BANNED: Free Speech - The Cost of Silencing Ideas

Do you think it's better for somebody to be able to share their thought openly on either side? Or do you believe that that information, one side should be cut off? Should one or the other side be censored? Your answer to that question is really important. 55% Of people, more than 50% of people believe the government should be censoring. Whoa. What's labeled hate speech today is not hate speech.

Sometimes it's love speech. Think about that. More than 50% of people think if somebody says something hateful, They should just automatically lose their job. And then if a speaker has a different opinion, they should be banned. People that have that opinion, they're fearful, lack wisdom, and they just don't know the history of the world.

And when there's less information you have access to, it's going to be harder to find and discern the truth. Hey everyone, welcome to the Growth Lab Podcast. I am Dr. Josh Axe. I am the founder of Ancient Nutrition. DrAxe.com and Leaders.com. Also a graduate of Johns Hopkins University.

And each and every week on the show, we cover the science behind how to grow yourself, your health, your wealth, and take your career, your relationships, and your spiritual wellness to the next level. Today I'm gonna be talking about what you should believe about censorship and free speech.

This is actually a huge deal, and I wanna share with you how a business I had decreased by 20 times because of censorship violations and how it can impact you, your business, your freedom in the future. All on today's show. I'm gonna be talking about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, and many others, and what they have to say about free speech and censorship.

And you might even notice today when you search on Google, some of the things that you might've found in the past, they don't come up. In fact, I was doing a consultation with somebody this week, a medical consultation. They said, I've been trying to look for natural ways to fight diseases like cancer and Lyme disease and a number of other things.

And he said, I can't find any natural information anymore. And I said, you know what? That's because Google, you may not be aware of this, Google owns YouTube, by the way. Google owns many pharmaceutical companies. So Google is a pharmaceutical company. Tech company. So Google and YouTube is a pharmaceutical slash tech company.

So what they do on searches, especially in regards to medical information, is they want to highlight the mainstream medicine and pharmaceuticals and those sort of treatments. And so what they will do is they will, they change the algorithm and censor people that would essentially hurt their business. And a lot of people don't know this truth.

By the way, if you knew that and realized that, let me know in the comment section if you realize that pharmaceutical companies and tech companies like Google are now censoring at the highest levels in history. We're going to cover all this on today's episode. Now, I want to talk about why free speech and anti-censorship is so important.

In the words of Jordan Peterson— and Jordan Peterson is a famed Harvard psychologist who also taught at the University of Toronto— now listen, he, he— a lot of controversy surrounds him, but he understands, and he went and studied, uh, things like the Soviet Union and Hitler's regime. And he found that one of the first things that kicks off tyranny, and that's where somebody enslaves you.

So you became a slave in the society, which is still very alive and well today.

There are many countries, in fact, you even look at China or Venezuela or Cuba, there are many countries to where they have— they're, they're highly censored and oppressed to where you can't speak your opinion, even a thought you have, if you would speak that if it's against the narrative of the government, you can be imprisoned when arrested and even killed.

And so Jordan Peterson has studied this his whole career. In fact, what actually got Jordan Peterson into psychology is he did a trip to Europe and he started seeing the devastation in the Soviet Union and in what's Russia today.

And he said, wow, what could cause such devastation in order for genocide and for hundreds of millions of people to be killed between Holocaust and Mao's regime in China, and he found that a lot of it starts with censorship. And so this is a really, really big deal. And here's what he says. He says, you know, free speech is important because if you can't speak freely, you can't properly think.

You can't be a free thinker. He said the greatest way that we think is by speaking our thoughts out loud. And so, and so, you know, in order for you to work through right and wrong, you may say something out loud and it's wrong, but you need to get out there saying, hey, I was thinking this, or I believe this.

And when you speak it out loud, uh, it gives you a chance to sort of work through your thoughts. And so sharing your thoughts with other people. And another way to do this is by write— is writing, by the way. So the closest thing that most people ever get to thinking is writing down their thoughts and beliefs about something and being able to go and say, okay, is Is this right?

