EQualyzer Series: When Rhetoric Turns Violent—and Why Free Speech Still Matters

The shouting match on Capitol Hill wasn’t just a bad day at work—it was a mirror. We open on the chaos, then follow the ripple effects across the culture: public glee at a political killing, campus protests that blur into crime, and media ecosystems that reward the most dehumanizing lines. Along the way, we draw the crucial boundary between consequences and censorship, showing why community judgment belongs in a free society—and why state pressure over speech is a line we can’t let any administration cross.

We unpack how labels like fascist and Nazi turn neighbors into targets, how the “martyr effect” makes silencing by force backfire, and why original sources beat viral edits every time. From immigration enforcement to late-night monologues, from cancel culture’s unending punishments to platform policies shaped by backroom calls, we map the real-world costs when debate is replaced by coercion. Tech companies can set rules, but when government jawbones platforms or affiliates, private moderation becomes public power by proxy—and that should alarm anyone who cares about civil liberties, regardless of party.

Grounded in the founders’ warnings and a moral call to speak truth with care, we argue for thicker skin, sharper reasoning, and a wider marketplace of ideas. Free speech is not a promise of comfort; it’s the oxygen of a healthy republic. If truth unsettles us, maybe it’s doing its job. Listen, challenge us, and bring your best arguments—we’ll put them at the front of the line and let ideas compete in daylight.

If this moved your thinking, subscribe, share with a friend who loves a good debate, and leave a review telling us where you draw the line between consequence and censorship. Your voice keeps this conversation honest.

Chapters

• 0:00 Chaos On The Hill
• 5:25 Rhetoric, Violence, And Consequences
• 11:17 Free Speech Versus Censorship
• 15:45 Context, Incitement, And ICE
• 20:55 Martyrs, Movements, And Truth
• 25:50 Public Backlash And Private Consequences
• 29:35 Protest Rights And Legal Lines
• 34:00 Cancel Culture’s Long Shadow
• 37:45 Tech Platforms And Government Pressure
• 43:15 Broadcast Rules, Kimmel, And FCC Power
• 48:25 Founders’ Warnings And Moral Speech

Transcript

Evan: 1:16

America's divided. Political rhetoric is off the charts. Insane.

Audio: 1:20

Do you do you know what we're here for? You know we're here about she. I don't think you know what you're here for. Well, you don't want to talk about I just eyelashes are messing up. Order, Mr. Chairman. Order of order. I do have a point of order, and I would like uh to move to to take down Miss Green's words. That is absolutely unacceptable. How dare you suspend the physical appearance of another person? Are your feelings hurting? Her words down. Oh, oh, girl, baby, girl. Oh, really? Don't even play, baby, girl. We are gonna move and we're gonna take your words down. I second that motion. So so I believe she's apologizing. No, no, no. Hold on. Then after Mr. Perry, she'll be recognized and Mission. I'm not apologizing. Well, then, I am not apologizing. Why don't you debate me? Mr. Chairman, um the the the minority self-evident you're not you don't have enough intelligence. Okay, move to strike the words. Move to strike the lady's strike again. That's two requests to strike. That's two requests to strike. Oh, they cannot take the words again. There's another motion to strike your words again. Okay, here's a here's the correct the correct part of G. Miss Green, do you ask unanimous to consent? Do you agree to unanimous consent to strike your words? I repeat again for the second time. Yes, I'll strike my words. But I'm not apologizing. With that objection. With that objection, Chairman, If you have the right to object. Chairman, I move that Mr. Goldman's words and Miss Ocasio Cortez's words be stricken. It's me. Miss Crockett. I'm just curious, just to better understand your ruling, if someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody's bleach blind, bad built butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct? A what now? Chairman, I make a motion to strike those words. I don't think that's a part of it. Chairman, motion to strike those words. I'm trying to get clarification. Okay, calm down. Calm down. No, no, no. Because this is what I'm getting proceeding. I'm trying to get the number of things. Can you please come? Chairman, Mr. Chairman. Okay, order. Chair now recognizes Miss Green for four minutes and 21 seconds. Four minutes? Let Miss Green come up, and then you all can I'll recognize it. I move to strike her words for a second time based on her second set of personal remarks, attacking another member. Right now, what they are trying to do is institute Nazism 2.0 in the United States. And guess what? It's gonna be us. It's gonna be on the receiving end of all of I think Hillary would be a terrible president. Well, I think the only card she has is the woman's card. She's got nothing else going. And frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she'd get 5% of the vote. She's a world-class liar. Just look at her pathetic email server statements. She's crooked, Hillary. Don't you understand that? This is one of the most crooked politicians in history. This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton. Death, destruction, terrorism, and weakness. She's the devil. Hillary Clinton is the bigot. I was going to say. They understand that we have a Timu Hitler in the White House right now that thinks that he is going to become the dictator of the United States. Well, I got another thing to tell you, sir. When they have a congressman or someone that ran for Vice President of the United States, comparing us to Nazis, that gives some of these nuts and bones them to take action. Donald Trump's modern-day Giscap Gescopo is scooping folks up off the streets. They're in unmarked vans wearing masks, being shipped off to foreign torture dungeons. No chance to mount a defense, not even a chance to kiss a loved one goodbye, just grabbed up by masked agents, shoved into those vans, and disappeared. Are you comparing ICE? You said to NSC 131, the neo-Nazi group. Are you comparing them to a neo-Nazi group? What I said is that Boston police and no police department that I know of at the local level routinely wears masks. The ICE issue is alarming beyond words. That's happening in the United States of America. Masked men jumping out of unmarked cars, people disappearing, no due process. People ask, well, is authoritarianism you're being hyperbolic? We're being hyperbolic. But as somebody who understands history, when I see ice, I see slave first balls. I come from a lineage which this country with black mothers, black fathers, away from black children, to build this capitalistic society. They're doing it again. This is not Germany! That's the SS in the Gestapo! This is the United States of America! Unmask yourself! Ice unmask. What are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? We know who the real cripples are. It's the ice agents abducting parents in the front of their kids. They found bullets on the rooftop, one of which was labeled with the words anti-ICE. He wrote that he intended to maximize lethality against ICE personnel. He hoped his actions would terrorize ICE employees. It's clear from these notes that he was targeting ICE agents and ICE personnel. Yes, there is a heightened sense of security for everybody, not only at work, but for their families, for their loved ones, um, mainly because of the doxing that's going on and the uh the violent rhetoric that people have been perpetrating.

