The Uncomfortable Truth About Rhetoric to Violence

an episode for some time. I mean, it's a relatively evergreen subject, but unfortunately world events I think I said this in the last episode, do not conform to a podcast release schedule, and given the ongoing conversations about political violence and their causes that have been going on since the assassination of Charlie Kirk on September tenth, twenty twenty five, most pointedly in the conversation I had with Danielli, Bellelli and Christaps Andredesen's on the last episode, in which I

actually had to stop and think, like, what are we talking about here? When it comes to threatening language. I figured that an adaptation of an essay I wrote over there Were a year ago in the wake of the attempted assassination on President Trump, then candidate Trump, that I

called the Vital Truth about rhetoric and violence. I still am considering what Danielle particularly said when we were having this conversation and how I started to think about things in terms of existential framing as potentially being something threatening, though I still think even if the evidence does not exist, one could make an argument against it on the basis of law or principle. But I still don't think I've moved on that.

still find myself unmoved at the idea. As to be fair, Daniellie also feels about the idea of restricting our freedom of speech that we have in this country. Obviously, there's a lot of controversy about that right now, based on people losing their jobs and suspensions of various public figures. But regardless, I do find myself still unmoved at the prospect of restricting speech even if the evidence psychological evidence changes.

And that's essentially what I got into with this essay that I wrote over a year ago, and what I'm about to get into with this podcast adaptation of it, so I hope that you guys enjoy this. I want to thank everybody who supports this show over on Patreon and substack, particularly supporters like my excellent executive producer level patrons John Andre Saither and Mike Maylebin, longtime supporters of

this show. Love having you guys here listening to me ramble on about such things, even when it interrupts the flow of history. Though, to be fair, guys, there is some history in this episode. It's it's a very strange combination of some of my passions, but it does involve history,

specifically legal history. So if you want to support this show, if you like what you have been listening to or what you listen to here, please consider supporting History Impossible at Patreon dot com, slash History Impossible or Historympossible dot

substat dot com. It doesn't cost you much to be a supporter and get all the benefits of having ad free versions of this show, as well as early releases in a lot of cases and exclusive content such as the pop Quiz sub series and things of that nature. And if you can't, you know, find the cash to support the show right now, that's fine. Just to make sure to spread the word about this show on social media. Follow me on social media of course, x, Instagram, Facebook,

all the normal places. But spread the word about this show to your friends who maybe would be interested in these kinds of things. This episode is a little bit different than what I usually do, so maybe it'll be a little more relevant, especially in this ongoing conversation we've been having about the nature of free speech and rhetoric and so forth. So with all that said, let's get into some I guess it would be impossible psychology, impossible legal precedent, and as always impossible history.

Christopher Hitchens. Something really surprised me when I started formally studying history in graduate school just over two years ago that the idea of correlation not equaling causation was not some kind of dictum. There were a lot of people who seemed to just see correlations as evidence of their arguments or sufficient evidence of their arguments. And honestly, if you're making a civilizational claim, it's kind of hard to

prove or disprove something like that. But if you're trying to make a claim about why American slavery, for example, became so particularly brutal later as it went along, and are trying to make it more of an argument about the essence of the human soul rather than incentives at work, you're just going to start to lose me. But when you start to lose me, I start to lose the rest of the class when I start pointing that out.

So I have to admit I was a little surprised when that particular argument did come up in the first semester, actually, but I thought about it, and to be fair, when examining history, it is next to impossible or just perhaps very difficult to dig out causal links from the past, especially the further back in time you travel. Journalism is the first draft of history and manages to get this wrong so often as it does often get wrong. What

does that say about history? With the time passing and the biases of people long removed from the moment being studied needing to be taken into consideration. I mean, the layers of difficulty start to become pretty apparent when you start thinking about it. But regardless, this was still a bit of a surprise for me, having a background academically speaking in psychology, particularly research based psychology in which the drum of correlation does not equal causation. Was banged upon

in every single class that I took. In fact, in the history of psychology course that I took, the main takeaway was that psychology, particularly in its infancy as a field, had a major causal fallacy problem. I mean, all you have to do is just look at very famous cases, like a lot of the claims made by Sigmund Freud, but also the much more contemporary ones like the claims made about the Stanford prison experiment that people still love to cite because it's a great story, but whose veracity

does not really hold up under much scrutiny. In fact, that study, which may be worth examining in detail one day on history Impossible, is a much better lesson on experimental design and what that can actually do to findings and to the people conducting the experiments in ways that can't really be appreciated until after the fact. This is especially clear with relentless self promoters and people who really just want to make the big, common sense sounding statements.

Be quote unquote proven true, as is the case with the Stanford prison experiments. Mayestro, I'll call him Philip Zimbardo, who if you look him up, totally not ghoulish looking at all. Now, regardless, these days, psychologists and psychological researchers, at least it was worth their salt of course, are actually quite careful to explain what the evidence in their experiments suggest and therefore where future research can go from here,

essentially either to refute or replicate the results. In other words, a good honest study has to have a good and thorough and honest conclusion section, one that admits faults and suggests future courses of action. It's that simple.

inspired the essay on which this episode is based. But obviously the recent assassination of conservative pundit Charlie Kirk, to say nothing of other assassinations and attempted assassinations around the country and just that have really rocked the nation's core, like political core in a lot of ways, including the assassinations of the Minnesota congress people to the attempted kidnapping or assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. I mean, the list

goes on. I spoke about this list, I gave a I quoted from a summary in the previous episode when I was talking to Christaps and Danielle. The point is, political violence is on the rise, and what do we always see. What has been always said in the wake of these acts of violence, successful or otherwise in terms of lethality, is always at least the implication that the way people talk, what they say, their rhetoric in other words,

is causing this violent behavior, this violent outburst. Put most simply, this situation that we've all just seen, that we're all talking about, that we've just heard only happened because of the rhetoric that people on the other side quote unquote have been using for the past ten years or so. In other words, what did you expect they say what they mean and they mean what they say now, to be clear, and I think I've been pretty clear about

this in various places. I do believe that the depictions of President Trump, both when he was in power, when he was out of power, now when he's back in power, have been, to put mildly, pretty hysterical over the last ten years or so. Invocations of fascism and especially Nazism being applied to him have just never made that much sense to me, even with what has been revealed about his attempts to overturn the twenty twenty election. That is

obviously a very anti democratic impulse. But the way I've always seen it, actual fascists don't just disrespect democracy or dislike democracy. They don't just disrespect the democratic process. They just tend to not want to have a democratic process at all. Whether or not that's true or applies to our president is kind of irrelevant. That doesn't seem to really be the mo of what's going on here. There's

a lot of other stuff going on. I've already made the comparisons to the late nineteenth century form of progressivism, which I don't know how wealthoers are going to hold up long term, but there's still a comparisons that should be well taken, at least in my opinion. Honestly, a lot of what we've been seeing has been more resembling you know, Chevista regimes, so to speak, down in South America, or you know, jew chaism in North Korea. Obviously not good.