Why is it not right? Looking at both sides, being able to hear both sides evenly allows someone to determine what the truth is if they're thinking correctly. The problem is what most people do, do today is they say, you know what, I don't want people to not like me. I don't want to be canceled. And so what I'll do instead is just go along with the narrative.

So here's what most people do instead of thinking. They memorize. The narrative of the culture and they just repeat it. So they really have no idea how to think for themselves. Here's how you think for yourself.

Again, you hear both sides, you write, you write down your thoughts about both sides, or you speak both sides and you, and you have a time to have kind of the, you know, the angel and the devil, this, you know, the dark and the light and sort of work it out together thinking about what is truth.

And honestly, the best way to do this is through with mentors and with groups of people being able to have open communication. Yeah. We are seeing this happen less than ever before in America today because of censorship and because we're afraid to be canceled. Cancel culture. You know, in fact, this is very, very, very much the opposite of what the Bible teaches. The Bible says grace.

Listen, hey, you messed up. It's okay. There's grace for it. Hey, you're thinking incorrectly. Hey, let's talk about it. Let's talk about, you know, let's, let's try and discover the truth. The problem is most people, rather than trying to discover the truth, They're trying to become popular and liked. Okay, so they're trying to protect themselves, and you can't grow. This is the way this works.

When your body's in a state of protection, it's the opposite of growth. It's your body's fight or flight response. Your body's in a fight or flight response, it's trying to protect itself. Your body is kicking into full gear. Adrenals, uh, adrenal hormones are being kicked out. You're trying to protect itself. Rest, growth, digestion, all those things, that's at the opposite of the scale.

So just know this, when you are canceling others, or you're unwilling to say what you think, or unable to, you know, uh, uh, even write those things down, you're in a state of protection. You're not healing, you're not growing. Versus the opposite is growing, is you're, you're able to speak, you want to hear both sides, you're not just dialed into the one side.

And so it's really important that again we get back to this. And here's the other thing that's so important. This is why censorship is a big deal and free speech is very important. If you can speak freely People can battle with their words. Okay, so before there's a blow with fists or knives or guns or war, people can battle it out by what they say.

Okay, so hey, you share your side, I share my side, we say where we meet, we talk about where we differ, and we do our best to come into alignment to do what's the best for society, not just ourselves, but ideally society.

Well, if you can't battle With words, what Jordan Peterson found, people will start battling with violence, you know, rather than, you know, via, via words, it'll be, it'll be with swords. And so that's why just know there's always a trade-off. There is a study, and I'm gonna get into this in a few minutes, but there's a study that's done.

The majority of people now believe that the government should be censoring people. That's dangerous. I, I, I, I mean, we're in America, you know, we're not, we're not living in China today. So again, this is a really dangerous precedent. So here's what happens if you restrict people from sharing what they believe, even if you believe it's racist or you believe it's wrong, let people speak.

Because again, people will decide for themselves versus if you don't let people speak, they'll find a way to be heard via violence. That's every civilization in the history of the world. That's what happened. If you can't speak freely, it's been violence. Here's another thing. There's never been a time in history where those who were censoring people ended up on the right side.

When we look back throughout history and we say, who were the evil people? Who were the true oppressors? At the time, there was a lot of confusion. But you find— you always find that it's the people that were censoring, they were wrong, whether it was, you know, you know, some, some tyrannical government or even the church.

Either way, if you— there was censorship, that person we see today was on the wrong side of history. You know, many people have been censored and even died for their beliefs. Galileo was executed for saying the world was round. Listen, this is a big deal because you might say to yourself, well, I don't want to see hate Hate speech. You know, I don't want any hate speech.

Well, who decides what's hateful? What if somebody has a different opinion about, about same-sex marriage? Okay. Is that person— should— if somebody believes it should or shouldn't, are both of those sides— is one hateful or not? No, we have to talk about these things. And so just because somebody disbelieves— doesn't believe the exact same thing you believe doesn't mean it's hateful.

In fact, it could be the greatest form of love because they're sacrificing you liking them. That's hard. It's hard. We all want to be liked. So again, going back to this, here's examples of past censorship. Again, Galileo was executed for saying the world was round. Socrates denied the city's gods and the governments of the time.

