Category: crime and punishment

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights folly ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Campus Freedom in Peril

Charles Murray, protest, violence, free speech, Bell Curve, students, intimidation
  1. What is the percentage of tenured faculty on American campuses who are still unambiguously on the side of free intellectual exchange?
  2. What is the percentage of them who are willing to express that position openly?

Sociologist Charles Murray asked those questions near the end of his reflections on Thursday’s Middlebury College event, in which his speaking engagement was interrupted by shouting mobs and he and his colleagues were physically attacked*.

Murray thinks the answer to the first question is “more than 50 percent.” He doubts that is the answer to the second.

He is pessimistic about free inquiry on campus.

And has reason to be.

College faculty members are closing ranks, as many at Middlebury did, calling Murray — famous for books such as Losing Ground and The Bell Curve — “a discredited ideologue paid by the American Enterprise Institute to promote public policies targeting people of color, women and the poor”** and “not an academic nor a ‘critically acclaimed’ public scholar, but a well-​funded phony.”

Mark J. Perry has listed many more complaints, all offered as reasons not to listen or debate with the famous intellectual.

That was last Thursday. On Saturday, a pro-​Trump, “Proud Boys” march in Berkeley culminated not only in violence, bloodied faces, destroyed property, but also in the burning of a purloined “Free Speech” placard.

The University of California at Berkeley seems uninterested in controlling the mobs. Berkeley City Police have poorly defended non-​leftist protestors. It’s open season on freedom of speech and the right to peaceably assemble.

Unless something is done, officially, mobbing will be the new normal. And our basic rights? A memory.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* His colleague Professor Allison Stanger was seriously injured in the riotous shoving and grabbing. Murray tweeted yesterday, “Everybody in the mob could be criminally prosecuted, but those who injured Prof. Stranger must be.”

** It is worth noting that his recent Coming Apart was entirely devoted to the economic performance and culture of white Americans.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Wolves Crying Wolf

By any means necessary, BAMN, protest, free speech, fascist, first amendment, censorship, violence

People have a right to defend themselves. Right? Especially against rape and murder.

“This is not about free speech,” Yvette Felarca yelled to the crowd at the University of California-​Berkeley, gathered weeks ago to “shut down” a scheduled speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, the controversial Breitbart editor.

Felarca, a national organizer for By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)*, the militant group with the incendiary name, argued that Milo wasn’t “interested in any genuine debate.”

She continued, “But what they’re really trying to do is they’re trying to assert their power, threaten us, intimidate us, rape us, kill us! This is real. This is life and death.”

Given such sentiments, it is hardly surprising that the protest turned violent — leaving people beaten, bloody on the pavement, and racking up $100,000 in property damage.

Not to mention causing the cancellation of the talk sponsored by the Berkeley College Republicans. Felarca called this a smashing success. Asked by reporters how she could justify violence to squelch speech, Felarca simply dubbed Milo “a fascist.”

Yesterday, in my Townhall column, “Hate Is Our Business,” I addressed the Southern Poverty Law Center’s just-​released report, “The Year in Hate and Extremism.” The report continued the SPLC’s habit of calling entirely peaceful conservative and religious organizations “hate groups.”

The man who shot a security guard at the Family Research Council in 2012, but was thankfully blocked from further mayhem, used the SPLC’s “Hate Map” to target their office.

In its reports, the “progressive” SPLC completely ignores BAMN and violent left-​wing groups. And by crying wolf in mislabeling non-​violent organizations as “hate groups,” it provides the unhinged — BAMN, Antifa, and lone-​wolf lunatics — very dangerous ammunition.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Ms. Felarca also has a day job, as a public school teacher at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in the Berkeley Unified School District. That has generated some controversy.

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Accountability crime and punishment moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Watcha Gonna Do?

civil asset forfeiture, forfeiture, police, abuse, theft, Trump, corruption, incentives, illustration, money, cops

At a White House meeting last week between President Trump and law enforcement officials, a Texas sheriff raised a concern about legislation introduced by a state senator to require a conviction before police could take someone’s property.

Mr. Trump asked for that senator’s name, adding, “We’ll destroy his career.” The room erupted with laughter.

“That joke by President Trump,” Fox News’s Rick Schmitt said on Monday, “has the libertarian wing of the Republican Party raising their eyebrows, instead of laughing.”

Not to mention the civil libertarians in the Democratic Party and the Libertarian Party itself.

Civil asset forfeiture, as we’ve discussed, allows police to take people’s cash, cars, houses and other stuff without ever convicting anyone of a crime — or even bringing charges. The person must sue to regain their property.

Lawyers aren’t free.

Two bedrock principles are at stake:

  1. that innocent-​until-​proven-​guilty thing, and
  2. Our right to property.

Since police departments can keep the proceeds of their seizures, they’re incentivized to take a break from protecting us — to, instead, rob us.

“Our country is founded on liberties,” offered Jeanne Zaino, a professor at Ionia College. “[G]overnmental overreach is not something that is natural for Republicans to embrace.”

Schmitt acknowledged that “Libertarians would hate this. They don’t want big government. But they don’t have a lot of pull.”

Libertarian-​leaning Republicans like Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Justin Amash are trying to end civil forfeiture, but the president will likely veto their legislation.*

Let’s not wait. Activists in three Michigan cities put the issue on last November’s ballot and won. You can, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* FoxNews​.com reported that, “Trump signaled he would fight reforms in Congress, saying politicians could ‘get beat up really badly by the voters’ if they pursue laws to limit police authority.”