But I'm just saying, comparisons to fascism, just on a technical level, just have never made sense to me, to say nothing of how Nazism makes it little sense either, given how aggressively friendly his administration has been towards the only Jewish state in the world, regardless, to imply that the president is so sinister that we'd soon see millions of our own countrymen, not to mention the countrymen of our neighbors who we'd be bound to invade in this

strained analogy, seeing them all herded into cattle cars to be shipped to industrial gas chambers to be killed on mass I don't know. I have never much liked Donald Trump as the president, but that seems pretty damn insulting to not just him. I don't really care about his feelings, but it is insulting and other peace people who work with him, who probably just want to keep their jobs. But it's even more insulting to the millions upon millions

of actual victims to the Third Reich military machine. That's just sort of the way I see it. Can make very very pointed criticisms about the current administration in the United States, especially these days, with their crackdowns on free speech, without just jumping the gun and comparing it to a regime that literally existed for the sole purpose of committing genocide. And yes, that is again how I tend to characterize

the Third Reich, Another discussion for another time. I'm just trying to make it clear where I'm coming from with this, but I also want to be fair. I don't think that the growing hysteria that we've seen in the Maga camp, the populace camp, whatever you want to call it, the

new right, the online right, is particularly salient either. It all starts to feel a little unhinged no matter which direction you're looking at, and it's all based on the same thing, the application of language and rhetoric and implying or impugning sinister motivations behind those things, and even more importantly, creating a causal line from that rhetoric to eventual hypothetical

evil behavior, but also sometimes actually real evil behavior. The point is, if we try to limit the insane or even just factually incorrect speech or rhetoric that we're hearing because there's a risk that some crazed person might respond to such speech, we're essentially trying to kill flies with sledgehammers or creative explosives if we really want to run with this analogy. And yet people will still try to kill those flies with sledgehammers and so forth, and it's

hard to blame them. While there was no shortage of unhinged imagery and rhetoric directed at George W. Bush and Barack Obama from twenty one to twenty sixteen, I remember seeing all those signs of their faces with a Hitler mustache on them. I'm sure some of you, at least old enough, do remember that too. I do think, in fact,

they've made this clear. Having just done a conversation with two of my podcasting comrades about it, I think it's fair to say that the persistence, intensity, source, and scope of the inflammatory rhetoric that exists here in this country of the United States has since increased in that time. That's passed. But the problem is that we're just operating on common sense here based on a perceived pattern. That's

not really an examination of the evidence. I want to approach a different question, a real question, both as a budding historian will say, and as someone with a moderate background in research based psychology. Therefore, that core question is this, did violent existentially framed rhetoric cause all of this political

violence to be unleashed upon the United States? Could we argue even that that's what it has caused in the past when it's happened leading to presidents almost being assassinated like Donald Trump, to actually being assassinated like say President Garfield, or for pundits to be assassinated like Charlie Kirk. Can we say that speech caused violence and thus possibly give credits to the idea that speech is violence.

can broaden it even further. And I believe we should to look at the question of whether or not rhetoric causes behavior to occur positive or negative at all. It's a pretty simple question, does action follow speech? That seems to be the sort of general way of framing it how most people do, at least, And it is a simple question and seemingly one with a simple answer. Now, I would wager that most people, using what they believe

is common sense, would say yes. But what I would also wager is that saying yes would correspond almost perfectly with their political beliefs. They believe that positive rhetoric, say, for example, Greta Tundberg's impassion speech in twenty nineteen regarding the existential threat of climate change, causes people to behave well. They also believe that negative rhetoric, say Trump's speech on January sixth, twenty twenty one, causes people to behave badly.

In other words, people will attribute the positive or negative effects of rhetoric based on what they believe is right

and wrong. Pretty straightforward. To further flesh out this example, though, someone who believed that Greta Tunberg's twenty nineteen speech was inspiring and helped make people more animated about the threat of climate change would be unlikely to believe that her rhetoric caused the more unhinged climate activist behavior of the past five years that we've been seeing, like the defacing of priceless art with tomato soup and the spray painting

of archaeological sites like Stonehenge. And conversely, someone who believed that Donald Trump's speech on January sixth, twenty one directly inspired the riot at the Capitol that day would be unlikely to believe that his later calls for peaceful dispersal and for protesters to go home had any effect on

anyone's behavior whatsoever. Whether or not anyone in these hypothetical scenarios has a point doesn't really matter to the broader point that this is a form of what's known as attribution bias, specifically fundamental attribution error, and this bias more likely informs our moral judgments rather than rational situational considerations. However, as suggested, this does not put to bed the claim

that rhetoric causes violent behavior. According to an article published by the Brookings Institute only three months after the January sixth, twenty twenty one riot, quote, a range of research suggests the incendiary rhetoric of political leaders can make political violence more likely, gives violence direction, complicates the law enforcement response, and increases fear in vulnerable communities unquote. Now here's the

thing about these claims. The Brookings Institute does indeed cite several papers and self described experts which suggests that rhetoric emboldens people in quotes there to express what they define as hateful attitudes. But if you actually look at the data they provided, there's nothing in there that suggests anything more significant than that kind of correlation. In other words, any evidence which shows that changes in behavior was caused

by inflammatory rhetoric is at best circumstantial. In fact, the article even acknowledges at the top of its fourth paragraph that quote, there is no direct line between violent rhetoric and political violence if the speakers are careful not to name specific targets and means unquote, which I don't know. That feels like the best example of an awkward mumble

in article form, if there ever was one. It also seems to be pretty well in line with the free speech standards that we have in the United States, at least legally speaking. We'll come back to that later in this episode, but I just think it's worth mentioning that now. The key part of that statement that there is no direct line between rhetoric and violence. As long as no specific target and means are labeled, the direct line cannot be established. That is a key part of this puzzle.