So Socrates, you know, Socrates, who's the, you know, the mentor of Plato and then Aristotle. Socrates was killed because he didn't believe in all the city's gods. So again, free speech and beliefs there. Louis Pasteur presented his discovery that diseases were spread by germs and was rejected by the whole medical community at the time. Marshall and Warren found that bacteria were causing cancer.

They were ridiculed as it was believed that bacteria could not survive in stomach acid. So we even see, you know, recent medical things that were said, no, that's absolutely wrong. We're going to censor you. And we find out later to be right. Now, how often did we see this with the mandates in the past that people were given and false medical information we've seen over the past 4 years?

How many times was Dr. Fauci wrong? How many times was the World Health Organization— the CDC— how many times were these institutions wrong? Well, we see almost constantly. So if somebody speaks out against them and is censored, is censored. Oftentimes we're censoring the truth. We need to be able to hear this. This is why this is such a big deal.

Now, I want to I want to share something that happened to me. Actually, before I do that, let me get into this. You know, Jordan Peterson recently expressed his views on X, formerly known as Twitter, criticizing the transgender movement. The current he also criticized heavily the Canadian Prime Minister and climate alarmists.

And a governing psychology board targeted Jordan Peterson for these views in a Canadian. Canadian court stood with them and upheld their demand for him to go through a reeducation program, as well as ordering him to pay a $25,000 fine. So think about this.

Do you think it's morally and ethically right for somebody— let's say it was you and you disagreed with one of the presidents, whether it was Trump or Biden, you disagreed with them and you say, I don't think you're correct on this matter for this, this, and this reason. And I don't think you're a good person for that. Okay.

If you said that, do you think you should have a $25,000 fine and have your degree or your license removed for posting that on X, formerly known as Twitter? Well, that's what's happening to Jordan Peterson right now. So whether you hate Jordan Peterson or love Jordan Peterson, you have to answer the question, is that morally and ethically correct?

And do you want to live in the type of world where if you speak ill about a leader in the country, that you can pay a $25,000 fine, potentially go to jail, and also have your account shut down. In fact, I recently saw his YouTube account for a short time was shut down.

It maybe might be back up again, but where— because Google and these other social platforms like YouTube are censoring Jordan Peterson. Here's what Jordan Peterson said about some of this. He said there is no difference between Free speech and thought. If you can't speak freely, you can't think. He says it's very hard for you to have all of your thinking inside your head.

He said the way that we actually find out what we're thinking is by speaking and writing. So when you think you have a problem, here's what happens. Your brain generates an answer. Once you've received the answer, you use your internal speech to start to dissect the answer. Now, here's the thing. If you can't share your thoughts openly, you can't fully think.

Writing and speaking your mind openly allows you to think at another level. Most people choose just to memorize and repeat the cultural narrative rather than thinking for themselves. And, you know, we also are taught to do this in school, by the way. John Rockefeller said, I don't want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers to work on an assembly line.

And that's what our school systems teach us to do. We're taught to memorize what you learn in school, memorize what the media says, and just repeat it, and that that's truth. And that's not the truth. We see the wisest people of all time think, and they speak freely, and they have engaged with conversations with other people oftentimes they disagree with to get to the truth.

But if that freedom is taken away, you're not going to be able to fully think and be able to discern the truth there as well. Now, I want to tell you a story about what happened to me personally and how I was affected by censorship. And I also want to say this affected you.

So I started DrAxe.com in 2008, and over the next 10 years, it grew to be the number one visited natural health website and in the top 10 of all medical sites. So my website, draxe.com, had 20 million unique visitors a month, and nearly 20 million of that was organic search. So for instance, if you would go online to Google and type in turmeric, draxe.com was in the top 3.

If you search coconut oil, it showed up in the top 3. If you searched chia seeds or how to make healthy chocolate chip cookies, draxe.com showed up in the top 3, or something like how to reverse diabetes, we showed up in the top 3 in Google. Google then went through an update called the Medic Update.

