The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - February 16, 2024


Freedom of Speech and the Death of Russian Activist Alexei Navalny (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_645)


Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

154.08463

Word count

613

Sentence count

34


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Scott Saad reflects on the tragic death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and offers a call to arms to all of us to fight for our own freedom and liberties. He quotes a quote from Ronald Reagan: "But freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction."

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.300 Hi everybody, this is Scott Saad. First, I wanted to wish you a good upcoming weekend.
00:00:07.540 I wanted to just briefly make some comments about the news that we found out today that the Russian activist Navalny has died in prison.
00:00:20.020 He was 47 years old. And I want to situate what happened to him in the context of what I often hear from people who write to me saying, you know, I really appreciate all of the efforts that you expend trying to protect liberties and Western values and so on.
00:00:41.660 But I can't do it and then fill in the excuse. And so it goes something like this. I can't do it because I might, you know, lose my circle of friends.
00:00:53.920 I might not do it because I'll lose my job. In academia, I might not do it because I don't have tenure yet.
00:01:00.520 Or I have tenure, but I'm going up for full professor so I can't speak until, you know, I'm able to get full professorship or I can't speak because I'm applying for a grant.
00:01:13.040 And I don't mean to make light of all of those reasons that people come up for why they shouldn't speak, but no war is ever fought, whether it be an ideological war or a physical war, where you can be guaranteed to win the war without ever incurring any costs.
00:01:32.940 And so linking it back now to Navalny, he could have left Russia. He could have never returned to Russia. He knew that if he returned to Russia, things would go badly for him.
00:01:45.200 But his commitment to the cause, whether you agree with him or not, whether you're a Putin fan or not, Navalny was certainly engaging in costly signaling, knowing full well that he might incur the greatest possible costs, as we now saw.
00:02:01.900 And yet he was willing to die for his principles. And so here I'm going to read for you a little snippet from my 2020 book, The Parasitic Mind.
00:02:12.380 This is at the end of the chapter titled Non-Negotiable Elements of a Free and Modern Society.
00:02:19.600 It starts on page 67 and then goes on to page 68 in chapter 3.
00:02:23.960 So I end this chapter with a very poignant quote from Ronald Reagan, uttered nearly two decades before he became president of the United States.
00:02:33.100 So now this is the quote by Reagan.
00:02:36.700 But freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
00:02:40.880 We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.
00:02:44.320 The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well-taught lessons of how they, in their lifetime, must do the same.
00:02:57.820 And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in America where men were free.
00:03:09.440 So there you have it.
00:03:11.780 There are always forces, even within what people take for granted as Western liberties, there are always forces trying to quell your freedoms.
00:03:21.920 And it is only through the assiduous, consistent defense of these freedoms and liberties that are not the default values throughout human history.
00:03:33.000 The West is truly an anomalous experiment.
00:03:36.440 Much of human history did not exhibit the types of freedoms that we've had in the West over the past few centuries.
00:03:45.860 And so everybody has a responsibility to contribute in any way that they can to the flourishing and the defense of our freedoms and liberties.
00:03:57.460 Have a great weekend, everybody.
00:03:58.520 Cheers.