Evan: 7:53

That was a little over six minutes of our political representatives, primarily talking just about insanity, about just wildness, and it's on both sides. Just incredibly dumb things that are being said. It it just it it sounds like we're being run by a bunch of children, if I'm honest. And again, it's it's it's uh both sides are participating, but I think it's important to to call out sort of the ending of that. We've had presidential candidates that were shot and second assassination attempts. We've had political voices that were shot in public, we have assassins trying to kill government agents, all of it tied back to the kind of rhetoric that we just heard. It's it's out of control, if we're if we're really honest. It's completely out of control. People are being silenced, cancelled, fired, even killed for their words. And while some people are celebrating it, he's dead.

Audio: 9:00

Yes, he deserves to die, and I hope he brings it hell. And I really don't want to hear any moral superiority from the people who were just laughing about undocumented immigrants getting eaten up by alligators. Okay. Y'all homie dead! He got shot in the dead, yo, homie dead.

Evan: 9:21

It's another 30 seconds of people celebrating a man being shot in the neck for exercising his right to speak. I have to ask, what kind of country cheers the silencing of voices? What kind of country cheers people being killed for speaking what they believe to be the truth? Well, I'm here to put truth back on the scales. This is the Equalizer Podcast. First, that clip of our political representatives in Congress. Wow. Wild. Wild. That's the kind of that's the kind of people that we have making all of our laws and we all look at each other and wonder, how's the government shut down? Well, there you go. That's how the government shut down because we spend more time talking about fake eyelashes and crazy nonsense than we do dealing with the issues that really matter. Whether it's Jasmine Crockett, AOC, Marjorie Taylor Green, really ought to make you wince, and if you're anything like me, your eyes are probably still rolling around like a slot machine. The truth is that, you know, they're not alone. Trump's mean, aggressive, very direct, retaliatory, makes makes up names for people. It's not nice, it's not kind. It's not how I would want to see things done, that's for sure. He calls people radical left, radical left lunatics. The left calls people on the right fascists and Nazis and racists, people like Rashida Taleb, AOC Crockett, Ilahan Omar, rest of the squad. They're all inflammatory and incendiary in their incitement. And and that's a problem, actually. When your rhetoric goes to inciting violence, and I mean really inciting violence. I'm not talking about comments that fire up your base. In other words, I'm not talking about people saying, you know, go and and you know, fight for your rights, or go and and you know defend what you believe to be your liberties. Whether it's left or right, whether it's it's a cultural movement in support of LGBTQ rights, or whether it's you know, free speech rights, or or whether it's it's lower taxes or whatever it might be, you have a right to voice your opinion. You have a right to speak your mind. You have a right to say what you think. And it's important that we recognize that. Politics is downstream from culture, and boy, boy do these people reflect that. Because you know, when I look around at our culture, you look at our cities, you got our towns, you look at our schools, there's an awful lot of those type of people that exist. They just fight and argue and debate for no reason. That's why we end up with the situation that we're in now where we have a government that's shut down, nothing can get it could get done because everybody's sort of dug in where they are. So I want to ask you, when it comes to our freedom of speech, when it comes to how we speak, what can be said, who gets to decide that? Who gets to decide what can and can't be said? Who gets to decide what's beyond the pale? Without open dialogue and hearing both sides and hearing all opinions, no matter how gross or vile or despicable we might think it is, how do we get to decide what we believe? Do you trust the current censors? Do you trust the media? Do you trust the government? What happens when the roles are reversed, the parties flip? Do you trust did you trust the last administration? Here's the reality: we live in a culture where people are being silenced, canceled, fired, and yes, even killed for words, both in and out of context. You talk about somebody like Charlie Kirk, you know, a lot of what he said is taken out of context and used against him in online videos. I won't get into litigating all of that today, but just some of the stuff that I've seen is just wildly off base from what was actually said. If you sat and watched the entire clip or the entire dialogue, which is readily available, you could see that a lot of it was innocuous. It was, it was, it was in in most cases the opposite of what it what it was being presented as. You talk about the ICE agents and you know, people doing their jobs enforcing federal law, and whether you like federal law or not, the law is what the law is. And their job is to enforce that law. And, you know, focusing on getting, you know, criminal legals out who have broken the law and done terrible things, and going and arresting gang members and, you know, violent criminals and cartel members. I think most people agree that's that's actually helpful. Improves our society in some way, shape, or form. You know, you have people out there trying to kill them. You have several detainees that have been shot and killed by accident because they were aiming for the agents, but weren't a very good shot, or they just fired indiscriminately into vehicles. And all this stuff is happening because people are calling them fascists and Nazis and encouraging their supporters to protest violently. Show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.

Audio: 13:58

This is just a warning to you Trumpers. Be careful, walk lightly. And for those of you who are soldiers, make them pay.

