Categories
First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people

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

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.


PDF for printing

Illustration created with Flux and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights international affairs social media

Banned in Brazil

Twitter is being banned in Brazil by a “Supreme Court justice” who seems to be the de facto ruler of the country. Who is also threatening Brazilians with massive fines, $8,900 USD daily, if they try to reach Twitter through a VPN.

A VPN or virtual private network hides your IP address and encrypts your web traffic. VPNs protect privacy and let you visit sites otherwise inaccessible. Sites that purvey “disinformation,” i.e., criticism of the government, and other verboten content. VPNs combat censorship and surveillance.

The justice, Alexandre de Moraes, issued an edict to ban Twitter after Twitter owner Elon Musk refused to obey censorship orders.

Twitter had told users that it expected to be shut down by Justice de Moraes “because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”

Now Musk declares that an “unelected pseudo-​judge in Brazil is destroying [free speech] for political purposes.”

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino adds that according to Brazil’s own constitution, “censorship of a political, ideological and artistic nature is forbidden.… Until there is change in Brazil, X [Twitter] will be shut down.”

Dictatorships often issue “illegal orders” in the sense that these contradict constitutional provisions whose force has faded … or that were never intended to do anything but fool people to begin with. Such political systems are not truly constitutional.

Nor would the situation be any better were the “constitution” more honest, simply announcing that whatever the dictator says goes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

Illustration created with Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights international affairs social media

Give Mr. Bean Another Hearing

Twelve years ago, Rowan Atkinson of “Mr. Bean” fame took a stand against a law that criminalizes “insulting” speech. He was participating in a campaign to reform Section 5 of the Public Order Act of 1986.

In his remarks launching the campaign, recently resurrected on Twitter, Atkinson said that his concern was less for himself as a person with a high public profile than “for those more vulnerable because of their lower profile. Like the man arrested in Oxford for calling a police horse gay. Or the teenager arrested for calling the Church of Scientology a cult. Or the café owner arrested for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV screen.”

And what about the thousands of cases that “weren’t quite ludicrous enough to attract media attention? Even for those actions that were withdrawn, people were arrested, questioned, taken to court and then released.… That is censoriousness of the most intimidating kind.…”

And he said more than this. Luckily it’s recorded.

This effectively delivered argument, forceful and often funny, by a well-​known personality, had its effect. The Reform Section 5 campaign succeeded. The law was amended.

But the victory, though important, was narrow. And, since that win, sweeping assaults on speech that offends somebody or other continue in Britain, the United States, and other Western countries where people should know better than to emulate the censorship of authoritarian governments to which we aspire to provide an alternative. We’re going to need a lot more funny speeches.

Because this threat to freedom is so serious.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
Fifth Amendment rights general freedom international affairs

Brussels Conference Squelched

What happened in Brussels?

“In Brussels, in the heart of the European Union, in a western liberal democracy, we’re unable to have a conversation about identity, migration, borders, family, and security without facing attempts to have it shut down,” says Matt Goodwin, a British professor.

The mayor of a Brussels district, Emir Kir, had ordered the shutdown of the National Conservatism Conference in order, he said, to “guarantee public safety.”

But Kir also stated the real reason, that in his neck of the woods “the far right is not welcome.” He apparently disagrees with viewpoints to be elaborated at the conference.

Police took steps to stymie would-​be attendees.

Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán said: “The last time they wanted to silence me with the police was when the Communists set them on me in ’88. We didn’t give up then and we will not give up this time either!”

This is a more open targeting of political speech than erasing the “misinformation” of social media posts. Does it signal a new strategy throughout Europe?

Hard to say. The immediate reaction of other European politicians, including many on the left, was dismay and shock that anybody would attempt such a thing. 

“Banning political meetings is unconstitutional. Full stop,” proclaims the Belgian prime minister.

“Extremely disturbing,” says a British spokesman.

Could be sincere; could be a realization that “Uh oh, we’ve gone too far”; could be a mixture of both.

The next question: will it happen again?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom media and media people national politics & policies

Wannabe Dictator

The question posed in boffo episode four of Tucker Carlson’s new Twitter show is whether Joe Biden is a wannabe dictator, as asserted by a chyron that Fox News displayed for 27 seconds on the day his administration arrested Donald Trump: “WANNABE DICTATOR SPEAKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HAVING HIS POLITICAL RIVAL ARRESTED.” (Fox News hastened to apologize to the world and to fire the producer who so incontinently chyronized.)

Carlson spends a couple of minutes discussing absurd reactions to the brief-​lived caption. But most of his satirical 13-​minute monologue is about whether President Biden qualifies for dictator-hood.

Carlson suggests that you have to do much more than jail political rivals to qualify.

Dictators enrich themselves and their families, taking bribes or kickbacks from businesses or other dictators.

In a dictatorship, it’s no longer possible to fight the injustice of the system. If people “gather in large numbers to protest the rule of the dictator, they’ll be arrested by state security services even years after the fact.”

In a dictatorship, you can’t even complain from your home; unauthorized opinions on the Internet must be censored.

In a dictatorship, major mental or physical lapses by the Dear Leader would be routinely covered up by a compliant media.

A dictator would say your kids belong to him. But Joe Biden says your kids belong to all of us; we have joint custody.

It’s a litany that could be extended, and Tucker Carlson does so.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder​.ai

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights national politics & policies partisanship

Invitation to a Beheading

I don’t gawk at car crashes. I did not watch the ISIS beheadings. Bloody slasher movies aren’t my thing. 

And neither was the recent hearing held by the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. It was so hard to watch I could hardly take more than a few minutes at a time.

Before the committee appeared two of the three heroes of Twitter Files fame: Michael Shellenberger, listed as “Author, Co-​founder of the Breakthrough Institute and the California Peace Coalition”; and Matt Taibbi, Journalist.

Or, as Del. Stacey Plaskett (D‑U.S. Virgin Islands) referred to them, “so-​called journalists” — before she asked her first question.

Mr. Schellenberger testified about “The Censorship Industrial Complex” and Mr. Taibbi’s testimony was a less elaborate narrative about how he got involved in the Twitter censorship issue, and what he discovered in working through the files. But Del. Plaskett and Rep. Debbie Wasserman-​Schultz (D‑Fl) were far more interested in discrediting what they said by attacking their qualifications and methods, not dealing with the facts they found.

Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D‑Tx) was the worst. I hand it to you if you can stomach her full interrogation — I came away wondering mostly about her IQ.

My negative reactions? Hardly an outlier. 

“Journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger were a credit to their profession and to all Americans who genuinely care about a free press and the First Amendment,” wrote Maud Maron in an op-​ed for The New York Post explaining why she was walking away from the Democratic Party: the party has fully endorsed censorship. The Democrats at the hearing “questioned, mocked, belittled and scolded [Taibbi and Schellenberger] for not meekly accepting government knows best” — proving themselves “an embarrassment.”

It might be good for our side when our enemies make fools of themselves. But it’s hard to watch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder​.ai

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts