Hume: Liberals calling for free speech crackdown 'don't understand the concept'

close

Video

Hume: Censorship advocates don't understand concept of free speech

Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume sounds off on new progressive endeavor on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight'

Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume warned Tuesday that those on the left calling for increased regulation of speech don't understand the concept of the First Amendment or the marketplace of ideas.

Hume told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" that the most distressing part of the "crackdowns" mooted by Big Tech and Democrats is that high-profile media figures and journalists have given them their backing.

BRIT HUME: What's most distressing to me ... is the extent to which journalists themselves are now participating ... it astounds me, frankly.

...

It is alarming and it suggests to me that people who are calling for this stuff don’t really understand the basis of our concept of free speech, which is that people are better informed by hearing a wide range of voices and tolerating them, and that the answer to objectionable speech is not censorship.

RUPERT MURDOCH CONDEMNS 'AWFUL WOKE ORTHODOXY' ATTEMPTING TO SUPPRESS FREE SPEECH

Thomas Jefferson, actually, expressed it very well many years back when he said the following: "For here," he said, "we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."

That’s the concept, open forums, free speech, if you find speech objectionable, respond to it with something better. 

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Later in 1927, there was a famous case called Whitney v. California in which [Supreme Court] Justice [Louis] Brandeis had a famous passage, and he is talking about this very issue and he said, "If there would be time to expose through discussion the falsehoods and fallacies to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to being applied is more speech, not enforced silence."

What we are hearing and seeing now is journalists themselves trying to shut down other news organizations and channels, and I find it astonishing and alarming.