Evan: 14:10

Make them pay. What do you think that means? Soldiers. Make them pay. And show be where it says protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful. It's literally in the First Amendment. The right to peaceably assemble. It's literally in the First Amendment. So that, sir, is where you can find that. And while some are cheering these deaths, as we heard earlier, I wonder if we've lost sight of what freedom of speech actually means. Don't misunderstand me. Speech always carries consequences. Words matter. They can heal, inspire, destroy, or enrage, which is why scripture tells us that death and life are in the power of the tongue. Here's the distinction that we need to hold on to. Consequences are not the same as censorship. Consequences happen in community through relationships, employers, or contracts. Censorship is when the government steps in and says, you can't say that. And once the government takes that power, liberty dies. Now Charlie Kirk wasn't everyone's cup of tea. Not everyone agreed with him, and that was fine. He didn't demand that everyone agree with him. But he talked about liberty. And his point of holding his discussions on college campuses was that there ought to be free exercise of the First Amendment. You ought to have the right to debate. You ought to have the right to speak about topics, no matter how much it might upset people. Because you don't have a right to not be offended. You don't have a right to not feel uncomfortable by things that are being said. In fact, that uncomfortability is that little metronome that God put inside of us, that little detector that God put inside of us that said, you know, spidey senses start tingling. I don't really like this. I don't think this is right. That's the discernment detector that you have built inside of you. It's there for a reason. And if we don't exercise and we don't use it, then we lose it. But you didn't have to attend his events. Nobody forced you to. Here's what really set him apart. He didn't just welcome dissenters to attend. He invited them to the front of the line. He he wanted those opposing voices. He believed in the openness of speech and debate. And he welcomed those who disagreed with him to the microphone first. Because he really believed that when we stop talking, really bad stuff starts. And then someone took his life, trying to silence him permanently. But you know what? All they really did was make him into a martyr. And they didn't stop his ideas, they amplified him. And history has seen this over and over, seen it time and again. They thought they would, you know, stop the abolitionary movement with the death of Lincoln. Didn't happen. They thought that by killing JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, they would stop the civil rights movement. That didn't happen either. It just made it go even faster. They thought by killing Gandhi that they would stop the uprising in India. And they didn't do that either. Even Jesus, attacked by Pharisees and the Roman government, because he was a bit of a rabble rouser. Most people most people may not recognize that about Jesus, but he wasn't he wasn't politically correct in his time either. And they crucified him for it very publicly, and it still didn't silence his message. Instead, it created a movement that grew one of the largest world religions. Every one of those individuals was killed to silence their message, and every one of their messages only got louder. Charlie aggravated the crap out of people because he knew their arguments better than they did. He read books on both sides. He read writings on both sides. He read the original sources. He studied both sides. He rooted his worldview and his Christian faith, but he tempered it with reason. He always, always, always questioned it. Always sat back and said, Is this really what I ought to be believing? Is this really by my principles? Is this really guided by my principles? Are these things that I truly believe? And he spent so much time with that that that's why he could hold his ground. And he had a belief system that was rooted in his his own truth. And it was firm. But he understood people. And that's why people feared him, especially in the political world. I've watched a lot of his stuff over the last few weeks. I was familiar before that. I had met him in the past briefly when he was first getting started. But I spent a lot of time, you know, watching some of his stuff over the last few weeks. And I I find it challenging to find debates and discussions