just something physical, it's just processes going on in your mind that say, I don't like this.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_07: And of course, there's an intuitive difference between the kind of hurt that you feel from words and the kind of hurt that you feel from being hit in the arm or something.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_07: But ultimately it's the same kind of thing going on, which is the brain reacting to stimuli and saying, I don't like this.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_07: If it's the case that my freedom to swing my fists ends at your nose just because of the physical harm that that's going to bring you about, then why doesn't my freedom to swing my language uh end at your ears, given that it can bring about just as physical harm within your mind?
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_07: Like what is the sort of moral difference here?
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_06: You're very clever, Alex, but um I shouldn't have phrased it that way.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_06: You are very clever and there's no but.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_06: Um I think we all instinctively understand the difference between physical violence and the impact of communication that's non-physical.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_05: He is very clever.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_05: Um but here is here is my but.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_05: My but is he is very clever at taking to its conclusions the naturalism that he's assuming at the beginning.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_05: And if there is no such thing as souls, and if we are just matter in motion, then yes, you can make the case that there is ultimately no difference between words and violence.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_05: Um even though Alex O'Connor admits that there is a very strong intuition that words and violence seem to be different kinds of things, but it's his naturalism that is preventing him from saying the different kinds of things, because surely actually all psychology boils down to biology, which boils down to chemistry, which boils down to physics.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_05: So actually it it is all force that is happening.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_05: And at the very bottom of all things, there can't be really a difference between words and violence because there is no real difference between your psychology and your physics.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_05: But let's run the argument in the other direction.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_05: What if your intuition is correct?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_05: And what if our society's intuition is correct, that words and violence really are different kinds of things, then the assumption of naturalism might be wrong.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_05: And maybe we do in fact have things called souls, and maybe there is a rational self at the heart of all things that is not reducible to our physics.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_05: And if there is a real distinction between spirit and flesh, between word, logos, and cosmos, world, well then would that not explain precisely the intuition that Alex has, the intuition that Constantine has, the intuition that I assume you have as well, that words and violence are different kinds of things.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_05: But what is brilliant about Alex here is he's forcing us to see that this is a theological issue, and that if we're going to switch from a Christian theological understanding of the world to an utterly naturalistic view of the world, then actually words and violence are not different categories of things.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_05: And it all just boils down to harm.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_05: And this kind of was the problem with John Stuart Mill, is that he, as a utilitarian, boiled everything down to harm.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_05: And so really John Stuart Mill, as this great enlightenment thinker, a very modern thinker, he opened the door to a very postmodern idea, which is that words and violence are pretty much the same thing.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_05: And if ultimately my ethical duty is to reduce harm, then surely I should reduce psychological harm just as I should reduce physical harm.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_05: And curbs on free speech should be every bit as robust as curbs on physical violence.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_05: Alex is absolutely right to do the reductio ad absurdum.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_05: I would just run it in the other direction and say, since we know that words and violence are very different kinds of things, then I guess we don't live in the naturalistic universe, and we actually live in the Christian universe.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_05: That's kind of the argument that I will make.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_05: And here's where I'm going to land the plane.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_05: I'm going to land the plane by saying post-Christian ideas about freedom of speech won't get us very far.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_05: We actually need metaphysical, theological commitments to might is not right, ideas are not persons, sins are not crimes, and words are not violence.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_05: And finally, we need a properly biblical account of freedom.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_05: You see, freedom is not simply your freedom from restrictions.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_05: That is a negative account of liberty, as Isaiah Berlin famously put it.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_05: He says there are two great uh accounts of liberty, and one is really quite a thin one.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_05: There's negative liberty, which is my freedom from certain restrictions, is really important, and it's the sort of thing that John Stuart Mill and John Locke and others in the Enlightenment tradition got really, really upset about.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_05: Don't tread on me, man.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_05: I need to be free from the power.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, fair enough, but that's a negative vision of liberty, which is freedom from restriction.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_05: There's also freedom for, because there's all sorts of choices that I can make, or that I can be free to make, that actually enslave me, that actually diminish me and corrupt me and reduce me in this world.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_05: And and a true account of freedom is to be able to make the sort of choices that reflect the kind of being that I am in the kind of environment that I'm in.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_05: Positive freedom is freedom for, which is why in the Bible, the Israelites were to be free from Pharaoh so that they could serve the Lord, right?
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_05: They were serving Pharaoh in Egypt, but they were liberated through the plagues, through the Red Sea, out into the wilderness in order that they could serve the Lord.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_05: It wasn't the case that they should be free from Pharaoh so that they can have grand adventures by themselves in the wilderness.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_05: You gotta serve somebody.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_05: And true freedom comes in serving the truly liberating Lord.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_05: And there is a truly liberating Lord of speech, and he has created the world by speech, and he has set us apart from every other creature in this world.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_05: And one of the key ways that we are different from every other creature in this world is that we have the power of speech as well.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_05: Here we are in the image of the speaking God, and we can speak order out of chaos, and we can speak life into dead souls, and we can forward our ends the same way that God forwards his ends through his word in all things.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_05: And there is such a positive vision for speech in the Bible.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_05: Pick up the book of Proverbs and just see that the way in which the tongue is this rudder of the soul.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_05: That's what what James in the New Testament says.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_05: Um it's a little thing, but it absolutely changes the course of your life.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_05: Your speech, your words are so important from the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_05: And what we speak so much reveals who we are.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_05: Speech is an incredibly edifying thing, an incredibly encouraging thing, an incredibly inspiring thing.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_05: So when you think of your freedom of speech, you should not simply think of your ability to say anything, no matter how odious or vile or offensive or cruel or heterodox or edgy, right?
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_05: Your freedom of speech is not best expressed when you say something edgy.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_05: Your freedom of speech is best expressed when you build others up, when you encourage.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_05: Now I'm very grateful for Graham Linehan.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_05: I'm very grateful for his comedy.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I don't think that he should have been arrested by five armed police officers in a country that's not even his country and detained for 16 hours because of three tweets that he said.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_05: I really don't think that that should have happened.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_05: I think that is an incredibly regrettable state of affairs, and I hope that the publicity that this case is attracting will help us to rethink categories like hate speech and the ways that we are policing speech.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_05: I definitely think that.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_05: But when I think of freedom of speech, I don't want to think that Graham Linehan is the avatar of free speech.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_05: Because his right to say things that are offensive is indeed a negative liberty that he has, and I want the law to protect such rights to speech.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_05: But true freedom of speech is the kind of speech that really makes people free.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_05: That says no to the things that diminish, but that also says yes to the things that give life.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_05: So let us truly believe in freedom of speech, which means not simply defending the rights of people to say the edgy thing at the fringes.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_05: We will truly be free speech advocates when we truly speak life.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_05: And if you want to get to the heart of life according to Jesus, we've got a great course for you.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_05: It's called 321.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_05: Why don't you go to 321course.com, start an account, get into it, and you'll explore Jesus' vision for God, the world, and yourself.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_05: The Bible says that Jesus is the Word of God.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_05: He is God's speech to us.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_05: If we listen to Him, we'll have our world turned right side up.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_05: Well, that'll do for us, and do subscribe to us so that we can join you on the next video.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_05: God bless.