And this is where they decided if your opinion was more natural and less mainstream medical, we're going to be penalized. The traffic of draxe.com over the next 2 years dropped from 20 million unique visitors down to 1 million organic search a month. So we went from being on the top page, first page of Google, buried all the way down on page 10, so where almost nobody would find information.

Now, if you go to draxe.com and you read an article on turmeric or ginger or chia seeds or probiotics or how to reverse diabetes, you'll find heavy medical citations. You'll find very research-focused and probably the best articles written on natural medicine and nutrition.

But you'll go online, if you search turmeric, you'll see WebMD, and maybe they have a single paragraph up and they don't cover much. They'll still show up number 1. Well, why is that? Well, Google runs ads for their own pharmaceutical company on WebMD, on Medical News Today, on Healthline, on all these sites.

And It doesn't benefit them for, for people to learn about nutritional supplements and exercise and meditation and lifestyle and those sort of things. And so I personally financially took an incredible hit and my own name, image, and likeness got buried because of censorship. Now listen, I started draxe.com for one sole reason initially. I wanted to help people heal. My mom was a cancer survivor.

My mom used natural medicine to help herself recover from multiple illnesses. And I said to myself, I never wanna see anyone have to suffer like my mom did. And I know there's a better way. I know there's natural ways that people can lose weight and feel great using vitamins and supplements and foods and getting sunshine and exercise. And I want to get that message out to people.

But again, it didn't, it didn't fall in line with the Google and the pharmaceutical narrative. And so it got buried. Deep, deep on Google, and then even on YouTube, started penalizing it as well. And so you may have noticed that. Oh, I noticed, Dr. Axe. I used to notice when I searched your name or anything natural, you'd come up on that first page of Google, and now you rarely do.

Well, this is because of censorship. And so it is affecting you. So here's the truth now. And by the way, you can see this on this graph. Look at where we were. 22,600,000-Some organic traffic a month. And then look at this, over the course of one year, February 2018 to December 2019, down to 800,000. We're talking about more than a 20 times decrease in organic traffic. In just over a year.

And this affects you because when you go and search, you're now not getting the best information. You're getting incredibly biased information. So you're not actually getting the truth now when you search, you're getting the thing that benefits Google financially the most, or, or YouTube the most. That's what is prioritized in the algorithm. So censorship is happening.

And not just that, some, some people have been completely banned and blocked and lost their accounts. On these social media platforms. You know, you know, probably one of the biggest areas where censorship is growing and flourishing today is on college campuses. Colleges are supposed to be an area where there is freedom of thought and where people go.

It's a battleground for people to battle out ideas and for truth to be found. Well, what happens when— and you might already know this— guess what the ratio is of liberal professors to conservative professors at public colleges today. It's not 1 to 1 as it should be. It's 1 to 13. And at schools like Harvard, it's 1 to like 100 at, at some Ivy League schools.

So if you go to a college campus, over 90% of those professors, it's probably somewhere around 93%, are going to be liberal professors. And so you're not getting a balanced conservative and a balanced liberal view. It should be 50/50 of learning these ideas and fleshing them out. You're getting— it's, it's completely off.

And again, college campuses are supposed to be spaces dedicated to the free exchange of ideas where critical thinking is taught. But instead, we're seeing the greatest threat of censorship today at these universities. Let me give you an example of these, of people that have been banned. Ben Shapiro was disinvited to speak at CSULA in 2016.

Ivanka Trump invited to speak at Wichita State commencement was rescinded. Mike Pence not entitled to a platform at a University of Virginia because of his words of violence and threatened the safety of his students. If you know Mike Pence, he's, he's this, you know, very harmless, kind man. Matt Walsh banned, for example, Here's another big one. Riley Gaines.

Riley Gaines, actually, she's not even conservative or liberal. You know, at the time, Riley Gaines said, I don't think that men should be competing in women's sports. And she was banned from multiple college campuses, and they called her a racist for simply saying— and because she lost to a man.

Who said that he was a woman in a swimming event, that a swimmer for Penn University said that he was a woman and he swam the 3 years before as a man. And then just the next year said, I'm a woman, swam and ended up tying with her. And they said, oh, you get the trophy because it's good for, for media coverage. You have to say, is this ethical? Is this morally right?

