Maintaining principle in a time of polarization

This keynote was originally delivered by Robert Corn-Revere to the Delaware Inns of Court on March 11, 2026.

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We live in interesting times.

I can see from some chuckles of recognition that some of you may have heard this expression recently — or maybe even used it yourself — to describe the times we are living in. Perhaps you have used it in an email greeting with a friend you haven’t spoken to recently: “I hope you are doing well in these interesting times.”

I know I have. Interesting times, indeed.

And the “interesting times” in this reference is not meant in a good way. It is a callback to what we are often told is an ancient Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Interesting, ironically meaning tumultuous, challenging, or chaotic.

But as it turns out, this is not an old Chinese proverb at all. Its origin traces to the 1930s in Britain, and it began cropping up in publications in the 1940s. By one account, Sir Austen Chamberlain, brother of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, received a letter from a friend in 1936 that concluded with the line, “We are living in an interesting age.” Chamberlain responded that he had learned “from one of our diplomats in China that one of the principal curses heaped upon an enemy is, May you live in an interesting age.” And he concluded his letter by saying, “Surely, no age has been more fraught with insecurity than our own present time.”

As I mentioned, the expression did not originate in China and there is no known equivalent expression in Chinese. The nearest example originates from a short story collection published in 1627 by Feng Menglong entitled Stories to Awaken the World. And the aphorism found there is a bit different: “Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos.”

I don’t know. Maybe it lost something in translation. Still a pretty good proverb, though. Some days, I look at our two Australian Shepherds, Lenny and Bruce, and think I wouldn’t mind trading places. They have a pretty good life on our farm.

But if I had to choose an aphorism that sums up the state of the world today, I think I would have to go with Mark Twain. This one may be apocryphal as well, but Twain (supposedly) wrote, “Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”

You can never go wrong with Twain, even if he didn’t actually write that line. There are plenty more where that came from. Here’s one he did write: “Suppose I were an idiot. Now, suppose I were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

Twain just never gets old.

We laugh at statements like that, but it doesn’t mask the fact that we are living in interesting, that is to say, serious and challenging times. As Napoleon Bonaparte said, “We must laugh at man to avoid crying.” Or as it is often paraphrased, “We laugh so that we do not cry.”

We face no shortage of serious, and some would say, existential challenges, these days. I don’t have to list them — you’re probably ticking some of them off on a mental checklist as I speak. And there would never be enough time in one speech to get through even the top five or 10. I am sure your list may differ.

But I am a First Amendment lawyer, and I have spent my career defending the constitutional protections for freedom of speech and of the press but also promoting a broader appreciation for a culture of free expression. So those are the challenges I will address tonight. How do we maintain our constitutional protections for free expression at a time when it seems like, as a nation, we are at each other’s throats?

We often hear that, as we prepare to celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday, that we face an existential crisis for our system of government and that the degree of polarization in society is tearing at the fabric of civil society. Anyone who has had a Thanksgiving dinner ruined by talk of politics knows this all too well. And confrontations on the streets of our cities and college campuses serve as a continuing reminder of how divided we have become.

These threats are real and we must devote serious thought to how to deal with them. I am not promising to solve them tonight with a speech ... But I’d like to offer some thoughts about some directions we might consider and how we might start.

One of the great minds from which I draw inspiration is the legendary jurist Learned Hand. Judge Hand served on the federal bench for 52 years and issued more than 3,000 opinions. While most were not on constitutional issues, he did issue some key decisions in early cases that helped nurture early First Amendment jurisprudence.

In a 1913 obscenity case, just four years after he came to the bench, Judge Hand wrote an opinion that began the ball rolling to loosen the grip of over American law wielded by professional moralist Anthony Comstock. And a few years later, he was instrumental in persuading Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes to change his position on the World War I era prosecutions under the 1918 Sedition Act for criticizing America’s war effort. This was the birth of American free speech law.

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But I think his most enduring contribution came not from a judicial opinion, but from a speech he delivered in 1944 that wasn’t even about freedom of expression. The speech was delivered at the height of World War II — one of those “interesting” eras that presented existential threats — and it came at a time when the outcome was far from certain. It was given just a couple of weeks before June 6, 1944 — the date of the allied invasion of Normandy, a critical turning point in the war in Europe.

Judge Hand spoke in New York’s Central Park to a gathering of 150,000 naturalized citizens as part of something called “I am an American Day,” at which the new Americans came together to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. All told, nearly half a million people attended the event. Judge Hand spoke about why the United States was fighting the war and what it means to be an American. His speech was titled The Spirit of Liberty.

Judge Hand admitted he couldn’t define the spirit of liberty — it is a little bit like obscenity that way — but he offered more than just to say you would know it when you see it.

As Judge Hand saw it, “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.” He suggested the foundation of our rights depends on “the spirit of liberty,” which he said flows from “the conscience and courage of Americans who create it.”

