Tag: free speech

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First Amendment rights

Fake News; Real Assault

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, Alex Jones, censorship, free speech, First Amendment, social media

I don’t defend the way Twitter, Facebook, and others target users for expressing views that these firms dislike. I do defend the individual rights of all persons, including owners of companies. Our freedom to act includes the freedom to act in ways others consider to be wrong — if we do so while respecting the (actual) rights of others.

But something is extra-disturbing about the way Facebook, Google, Apple, Spotify, etc. (though not Twitter) ejected Alex Jones from their platforms. The firms apparently obeyed journalists and politicians demanding InfoWar’s ouster for purveying “hate speech.”

And now: “These companies must do more than take down one website,” intones incumbent U.S. Senator Chris Murphy.*

Such statements aren’t laws. But every company must worry about the arbitrary government power that incumbents like Murphy can deploy. And fellow U.S. Senator Mark Warner’s leaked paper on the dangers of technology-abetted fake news tells us we’re in for a more direct assault on free speech.

“The size and reach of these platforms demand that we ensure proper oversight, transparency and effective management of technologies that in large measure undergird our social lives . . . and our politics,” says the plan. The goal is to “ensure that this ecosystem no longer exists as the ‘Wild West’,” i.e., unfettered by government.

So . . . the idea is to rescind that wild First Amendment? 

I would sooner press for a new law penalizing politicians who threaten the liberty of firms on the basis of catering to the “wrong” customers.

But there is no crying need for this. Let’s stick with “Congress shall make no law . . .”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* These companies did not take down a website, by the way. Alex Jones’s InfoWars.com appears to be going gangbusters. Those companies ousted InfoWars from their Web services. This is a distinction with a difference.

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard

May Trigger Eye Rolling

microaggressions, trigger warning, free speech, First Amendment, freedom,

The fashionable campus notion of “microaggressions” blurs the distinction between peaceful speech (offensive or not) and bashing somebody over the head with a club. 

If courts, police and/or university officials can rationalize regarding the perpetrator of a so-called “microaggression” as initiating force against an offended listener, they can also rationalize using actual physical force in retaliation. Which, to the extent implemented, would mean the end of freedom of speech. 

After all, nobody needs a First Amendment in order to utter banal pronouncements about the weather.

The allied campaign urging or requiring professors to issue “trigger warnings” before discussing anything that might provoke discomfort also dampens discourse. 

Who can object to letting viewers of TV news know that they are about to see a corpse? Or sending little kids out of the room when certain subjects are discussed? But is such common sense the point of “trigger warnings”?

At best, “trigger warnings” are a silly name for referring to what nobody seeks to keep secret. At worst, they help trigger distress themselves — or impede frank discussion of controversial subjects. The latter treats adults as if they were not adults; the former makes adults less adult. 

If and when “trigger warnings” are imposed by force, with penalties for omitting them, they also endanger freedom of speech.

Advocates of open discourse seem to be in an endless war with champions of a repressive political correctitude. The jabberwocky used to justify that repression keep evolving. The response must be constant: intellectual clarity and eternal vigilance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Progressive Designs

Progressive, magazine, H-Bomb, plans, free speech, First Amendment

In February 1979, Professor George Rathjens called the editors of The Progressive, urging them not to publish a story in the works, which included a journalistic best guess as to the design of a hydrogen bomb. The Progressive refused to squelch the story, and the professor of poli-sci (not nuclear physics) contacted the Department of Energy, which sued to suppress the article.

The Progressive defended itself on free speech grounds.

Fast forward to today, with progressives screaming to squelch the freedom of speech and press of Defense Distributed, an Austin, Texas, organization, which expressed its intention to publish easily downloadable plans* to print plastic guns using 3D printing technology.

This hit the news first as the result of a court decision early in the month,** but now Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.) blames the Trump administration, not the court. “Donald Trump will be totally responsible for every downloadable, plastic AR-15 (gun) that will be roaming the streets of our country.”

Why blame the administration? Because the administration settled its lawsuit holding up the publication.

Amusingly, back in 1979, the government dropped its suit against The Progressive.

Progressives were definitely not for nuclear bombs 40 years ago, and The Progressive had its own agenda in publishing a version of the article that saw print in the magazine’s November 1979 issue. Now progressives express more alarm about private individuals having weapons, not about the government’s weaponry. 

But the biggest change? It has something to do with free speech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* I say “easily downloadable” because plans like this have been available on the not-exactly-easy-to-access Dark Web for some time.

** The decision is clear: “Arguments for tighter restrictions on firearms are, in this case, directly opposed to arguments for the unfettered exchange of information on the internet.”