where he didn't come out on top in the end. If you just put your thinking caps on, if you just put your reasoning cap on. Maybe that's because he and I tend to share the same assessment of things. And I know that there's going to be a lot of people out there that that don't. I have friends that quite frankly don't. And I'm okay with that. And I hope they're okay with that. Because it's not going to make me like them any less. It's not going to make me appreciate who they are any less. Because I think we are more than just our opinions. I'm guided m very strongly by the Bible, of course. And in John 8 32, it says you know, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. The truth doesn't die with a man. In fact, every faith tradition says something similar. You know, it's not just the Christian faith. It's you know in Islam, the Quran condemns killing prophets. In Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita shows that when the righteous are killed, Dharma or truth still prevails. Buddhism teaches that Buddha's death only spread his teachings even further. So the lesson we have that comes out of this is really when men try to bury the truth, they only plant it deeper. It only grows taller, and history proves the truth will rise. In the wake of the assassination, speech issues were raised in a variety of contexts. We'll talk about Jimmy Kimmel a little bit later, but I want to focus on these people that are celebrating Charlie's murder through their vile comments online. Almost no post. Memorializing Charlie Kirk escapes being inundated with hateful comments, labeling him a fascist, a racist, a bigot, criticizing his memorial, denigrating his wife, and chastising his friends. One of the hardest things for me to see at times, and and candidly, the Unmentionables podcast put out a post that showed Erica Kirk, his his wife, a couple days or shortly after his very public murder, holding herself together quite quite miraculously, if I if I do say so myself, as she stood up there and she gave a speech I don't think she would have ever imagined she'd be giving, and I can't imagine anybody who would ever want to be giving that speech. Just hours, days after your husband is publicly murdered, you understand that you are now in charge of the family. You're the head of the family, two children, two young children. You're also in charge of a movement. See what these people who are out there chastising her for not being a mushy wreck of tears, which I'm a hundred percent positive that she is on a regular basis when the cameras aren't rolling and when she doesn't have to, you know, put on a good face for the duties that she still has as a mother and a CEO now. But what these people don't seem to understand is that Erica was suddenly the only parent to those two little kids and the leader of the movement that Charlie had built over the last you know 10, 12 years. And that movement has millions of people that are a part of it and paying attention. And not only was was there is there the the part of that that was already in place, but there's the part of that that was exploding after people realized what had happened and wanted to join that movement. And I think that people online tend to dehumanize very quickly because they're looking at a computer screen and they're not sitting across the table from someone else. I've seen people who, if you look at their Facebook accounts, their Instagram accounts, they claim to be children of God. They they some of them are pastors, some of them are deacons, and all of them, you know, denigrating Charlie, hoping he rots in hell, denigrating his wife for not being a blubbering mess constantly, for being able to stand up there as a as a strong woman and and do what she needs to do in order to keep Charlie's movement and memory alive. These are the people that'll post memes and tropes and splatter utterly false attributed comments and celebrate his demise in a very public fashion. They they flock to social media to gloat, and some of them learn that there's consequences for their speech.

Audio: 22:27

Good news. Yes, he deserves to die, and I hope he brings in hell. And I really don't want to hear any moral superiority from the people who were just laughing about undocumented immigrants getting eaten up by alligators. Okay. But following up with what was just said, he's been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that's the environment we're in that people just you can't stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place.