The point is, despite making a sneakily worded claim that rhetoric connects to violent behavior, the article's author, Daniel L. Byman, is unable to make the case that rhetoric causes behavior, despite the implication of causality being created by letting connects do so much heavy lifting. A much better and in my opinion, honest account of the facts that we have available comes from an article on Live Science written way back in January of twenty eleven, in the aftermath of

another story to which we'll return. The author, Stephanie Poppus, explains that psychologists make it very clear that quote the answer isn't as simple as yes or no quote, and that while quote violent rhetoric can make people more comfortable with the idea of violence, it's almost impossible to pin down the larger causes of one specific incident.

does not mean that it is therefore true. For example, while it is clear from research cited by Papus in her article that quote people with acute mental disorders like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder are two to three times more likely to commit violent crime times not just homicide, than people without mental illness unquote. It is also clear that other factors play a part, including substance abuse, which correlates with violent behavior at rates eight to ten times greater

than that of the population. Now, these factors matter for our purposes because they are completely independent of the presence of violent rhetoric, and yet they act as risk factors for violent behavior, significant ones at that While it might not seem unreasonable to quote unquote toned down violent rhetoric as a means of trying to stem a tide a violent behavior, there are a number of reasons why this

might be unnecessary. In terms of it being unnecessary, Papus notes in her piece that quote, there hasn't been any systematic research on whether rhetoric pushes people on the edge of sanity off the cliff quote and that quote, the phenomenon is so rare that it would be difficult to get good data unquote, and that is important for us

to remember. Even though there there is very clearly a spike in politically motivated violence in the United States in the contemporary era, and there has been before as well, it's always been statistically speaking, very rare. That's always going to make it hard to study at scale and to

be frank. To quote a University of California Irvine psychologist named Peter Diddo who was cited in the Pappus article, he says, quote You're never going to get science to speak to whether some sort of violent political rhetoric caused this particular individual to act as they did. Unquote. It's

just not that simple. And this is backed up by a twenty twelve study from the University of Michigan which found that political advertisements which used words associated with violence you think of words like fight, that those advertisements had little effect on an individual's opinion on whether or not political violence was justifiable. In addition, any positive effect that was observed by the researcher was more strongly correlated with

individuals who already possessed high levels of aggression. So, in other words, the violently worded rhetoric did not make anyone violent who was not already primed and ready for being violent to begin with, if only to hammer the point home a little more strongly. These kinds of findings also track with the data that I gathered while doing my own research fifteen years ago on the effects of violent

media exposure on adolescence. This was a little bit touched on in the conversation that I had with Kristaps and Danielle. You guys might remember where Danielli referenced video games, for example, being often cited as a cause, music, movies, and so forth. That's what I was studying when I was an undergraduate in the psychology program of my alma mater. Now, in terms of the research that I examined and collated, there was very little evidence back then to suggest that violent

behavior stems significantly from exposure to violent media. However, there was plenty of evidence strongly suggesting that exposure to real world violence, namely environments in which domestic violence, gang violence, and war violence, produced a very real positive effect on an individual's likelihood of committing a violent action at some

point in their lives. This was supported by a study conducted in two thousand and six by mcab and colleagues, and from earlier work done in nineteen ninety six by Sayner and Elikson. The former study found that quote exposure to community violence significantly predicted externalizing problems two years later when potential confounds were controlled unquote, and the latter study found that quote as the number of risk factors increases,

so does the likelihood of engaging in violent behavior. Unquote, if it was not yet clear that violent behavior stems from much more than secondhand exposure, that is, violent media and rhetoric speech. In other words, it became comes even clearer when examining how biological and cognitive factors have also been determined as being significant in predicting violent behavior, relatively

independent of environmental pressures. According to a study conducted by J. Martin Bramirez in two thousand and two, psychobiological factors like hormonal levels, namely, unsurprisingly higher levels of testosterone, primarily in young natal males, demonstrated a significant link to violent behavior

with adolescence that continued into adulthood. As Ramirez reports, quote early adrenal androgens contribute to the onset and maintenance of persistent violent and antisocial behavior, and that it begins early in life and persists into adulthood, then concluding that quote, hormones can be involved in the development of aggression as a cause, as a consequence, or even as a mediator.

In addition, according to a study conducted back in nineteen eighty four by l. Ral Huesman and Leonard d aerin aggressive behavior remains stable over time, in which quote a circular process in which scripts for aggressive behavior are learned at an early age and become more firmly entrenched as the child develops, so that aggression becomes self perpetuating in

children with certain cognitive characteristics. What this further suggests is that aggression, that is violent behavior, is something far more entrenched than something that can just be activated by the

presence of violent rhetoric. To put it another way, much of the evidence available suggests that human brains, while certainly very malleable over time and with proper pressures applied, some of which are biological and likely even have a genetic component, the brains are not so putty like that someone shouting

fight at a rally will prompt a violent response. From the evidence that is available at least trying to study the effects of exposure to violent media and rhetoric, there is at best no clear answer which requires us to

assume a non positive effect. This is not to say that we should not continue to study such linkages for the sake of expanding our knowledge and the effects of speech and behavior, but it is to say that we cannot, at least rationally speaking, start ascribing responsibility to speech where none conclusively exists. In terms of external social factors, the studies that we examined above all concluded the same thing, that the risk for violent behavior increases thanks to exposure

to other violent behavior. That was always the strongest predictor, but it was often only in the children's and adolescent's immediate vicinity, as in, not part of their media consumption. The only significant and persistent effect that media consumption had upon children, and these were very young children, often toddlers a lot of the time, was that it did sometimes desensitize them to violent depictions when they were exposed to them again, as in, they didn't have as strong of

a reaction when looking at it. That was something a lot of parents were concerned about, especially with video games back in the nineteen nineties and even early two thousands. The desensitization question that diminished reaction was very concerning, and you know, I honestly can't blame a lot of parents

and adults are being concerned about it. But the question then, of course became this does the desensitization toward violent expression lead to a greater propensity toward violent behavior and There's a really big problem with that question because of where it leads us. It leads us to a frequent and at this point classic chicken and egg paradox in psychology.

Would someone desensitized by violent depictions or rhetoric already be someone who is more likely to engage in violent behavior thanks to other from what we have seen statistically more significant factors, both biological and and environmental. Or did this violent depiction, this rhetoric and exposure to it quote unquote pushed the person over the edge. Would they have been

violent without that rhetoric being there? As best I can tell, and I double check this, in the decade and a half since I conducted my own research, no further data has emerged that significantly suggests that exposure to media or rhetoric can accomplish this pushing over the edge, not on its own, in fact, thanks to the research that has been conducted, that because it continues to be looked at over the years, suggests the opposite the previously cited Huesman

and Aaron write that quote violent scenes seen on television provide examples that the child can encode unquote and that children quote rehearse aggressive acts through aggressive fantasy, and these aggressive acts undoubtedly include the ones viewed on TV. However, despite this study demonstrating a link between cognitive processes and violent behavior, it fell well short of demonstrating those cognitive processes being determined by the exposure to violent media, much

less being persistent across time independent of other factors. According to a much more recent study almost forty years more recent than that one by Devili, O'donahue and Brown that got published in twenty twenty one, anger and aggressive behavior was much more strongly correlated with personality factors and feelings of frustration than with exposure to violent media or rhetoric

for that matter. As Devili himself put it in an interview about these findings in the Griffith University news story covering the study, quote, we found no difference in both anger and aggression following exposure to a book, violent video game, television, and nonviolent video game. What we did find was that people with high levels of impulsivity, increased emotional reactivity to the media, and frustration with the content of the media are more likely to have a higher anger response to

media exposure. These results are in direct opposition to traditional models of aggression, which suggests a causal link between trials of violence and aggression risk. This study has essentially found, or at least suggests, what many other studies have found over the past several decades, that violent or aggressive media exposure demonstrates little to no significant connection to the incidents