And again, what happens over time is if people tend to, as Jordan Peterson said, if people can't work out their— a war of words, there's a war of sorts. And so you've gotta understand there, there's always a, there's always a trade-off. If you censor somebody, you think, oh, problem solved. I censor them. I have my opinion. And if people can't hear the other side, that's good.

So I wanna go through this quick. This is something Elon Musk said. And I wanna get into something he said here in just a minute, but Here's the thing. Censorship today across social media has the power to affect something as large a scale as presidential elections, the most powerful position in the world. Listen to this quote.

Twitter, today known as X, even went as far as blocking the distribution of an article by the reputable Washington Post. The Post had published an article about the son of Joe Biden, and Twitter stopping its users sharing the link by making it as being potentially unsafe, by marking it as being potentially unsafe.

The company later announced that they had blocked the content since the Post article was based on a hacked private account, which is against their internal guidelines. Basically, a social media company was claiming to have higher ethical standards than the traditional newspaper, The Washington Post.

And we saw this constantly via the Twitter Files coming out, which I can't believe that more people didn't study and dig into all the censorship that happened in the past. Here's another interesting take from Elon Musk. Elon Musk was asked if there was any company he feared, to which he answered Google. Now, here's why Elon answered Google, and I think there's 2 main reasons.

One is the censorship mechanisms. I would say a similar thing goes for Apple. I mean, Google owns Google, And YouTube, right? The 2 largest search engines in the world. So when people search, they think, well, I'm finding truth when no, they're finding one side primarily and what that does to culture over time.

The other thing is he has concerns over artificial intelligence and how that will relate to it as well. But all that being said, this is something that should concern all of us and why it matters. So here's why this matters. If you can't discover the truth online, in online searches and in social media apps, it's very hard to find the truth.

Now, you can buy paperback books, but at some point Amazon may say, hey, we're not going to sell these books either. So then how do you find the truth? So it gets more and more difficult to discover the truth when there's censorship. And we want people to have access to both and be able to discover the truth by themselves, by helping people learn to think, and by growing in the virtue of wisdom.

Now, I want to say this to you. YouTube just updated their censorship policy. Here's what they said. YouTube is taking immediate action to expand its medical misinformation censorship policies. Its focus will be on cancer. And I also believe likely COVID.

Starting today and ramping up in the coming weeks, we will begin removing content that promotes cancer treatments proven to be harmful, or ineffective, or content that discourages viewers from seeking conventional medical treatment or, or professional medical treatment. Now, how do they decide what's ineffective or effective?

Well, here's how they decide, and this is what they say in their own words if you dig deeper. It's by, number one, looking at what does the World Health Organization say. That's how they decide. So, so local doctors, uh, and, or, you know, uh, mainstream doctors like Dr. Fauci and the World Health Organization, that's how they decide what's true and not true.

And one of the other issues that they get into is you read more articles here on, on everything, you'll start to find out that, um, oftentimes World Health Organization, this is tied to the government. So essentially the government gets to decide too what's true and what's not true. So now you're having a government censor information.

This is basically what's happening, and this is what's happening with Google. It's what's happening with YouTube. Because of this, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has constantly been censored. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was running as a Democrat.

Now he's running as an independent presidential candidate, and he is suing YouTube and its parent company Google for allegedly violating his free speech, according to a complaint filed August 2nd. YouTube has removed Kennedy's videos because of— they've labeled it as vaccine misinformation policies on multiple occasions, according to the complaint.

And he says, since YouTube does not allow people to say anything that contradicts local health authorities, the LHA, or the World Health Organization, the WHO, medical information about COVID-19, this means the government sets the medical censorship guidelines. According to Kennedy's new lawsuit. So again, here's the problem.

Americans have mixed opinions on whether the censorship we're seeing today is good or bad. So here's the problem according to Alan Dershowitz.

Basically, he says that, you know, today when it starts with kids and they're raised up in academic institutions that are 13 to 1 liberal teaching that point of view, those will in the academic institutions and school systems become the future leaders of society. Those people then today are leaning towards heavily censoring versus free speech.