Evan: 23:27

And that's the unfortunate environment we're in. Now those are those last two, the homie dad girl and Matthew Dowd lost their jobs for those comments and for what they did, lost their jobs, lost their ability to attend the school that they were going to, the college they were going to. Because, see, while the First Amendment, as we covered on our first episode, check that out if you haven't yet, protects speech from government. It does not protect speech from the discernment of the public, individuals. In future episodes, we'll talk about how the free market and consequences align with moral principles and the exercise of speech. We're going to talk about that in more detail today, but it's it's worth noting that with great power comes great responsibility and also great consequences. You gotta be careful what you say, because someone might be listening, and that someone may be the person signing your checks or administering the school that you go to. And that's the point of the freedom of speech, and we'll talk about this a little bit later. But the point is that while you can say whatever you want, there's still gonna be consequences, potentially, for that speech. Could be good, could be bad. People may like it and they may not like it. Alright, now I want to shift from individuals to movements. We'll talk about the campus protests for a minute here. I see on one level, protests are free speech in action. Even vile speech is protected. Just to be plain and blunt about it, you have every right to burn the American flag and to say that America is terrible. And as a marine veteran, it boils my blood when you do that. To be quite honest. It it it it really gets inside of me. But you know what? Liberty means protecting even those things that boil our blood, not just what makes us proud. If all I did was say anything you say positive about America, about the flag, about what we do as a country, all the positive things are great, and that's all I want to hear, you know, then the idea of fascism would come into play, nationalism would come into play. But I don't believe that we can survive as a nation that way. The problem is when protests and words cross the line into criminal activity, when you start to occupy buildings, you start threatening people, restricting their rights, blocking traffic, causing chaos, looting, burning down cities and buildings. It's no longer free speech, it's lawlessness. We saw that with the campus protests where they took over campus buildings. We saw it with the BLM rioting, especially in Kenosha, some of those other cities. It's it's crossing a line. And I think we have to note something uncomfortable about these campus protests too. Many of the people who are leading these campus protests are are foreign students. And the problem they're gonna have is that the Constitution doesn't apply to them, and that creates a problem for them. Now, when I look at these campus protests and I see these people who are out there supporting, literally supporting Hamas, a terrorist organization, literally supporting Hezbollah, terror terrorist organization, literally calling for the extermination of a whole group of people that have been, especially ones that have been attacked in the past and and throughout history. You know, quite honestly, it does make me uncomfortable. It does make me recoil. And there is a part of me that says that's that's wrong. That shouldn't be happening. And that's good. To me, that's my discernment bell going off and saying what that person is saying or what those people are saying or what those people are doing, it's wrong. And that's good because it tells me my moral compass is working. And I'd rather hear it and recoil and say, I don't want to be a part of that, I don't like that, I don't believe that, than not hear it and not know it's there. So I want that. Now, here's what I will say when those people are identified and they stand before their prospective employers, or their jobs or offers are rescinded, or their invitations to their schools are rescinded. I don't see any problem with that, quite honestly. I really don't. It is up to those institutions and those companies, those organizations, those individuals to make their own determination about who they want to do business with. Now, if the government was coming in and telling them they couldn't say those things, then that would be a completely different thing. But that's that's not what we saw. Of course, we saw people voice their opinions on whether or not it was good or bad. Of course, we saw discernment from our leaders around what are we going to support, what are we not going to support in terms of those campus protests. But we didn't see crackdowns, we didn't see people being forced to stop speaking by violent means. So let's talk about cancel culture. If there's one thing that embodies the opposite of free speech, it's it's it's this, it's cancel culture. Where they take something that you said decades ago, rip all the context out of it, and weaponize it against you. You know, hindsight is always 2020, and no one is safe from never having said anything that might have offended someone. And cancel culture to the extreme is what we're now seeing in in Great Britain, where they're literally jailing people for tweets. They are literally jailing people for exercising their right to free speech. Again, these people may be saying things I agree with and and maybe saying things I don't agree with. They may be saying offensive things. And the fact of the matter is, that may be despicable to me, but you still have a right to say it. You still have a right to do it. You still have a right to make that post here, not apparently in in Great Britain, where they are arresting people, literally putting them in jail for tweets. Here's a truth bomb I'm gonna drop on you folks. The freedom of speech doesn't include the right to not be offended. Find it in the Constitution. I'll I'll change my mind. It's not there. Your feelings are not a constitutional right. And if we destroy every person who offends us today, who's gonna be left to speak tomorrow? Whether it's a comedian or just some guy on the street, whether it's a joke or an insult. Doesn't really matter. It's not our right to stop them. Let's talk about tech