of violent behavior. What makes this frustrating for a lot of social scientists, and no doubt some of you listening to me talk about this right now, is that while it doesn't demonstrate a positive effect, it doesn't demonstrate a negative effect either. Believe me, I find that frustrating too,

but that's how psychology often works. To be fair, these kinds of results to these studies also mean that you cannot say with any certainty on a scientific basis that violent media or rhetoric exposure doesn't cause particular behavior to occur. The real thing, the real, key thing to remember is that the lack of a positive claim does not therefore

negate the negative claim. That is what trips up a lot of people, as in, well, there's no evidence that rhetoric causes violent behavior, but there's no evidence that it doesn't. If so facto, we might as well assume that it does. In order to be safe. Better be safe than sorry, that kind of thinking. But here's the thing. That kind of response is at the heart of a correlation equals

causation fallacy. Some of my favorite examples of this fallacy at work can actually be found on Wikipedia on their entry for this, and while Wikipedia has its problems, this is a very fun entry, or at least it was last time I looked at it. Some of these included the following. One. Young children who sleep with the light on are much more likely to develop myopia later in life. Therefore,

sleeping with the light on causes myopia. Or two, as ice cream sales increase the rate of drowning deaths increases sharply, therefore ice cream consumption causes drowning. Or three, A hypothetical study shows a relationship between test anxiety scores and shyness scores with a statistical R value, which is the strength of correlation of plus point five nine. Therefore, it can be simply concluded that shyness in some part causally influences

test anxiety. Or what will always be my personal favorite, the number of films that Nicholas Cage has appeared in in a given year has a positive relationship with how many people drowned by falling into swimming pools in that same year. Therefore, Nicholas Cage film releases cause people to

drown and swimming pools. There are just too many variables for which we must control when studying the phenomenon of media or rhetoric consumption to say for certain whether or not that consumption has a strong enough correlation with violent behavior for it to be something we have to start thinking about more seriously. Now, I actually had to stop and think about this for a little while, and I was able to break it down in the original essay, and I want to break it down for you here.

I want to give you a list of what would need to be controlled in a study that seeks to determine this this connection between consumption of speech, will just put it so broadly, or rhetoric or violent media whatever, and violent behavior, because this would be very difficult to design, and I might be missing some things, but let me at least try to give you this list of what we need to be controlled in an experiment seeking to

determine singular causal effects of this violent media, rhetoric consumption and violent behavior. We'd have to one, control for the genetic incidents of behavioral disorders that are positively correlated with aggressive behavior towards others, such as antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, extreme bipolar disorder, and so forth. The second thing we'd have to control for would be the self perpetuating cognitive

connections between violent behavior and thought patterns. That's already pretty hard to do too. Then the third thing we would have to control for is a socioeconomic hardship from when growing up, because that's also considered to be a factor

when it comes to increased likelihood of violent behavior. The fourth thing we'd have to control for would be exposure to violence in the real world, including different kinds of abuse, bullying, urban violence, and warfare, And in doing that, we would have to control for that at different ages in order to look at how impressionable people are at different ages

for these things. The point should be clear when I list off all these things, unless you can control for all these things, and like I was essentially saying, other factors, I'm probably not smart or qualified enough to even think of while conducting a study of people's propensity towards violence when exposed to violent media or rhetoric, you cannot, at least if you're a good or honest researcher that isn't searching for a particular conclusion, say with any certainty that

rhetoric causes particular behavior to occur, violent or otherwise. However, there is a deeper reason, at least to me, that, at least until such evidence appears and is conclusively replicated, that we should not be ringing our hands over the effect of rhetoric. The lack of clarity when it comes to whether or not we can scientifically prove quote unquote

the connection between violent behavior and violent rhetoric. That difficulty in forming that connection one way or another is difficult enough. There's a much more, i'll say loose but principal reason that we have yet to consider, Because even if we can determine a strong or even somewhat significant causal link, perhaps we still should not be wringing our hands over all of this.

least no on the basis of human psychology alone. There's just too many unknowns. Like I said, it's actually more impossible to say one way or the other on the question of does rhetoric cause violence or does speech cause violence? More oddly, in a psychological sense, the evidence does not go one way or the other, which means I will dispute anybody who says yes, but I will not on that basis simply say no. I think there is a deeper reason why we should say no. However, and that

is what I want to get into here. What I'm talking about is the practical answer from an American perspective, particularly the practical answer of does rhetoric cause violence? Should be no, A definitive, outright, flat out no. We can base it both on this lack of compelling evidence from the psychological literature, but it's more compelling to make this an outright, flat out no on the basis of the profound legal history in the United States on the subject

of speech protection. The practical implications of claiming that rhetoric speech is what causes violent action are or should be pretty simple. This is because even if the causal link between rhetoric and violence wasn't extremely tenuous already, there is a profound legal and even moral perversion at work if we acted as if rhetoric definitively caused violent behavior to occur.

And frankly, I don't think anyone understands as better than the head of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression as well as co author of the excellent classic. I would even say the Coddling of the American Mind and its semi sequel, The Canceling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianov. Now I need to make a quick admission for the sake of transparency that I made in the original essay this is based on Frankly, as far as I'm concerned,

Greg is a true mench for one reason alone. On top of his tireless amazing work for the protection of free speech in this country, but he's also been recommending the history Impossible substack for over a year at this point, two years or so, and this recommendation that he's been giving is significantly responsible for the rapid growth that I've

been seeing over there. But more importantly, I see Greg as a true point man for defending free expression in the US from a legal perspective, like I was saying, especially given the sorry state in which the ACLU has found itself over the past decade or so. Now, I have no idea how he found my substack. Someone must have recommended it to him, or maybe he just came across at browsing, but I am very thankful for the work that he does and for of course the recommendations

that he gives. So with that out of the way, Greg has been providing incredible commentary on this subject for years. In an excellent post that he wrote over on his substack called the Eternally Radical Idea that he wrote back in July of twenty twenty four, titled why the words our violence argument needs to die, he discussed this very subject that we're talking about. Greg made it very clear in this essay that this argument of speech constituting violence

does indeed need to die. As he explains, quote, anyone who equates speech and violence has likely never been punched in the face unquote. And that quote equating a barbed tongue with a barbed spear not only betrays a lack of understanding of genuine violence, but also the way words, even harsh ones, have served as both an alternative and

a solution to violence unquote. This is the core moral issue with claiming that rhetoric causes violence, because it is in effect saying that rhetoric is violence and thus should be subject to legal punishment akin to the punishment of

actual that is, physical violence. And if that is the case, well then we know who is really rep for the attempted assassination on former President Trump, or perhaps more controversially than we know who is really responsible for the chaos that occurred on January sixth, twenty twenty one, or most relevantly in terms of when it happened, then we know who is really responsible for the brutal killing of Charlie Kirk. Now, as we've already covered, these kinds of claims simply do

not hold much water when it comes to human psychology. Again, they don't hold water very much in the other direction either, but they don't hold water in the positive direction, and that is what matters here. But more importantly, they hold very little to no water when it comes to what I consider to be the long and extremely vital to understand history of free speech protections in the United States

legal system. Well, Greg is the real expert on such a subject, and he does great work summarizing some examples in his article that I referenced earlier. I need an excuse to make this long very obviously in many ways political ramble of mine, that is, making an appearance on a historical podcast into something a little more about history.