And so we're— if you look 20 years into the future, the likelihood of censorship getting worse, not better, increases dramatically. He also says in today's attitudes towards free of speech, Many millennials become tomorrow's rulers of our nation, and we could lose much of our freedom of thought, speech, expression, and dissent.

Those who cherish these freedoms must become more proactive in their defense. And so if you believe free speech is important, you should be speaking out about it. You should be having conversations about it. You should be against censorship in this way because it will lead to more violence if there's censorship. And we can't— there's less truth. You can't discover the truth.

I'm not trying to totally censor one side. Now, I do think there should be thought about what kids learn at different ages in school. But in colleges, someone teaching, let's say, a Christian idea or thought, Judeo-Christian thought about, about slavery, and somebody teaching what somebody believes in the early stages of critical race theory, I'm okay in colleges teaching both.

But I don't want it to be absolutely one or the other in public institutions. Now, if it's a private school, that's a different thing as well. But overall, in public universities, it should be equally both. Now, American attitudes towards moderating false information online— these stats are mind-blowing to me.

Listen to this: 65% of Americans today support tech companies moderating and censoring false information online, and 55% support the U.S. government taking these steps. These shares have increased since 2018. So think about this: 55% of people, more than 50% of people, believe the government should be censoring. Whoa. 65% Of Americans believe that tech companies should moderate false information.

Well, how does a tech company decide what's fault— what's true and what's not, and what's, what's hate speech and what's not? And then here's the other thing: 5 years ago, Americans were more inclined to prioritize freedom of information over restricting false information. Today it's 58% to 39%. So obviously it is a huge, huge difference.

And this, of course, falls, uh, very closely into— this is very relevant to Politics. Today, 70% of Republicans say those freedoms should be protected, whereas nearly 65% say instead the government should be taking steps to restrict false information and limit free speech. So 65% of Democrats believe we should limit free speech.

70% Of Republicans believe we should be taking more steps to increase free speech. So obviously you can see here. The Democratic Party wants to limit free speech. The Republican Party obviously is more pro-free speech according to the data we're seeing here. And you can kind of see here the US government should take steps to restrict versus tech companies should take to restrict.

And the difference here and growing differences between Republicans and Democrats there. Now, here's one more example of this. Social media news consumers say the news posts they see generally lean more liberal than conservative. That is absolutely true. In fact, when you look at the data, I want to say it's 80 to 90% of media companies are owned by people that are liberal versus conservative.

Even Elon Musk— here's the thing about Elon historically— he actually has voted Democrat, and even he is more of an independent and middle thinker, the owner of, of, of Twitter/X. And, and, and he is so ridiculed by so many people for trying to be more free speech at the same time. So again, here it comes down to this principle.

Do you think it's better for somebody to be able to share their thought openly on either side? Or do you believe that that information, one side should be cut off and limited? I wanna give you an example of this same-sex marriage. Let's say one group of religious folks here, Judeo-Christian, say we don't believe that, uh, It is morally right. That's what they say. It's not morally right.

Let's say another side— and the other side says that's hate speech. Should one or the other side be censored? Your answer to that question is really important, what you believe there. And again, my answer is I want, I want both sides to be able to share completely openly what they believe. And I want the public to be able to think for themselves. I don't— here's the thing. I'm the opposite of J.D.

Rockefeller. I don't want a nation of workers. I want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation— I want to— I want a nation of people who say, I want to find truth. I love truth, and I don't care if it's not what aligns with me right now. I just want the truth. I'm not here to take Republican or Democrat or left, right. I'm not here to take a side.

I just want the truth because the truth will set me free. And when there's less information you have access to, it's going to be harder to find and discern the truth. So I want to get into a study here now, and it's really eye-opening.

According to a survey by the civil liberties organization Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, more than half of Americans, 55%, think a person should lose their job if they say something hateful. And 52% of people believe institutions of higher learning should be able to ban speakers with views that are considered hateful.

FIRE found— the name of this organization— that nearly 6 in 10 Americans say that democracy is threatened because people are afraid to voice their opinions. Think about that. More than 50% of people think if somebody says something hateful, they should just automatically lose their job, and that if a speaker has a different opinion, they should be banned.

