The career of a politician mainly consists in making one part of the nation do what it does not want to do, in order to please and satisfy the other part of the nation.
Auberon Herbert, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and Other Essays, “Salvation by Force.”
Would the likes of H.L. Mencken and Jonathan Swift be free to say much on the “open” platforms of modern social media — that is, before being suspended, blocked, demonetized, stomped?
Depends.
Imagine: 1920s-vintage tweets by Mencken lambasting literary Puritanism and “chiropractic” or 1720s-vintage tweets by Swift pummeling prejudice against poor people — neither would likely inspire high-tech gendarmes to swoop in swinging their truncheons very immediately.
President Trump would also be an acceptable target.
But let HLM or JS skewer Democratic Party panjandrums, and the skill of the skewering would constitute the first bill of indictment. Especially during the last days of a presidential election.
As the often funny and spot-on Babylon Bee has learned, plenty of faux-high-minded rationalizations would be spouted from Twitter, Facebook, and Google mouthpieces as the social media behemoths go about suppressing the satiric discourse . . . as if scripted by satirists!
Thus, Facebook has just demonetized the Bee for “inciting violence.” And how was this violence incited? By spoofing the silliness of a senator.
Are such suppressors of satire somehow led by — say — an invisible hand to . . . self-satirize?
Apparently, yes.
But what is the answer to invidious discrimination by “neutral” platforms?
Andrew McCarthy of National Review is not alone in wondering whether the giant tech firms are abiding by the terms of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects them from prosecution for the speech of others on their “open” platforms. But maybe the bottom line is . . . we should just outlaw punch lines.
They’re pretty painful if you’re the one getting punched. I mean, c’mon, man. “Punch” line? Pretty violent.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On October 21, 1921, President Warren G. Harding delivered the first speech by a sitting U.S. President against lynching in the deep South.
So what do you do if you don’t know? How do you manage your risk if you don’t know? . . . The thing that you can default to is freedom. Because the one thing we know is that if we were to lose our freedom to anything, screw it: we’re out of here. Right? We’d all just close the planet and starve to death. If we lose our freedom we don’t even want to be here.
If you say to me ‘I can give you your freedom back but there’s a one percent change that you’ll die,’ I’m in; I’ll take my freedom. ‘I’ll give you your freedom back but there’s a one percent change your grandmother might die a few years early,’ I’m in; ‘sorry, Grandma.’ I’m gonna talk to Grandma, first, but you know what? She agrees. Grandma doesn’t disagree. Grandma wants me to be free; Grandma wants to be free. . . .
If you don’t know what’s the right thing to do, you have to default to the primary human needs. And we have a primary human need for freedom.
Real Coffee with Scott Adams, Periscope Episode 1151, “Trump Slaughtermeter Pinned 100%. Swiss Coronavirus Mystery. Who Reversal.”
San Diego’s school district is weakening its grading system because of “racial disparities.”
Yearly averaging of grades will end. Why? The practice, it is said, has penalized students who do poorly early in the year, presumably unfairly.
Teachers will also be prohibited from taking into account whether homework is submitted on time and how students behave in class. These aspects of performance will instead be incorporated into a “citizen grade.”
Richard Barrera, VP of the school district, says “to be an anti-racist school district, we have to confront practices like this that have gone on for years and years.”
Student behavior has sometimes been called “deportment.” Grading it separately is nothing new. But San Diego’s rationale for doing so is bad. And eliminating a yearly average (or semester average) discourages students from working diligently all year long.
What if, under the hobbled system, grades still exhibit “racial disparities”? The logical conclusion is an end to grades and to merit-based distinctions.
Many reasons for academic disparities among different groups are possible. But let’s say that kids of certain color tend to have lousier home lives than kids of other color, and therefore do worse in school.
If so, disparities in performance cannot be attributed to attempts to objectively assess schoolwork.
And the problems won’t disappear if grades disappear.
Any silver lining?
Well, if you’re a substandard teacher, meaningless grades for students will also make it harder to know when you, the teacher, are doing substandard work.
Though the metal most apt, here, is much baser than “silver.”
Lead seems about right.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On October 20, 1803, the United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase.
Exactly 15 years later, the Convention of 1818 signed between the United States and the United Kingdom which, among other things, settled the Canada-United States border on the 49th parallel for most of its length.
When a man is treated like a beast, he says, ‘After all, I’m human.’ When he behaves like a beast, he says ‘After all, I’m only human.’
Karl Kraus, as quoted in Thomas Szasz, Karl Kraus and the Soul Doctors (1977).
Regarding the lockdowns, I said in the last episode of my podcast, “we’ve kind of accepted the Chinese model.”
You know: extreme; cruel; totalitarian.
And few officials in these United States seem more “Chinazi” than Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer and her Attorney General Dana Nessel.
Their authoritarian behavior has inspired quite a bit of anger, and even, it appears, plotting for a kidnapping.
Fortunately for citizens who voted these two lockdowners into office, insurrection is not necessary to re-establish a rule of law. Let mlive.com explain: “Earlier this month, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that a 1945 state law Whitmer used to sign executive orders during the extended COVID-19 state of emergency was unconstitutional. The court said Whitmer did not have the authority to continue a state of emergency without the support of the Legislature, essentially ending her orders signed past April 30.”
Yet the AG has decided to enforce Whitmer’s unconstitutional edicts, nonetheless.
The political backlash is now quite legal and above-board, for the state’s Board of State Canvassers has approved petition language to recall Nessel.
On the petitions, which will be circulated on Election Day, the explanation for the recall will read as follows: “Dana Nessel, on Thursday, August 6, 2020, Announced plans ramping up efforts to enforce Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Executive Order 2020-148.”
The petition has been spurred by Albion, Michigan, resident Chad Baase. He is incensed, as he should be, that Nessel “violated her oath of office by enforcing an executive order which violated the Michigan constitution, therefore she violated the constitution.”
“She needs to be held accountable,” Baase insists, and it’s great that he has found a peaceful way in democracy’s ultimate recourse: the recall vote.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On October 19, 1781, representatives of British commander Lord Cornwallis handed over Cornwallis’s sword and formally surrendered to George Washington and the comte de Rochambeau, at Yorktown, Virginia. The Revolutionary War (or War for Independence, or Colonial Rebellion, or whatever you wish to call it) was over.
In 1918 on this date, conservative writer Russell Kirk was born.
Leftist regimes turn to political terror as their policies fail. When the idealism dies, and the theories fall apart, the organizers pursue misery for the sake of misery, using fear, deprivation, and hate to maintain their grip on power while crushing the political threats to their rule.
Daniel Greenfield, “The Chinese Lockdown-and-Mask Model Failed. Now Its Proponents Need Scapegoats,” Sultan Knish, October 17, 2020.