So I think it would only be fair to apply some historical analysis of the free speech debate in the United States to demonstrate why I believe, at least arguing for rhetorical responsibility for violent behavior. Again, already shown to be dubious at best, simply does not pass muster for anyone who values free expression at least. Again, this is more of a practical argument as I see it, and hopefully my use of historical examples will help with that.

In Greg's article, he mentions a couple of vital cases in the history of free speech rulings, including the infamous Wants via the United States nineteen sixty nine and Walter H. Rankin etc. At Al. Petitioners v. Ardith Macpherson nineteen eighty seven, both of which involved inflammatory speech against the President Johnson

and Reagan, respectively. These cases demonstrated that, at least by nineteen sixty nine, our freedom to say extremely inflammatory things such as the watts of wats to be the United States proclaiming quote, if they ever make me carry a rifle, the first man I want to get in my sight as lbj unquote, was actually quite robust. Yes, these cases went to the Supreme Court, but they both worked out in favor of the defendants thanks to their First Amendment rights. However,

things were not always this certain. The road to what I for a long time have called the post Brandenburg world, referring to a famous case to which will return has had many twists and turns that many have not and still do not fully appreciate. And I include myself a legal layman in that I have an awareness of the Brandenburg case and of free speech protections and an appreciation of them. But I'm still a layman. Let's just keep

this in mind as we move forward. I'm just reporting what I have read here and as I understand it now. There are many incredible books that cover all these twists

and turns, both broad and specific. But the one that has helped me most in coming to understand this journey through the American court system of the concept of free speech is actually a book from nineteen ninety eight, and it's a magnum opus regarding the idea of speech protection, especially in the academic context, called The Shadow University, The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses, by Alan Charles Corers and Harvey A. Silverglade, the co founders of the Foundation

for Individual Rights and Expression back then education instead of expression, and one of them serving as Greg Lukianov's mentor. The course in Silverglade's history is comp prehensive and vital in my opinion for understanding the journey free speech is taken in the United States, they cover it all, especially most

importantly in the twentieth century. To begin, Coors and Silverglade describe Gitlo v. New York nineteen twenty five, in which Benjamin Guitlow, one of the founders of the Communist Party USA and future anti communist crusader. As it happens, thanks to like many similar to him, at that time, newfound post Stalinist disillusionment and horror as the crimes of that regime became clearer and clearer and less possible to deny.

But back in the twenties, Gitlow was convicted for spreading pro revolution pamphlets in the United States, which was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court. Now, this upholding of that conviction might seem like an obvious loss, and indeed Coors and Silverglade explain that this first major victory of the ACLU in nineteen twenty five as being quote unquote pyrhic. But the ruling incorporated the Fourteenth Amendment by arguing that its provisions of due process also applied to local state

authority as well as federal authority. As cores in Silverglade summarize quote. Despite Gittlow's loss, the incorporation of First Amendment rights into Fourteenth Amendment due process proved vital to the

development of free speech jurisprudence. This standard would be solidified just over a decade later with Haig v. Committee for Industrial Organization nineteen thirty nine, in which the ACLU was able to challenge an anti organizational ordinance passed in New Jersey against a CIO or the CIO of the AFL CIO mega union that we all know and love today, and this ordinance prohibited them from distributing leaflets and organizing meetings, so it was seen as unconstitutional with regards to the

First Amendment, but also the Fourteenth Amendment, which the ACLU did see as a violation of this CIO's constitutional rights. As Cores in Silverglade explain, this secured the quote unquote public forum doctrine of free speech protections thanks to Justice Owen Roberts quote, holding that the parks and streets where the CIO and others were speaking were held in trust for the public as a forum in which to exercise

the rights of speech. Local governments no longer could restrict speech because they controlled the land upon which the speaker stood unquote. So if you've ever heard someone say I pay taxes as a way to defend their right to say vile things on publicly owned land, they may be obnoxious,

but they are absolutely and more importantly, legally correct. Cores and Silverglade also devote a lot of space in their book to explaining how the litigious pursuit of loopholes in these free speech protections actually helped fuel plenty of cases that helped create the incredible free speech protections that we enjoy today in the third decade of the twenty first century.

As they write, quote, the history of First Amendment jurisprudence has been written by the efforts of those who have sought to whittle away free speech rights by positing one exception after another, and by those who have resisted unquote. This has resulted in the Supreme Court consistently hearing four special types of cases against what we consider free speech

in the United States. Two of these exceptions, namely those of obscenity and threats to quote unquote national security, are actually less relevant to what we're talking about in this episode, and they'll likely open up enough cans of worms on their own, So we will just leave those be for now.

At least. The exceptions that matter most to the question of whether rhetorican behavior violent behavior in this case are connected are in cores and silver glades words quote speech posing a clear and present danger of imminent violence or lawlessness end quote, so called fighting words that would provoke a reasonable person to an imminent violent response.

The part of Holmes's opinion that most of us are familiar with, very familiar with, is his proclamation that quote, the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and

causing a panic. Unquote. Now, this standard of you can't shout fire in a crowded theater, something people still repeat to this day erroneously, I should add, was actually kept in place legally speaking, for a half century until the most famous free speech case of the twentieth century, Brandenburg vi. Ohio nineteen sixty nine, began the process of putting limits on these attempts at limiting free speech on the grounds

of quote unquote clear and present danger standards. There is a reason that the Brandenburg case is considered such a landmark in the expansion and protection of Americans' freedom of speech, and a reason that I still sometimes use the term post Brandenburg world, even though I've come to think that

more credit is due to subsequent cases as well. The reason why this case is considered such a landmark is that it began the process of whittling away anti speech activists' ability to go after their targets for their advocacy of distasteful ideas, for fear of quote unquote incitement. And there's that word again, guys, incitement. Now, obviously, people have continued to claim that unseemly speech will quote unquote incite others into action all the way until twenty twenty five.

As we have talked about, and they will likely to continue to do so well into the future because ironically, perhaps it is their free speech right to do so. But the outcome of Brandenburg v. Ohio began a process of strengthening the standards required for such legal outcomes to occur. And there are likely people who, when they hear the things that the Brandenburg, the man himself of this case was sane, would like to see him not perhaps just thrown in jail, but maybe even strung up on a lamppost.