censorship. This one matters because it really blurs the line between private rights and government overreach. Well, normally the First Amendment only restricts government speech control, but when government officials start to pressure platforms to remove speech, it ceases to be purely private moderation. And that creates a hybrid authority problem where private companies are acting as enforcers for government power without accountability, those behind-the-scenes movements. We've seen that most recently with the court filings and disclosures from YouTube that show that the government agencies under the Biden administration, including top White House staffers, pushed YouTube and other platforms to suppress discussions about the origins, treatments, and policies of COVID-19, even when that content didn't break platform rules. There was suppression, there was demonetization, there was cancellation, count removals, livelihoods impacted, even if it wasn't against the rules of the platform. Same kind of pressure was applied before and after the 2020 election, leading to more removals, content removals, count bans, demonetization. People weren't allowed to ask about election integrity, they weren't allowed to ask about COVID-19. YouTube was pressured by the government to take that stuff down. We've seen the same thing from the Twitter files after Elon Musk purchased Twitter, suppression, content labeling, whether or not it was proven to be accurate or not. You know, those are the kinds of things there was no dissent allowed. And when you start looking at authoritarian regimes, they always start with removing dissent, removing the ability for people to question. And this is really a broader pattern. This is not just YouTube, it's not just Twitter. You know, these tech platforms present themselves as neutral moderators, and you hear them sit in front of Congress and and push back against you know these congressional. Inquiries into their policies, into their algorithms. You know, they they act like they're these beacons of freedom and free speech. And yet these leaks in lawsuits increasingly show collusion with government. I bet you will hear something from Meta, Facebook, Instagram, given its scale and its past cooperation with government fact-checking efforts. I bet you're going to hear from them that the Biden administration also pressured them to make changes. I mean, let's be fair. The First Amendment restrains government power, not private companies. Platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, they can set their own rules. But when the government leans on them, when officials whisper, hey, take this down, or else, that's not private moderation, it's government censorship by proxy. It's the government partnering with the private market to use them to their ends for censorship purposes. I mean, imagine this kind of a situation. Imagine the government tells a landlord, hey, don't rent to this person, or else we're gonna do more inspections, there'll be fines, we'll be withholding permits, you're not gonna, you're not gonna be able to do business better the same way you are now going forward. On paper, the landlord's still the decision maker here, right? When the landlord says, okay, I'm not gonna not gonna rent to this person, I'm not gonna let this person do business with me. They're still making that decision on paper, but the state's behind the strings, pull behind the uh scenes pulling the strings. And this is what happens when government nudges these platforms. Platforms are still the face of the decision, but the authority isn't really theirs. And here's why that's dangerous. Truth doesn't fear debate, governments do. But that's why we have alternatives like Rumble, Truth Soldier, Truth Social, even X now that Elon Musk. That's why they exist. Keep the marketplace of ideas alive. See, truth survives challenges. You can argue, you can debate truth, you can question it, you can ask why a million times. And if it's true, it's still going to be true. Lies collapse, though, under scrutiny when you start looking at what's said. And that's what makes debate the immune system of democracy. You talk about things, you debate it, talk quickly about the government shutdown. On the one hand, you've got the Democrats saying Republicans don't want you to have health care. On the other hand, you've got Republicans saying Democrats want to give health care to illegal immigrants. Which one's right? Because they can't both be right, right? Well, the reality of that situation is whether we like it or not, whether you've heard this before or not, the Republican-controlled House passed what they call a clean continuing resolution. And the idea of that is we're going to continue to fund the government at the current levels. Nothing changes, everything stays exactly the way it is, so that we can have a debate, discussion on a broader plan about how to handle some of the upcoming potential changes in funding levels to certain programs. We can talk about whether or not those programs are reasonable and responsible to fund. Now, I have no idea what these people are doing if they're not already debating these things. I think that a lot of time is wasted in Washington, D.C. I know a lot of time is wasted. I won't say think. I'll say I know. I know a lot of time is wasted there. I don't have a lot of faith that all of the people there are really there to serve the people, at least not as their primary role. I think a lot more time is spent playing games than there should be. And as a result, I think they waste a lot of time. They waste a ton of time. And because of that, we have these unresolved issues that, I mean, you could cynically look at it and say they're purposely doing it, they're purposely leaving these issues on the table so that they can fight about it when push comes to shove and they can use it as a hammer from one side or the other. That's a cynical way to look at it. Those of us that have been around politics in any real capacity for any long any period of time can tell you that's typically the way we kind of see things is a very cynical approach to it. You could also say that it's it's a real concern that they have. But this question is, why are we waiting so long to take care of these issues? We we know and we knew