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Accountability First Amendment rights folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Regulating Protest too much government U.S. Constitution

Freedom “Weaponized”

free speech, First Amendment, censorship, freedom, liberty, rights, Justice Elena Kagan

Justice Elena Kagan has a way with words. The conservative majority on the court, she said after two recent rulings, is “weaponizing the First Amendment.”

What a phrase! But what does it mean?

“Conservative groups, borrowing and building on arguments developed by liberals,” explains The New York Times, “have used the First Amendment to justify unlimited campaign spending, discrimination against gay couples and attacks on the regulation of tobacco, pharmaceuticals and guns.”

First: if “liberals” now find themselves not supporting the idea of particular freedoms, or freedom in general, are they really “liberal”?

Second: “borrowing arguments” is what we expect to happen. Logic isn’t partisan.

Third: the point of the Bill of Rights is to “weaponize” the defense of freedom.

Remember, it is freedom of speech; freedom of the press; freedom of association; freedom of exercising one’s religion. The First Amendment weaponizes their defense by disallowing Congress from legislating against them.

Now, it has long been a “problem” that these listed freedoms blend together. They all work together or don’t work at all. And each points to freedom more broadly.

Kagan wants to read freedoms narrowly — though liberals historically have, indeed, read them broadly.

She’s objecting to two recent rulings. The first prohibits states from requiring pregnancy centers to talk up abortion options to their clients. An obvious free speech issue. The second prohibits governments from backing unions in their extraction of “agency fees” from non-members. An incontrovertible issue of freedom of association.

Kagan and The New York Times apparently think that “liberalism” means defending some freedoms in some contexts, but denying freedom in others.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

 

Illustration by Newtown grafitti

 

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Accountability crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers Regulating Protest

Assaults Not Allowed

speech, argument, hate speech, minds.com, Bill Ottman, violence, free speech, tolerance

Have Americans forgotten that freedom makes getting along easier?

We do not all have to like each other. We do not even all have to be nice to each other. We just don’t have license to hit or hornswoggle our fellows. Hate speech may be bad, but it is hate assaults — not talk — that should be punished by law.

Yes, free people are at liberty to insult each other, call each other nasty names, even demean each other. And those insulted, besmirched, and dissed may return in kind or shrug the negatives off.

But we needn’t let it go at that.

Bill Ottman, founder and CEO of Minds.com, reminds us that there is more than one way to skin a hate. When coming across vile nonsense and worse, “the most important question is how we deal with these situations,” he writes.

We may be able to find the answer in the work of Daryl Davis, a famous blues musician with a hobby of  befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan. According to him: “Once the friendship blossoms, the klansmen realize that their hate may be misguided.” By having dinner with Klansmen, he has inspired over 200 members to give up their robes.

Ottman goes on to call for a concerted effort to reclaim a future for “internet freedom and human rights.” That’s a good idea.

Don’t accept the premise that, to get along, we must squelch speech. Instead, ignore disagreeable people trying to make us feel bad.

And look for ways to persuade those who hate us.

We can be adults about this. And keep freedom of speech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people moral hazard U.S. Constitution

Exit Strategy Advised

free speech, Trump, First Amendment, rights, college, campus, tolerance

The First Amendment applies only against governments, but our free speech rights can be violated by nearly anyone.

These days, these rights are most notoriously and routinely violated by mobs of students . . . attending colleges and universities nearly all of which depend upon taxpayer subsidies.

David E. Bernstein, writing at the Volokh Conspiracy, in “USC Law Professor: Supporters of Campus Free Speech are ‘Preying on Vulnerable Teenagers,’” makes a number of points regarding a law professor’s published defense of nasty student reactions to a Federalist Society speaker . . . on a campus not his own.

Bernstein notes that “the article has to have the requisite references to the Emmanuel Goldsteins of the modern left, the Koch Brothers, who are mentioned four times for no discernable reason.” The reason, of course, is demonization. For a movement needs enemies.

The USC law professor argues that journalists should ignore campus speaking events that “goad” students into “tactical mistakes” by the “mean-spirited provocations” of “seasoned political operatives preying on vulnerable teenagers and inexperienced young adults.”* Bernstein shows that the “tactical mistakes” amount to peaceful and intellectual speakers being “harrassed, shouted down, and subject to or threatened with violence”; every reasonable person knows that disagreeing with the ideas someone communicates does not excuse violating that someone’s rights.

No matter how “provocative.”

Most chillingly, the speaker who incited student ire and accusations, etc., had been advised by “a security guard” before his “talk” to devise “an ‘exit strategy.’” This indicates that the American taxpayer needs an exit strategy from subsidizing anti-democratic mob activism.