Clarence Brandenburg was a leader of a ku Klux Klan chapter in rural Ohio in the nineteen sixties. He had organized a rally in Hamilton County and invited a Cincinnati reporter to come cover the proceedings he was showing off. In other words, he wanted the world to see what he had to say. He wanted the world to know

what he and his organization stood for. During the rally, captured on two separate films, Brandenburg proclaimed the following quote, Personally, I believe the Niggers should be returned to Africa, the jew to Israel unquote, and that quote, we are not a revenge in organization, but if our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court continues to suppress the white Caucasian race.

It is possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken unquote, thanks to the, to say the least inflammatory remarks made by Brandenburg, he was arrested and charged under the Ohio Criminal Syndicalism Law, in which quote crime sabotage, violence or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform, and dissembling quote with any society, group, or assemblage of persons formed a teacher advocate the doctrines

of criminal syndicalism quote was deemed illegal. This case, when it appeared in front of the Supreme Court, was eventually overturned, the reason being it was clear to the justices that the remarks made by Brandenburg merely advocated for the objectively racist policies and violent action that were described in his comments, but not in any set time or place, or against

any particular person. This was where the more modern standard of the quote unquote imminent lawless action test came into being, which made the notion of quote unquote clear and present danger far stricter as far as standards went, In other words, unless Clarence Brandenburg had been holding his rally on say A Street in Cincinnati and directed the KKK members at his rally to go attack a random passer by who

happened to be black, his invective was indeed protected. It should be noted by the way that this kind of specificity has been plaguing the debate surrounding President Trump's role in the violence of January sixth, twenty twenty one. But as best I can tell, there still is no consensus.

I've already stated my own opinion on such claims as they relate to the psychological aspect of this thing we're talking about here, but legally speaking, it appears to still be in a bit of a gray area the incitement claim, at least anyway. This new standard was applied only four years later in Hesvi, Indiana in nineteen seventy three, and it reaffirmed and clarified the imminent lawless action test established

by Brandenburg. Ever since then, the standard has continued to be used and continues to be strengthened, to the point that, as Cores and Silverglade put it, quote, mere advocacy ceased

being the repeated target of censors. Quote, however, would be censors had another exception that, despite seeming less well known than the notion of shouting fire in a crowded theater in the sense that it doesn't seem to be referenced as often, has become even more common as a weapon being used against free speech in a courtroom.

witness faith, was quote unquote a racket. After he was escorted away by a police officer for his own safety, he railed against the City Marshal of Rochester, calling him a quote unquote goddamn racketeer and a quote unquote damned fascist, and that the local government was made up of quote fascists or agents of fascists unquote. Seen as this was nineteen forty this charge meant a lot more back then

than it does today. I should note from there, Chaplinsky was arrested and charged for violating a law that prevented him from saying quote any offensive, derisive, or annoying word to any other person who is lawfully in any street

or other public place unquote. In Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire nineteen forty two, the Supreme Court upheld this conviction, with the majority arguing that quote there are certain well defined and narrowly limited classes of speech unquote, and that Chaplinsky had violated these classes by using quote insulting or fighting words, those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend

to incite an immediate breach of the piece. As we can see, even the Supreme Court at least eighty years ago agreed with the idea that words constituted a form of violence or in their words, injury. Chaplinsky was not able to see his free speech rights affirmed by the Court, and the Court reaffirmed the idea that speech could be

made illegal the name of public safety with this decision. However, this decision, with its invocation of quote unquote fighting words set into motion future nuances and expansions of what constituted free speech. Only one year after Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire was decided, the Court contradicted its own fighting word standards in their decision on CAFETERII Employees Local three to zero

two v. Los Angeles nineteen forty three. In their ruling, the Court decided that the word fascist was quote part of the conventional give and take in our economic and political controversies on quote, weakening their own previous ruling but

strengthening the protections on free speech in the process. However, the first truly significant change occurred in nineteen forty nine, when, as Courts and Silverglade put it, quote, the Court further undermined the idea that offensive speech is not protected unquote. They continue their summary as follows quote. In Termina Yellow v. Chicago, the Supreme Court reversed a disturbing the peace conviction of a suspended Catholic priest and follower of the notorious anti

Semite Gerald L. K. Smith. Father Arthur Terminiello, gave a speech in Chicago attacking quote communistic Zionistic Jews un quote, moving an unsympathetic crowd to violence against him. Justice William O. Douglas wrote that the quote function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may, indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are,

or even stirs people to anger. Thus, the court sent a message that the First Amendment prohibits the punishment of words merely because they might produce an angry reaction. Terminiello was particularly important because the offensive language there, even though it in fact produced a violent reaction, was not viewed legally,

speaking as fighting words unquote. The significance of this ruling and subsequent rulings like Street v. New York nineteen sixty nine and Coen v. California nineteen seventy one, which involve flag burning with the former and anti conscription agitation with the latter, that reaffirmed the core principle of that first ruling should be obvious, but in case it isn't. And consider it this way under the protection of these cases today in the twenty first century, even if violent rhetoric

caused or even significantly contributed to violent behavior. Then, as best I can tell, neither progressive media outlets or democratic politicians referring to Donald Trump as an existential threat to democracy or a fascist, or any person criticizing Charlie Kirk and calling him a racist or a fascist, would be liable in their respective twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five attempts, successful in the latter case, on their lives.

The same can more than likely be said, at least by my best estimation, about Donald Trump's speech to his supporters on January sixth, twenty twenty one, or for that matter, any of the really insulting and frankly, in my opinion, morally disgusting speeches made in the streets of New York or London in the wake of October seventh, twenty twenty three, talking about Zionis and even globalizing the Intifada quote unquote ugly words, possibly even with the intent of inciting something,

but they're still protected in all cases, it seems to me, at least as a layman. Again, remember I'm not a legal expert. This is just my personal opinion. But back to the story at hand here and the actual facts

involving the evolution of free speech protections. An important aspect of the Coen v. California ruling that must be added to all of this is the fact that constitutional protection was extended to the quote unquote emotive function of speech, in which the court powerfully ruled that quote expression of emotion was as much a function of speech as was

the cognitive role quote. According to Cores and silver Blade, because according to the Cohen decision, quote emotive function may often be the more important element of the overall message

sought to be communicated on quote. Who can honestly say that emotions have not been and were not running high among the commentariat throughout the entire Trump presidency or during the twenty twenty four campaign, much less in the mind of the soon to be ex president at that time at the January sixth, twenty twenty one rally, or among the anti Israel demonstrators in the wake of October seventh, ranting and raving about genocide and intefada with zero sense

of irony. I might add after the Terminiello, Street and Cohen decisions, as well as other decisions like Gooding v. Wilson nineteen seventy two, which involved the defendants saying things like white, son of a bitch, I'll kill you, and you, son of a bitch, I'll choke you to death in the midst of an altercation. After all those decisions, many other convictions involving inflammatory language got reverse, which helped further

set precedent. In legal terms. This is basically like replicating the results of a study in the sense that these standards continued to pass muster across time and justices. These standards continued and still continue to be challenged every step of the way. That is ultimately the point of First Amendment law. Challenges to free speech will never end, and

it's important for us to remember they never will. As the famous cognitive psychologist Stephen Pinker put it in an interview on the Free Press Honestly podcast just over a year ago, not only is consent of the governed not particularly intuitive in the context of human nature, but neither is the notion of free speech itself. There is a reason that people like Greg Lukianov and the other people at Fire and others rightly say that freedom of speech

must be defended at all costs. Assault upon it are eternal, because human nature is the only true eternity. In a way, these challenges should not end, because that would mean that free speech has in effect ended. The power of free speech can be seen in the challenges against its very existence, as long as the ability to make those challenges and to challenge those challenges still exists the experiment that is

free speech, and it is an experiment. And one could argue American culture itself will continue.