And this is the key part: He described it as “the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias.”

As I noted, this speech wasn’t really about the First Amendment, but this is as good a summation I have ever seen of what I call the culture of free expression. And it identifies the challenges we face — that it is necessary not just to defend the law, but also to persuade our fellow citizens why it is essential to provide breathing space for all points of view, even for those we detest. Perhaps especially for those we detest.

As Justice Holmes wrote in a 1929 dissent, “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”

That seems pretty straightforward, but keep in mind, Justice Holmes was writing in 1929 — two years before the Supreme Court began seriously developing First Amendment jurisprudence. He understood that protections for free speech had to be grounded on neutral principles.

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And this is how the law developed through the 20th century and into the 21st. The First Amendment has protected firebrand priests and Vatican critics alike. It has protected militant civil rights activists and white supremacists equally. It likewise has shielded those who speak for or against a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. And it has protected those who would burn American flags or crosses as a form of protest, just as it has those who display them with pride.

At the same time, Judge Hand’s words remind us that our fate as a free society depends not just on what we do as lawyers and judges. How this ongoing experiment in freedom will turn out depends not just on the law but on our collective thoughts and actions as citizens. His message in The Spirit of Liberty is a cautionary challenge, but it also points a way out of the polarization that is poison to civic discourse.

Nothing about this is easy or automatic. That’s why I have a job.

I work for an organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), that exists to defend the law of free speech and to promote a culture of free expression. We take cases and defend speakers from across the political spectrum. Our motto is, “If the speech is protected, we will defend it.”

But, of course, because we defend speech without regard to the speaker’s point of view, we tend to take flak from all sides. Part of this has to do with FIRE’s origins. We were founded in 1999 by Harvey Silverglate and Alan Charles Kors who had co-authored the book The Shadow University which described a growing degree of illiberalism on college campuses that led to censorship by campus “speech codes” and other administrative policies. It was the time in which the term “politically incorrect” came into vogue.

FIRE was created to address those issues, and at the time we were called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. In 2022, FIRE broadened its mission beyond the campus to address free speech issues in society at large, and our name changed to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Same acronym, broader mission. But most importantly, the same core principles.

Our president, Greg Lukianoff, has been told this is a terrible business model, because it guarantees we are going to annoy every faction in American politics at one point or another. And that much is true. We take it as a point of pride.

This ambivalence was reflected in a lead story in the Philadelphia Inquirer just last month. It features a really nice photo of our Legal Director Will Creeley and our Chief Operating Officer Alisha Glennon in our Philadelphia offices overlooking Independence Hall. And the headline reflects how people sometimes react to our consistency with a “does not compute” error message: “‘Cancel culture’ monitor now a Trump Adversary.”

“How can this be?” some people ask. After all, didn’t our work defending conservative speakers on university campuses show us to be a right-wing outfit? And they are confused by the fact that we currently are taking a number of cases and positions contrary to the current administration.

For example, we are defending Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer against an idiotic suit filed by President Trump alleging “consumer fraud” because her poll in the final days of the 2024 election incorrectly found that Kamala Harris was in the lead.

We are suing Marco Rubio on behalf of the Stanford Daily arguing that the secretary of state should not have the unbridled power to revoke visas and deport student journalists just because they happen to write something the administration dislikes.

And we are suing the attorney general and the secretary of homeland security for strong-arming social media companies into censoring Facebook groups who observe and report on ICE activities.

The point is, we are not a combatant in the culture wars. FIRE does not wear any political team’s jersey. The corollary to our motto “If it is protected, we will defend it” is this: If you are a censor, we will fight you.

That’s why we filed a brief in the Supreme Court opposing the Biden administration’s practice of pressuring social media companies to delete posts about COVID-19 or other matters that were deemed “misinformation.” At the same time, we filed a brief asking the Court to strike down laws in Florida and Texas that would have empowered states to regulate social media moderation policies. And we filed against New York’s attempt to silence the National Rifle Association by jawboning insurance companies against doing business with the gun rights organization.

For each of these examples, I can give you a dozen more that reflect FIRE’s commitment to defending free speech without regard to the speaker’s views. Our goal is to hand down a legacy of strong free speech protections that can stand up to the stress test coming from any federal administration or combination of state and local actors, regardless of the political direction.

The harder problem we try to address is the one Learned Hand identified — to speak to what lies in the hearts of men and women, and to nurture a spirit that seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; to promote an understanding that our side (whomever that may be) may not always be right, and to weigh the competing interests alongside our own without bias. In short, we look for ways to get past this “us versus them” mentality.

How do we do that, exactly? I mean, we are not naïve. There will be no kumbaya moment where everyone comes together to embrace a message of peace and harmony. Political polarization is not going away any time soon.

