How long can one live without?
by Pete Fasciano, Executive Director 10/12/2025
We’ve all heard the survival ‘rule of three’. 3 minutes without air? 3 days without water? 3 days without food? The likelihood of death is regarded as imminent. With water and food scarce, we see the devastating effects of starvation in Gaza.
From Twelfth Night: If music be the food of love, play on. But what of truth?
If speech is the food of freedom, speak on. Abundant, unfettered speech feeds a free democratic society. This is the bountiful harvest of liberty – the ever-flowing cornucopia of open opinions. When speech runs free, we are free. This is why the first amendment in Our Bill of Rights is perhaps the most important amendment to our Constitution. Red ideas? Blue ideas? Other – independent ideas? It’s all good.
In our last election, then candidate Trump promised the restoration of free speech. Ummm, o-kaaay – Did not see that as an issue at the time, given .the many radical claims he was making at his rallies. Criticisms from the press and the left? Sure. That’s how it works? Curtailment? Abridgement? Silencing? No. Rally after rally, he bloviated at length, saying whatever he wished in the moment – freely.
Fifty years ago, when the Smothers Brothers sent an apology to President Johnson for their satirical jokes, he responded with a most memorable, elegant quote,
“It is part of the price of leadership of our great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists, You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives.”
This is what true presidential leadership – and dignity of the office– looks like. The Smothers Brothers spoke truth to power. And power said it was all good. .
Today, we are seeing and hearing a systemic, increasingly aggressive suppression of ideas, opinions, and even hard facts that do not align with the current president’s mood of the moment. Over time, this suppression – this open war on open thought – continues to worsen.
It begs the question, when a society is denied the intellectual food of free speech – when our collective reason is stifled, starved for say – three months? Three years? At what point does democracy wither and die?
And – as always –
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