And now that was correct, if only by accident. And conversely, there was and now, especially in the wake of the brutal killing of Charlie Kirk, there continues to be plenty of people claiming that the idea of a Trumpian fascist nightmare that Kirk was cheerleading had not spread, then none

of this violence would ever have happened. There are also plenty of people who are now banging the drum of saying that had it not been for all the attempts at calling our times a Trumpian fascist nightmare and referring to Kirk as a propagandist for such fascism, such hatred as his alleged killer claimed in his justification to his roommates, slash Lover that this, this violence is the logical endpoint

of such violent language, of such inciting language. Many of the people saying this also have long since mocked, derided, and refuted the idea that words are violence, and sometimes even more explicitly, that words lead to violence. The hypocrisy at the core of all of this, the inconsistencies everywhere was and remains apparent the people who entertained the idea that words were violence in the first place suddenly realizing that real world violence was what was truly beyond the pale.

The irony was as thick and smooth as butter, and the people who were mocking the words are violence crowd in recent years, months, and even weeks are suddenly wringing their hands over the existential tenor or hysterical tone of the rhetoric that supposedly led to their favorite conservative pundit assassinated.

The irony is just as thick, and yet despite the obvious selective memories and selective standards and therefore hypocrisy coming from pretty much every camp in this conversation, it should be clear that after everything we've covered that none of it matters. It almost certainly does not matter for actual psychological reasons, but more importantly, it doesn't matter for broader legal, moral, and I would argue even national reasons. Let's look at one more story from our past, one I referenced in

passing earlier on in this episode. It's actually a pretty recent story in the grand scheme of things, but it feels like an eternity ago. On January eighth, twenty eleven, US Representative Gabby Gifford's Democrat from Arizona, was in a Tucson supermarket parking lot meeting with her constituents when a lone gunman opened fire and shot eighteen people, including Gifford's

with a point blank gunshot to the head. Somehow, I mean, it's probably more common than it sounds like when you put it this way, but somehow Gifford survived, but six others, including Federal District Court Chief Judge John Roll, were killed. The event was obviously horrifying, and it quickly became and largely remains, one of the centerpieces to the gun control movement in the United States, and indeed, Representative Giffords has spent much of her post congressional public life advocating on

behalf of this cause. However, while the gun control debate it sparked sucked most of the oxygen from the room in twenty eleven, which, honestly, even though people haven't invoked it, in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination in September of twenty twenty five, it all feels strangely muted and even passe.

There was back then a now very familiar refrain going on that political rhetoric, particularly violent political rhetoric, caused this to happen, caused this woman to be shot in the head, and for these six people to be killed and needed to be quote unquote cooled down, in the words of many people at the time, specifically former vice presidential candidate and someone I have not thought about in a very

long time. Sarah Palin, along with the relatively nascent Tea Party movement, became the target of the political left's ire for Palin's website called take Back the twenty which used animated crosshairs to indicate which US districts needed to be well taken back, that is, electorally by Republicans. Giffords had already expressed outrage at this a year earlier, in March of twenty ten, when after her office had been vandalized,

she said, quote, we're in Sarah Palin's targeted list. But the thing is that the way she has it depicted, we're in the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize that there are consequences to that action unquote. Thus, the pump was already primed for a massive amount of confirmation bias when

the actually unthinkable occurred ten months later. While much of the commentary, both at home and abroad seemed to echo this common sense notion that quote, there are lethal consequences unquote to political speech, there was some vital, if somewhat muted, dissent. It began with the fact that it wasn't even clear if Gifford's would be assassin even saw the map on

Palin's website to begin with. This was definitively reported in twenty seventeen by The Washington Post, whose article was titled the bogus claim that a map of crosshairs by Sarah Palin's pack in cite a representative Gabby Gifford's shooting. So this claim that was so in vogue at the time has been largely put to bed and nobody even knows

about it. But soon this kind of descent expanded into more meaningful and even philosophical commentary about how inflamed rhetoric was by no means unique in American history, by no means to blame for what happened to Gifford's and by no means even a bad thing as communications professor and journalist W. Joseph Campbell pointed out in his own historical reckoning of blaming quote unquote overheated commentary for assassinations, the effort to link Palin and the Tea Party's rhetoric to

the Gifford's shooting was quote evocative of a campaign more than a century ago to blame the assassination of President William mcain hinley on the yellow Press of William Randolph Hurst. Continuing, Campbell writes the following quote. President McKinley was fatally shot in September nineteen oh one by an anarchist named Leon Cholgos, who, according to William Randolph Hearst's finest biographer, was unable to

read English. Even so, Hurst's foes, notably The New York Sun, sought to tie the assassination to ill advised comments about McKinley that had appeared in Hearst's newspapers months earlier. One especially ill considered comment helped fuel the allegations that was a quatrain written by columnist Ambrose Bierce twenty months before McKinley was shot on September sixth, nineteen oh one. While

greeting well wishers in Buffalo. Bierce's column of February fourth, nineteen hundred closed with a reference to the assassination a few days earlier of the Kentucky Governor William Goebel. Bierce, a prickly and a cerviit commentator wrote the Bullet that Pierce Gebel's breast cannot be found in all the West. Good reason it is spreading here to Washington to stretch McKinley on his beer, Quoting from The New York Sun's

own story, a menace to our civilization. Campbell points out that the paper accused Bierce, the Hearst Paper, and by extension, Hurst himself, of enabling quote an atrocious anarchistic assault on the president unquote, and that yellow journalism had just quote graduated into a serious and studied propaganda of social revolution unquote. Does this, or for that matter, the reaction to the Gifford shooting, or for that matter, the reactions to the

Charlie Kirk killing sound familiar? Now, despite all this evidence, Marshall, here one might still ask, more than an abstract philosophical sense, at least you know, to me personally, are you saying that you value the freedom for people to express themselves

more than preventing harm or ensuring public safety. Yes, and if you'll pardon me paraphrasing the joker meme format, I've become increasingly tired of pretending that there are any compelling counter arguments against this stance that currently exists and have been studied.