months ago that these questions were out there. Why didn't we take care of it then? And what does take care of it really mean? Does it mean that everybody gets what they want? Because that can't happen. Both sides can't have what they want. There's gonna be some give and some take, there's gonna be some level of compromise. But the problem with our society and where things are today is that we're not willing to do that. And so what we have now in this situation is we have two sides that refuse to bend. And so instead, we've got this pressure that is applied. And if we look at the two arguments, we look at the Republicans and we say, okay, continuing resolution has been passed out of the House, President Trump's ready to sign it, it will carry on continuing or continued current levels, so nothing will change, nothing's being taken away at this point. There's no alteration to funding levels. So at this point, why would we shut down the government over that? And if you look at the Democrat point of view and you say, here's the reality: we have this continuing resolution, it's not changing anything, so nobody's having anything taken away. What is the what is the real issue? And what it all comes down to is the Democrats don't believe that they're going to be able to get what they want at the end of the day. They don't believe their argument is good enough to convince people to do what they want to do. And so they are using this as an opportunity to wield a sledgehammer. They're using this as a shield. And this is the kind of thing that goes back to if you look at the reality of the truth, nothing changes with the current res with the current continuing resolution. If you look at the other side, still nothing's changing. So at this point, what sense does shutting the government down make? The only thing that it does is it gets the population up in arms, it hurts the government workers who are out of out of work, it hurts the people that are relying on programs. Let's look at this situation. You ever had if you're a parent, you have kids, you've had toddler freak out in a store, go bad shit crazy, start screaming. You have sort of two ways that you can handle that. First is you can appease the child, you can just give them a toy, just stop, right? Stop screaming. You have a another way to do it, which is take the child outside, you have a conversation, you discuss, bring down the temperature, figure it out. Well, the Democrats want us to act like the first one, and they want us to just give them what they want. Just give them what they want, just just give them what they want so we can move forward because this is too much pain. It's too much that we're going through right now. We can't do this. Republicans want us to act like the other parent, the other approach. I tend to fall in the other approach category. I don't want to just give in to temper tantrums. I want things to be reasonable and responsible. I want to think about things, talk through it, make sure that we come to an agreement about how this should be done, if it should be done. But see, that's where the difference between truth and lies comes into play. And when you add government suppression into this, letting officials decide what can and cannot be said or done. Now you're now you're pushing the limits of that first amendment. And when once people realize that their speech is being curated by political pressure, they stop trusting the platform and government. And then there's there's precedent at that point, at this point. It's COVID or elections today. Tomorrow could be foreign policy, climate change, criticism of those in power. Where does it stop? Where does it end? If we allow the government to outsource suppression to private firms, they avoid transparency, due process, and legal challenges. We keep talking about due process in our political discourse. This is one of the biggest ways that due process is actually violated through this shadow censorship. And to give an example of how that's being played out in the in the real world, millions have flocked to these alternatives, Rumble, Truth Social X now that Elon Musk has has purchased Twitter to counter the perceived biases that they're they're facing. And and the Democrats have their own as well, or the liberals, I should say, have their own as well. Let's bring us a little closer to home and go inside of our televisions late at night. After the Charlie Kirk assassination, Jimmy Kimmel made a joke tying the shooter to MAGA and mocking the president's response. Outrage followed. Kimmel was taken off the air for a few days a week by ABC while they were going through discussions with the local syndication or the local uh affiliates. Here's what most people don't realize broadcast TV operates under different rules. So the local stations they own the licenses that are granted by the FCC. So the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, they have these licenses to the over-the-air broadcast wave, right? This is a a relic of you know years past. It was passed by the FDR administration. It was a way for the government to control media back in the in the 40s. But at any rate, local stations were granted licenses by the FCC, and those licenses basically say, listen, the airways belong to the public, and stations are renting them under the condition that they serve the public interest. And this the networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, they produce TV shows, and then they lease those out to different affiliates in different places. So if you've ever, if you're a Jeopardy fan, for example, and you travel at all, you'll notice that it's on ABC in one city, maybe NBC or even Fox in another city. Those local affiliate affiliates are the ones who decide what airs and what doesn't. They are the ones that hold the networks accountable, and they're the ones that are held accountable to the FCC. So what you had is you had Nextstar and Sinclair, who own hundreds of TV stations across the country. And they preempted Kimmel when he made those comments until he met some demands that they had, meeting with Kirk's widow and apologizing and so forth. It happened in sort of simultaneous way, where the FCC commissioner was Brendan Carr. He he said, look, we could do this the easy way or the hard