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Posted on 02/13/2026 4:00:21 PM PST by nickcarraway
On Wednesday evening, I attended the third annual RealClearMedia Samizdat Prize Gala in Palm Beach, Florida. RealClear, whose brands include its flagship RealClearPolitics website, is best known as a content and polling aggregator, and as an advocate of political and ideological diversity. Pursuant to that mission, the Samizdat Prize recognizes and honors leading champions of free speech from across the ideological spectrum. This year, the prize was given to longtime Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, Irish-born comedy writer Graham Linehan, and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. (Kirk’s award was, of course, posthumous.)
I am grateful to RealClear for their regular publishing of my weekly column and appreciated the spirit of the event. Still, I was troubled by some of the rhetoric that I heard throughout the evening when it comes to the issue we had all congregated to celebrate: free speech.
In his introductory remarks, my friend David DesRosiers, the publisher of RealClearMedia, criticized the Trump administration’s prosecution of former CNN personality Don Lemon for his much-covered recent storming of a Sunday church service in Minnesota, framing it as a journalism and free speech issue. Later in the evening, Dershowitz stridently defended the fundamental transgender claim that a man can become a woman or a woman can become a man; when booed for suggesting as much, he said it was OK to disagree on this because we all have our free speech—as if that is the single highest and most important value upholding American society.
But is it?
The foremost goal of politics, since time immemorial, is to best pursue and realize the common good. Free speech certainly has some intrinsic value, as one good in the broader basket of goods constituting the common good.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
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If not, then why was it the first amendment?
Not when practiced by retards like Timmah Walz
What we have is Freedom of Speech which is a different animal. It means the government can not make you shut up.
It also mean that the government can not compel your speech. This is a point that is often missed.
Yes, Freedom of Speech is the highest value because if the government can prohibited you from either honest and forthright communication or from lying your head off, your choice, you are closing in fast on the moment when you are going to be killing each other.
I don’t know if this is accidental or coincidental, but the link brings me to an article titled “Xi Jinping Is Losing Control of China’s Military | Opinion”.
The First Amendment also included freedom of religion. And we know that was overruled.
Here’s the right link: https://www.newsweek.com/is-free-speech-really-the-highest-value-11516553
The Bill o fRights are all important...though, the Ninth explains, it is not an exhaustive list of the rights of citizens. It could be argued that all are endangered without the Second. You make the call.
Truth is the highest value. Free speech is how we determine the Truth.
Yes. Absolutely. That’s why it’s the first amendment. There is literally nothing more important. The ability to express your thoughts is the cornerstone of all other freedoms. The founders were familiar with England and brutal suppression of opinion. I can’t believe this is even a question.
Oh STFU Newsweeeeeeek
So, you don’t believe freedom of religion is part of the first amendment?
Just look at what happened during covid when Free speech was basically annulled. If you want to be China or the USSR or the European Union right now then go ahead and get rid of free speech.
Let’s Go Brandon could be considered untruthful. But it worked.
Indeed, mockery and innuendo and memes etc. can get to the truth more efficiently than outright truth.
That’s probably why the EU’s Article 13 was passed. Yeah, maybe it’s not an outright ban on memes. But it’s murky enough to be effective.
Alan Dershowitz formerly on the payroll of Jeffrey Epstein is in this story amazing.
But arguing for transgenderism would seem to fit Dersh’s predilection for ‘sexual liberalism’ evidenced by his relationship with Epstein.
I guess Alan will soon be on Glenn Beck’s show again and doing a big tour of all the conservative media platforms.
Is it proven he was on Epstein’s payroll? Of course, good defense attorneys are likely to have bad people on their client list.
I guess what I’m getting at is how sleazy is Alan in all this there was an FBI informant in the files essentially calling Alan a foreign intelligence agent.
I don’t know squat about this FBI informant but in Israel this week a media report identifying the informant as a “Holocaust Denier”...
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/who-is-the-trump-mossad-epstein-file-fbi-informant-charles-johnson/
Wow how did hey get that info on the informant did Pam Bondi or Kash Patel hand it over.
But moving forward Alan defended Bill Clinton during impeachment.
Ostensibly prosecuting Bill Clinton was Ken Starr.
Starr worked on Epstein’s defense in the network of lawyers including Dershowitz...
https://factually.co/fact-checks/justice/kenneth-starr-professional-consequences-epstein-ties-6d78b4
Now read this...”Jeffrey Epstein Visited Ken Starr On Baylor’s Campus in 2012”
https://baylorlariat.com/2026/02/11/jeffrey-epstein-visited-ken-starr-on-baylors-campus-in-2012/
The highest value in what context?
In an overall sense I can think of many things that are more important to me than freedom of speech starting with the right to self defense. Another would be freedom of association.
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