police all speech. And I can't think of somebody in government, politics, business, or the press that I would trust with that power unquote and that quote. The great miracle of American politics is that, although it can tend toward the most cutthroat

and thuggish, it is almost devoid of genuine violence. Outside of a few scuffles and busted lips now and again unquote, even with the increased risk seemingly an incidence of foul, vile political violence, this statement from almost fifteen years ago is actually an important reality check, especially in the context of our dreaded twenty four hour news cycle, whose twenty four hour nature is less of a concern to me

than the spotlighting effect that it creates on outliers. But frankly, this long rant of mine has already grown unweelly enough. I'll just put it that way it did in the essay, and it is growing so here. Schaeffer's best point, however, and one that I think matters most to what we're trying to uncover here, is this quote. The wicked direction the American debate often takes is not a sign of danger,

but of freedom unquote. I can't think of a better way to justify the broader point of this tangled, snarled attemptive mind at explaining why I don't believe rhetoric really matters materially as much as so many people think it does. Not to recap the psychological evidence that rhetoric causes behavior, much less violent behavior, simply does not exist. Counter evidence does not really exists too compellingly either, But we can't operate on the assumption that a lack of evidence means

that there must be some evidence or vice versa. And more to the point that I've been trying to make, it doesn't actually matter, because even if there was evidence that rhetoric caused behavior, and we acted accordingly to restrict rhetoric on that basis, we would be sacrificing the one biggest thing that really makes the United States special as a nation and as a culture. This is demonstrated by the repeated expansions and protections applied to the First Amendment

to the United States Constitution. The legal system for generations now has demonstrated a willingness to continue, but was ultimately the experiment that the founding fathers thought we might put forth as a nation, a culture, and a civilization. Given the sophistication of the Bill of Rights, it is clear that they understood, or at least intuitive, that human psychology was far more complex than a to B causality, especially when it came to the question of speech and action.

Psychological evidence seems to bear this out. Should our legal system and standards not also match what is indeed real and true, at least so far. Of course, none of this is to say that such things can't or shouldn't be challenged, but it is not insignificant that with every landmark legal case regarding the individual citizen's right to free expression in the United States, his or her protections have

ultimately been expanded. Perhaps the advent of new technologies like artificial intelligence will require more careful readings on such things, But in the meantime, when it comes to the question of rhetoric and behavior, the debate is and should be, in essence closed for now. Now, further study of the connection or lack thereof, between rhetoric and behavior must absolutely continue, if only because it will help us make better sense of the greatest mystery of all, the true final frontier,

which is the human mind. As I posited more to myself as a challenge when discussing this with Danielle and Christops on our recent conversation, perhaps there is something to the idea of existentially framed rhetoric having a greater effect on people's behavior than I'm willing to countenance. I want to keep my mind open to that possibility. We'll just have to see, especially if studies continue to be produced

and have compelling, replicatable results. But again I find myself still chafing at the idea that that would even matter, even if it was true, regardless of the findings of such studies. If Americans are to consider ourselves unique among the rest of the world's nations and cultures, and maintain the reputation as not just a land of true freedom, but the land of true freedom, then restrictions or even

referenda on the subject of broader speech restriction. I don't want to put it too harshly, but they seem to me to essentially render the entire American project moot. Well, I will always be the first person standing in line to proclaim that the United States is not as special as so many of its appraisers and critics alike seem to think, especially when it comes to comparing it to say,

other countries' behavior. I will also always proclaim that there are things that Americans do and try to do that are unique, and when it comes down to it, our experiment with expanding just how much our citizens are legally allowed to say and thus think, is one of those things. And to put it even more bluntly, our legal protections for our speech are not something that any American would like to see curtailed if they ended up on the

wrong side of that curtailment. Let's just be honest here, So why will there no doubt be people who hear this that are unconvinced by the evidence that I've provided and the reasoning that I've suggested. While it's certainly possible that it will be due to evidentiary oversights on my part, I've only read so many psychological studies on this subject. After all, it does go back, in my view, to that pesky load star we all have within us, that

is common sense. It is really hard to override common sense, especially when it feels like what I'm saying doesn't comport with what we want to be true, which often does comport with what we perceive in front of our own

two eyes and hear with our own two ears. If we look at how a lot of people who don't like the polarization in our political culture or the tenor of the rhetoric in it, respond to such events, it almost always becomes reduced to arguments about how it certainly doesn't help things, or well it makes things less pleasant, and those things are true. They certainly can be true, and I think they are true. But at the end

of the day, that's still just one person's opinion. It even is maybe millions of people's opinions, but they're just opinions. When I hear someone say it doesn't help things or it makes things less pleasant, I do know what they mean, and I might even sympathize sometimes, Like I said, I often do, especially lately. But I also think that those arguments, given the evidence out there, should probably be put to bed, because the implication will always be we need to put

a stop to that speech that we think is bad. Otherwise, what's the point of saying you don't like the speech. There are a lot of things that we don't like but can't or, as I hope I have made clear,

should not do anything about. If only it was so simple that the young man who killed Charlie Kirk, or the young man who shot at Trump, or the man who killed those Minnesota representatives, or the man who tried to likely kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh, or the man who broke into Nancy Pelosi's home and beat her husband with a hammer, or the assassins of years passed like the one who shot Reagan or the one who shot John F. Kennedy, or the who shot William McKinley, or the one who

shot Andrew Garfield or the one who shot Abraham Lincoln. If only we could show that these people were motivated by pure brainwashing of a hostile partisan media, then we could find some justice, maybe where there seems to be none or not enough in such a seemingly chaotic and violent world. Maybe then we could pin the necessary responsibility. Maybe then we could place a lid on the specific kinds of rhetoric that led to this outcome, so it

would never happen again. Maybe then the left or the right could finally take real responsibility for the things they say so flippantly, and the problem of left or right terrorism could finally be put to bed forever, and we'd all be safe from the people on the other side of the political aisle who hate our fucking guts. If only it was so simple.

a little hard on this one. I think, at least that's how it feels to me. I don't you know. I'm obviously, you know, pretty overtly political in some of the things I say, but in this case it felt less historical more political than usual. So I always have a little bit of a guilt complex about that, but I feel like it's very relevant and I felt like

this might be something you guys be interested in. So anyway, before I get go in here, I just want to thank the following people for supporting History Impossible over on Patreon and substack. These people include the following Zazu, Ben Ben, Bob Downing, Sam Graham, Greg Hunter, s O Skip Pacheco, Molly Pan, John Pisano, Anna R. PJ. Raider, Matthew m Rice, Philip Rice, Emily Schmidt, Pierre Vapuni, Christian Wilson, and as always Fu so thank you again for listening. We will

be back to more regular programming so to speak. Have a really fun research based episode that was a cat in the background by the way, coming uh soon actually, and then after that, well we will see when it comes to interviews. But we're finally getting back to real regular programming so to speak, as in the next installment of the Muslim Nazis. Yes, it's really happening, So thank you again for listening, and please stay tuned.