Commentary
If you were putting together a series of speakers with luminaries of our time who would provide inspiration, intellectual stimulation, and insight, would Dr. Anthony Fauci, Liz Cheney, Stacey Abrams, and Judy Woodruff be on your list? Certainly not mine.
In a full-page advertisement for the Arizona Speaker Series that appeared in a recent edition of the Arizona Republic, those individuals headed the list of guest speakers in the Series’ October-April schedule. For the uninitiated, these speakers command substantial fees to appear.
Tickets, depending on the floor location, run from $149 to $499, however, they are already sold out. A few tickets for the Premium/VIP location at $599 were still available when I was drafting this blog. I find it preposterous that anyone would pay that kind of money to see and hear those individuals.
To be fair, there are three other individuals scheduled to appear who may provide inspiration and intellectual stimulation and insight – Sully Sullenberger, the pilot who miraculously landed a plane load of passengers safely on the Hudson River in 2009, for sure, but I’m not certain about photojournalist Lynsey Addario and neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman.
The Arizona Speaker Series in Phoenix is one of three sites produced by Imminent Series Group. The others are in Salt Lake City and San Jose. The series was founded by Gary Lauer and his son Rob.
The Lauer’s say we would “likely be impressed with the work that goes into the selection” of speakers. I’m not so sure.
They are free to book the speakers of their choice, and those willing to cough up $149 or $499 to hear them are obviously free to do so. That’s free speech.
How about Vice President Harris? She’s not on the list, but would you pay to hear her speak. Appearing with Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg at an event with disability rights advocates to increase transportation accessibility, she gave us another of her cringe worthy word salad quotes: “This issue of transportation is fundamentally about just making sure that people have the ability to get where they need to go,” she said chuckling, “It’s that basic.”
A Twitter user described her appearance as a “first grade vocabulary class.”
Meanwhile, at Arizona State University, one of the state’s higher education bastions of liberal thought, controversy swirled over the manner in which four conservative speakers, including Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk, were treated prior to the event entitled, “Health, Wealth and Happiness.”
T. W. Lewis, CEO of a commercial real estate investment company and his wife, pulled their funding of the facility that bears their name – the T.S. Lewis Center for Personal Development at Barrett, the Honors College – saying, “After seeing this level of left-wing hostility and activism, I no longer had any confidence in Barrett to adhere to the terms of our gift, and made the decision to terminate our agreement.”
Thirty-nine members of the Barrett faculty had condemned hosting “such controversial figures” as of the day prior to the event that went on as scheduled.
Free Speech and the First Amendment
Remember those meetings FBI agents had with individuals of Twitter and other social media? In case you missed it over the Fourth of July weekend, Judge Terry A. Doughty blocked key Biden administration agencies and officials from meeting and communicating with social media companies about “protected speech.”
The injunction was a victory for the state attorneys general, who accused the Biden administration of enabling a “sprawling federal ‘Censorship Enterprise’” to encourage tech giants to remove politically unfavorable viewpoints and speakers, and for conservatives who have accused the government of suppressing free speech.
The attorneys general alleged the actions amount to “the most egregious violations of the First Amendment in the history of the United States of America.”
Get this. The administration’s argument for staying the injunction was that it could lead to “grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes,” thereby causing government “irreparable harm.”
“Another way to read the government’s argument is that if it can’t interfere in elections or engage in rampant viewpoint discrimination, that causes it “irreparable harm.”
Of course, the government doesn’t appreciate your right to free speech could possibly causing them “irreparable harm.”
May God continue to bless our fight for the free speech freedom of the First Amendment we enjoy in the United State of America.