way. Problem is, you know, that can be seen as he was he isn't just commenting, he's he's applying pressure. And, you know, he tried to walk that back, but the reality of the situation is I I truly believe that that was applying pressure. Now, ultimately, Nextstar and Sinclair made that decision, but that's not really that different from what the Biden administration did with YouTube, Facebook, Twitter. Is it illegal? No. Was the government leaning on those private broadcasters to silence a voice? Sounds to me like they absolutely were. And once again, the principle's clear government has no place in a censor's chair. Do I like what Jimmy said? No, I don't like what Jimmy says most of the time. So you know what? I just don't watch him, quite quite honestly. I don't watch him. And I think most people don't watch him, honestly, because his ratings aren't all that great. So they he went away and he came back, and his ratings were really high for a couple days, and now they're back down again to historic lows. And that's fine. I mean, you know, people can choose to watch or not watch. He has a right to be on air if people will put him on air. It's fine with me. I just won't watch it. That's okay. So over the last few weeks, he's been everybody on the left's favorite talking point. Everybody talks to him, talks about him, and that's great. Now, if these local stations had taken this action on their own, without government pressure applied, simply acting on their own accord and with their own morals in mind, I'd be fine with it. After all, there's consequences to speech. Whether it's you know firing Jimmy Kimmel, whether it's taking him off the air for a few days, if something he said violates the conscience of the people that are putting his show on the air, they have every right to take it down. And the reality is he could leave it up on YouTube if he chooses to. He did. You can go on YouTube right now and see what he said. Maybe it doesn't offend you. Maybe it does. The reality is if the stations wanted to take him down, the local stations, if the syndicates that own them wanted to take him down, they had every right to. Brendan Carr should not have stepped in, should not have said what he said. Is it in accordance with law and the rules and was what he said technically in line? Yes. Did it cross the line for me? Yeah, also yes. And when we start talking about speech and the responsibility that comes along with the freedom, the founders understood this better than anyone. George Washington said, if freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent, we may be led like sheep to the slaughter. So he understood that freedom of speech is extremely important. But also in that statement is the dumb and silent part, right? Dumb and silent. So silent because we can't speak, but also dumb because we can't hear different opinions, differing opinions. And it's extremely crucial in a free society for differing opinions to be shared. So Washington even understood that. And this is a guy who, you know, was a military guy. He was a general. Follow what I tell you to do, do the work, do the job. But even he understood. Freedom of speech and the freedom to hear go hand in hand. Benjamin Franklin warned whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech. And again, speech, being able to say something, it's great. It's important, it's critical, it's crucial. But you also have to have the ability to hear it. Madison called speech and the press the only effectual guardian of every other right. And this goes back to something that I said in the first episode. There's a reason why the First Amendment is the First Amendment, and the way that it's structured is important. There's a reason why it's religion, then speech, then press, then assembly, and petition. There's a very strong, crucial reason why each of those things is in place where they are. If you haven't listened the first episode, go back and listen to it. I think you'll appreciate that. They also understood that free free speech wasn't a free-for-all. Madison cautioned that liberty could be endangered by its abuse. John Adams said liberty depended on knowledge. And Hamilton said freedom of the press was meant for truth, not slander. So we go back to again something that we mentioned in episode one of this new podcast series. Freedom of speech gives you the right to say what you choose to say. You should choose to say the right thing. You should choose to say the things that build up, not tear down. And the Bible agrees with that too. Proverbs 1821 reminds us death and life are in the power of the tongue. Ephesians 4.15 calls us to speak truth in love. And Jesus himself warns us in Matthew that we'll account for every careless word. So here's the balance. Freedom of speech is essential to liberty, but it's not a free license. It's a stewardship, and God Himself will hold us accountable. So let's land here. Free speech is the oxygen of liberty. Without it, truth suffocates and tyranny grows. Cancel culture, tech collusion, FCC pressure, these are all modern suffocations, but history teaches us truth doesn't die when it's buried, it grows. So don't outsource the truth. Don't silence voices you disagree with. Test everything against your moral compass. For me, it's scripture. Read original sources. Don't just take the the the quote that you got in a in a social media post. Go find the original source and watch the context. Make sure you understand what's being said, what's being written, what you're reading. Make sure you get it fully and completely before you have an opinion. And remember, if truth offends you, maybe it's because it's doing its job. I'm the Equalizer. Truth just got its day. See you next week. Before you go, let me leave you with this. If today's episode gave you something to think about, there's more where that came from. Subscribers get access to exclusive content like with the Equalizer series, Deep Dives you just heard, plus other behind the scenes conversations we can't always put in the public feed. It's our way of giving you more substance, more context, and more truth without compromise. So hit that subscribe button, join the community, and make sure you don't miss what's next. Because here on the Equalizer, truth isn't optional, is essential.