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crime and punishment folly ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

God Knows You’re Good

Henry Louis Mencken, Black bloc, Antifa, protest, terrorist, violence, Milo Yiannopoulis, Gavin McInnes

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom,” wrote H. L. Mencken, “is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels.”

Henry Louis Mencken (1880 — 1956), master prose stylist and social critic, knew whereof he wrote. But he also penned things to which few would give their hearty assent.

Today, we find several controversialists who, like Mencken, side with individualism against collectivism. They are raising a ruckus.

But are they “scoundrels”?

Does it matter?

The big news, last week, was the anti-​Milo Yiannopoulis riot in Berkeley. But also last week, Robby Soave explains, “Black bloc ‘anti-​fascists’ attacked right-​wing media figure Gavin McInnes outside a New York University building,” where things got so crazy that one protester, a professor, screamed at the police for protecting Mr. McInnes when they “should” have — get this — been beating him up!

She called McInnes a Nazi. And insinuated he was a rape threat, etc.

So what did Reason writer Soave do? “McInnes,” he noted, “routinely says obnoxious things that deserve criticism. He’s something of a Diet Milo.”

What Soave did not do was ever address the Nazi charge, the rape charge, or any of the calumnies hurled at McInnes. Were Mencken the one being attacked, would he have written that the Sage of Baltimore “routinely writes obnoxious things that deserve criticism”? 

Sure, true. But is that the stance you want to take? 

Soave finds Milo and Gavin icky.

I feel his pain. But … when “Nazi” is the charge, calling the accused “obnoxious” and “deserv[ing] criticism”? 

Gavin McInnes isn’t a Nazi. Or a rapist. And he retains free speech rights, regardless of what one thinks about his anti-​feminism, or other controversial opinions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies responsibility

The Silence of Violence

Berkeley, Milo, violence, speech, politics, photos, comment, analysis

“The Free Speech Movement is dead.”

So said the Berkeley College Republicans after violence Wednesday night forced cancelation of a sold-​out speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, the Greek-​born British author, now a senior editor at Breitbart News. The reference, of course, is to the University of California’s history as a haven for free expression dating back to the 1960s.

Protests of the event gave way to

  • people beaten up on the streets,
  • rocks and bricks and Molotov cocktails hurled at police,
  • a young woman with a “Make America Great Again” parody hat pepper-​sprayed in the face,
  • fires set, windows smashed at the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, along with
  • an estimated $100,000 of property damage.

Yet only one arrest was made Wednesday night, and two on Thursday, when a man in a suit wearing a Trump hat apparently triggered two guys to jump out of their car and assault him.*

CNN dubbed the “inflammatory” Yiannopoulos a “professional provocateur.” He has also been labeled a racist, which he denies, and a homophobe, even though he’s gay. Pushing the envelope against political correctness, for his part, Milo calls “college campuses … cancerous and toxic to free expression.”

Regardless of label, Yiannopoulos’s right to speak and the right of others to listen are constitutionally protected. And violence to block a peacefully expressed point of view is never justified.

Asked about the tactics used, one unnamed young protestor** explained, “Although, you know, it could get violent or whatever, with the fire, that’s what caused Milo to leave. We succeeded.”

The young woman added, “And next is Trump.”

Either we defend civilization against speech-​squelching violence, or inherit an ugly silence.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*More arrests may be forthcoming. The Washington Post reported that, “University police rescued many people in the crowd who were being attacked, trapped or injured … and are collecting video to try to identify suspects.”

** The woman was part of the ominously-​named group By Any Means Necessary.

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crime and punishment ideological culture judiciary national politics & policies Second Amendment rights Tenth Amendment federalism term limits U.S. Constitution

Perry Mason for the Court

Neil Gorsuch, Perry Mason, Supreme Court, Judge, nomination, Trump

Legend has it that a juror once ran up to attorney Neil Gorsuch, after Gorsuch won a case proving a gravel pit owner had been cheated, declaring, “You’re Perry Mason.”

These days, Gorsuch sits on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, and is President Donald Trump’s nominee for the late Justice Scalia’s seat on the nation’s highest court.

And now Gorsuch is receiving testimonials worthy of the indefatigable TV lawyer.

Brad Smith, the chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, expressed his pleasure “that President Trump has nominated someone who will defend a robust First Amendment.”

Ballot access expert Richard Winger noted that Gorsuch has a “good record in cases involving independent candidates and minor parties.”

“I am hard-​pressed to think of one thing President Trump has done right in the last 11 days since his inauguration,” wrote Neal Katyal in the New York Times. “Until Tuesday,” continued the Georgetown law professor, “when he nominated an extraordinary judge and man, Neil Gorsuch, to be a justice on the Supreme Court.”

Katyal, who had served as an acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, added that Gorsuch’s record of holding government officials accountable “should give the American people confidence that he will not compromise principle to favor the president who appointed him.”*

Even I have pertinent testimony: back in 1992, Gorsuch argued (in a co-​authored Cato Institute paper) that term limits were “constitutionally permissible” as “institutional constraints on the power of government” that “the Framers,” if alive today, would likely see as “necessary preconditions for liberty.”

No, Gorsuch is not actually Perry Mason — I never knew where Perry stood on term limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* On Reason’s Hit & Run blog, Damon Root strongly agreed.

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