Free Speech
If America stands for anything, it’s the freedom to express our beliefs peaceably and without fear of retribution from our government.
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A demonstrator holds a sign at the Burbank headquarters of Disney. Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP
Jimmy Kimmel and Censorship
This week, Disney took the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show off the air indefinitely after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr threatened ABC broadcasting licenses if they don’t take action against Kimmel. From reporting from The Guardian: [1]
The Mickey Mouse logo is all over Walt Disney’s headquarters in Burbank, California. But on Thursday, those famous ears were also on display outside the studio on protest signs, including one labeling Disney executives as “cowards” for suspending Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talkshow in response to pressure from the Trump administration.
Disney, which owns ABC, “indefinitely” suspended Kimmel’s show on Wednesday night, following threatening remarks by Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, about possible regulatory consequences for comments Kimmel made about Trump and the Maga movement’s response to Charlie Kirk’s killing.
As many Americans condemned the incident as a blatant government attack on free speech, others attacked Disney and its CEO, Bob Iger, for what they saw as a swift capitulation to the Trump administration’s demand that they censor a prominent comedian.
Investigative journalist Ronan Farrow broke down in this video on Threads: [2]
If we believe is what the promise of America, we don’t want the government using its authority to punish people for their expression. The First Amendment was part of the Bill of Rights for that very reason. Our country has strengthened our rights to freedom of expression through legal cases, some protecting truly objectionable speech.
However, as much as we might like the government to suppress the speech over others that we don’t particularly like, abusing that authority, whether you’re a head of a family, a business, a group, or a government, does not lead to better decisions in the long run – only ones that make those in power feel better about their current authority.
A concurrence by Justice Louis Brandeis in a long-standing, unanimous Supreme Court ruling - Whitney v California (1927) – highlights reasons for these key American freedoms: [3]
Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties; and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.
…
Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.
…
Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
This concurrence paved the way for our current American understanding of free speech and the limitation of government to coerce thought and expression. From the National Constitution Center: [4]
Within Brandeis’s concurrence, we see the foundation for future speech-protective decisions by the Supreme Court, culminating in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969). With Brandenburg, the Court finally wrote Brandeis’s Whitney concurrence into bedrock constitutional doctrine—concluding that, generally speaking, the government may not restrict speech unless it is directed to and likely to cause immediate lawless action.
Jimmy Kimmel’s statements posed no “evil… so imminent” to warrant the FCC Chairman to threaten Kimmel’s employer with governmental action. And while some may point to Disney, not the government, making the decision to sideline Kimmel, the Supreme Court has indicated that this doesn’t matter if it’s done as the result of government coercion. From an opinion piece by Jacob Schriner-Briggs, visiting assistant professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law: [5]
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided National Rifle Association v. Vullo. There the court considered a lawsuit brought by the NRA, which alleged that the superintendent of New York’s Department of Financial Services had threatened several of the NRA’s business partners with adverse regulatory action, pressuring them to cut ties with the NRA to indirectly (and unconstitutionally) punish it for its pro-gun advocacy. The court agreed. In a 9-0 decision, it ruled that “a government official cannot coerce a private party to punish or suppress disfavored speech on her behalf.”
Penalizing people for their expression – their opinions, their views, their beliefs – resulting from government coercion is unconstitutional and un-American.
No Kings
Our First Amendment freedom of the people “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” will be exercised in the coming weeks. The next nationwide showing of standing up for our American rights and freedoms is scheduled for October 18. I plan to be there at the corner of Lynn Road and Hillcrest near the Oaks Mall in Thousand Oaks. [6]
America’s true spirit - Resisting Kings since 1776.
Local Democracy in America
Abuses of power take place at the local level as well, and I’ve written about these with respect to elections – whether they are held without government influence or even whether we hold them at all.
The paperback version of my book Local Democracy in America is launching on Amazon on September 30!
Please help me provide donated copies to local high schools, universities, and libraries.
To those that have pledged support for the donation program thus far, thank you!
A Little History
Marking the Semiquincentennial of American Independence 250 years ago
Ethan Allen is captured trying to take Montreal
From History.com: [8]
After aborting a poorly planned and ill-timed attack on the British-controlled city of Montreal, Continental Army Colonel Ethan Allen is captured by the British on September 25, 1775. After being identified as an officer of the Continental Amy, Allen was taken prisoner and sent to England to be executed.
Although Allen ultimately escaped execution because the British government feared reprisals from the American colonies, he was imprisoned in England for more than two years until being returned to the United States on May 6, 1778, as part of a prisoner exchange. Allen then returned to Vermont and was given the rank of major general in the Vermont militia. In 1777, Vermonters had formally declared their independence from Britain and their fellow colonies when they created the Republic of Vermont. Forever loyal to the colony he founded, Allen spent the rest his life petitioning the Continental Congress to grant statehood to Vermont.
After the war concluded, the independent Vermont could not join the new republic as a state, because New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut all claimed the territory as their own. In response, frustrated Vermonters, including Allen, went so far as to negotiate with the Canadian governor, Frederick Haldimand, about possibly rejoining the British empire.
Ethan Allen died on his farm along the Winooski River in the still independent Republic of Vermont on February 12, 1789, at the age of 51. Two years after his death, Vermont was officially admitted into the Union and declared the 14th state of the United States.
The Natural is based on the 1952 novel about baseball by American author Bernard Malamud, his debut novel. The story follows Roy Hobbs, a baseball prodigy whose career is sidetracked after being shot by a woman whose motivation remains mysterious. The story mostly concerns his attempts to return to baseball later in life, when he plays for the fictional New York Knights with his self-made bat "Wonderboy". [9][10]
Levinson’s 1984 film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction-Set Direction, Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Glenn Close), and Best Music, Original Score (Randy Newman).
This is my all-time favorite movie – the all-star cast and Randy Newman’s score are top notch. The dramatic scenes of knocking the cover off the ball (literally) and timely, towering home runs, underscored by Newman’s outstanding score, still give me goosebumps.
GIF Game
RIP Robert Redford
Notes and Sources
[1] Lois Beckett, “Hundreds protest outside Disney HQ over ‘un-American’ Kimmel suspension ,” The Guardian, September 18, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/18/jimmy-kimmel-protest-disney-abc-burbank
[2] Ronan Farrow [@ronanfarrow], Threads, September 20, 2025, https://www.threads.com/@ronanfarrow/post/DOzgWz9lYs6
[3] Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/274/357/
[4] “Whitney v. California (1927),” National Constitution Center, retrieved September 21, 2025, https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/supreme-court-case-library/whitney-v-california
[5] Jacob Schriner-Briggs, “How Brendan Carr’s not-so-veiled threats could work in Jimmy Kimmel’s favor,” opinion piece, MSNBC, September 19, 2025, https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-fcc-chair-brendan-carr-jimmy-kimmel-first-amendment-rcna232325
[6] “No Kings,” https://www.nokings.org/
[7] Mic Farris, Local Democracy in America, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, 2025.
[8] “Ethan Allen is Captured,” November 13, 2009, retrieved September 21, 2025, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/september-25/ethan-allen-is-captured
[9] “The Natural,” Wikipedia, retrieved September 21, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Natural
[10] “The Natural,” IMDb, retrieved September 21, 2025, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087781
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