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First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people

Bill Nye, the Jail-My-Debating-Opponent Guy

Bill Nye, science, climate, global warming, censorship, authoritarianism

The latest Joe Biden outrage is the handing out of Presidential Medals of Freedom to the blatantly undeserving.

Popularizers of science seem to have gone downhill these days. Or perhaps it’s just a few of the most visible ones who are so vile.

In their own day, Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov espoused some lamentable left-wing views and advanced some dubious propositions as they explained the universe to nonscientists. But you could listen to, read, and enjoy them.

Neither ever suggested, not even once, that persons who disagreed with him on a scientific question might reasonably be incarcerated therefore — inasmuch as the disagreement impaired his quality of life “as a public citizen.” (An argument any totalitarian might use to rationalize violating innocent persons’ rights.)

But Bill Nye, “the science guy,” has expressed the greatest possible sympathy with the proposition that it might be okay to imprison scientists who disagree with him about climate, human impact on climate, or the advisability of trying to centrally plan climate.

In 2016, when asked about a proposal to imprison “climate skeptics,” Nye said that “extreme doubt about climate change is affecting my qualify of life as a public citizen. That there is a chilling effect on scientists who are in extreme doubt about climate change, I think that is good.”

People don’t do their best thinking with a gun pointed at them, Nye guy. That is not good.

Note: it’s the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Not the Presidential Medal of Craven Censorship.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Karel Čapek

CAPEK, REVOLUTION

You can have a revolution wherever you like, except in a government office; even were the world to come to an end, you’d have to destroy the universe first and then government offices.

Karel Čapek, The Absolute at Large (1921).
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Today

Balloon & Autogyro

Blanchard, balloon, flight

On January 9, 1793, Jean-Pierre Blanchard became the first person to fly in a balloon in the United States.

Precisely 13 decades later,  Juan de la Cierva y Codorníu, 1st Count of la Cierva, made the first autogyro flight.

Categories
ideological culture international affairs

Exit Trudeau

Justin Trudeau, Canada, truckers, Covid, vaccines, economy

America’s far-north (and far-left) autocrat, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is resigning.

His resignation may pertain to the fact that opposition parties promised to vote no confidence in Trudeau’s Liberal Party when the Canadian parliament meets in March.

Associated Press says that critics complained of Trudeau’s efforts to “strike a balance between economic growth and environmental protection,” i.e., sacrificing economic growth to environmentalist hobbyhorses. 

Critics have many other complaints too.

What’s the worst of Trudeau’s conduct and policies? Tough call. But his treatment of the Canadian truckers who launched a Freedom Convoy to protest Canada’s ludicrous COVID-19 mandates has to be near the top of the list. Among other measures, Trudeau froze the bank accounts of protestors — and even those of some supporters.

GoFundMe cooperated by blocking donations to the truckers and even, briefly, declaring that blocked donations would not be returned to donors who failed to make a special appeal but would instead be redistributed to “credible and established charities.” The outrage over the planned theft, even if perfectly in sync with Trudeau’s hooliganism, was too great, though, and GoFundMe reversed itself.

Trudeau is also one of many Canadian politicians who leapt into inaction as the Chinese Communist Party tested the limits of its ability to interfere in Canadian elections and politics and engage in transnational repression. I have discussed the problem here; and the sister site of Common Sense, StopTheCCP, has touched on it here and here and here and here.

Trudeau’s exit is good news for Canada and the free world. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Fernando Pessoa

I was born in a time when the majority of young people had lost faith in God, for the same reason their elders had had it — without knowing why.

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935), The Book of Disquiet (1982; posthumous); written (if not exactly published) under the “heteronym” of “Bernardo Soares.”

Categories
Today

Washington’s First

Washington, happiness

Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

On January 8, 1790, President George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address in New York City.

Categories
Accountability First Amendment rights national politics & policies too much government

GEC Bullet Ducked?

censorship

Last month, a mega-monstrous “continuing resolution” (CR) — allowing federal deficit spending over the set debt limit — was killed by public outcry, helped along by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and others with megaphones or MAGAphones.

This CR was chucked to the great annoyance of champions of runaway spending and runaway violations of individual rights. They babbled about the autocratic interference of one “President Musk.” 

As if his complaints alone would have sufficed to kill it had nobody else in America cared.

The mega-monstrous CR was replaced by a mini-monstrous CR. The replacement sported many fewer pages, things like a pay raise for congressmen having been left out.

Also deleted? A part of the State Department devoted to censoring Americans.

Called the Global Engagement Center (GEC), it was designed to use indirect methods to censor Americans guilty of wrongthink. The plan was to give our tax dollars to creators of blacklists, like $100,000 to the Global Disinformation Index. American advertisers then would feel compelled to avoid dealing with listed companies — to remain on the good side of the U.S. government

Thanks to “President Musk” and his “obedient slave” Donald Trump, the GEC died. State’s website now says so itself.

Or did it? Has the GEC simply been rebranded?

The new thing is a so-called Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub; it looks like State will still be funding this GEC clone. 

The GEC, after all, was also supposed to focus only on foreign agitprop.

When will government agencies stop trying these kinds of anti-democratic, anti-constitutional end runs? 

Never. Not voluntarily.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Karel Čapek

Capek

There came into the world an unlimited abundance of everything people need. But people need everything except unlimited abundance.

Karel Čapek, The Absolute at Large (1921).
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Today

Winter War

On January 7, 1940, the Finnish 9th Division completely destroyed the much-larger Soviet forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi Road, in a crucial battle during Finland’s Winter War.

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment media and media people national politics & policies

Pardon Me

Dr. Fauci, Anthony Fauci, covid, pardons, Biden, justice

Another round of presidential pardons, anyone?

At Medium, former New York Times science and health reporter Donald G. McNeil, Jr., urges President Joe Biden to “preemptively pardon Jack Smith, Robert Mueller, Merrick Garland, Brad Raffensberger, Fani Willis, Letitia James, E. Jean Carroll, Judge Juan Merchan and every judge who has ever issued a ruling that made Donald J. Trump unhappy.”

He says that “President Biden should also pardon himself,” along with “the heads of Operation Warp Speed and the chief executives of Pfizer and Moderna,” and “can’t even imagine how many political journalists . . . also need protecting.”

Is there anyone left?

“While we’re at it,” writes McNeil, “I’d like a pardon too.”

The award-winning journalist had a colorful history at The Times. In 2020, the paper reprimanded him for comments attacking Trump and the head of the Centers for Disease Control over their COVID response, declaring “that his job is to report the facts and not to offer his own opinions.”* 

And we can’t forget the primary focus of McNeil’s essay, titled: “Now Biden Should Pardon Tony Fauci.” Declaring “Dr. Fauci has done nothing wrong,” the reporter decries that “a motivated prosecutor can go after you for anything . . . can break you financially with legal fees just proving your innocence.”

Yes, we know . . . having watched it unfold against Mr. Trump.

McNeil clearly fears that Trump will become a dictator, throwing out the Constitution and the rule of law. Judging from Trump’s first term, I am not so worried. But does even McNeil really believe these pardons could survive his imagined MAGA maelstrom? 

For nearly 40 years, Anthony Fauci directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, with primary responsibility for the treatment of contagious illnesses, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. A presidential pardon would be an official admission of his guilt. 

In your own vernacular, Mr. Biden: Don’t! 

Fauci deserves his day in court. And so do we. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* Then, in early 2021, McNeil resigned from the newspaper “under pressure” after complaints surfaced about him using the n-word on a student trip to Peru, for which he served as a guide.

Note: Back in 2022, Elon Musk did post on X: “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.”

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