Superhighways of Foreign Influence

Advisory Opinions

The Dispatch

News, Politics, Government

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 September 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Sarah Isgur and David French explore the evolving battle over free speech and examine modern threats posed by social media. The Agenda:—Rising acceptance of violence in discourse—Student protests and free speech—David’s favorite pro-free speech essay—Understanding stochastic terrorism—Online bots and foreign influence—The implications of Section 230—The assassination’s veto—South Carolina v. Doe Advisory Opinions is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—click here. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member by clicking here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ready?
0:02.0	I was born ready.
0:04.0	Welcome to Advisory Opinions. I'm Sarah Isgard. That's David French. And we are going to take a break from our regular podcasting to talk the First Amendment. Speech is violence? Is violence speech? We'll talk about stochastic terrorism and incitement under the Brandenburg standard,
0:39.1	as well as Section 230 and the TikTok ban, and security fees charged to student groups
0:44.9	who want to bring controversial speakers to campus.
0:48.0	Is this the assassins veto?
0:49.8	All this is coming up on advisory opinions.
0:55.9	And we're back.
0:57.5	David, what I don't want to do on this podcast today is rehash the stuff that I think
1:03.6	everyone else has said.
1:04.9	I don't want to do a eulogy for Charlie Kirk, as I mentioned at the beginning of the last
1:08.6	episode.
1:09.5	I first met Charlie many, many,
1:12.7	many years ago. And I think that any AO listener at this point understands that we have two
1:20.7	tragedies at play here. There's the unimaginable tragedy that is being born by Charlie's wife and his two young children who were there who witnessed
1:30.0	that and his friends and family. The second tragedy, the one that I think our culture is focused
1:37.6	on is the one that we'll talk about. And that's the attack on the very concept of liberalism.
1:46.5	The idea that you argue about your ideas,
1:48.9	that you try to persuade about your ideas,
1:51.1	and that violence isn't an option for a disagreement
1:54.4	about the future of the country.
1:57.4	And, you know, for folks who didn't like what Charlie was saying, disagreed with
	...

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