People that have that opinion They're fearful, lack wisdom, and they just don't know the history of the world. That if you negate free speech— listen, by the way, I've spent a lot of my career studying in-depth psychology, and part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is for people— part of that, for them to feel safe and secure, is for them to feel heard.

You know, that's one of the biggest causes of issues like suicide today and poor mental health. Is if somebody doesn't feel like they can be heard, like, like, like their opinion isn't, isn't, isn't heard, it actually affects mental health negatively. So think about this.

If you tell somebody, no, no, you, you, you can't voice your information, you can't post it online, your account's deleted, you can't say it out loud, you could lose your job. What does that do to someone's mental health? Well, the mental health crisis is one of the fastest growing healthcare issues today. In the past, it was cancer and heart disease and diabetes.

Those things aren't even close today to how fast mental health issues like suicide, depression, anxiety, how fast we're seeing these grow. And somebody not being able to voice their opinion is much more harmful to that than actually even somebody having hate speech. And again, what's labeled hate speech today is not hate speech. Sometimes it's love speech. I wanna give you an example.

You know, if I had my, my daughter and she Um, you know, and, and, and she just, you know, like this happened yesterday. She threw it. She's 3 years old. She threw her food on the floor. I said, Arwen, I love you. You cannot throw your food on the floor. If not, you're gonna have to get down, right? You, you can't do that. You can't say that. What I mean, the same thing is happening today.

We have college students and people that are so immature that if you just tell them you shouldn't do that, that's not morally right, that's incorrect, they say you're hating me. That's hate speech. And it's not. So, you know, the words like racism and hate, they're just thrown around all over the place today. And the reality is, is oftentimes it's love speech.

Somebody is actually speaking the truth in order to help other people. So just important to realize this. But here's the big thing. If you limit free speech, you hurt mental health, you hurt people actually discovering the truth, and you hurt civilization actually moving forward because there's less access to the truth. And so you actually keep— a nation stuck.

So here's some questions that arise from these studies. Why? Number one, why would some Americans increasingly support forfeiting their free speech in order to remove any chance of reading potential misinformation or fake news? Why would somebody give up their freedom for that? Well, one is, I believe it has to do with virtue, their character, that they want to be right.

And they, they don't walk in humility. It takes humility to say, you know what, I heard both opinions and I thought this way, but now I think this side's right, versus no, I have the opinion of the mainstream and I'm right no matter what, and I don't need to change my opinion. So it's really a pride issue slash humility issue.

People who don't want to allow free speech, they lack humility and they have too much pride. That's the root of it. Number 2, Is it easier to not think and have one perspective spoon-fed to you? You know, today's world is so convenient with AI and smartphones and just Google search online.

You know, depending on others to fact-check is easier than using your own critical thinking skills to sort through different information, forming your own opinions. It's more difficult. So the other one is it's lack of work ethic. In laziness. That's the other root issue. People who want to censor, these are people that are lazy. They lack work ethic.

Number 3, is it a— is it actual fear of misinformation? In some cases, maybe. But think of those who fear giving the, you know, anti-vax community a platform because they think their opinions do exponentially more harm than good. Is it really a fear of misinformation, or is it trying to protect a business or financials or a narrative, right? Or your own political side. Oftentimes it's out of fear.

It's, I'm trying to protect this thing I have, and I don't want to risk losing it for financial gain, or I don't want to lose my pride either. These are the reasons why many people operate out of and, and want to take away free speech and want to promote censorship. It's fear, it's pride, and it's lack of wisdom in a nutshell.

So here's the thing to know: the right to offend is inherent in the right to free speech. It is impossible to share thoughts on any important matter without the risk of offending somebody. Those are the thoughts of Jordan Peterson.

Again, So again, in order to discover the truth, you have to risk offending people and get in debates and arguments and think out loud by speaking and not worry about being canceled or deplatformed. So here's a couple quotes that I think will help enlighten you about free speech. One is by Sarah Ruger. She's the vice president of the Stand Together Trust.

