To call Jonathan Turley, Distinguished Public Interest Law Professor at the George Washington University Law School, a “Fox News pundit” seems sacrilegious. But his frequency as “the” legal scholar for America’s most-watched cable news is what filled the Boise Centre Ballroom, where Turley took the stage last week.
The event was the Annual Fall Dinner of the Mountain States Policy Center, a conservative “think tank” formed in 2022 and already the most powerful voice for conservative thought in Idaho.
The audience was a “who’s who” of Idaho’s “limited government, pro-free market” movers and thinkers, from House Speaker Mike Moyle and Attorney General Raul Labrador to Rep. Bruce Skaug, sponsor of conservative legislative victories for which Idaho is increasingly famous.
Turley was an unexpectedly appropriate keynoter. The former Tulane Law School luminary is now an institution at the George Washington Law School in Washington, D.C. He has served “of counsel” in two Presidential impeachments, and is rated the nation’s “2nd most-cited Law Professor.” In policy, he aggressively champions individual rights against the excesses of a powerful central government.
But in Boise last week, he focused on one essential right, embodied in the First Amendment to the Constitution, the right to freely speak your mind. He labeled it the freedom synonymous with America’s grand new experiment in self-government.
“What is this American?” Turley quoted a European observer questioning the unique new citizenry of the former British colonies. These “Americans” exhibited a previously unknown openness, a willingness to criticize power and to call out oppression and hypocrisy. To those living for centuries under Europe’s authoritarian rulers, this looked like feckless chaos, incapable of holding a populace together with any lasting success.
“To criticize your ruler was historically a serious offense, punishable, in some cases, as a capital crime,” Turley explained. That America not only embraced free speech, but then quickly emerged as a thriving, successful and powerful nation, upended all expectations.
In his book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, Turley calls the First Amendment right to free speech a “radical new concept” that the powerful sought almost immediately to curb with the passage of the “Sedition Act.” Modern “content moderation” and “deplatforming” are just the most recent variations on “we claim you can speak freely, but did you think we actually meant it?”
Over time, there have been many ways to bring about societal unity. The most common is to use clubs, swords or guns. Some societies manipulate economics, forcing consensus if you want to eat or sleep under a roof. Even America’s first Puritans forced agreement by branding and placing a “scarlet letter” on those who deviated from the norm.
But the essence of America’s unique new freedom is captured whenever we teach toddlers not to hit, or spit or bite. “Use your words,” is the wise parent’s admonition.
“Use your words” is America’s enlightened answer to dissent, conflict, and contention. Mass immigration? A human right, or a breach of national security? Use your words. Universal health care? Communism in medicine, or public compassion? Use your words.
Professor Turley holds one other unique honor. He is the modern legal scholar who most accurately predicts the Supreme Court. When asked about that skill, he claims, “pure luck in how the entrails appear,” referencing Roman augury, a ritual fortune-telling based on the internal organs of slaughtered animals.
But his real skill is forecasting whose arguments (i.e., free speech) will be persuasive, convincing the court’s majority. Justices deliberate among themselves to find the truth. Their life appointments shield them from any influence other than pure reason.
What a revolutionary new idea! That we, the individual citizens of America, can govern ourselves with a similar process. Deliberate publicly, speaking honestly as we see things, free from punishment or intimidation, in pursuit of the truth... which sets us free.
That ideal is our legacy. It’s what makes us “American.”
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