But to hope for that outcome misses the point of living in a free society. Dispute is a feature of our system, not a bug. That’s what freedom means — the freedom to live and think differently and to disagree. As the Supreme Court reminded us in another “interesting” era, a key function of free speech is to invite dispute, and it “may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.”

So, does that mean having a nation filled with angry people is a good thing? Not at all. But having disagreements, including contentious ones, is a fact of life. Part of our job is to explain how we must live in a large, diverse, and yes — at times — polarized society. We try to lead by example by adhering to principle and to spread the message of why we think free speech works. Most importantly, free speech is the best — and perhaps the only way — to resolve these disputes as an alternative to violence or coercion.

One of the things we try to do is to remind people that there is a possibility they might not be right about everything. Or, as Judge Hand put it, the spirit of liberty “the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.”

Former Justice Anthony Kennedy, a champion of the First Amendment, described the flip-side of this concept. “Self-assurance,” he wrote, “has always been the hallmark of a censor.” That’s pretty obvious when you think about it. A mind filled with certainty is a closed mind.

I think for most issues, you are more likely to be persuasive if your objective isn’t to explain to someone why they are dead wrong. Maybe it is enough just to learn a little more about why you disagree. That is why Judge Hand said the spirit of liberty “seeks to understand the minds of other men and women” and “to weigh others’ interests alongside their own.” Maybe you will find you can never agree with your adversary, but cultivating this habit of mind is the beginning of dialogue. And dialogue is the beginning of finding a peaceful resolution of any problem.

Another aspect of this mindset is to try to keep things in perspective.

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No one is going to prevail in a winner-take-all culture war. Not for long anyway. As Justice Holmes wrote in 1919, “Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical … if you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart.” But you have got to keep in mind “that time has upset many fighting faiths,” and that the only secure path is to protect what he called “free trade in ideas.”

This means it is vital to keep things in perspective and understand we are playing a long game. Remember those “interesting times” we were talking about? We have seen them before.

For those who think we are facing unprecedented levels of polarization, think back to 1968. (Or, if you are younger, read about that period.) The 60s in general saw political upheaval and the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, and of Martin Luther King. We witnessed the largest military occupation of an American city since the Civil War to quell riots in Washington, D.C. following the King assassination. And it was a time when cities burned.

We saw a “generation gap” that divided the nation. The slogan then was “don’t trust anyone over 30.” Today, it’s “OK boomer.”

The point is, today’s challenges are not entirely unique, and the ones we endured in earlier times made us stronger. I believe the era we are living through now will make us stronger still. Just considering the law of free speech, we went through the Red Scare of 1919, World War II, the McCarthy Era, the civil rights and antiwar demonstrations of the 60s and 70s, and since then an upheaval in the technology of how we communicate. Each was seen at the time as an existential crisis.

Somehow, we managed to get through those challenges. And, in terms of First Amendment jurisprudence, they lead to vast improvements in the law. The cases decided during those periods of turmoil and polarization formed the backbone of the protections we have today. And those decisions are the essential building blocks of the law we are using to confront the current challenges.

Is success guaranteed? No, of course not, and it never was. What is certain is that history is written by those who stand up, not by those who bend the knee to temporary power. (I mentioned Neville Chamberlain earlier — he was responsible for some history that might be an exception to that claim.) But it is no doubt true that the lasting contributions are made by those who understand and use their rights, not by those who file them away in a drawer hoping to avoid the fray.

What does this mean in practical terms?

As members of the Bar, it means living up to our duties as officers of the court, to honor the ethical standards of our profession, and to eschew taking frivolous cases no matter how tempting may be the professional inducements to do so.

As judges, it means holding lawyers accountable when they fail to adhere to those standards.

For those who serve as government lawyers or regulators, it means honoring the oath of office you took to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

And for those who find themselves confronted with frivolous litigation brought by figures of great influence, it means not settling what you know to be meritless claims. Doing so may at the time seem expedient and even rational. But it cannot be rationalized away as principled, and it represents short-term thinking.

If you doubt this, just ask the law firms targeted with executive orders who settled with the administration, as distinguished from those who stood on their rights.

The Inns of Court is uniquely situated to uphold these values. With its commitment to the rule of law and its creed of fostering excellence in legal practice, it recognizes that law is essential to preserving and protecting the rights and liberties of a free people. It promotes the values of ethics and integrity through collegiality and mentorship. And its commitment to excellence and its creed embody Judge Hand’s spirit of liberty.

Ultimately, how this turns out will be determined by all of us. Not just the lawyers and judges who make arguments and issue decisions, but by everyone who participates in, and is affected by, the clash of ideas. So long as we live in a society governed by the rule of law, I remain optimistic our nation’s 250th year will witness a renewal of the promise of freedom that began with the American Revolution.