She says, humans are hardwired to respond to difference with fear. But our difference can be a source of strength when we learn how to respect and engage with each other across even the deepest of divides. So it's important that we have differences and we can talk it out and flesh it out together, and we respect and honor one another's opinions.

Also, Antoon Debate said censorship may not suppress alternative views, But rather generate them and by doing so become counterproductive. Censorship backfires. By the way, here's what I've seen. When you censor and suppress information, it's counterproductive. And so it actually starts creating more lies.

In fact, oftentimes what happens is you're getting the truth that's being censored, but in order to discredit the other side, they start telling lies in order to discredit those that are censoring them. And so it's this vicious cycle of what happens. That's exactly how this happens with the left and the right.

The left starts to really try and censor where, where the right is telling the truth, but then some of those on the far right start lying to discredit those on the left and damage them. And then that's, that's the cycle. That's the cycle we're in today. Now, here's where I think censorship can be good.

Some things should be censored for kids, such as highly immoral content that leads to destruction and immorality, such as pornography. Right? So there are certain things that kids shouldn't be allowed to be exposed to, let's say, till they're 18 years old when they can make their own decisions for themselves, and things that have proven to absolutely crush and ruin societies like pornography.

But outside of that example and maybe a few others, there really shouldn't be any type of censorship at all. Here are some of the solutions and how you can help fight censorship and promote free speech. Number 1, walk the walk. Don't fight a lie with a lie. Listen, if somebody politically is censoring you, don't just start lying about them. Continue to speak the truth.

Again, don't fight evil with evil. Fight evil with good. Operate with integrity. And the more virtuous something is, the more virtue it feeds. Solution number 2, speak out. Free speech is important because it leads to wisdom and it leads to the truth.

You know, if someone like Jordan Peterson is being banned or is being promoted to— needs to— they, they're saying needs to be reeducated, which the reality is he would re— he should be reeducating them. But again, go and support these people. Riley Gaines, somebody who's fighting for women's rights, go and support her. Do everything you can.

Take her courses, go to hear her speak, do everything to fight for her. In helping her and people like Jordan Peterson or in people that are fighting for free speech. Continue to also have those conversations. Learn where the other side is coming from. Don't just ridicule and say, I hate you, you're wrong, you're full of lies. That never helps anything.

If you're going to post on social media, have something important to say and maybe start off by saying, I understand your perspective. Here's where you're coming from. Here's what I believe and where I believe you're wrong, and here's the trade-off. I believe the big point here is, is point out what's at stake.

If we go down the path that you're suggesting of censorship, here's what happens, and here's what's happened historically. Look at the Soviet Union, right? So there's these 2 paths. And so paint the picture of there are trade-offs. Here's what happens if we go here. Here's what happens if we go here. That's often how you should speak out on social media.

Now listen, you have to think in order to do that. Number 3, learn how to be a critical thinker. Do the research and compare both arguments and share your thoughts. Number 4, we fight with our words or we fight with our swords. So realize it's always better to fight with your words than to fight with your swords. So in closing, listen, I want to hear from you.

Obviously, I shared a lot in this podcast, and in the future you're going to continue to hear me talk more about some of these deep and important issues. But I'd love to hear what are your views on censorship and free speech. Hey, did you notice that? Have you ever searched draxe.com in the past? You notice we came up, went down. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on Jordan Peterson, on Riley Gaines, and what are your beliefs about free speech and censorship. And if we keep going with censorship, what could happen to society? Thanks so much for engaging. Thanks so much for commenting, and I can't wait to hear Your thoughts as well.

By the way, if you're not subscribed, make sure to subscribe here to the podcast, uh, where each and every week we're covering more and more information on the science of growth. Again, I'm covering this information because I think it's important for growth.

As I learn these things and I dig into news and the scientific literature and the psychology news, I'm gonna continue to share what I learn with you in order to help you grow. That's what this podcast is all about. It's helping Myself grow, but also help you grow spiritually, in your career, in your health, and in your wealth, and just personally grow to become the best person you can be.

Hey, thanks so much for watching this podcast, for commenting and subscribing. I'll see you on the next episode.