And its professorial enablers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Don’t you find this language awfully coddling of people who should be treated as responsible for their actions, and who, by their attendance at an institution of higher learning, should be capable of listening to any point of view? I find it maddening.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment education and schooling First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture moral hazard Regulating Protest

The Shallow State

deep state, shallow state, free speech, censorship, first amendment, law. university

Amidst all the talk of The Deep State, we are in danger of losing track of a parallel problem: the Shallow State — which, despite lack of depth, is very wide.

I am referring to government employees who increasingly abandon any pretense of impartiality. And the public institutions that protect them.  

Consider the case of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and its 39-year-old lecturer Tariq Khan, who is a member of an Antifa-affiliated group called the Black Rose Anarchist Federation. Mr. Khan had been angrily shouting and chanting at a campus anti-Trump rally when he was mildly challenged by a non-nut student journalist. Khan went on a rampage, screamed at and pushed the young journalist, and deliberately broke the smartphone of a fellow journalist who had been recording the fracas.

Khan was charged with destruction of property. But the story doesn’t stop there.

“I was told that if I wanted the ‘situation to improve,’” wrote a third journalist, “that I should stop writing about Khan.”

The university placed a restraining order on the three, to squelch news and dissent.

So the trio sued on First Amendment grounds.

Here we have a teacher willing to abridge free speech the old-fashioned way, by playing the bully. And a public institution ready and willing to defend him, to take his petty criminality and raise it to a conspiratorial, Big Brother level.

Not only does this rob Americans of rights, taxpayers are being forced to fund what they might justifiably regard as the destruction of the republican form of governance.

Root out the infamous Deep State?

Sure.

But limit and make transparent the Shallow State, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights folly ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies

The Critique of Pure Intolerance

Christina Hoff Sommers, Lewis & Clark Law School, Federalist Society, fascism, free speech, censorship, no platform

If you are older than 50, you probably remember when “liberal” meant free speech advocacy to the point of absolutism. “I may disagree with what you say,” stalwart liberals pledged back in the Sixties, “but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”

Nowadays, if you are under 30 and have gone to college, you may not even have encountered this saw.

Which has consequences.

Nine student groups protested, last week, the Federalist Society’s invitation of writer Christina Hoff Sommers to speak at Lewis & Clark Law School. The groups called it an “act of aggression and violence” and smeared the philosopher and Democrat as “a known fascist.”

Bari Weiss, writing in The New York Times, calls this “the moral flattening of the earth,” the “main effect is that these endless accusations of ‘fascism’ or ‘misogyny’ or ‘alt-right’ dull the effects of the words themselves. As they are stripped of meaning, they strip us of our sharpness — of our ability to react forcefully to real fascists and misogynists or members of the alt-right.”

While this “flattening” does prevent the flatteners (bullies) from even seeing any gradations of threat or error, let’s not pretend to be surprised. Their techniques do not merely echo, but replicate exactly, neo-Marxist postmodernist philosopher Herbert Marcuse’s proposal, in “Repressive Tolerance,”* to censor writing and speech “from the right.”

Ideas have consequences. Just as Marxian socialism led to Lenin, Stalin and Mao, these tyrants led to Marcuse, whose thinking set much of today’s Academia into full tyranny mode.

It’s time for liberals “on the left” to repudiate explicitly the methods of tyrants . . . to their left.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* See Herbert Marcuse and Robert Paul Woolf, A Critique of Pure Tolerance (1965). My college political theory professor, a proud communist, was a big fan of Marcuse.

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First Amendment rights general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Why They Hate the First Amendment

Facebook, censorship, censor, first amendment, free speech, Citizens United, elections

Does banning Facebook in the weeks leading up to an election sound like freedom?

“The corrosive effect of social media on democratic life,” writes The New Republic’s Jeet Heer, “has led both French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to make the same threat to Facebook: self-regulate or be regulated.”

But Macron doesn’t go far enough. “If fake news truly poses a crisis for democracy, then it calls for a radical response,” Heer insists.

“Many countries have election silence laws, which limit or prohibit political campaigning for varying periods of time ranging from election day alone to as early as three days before the election.” And Heer sees little reason not to apply such regulations to social media.

“What if you weren’t allowed to post anything political on Facebook in the two weeks before an election?”

This exactly parallels the prohibition of political spending “by corporations” before an election, as in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulation. Except here we have it directly affecting normal citizens.

The current excuse, “fake news,” appears to be defined by partisans almost entirely as the errors and lies and spin of their opponents’ side(s).

But since lying about one’s political enemies is at least as old as the Election of 1800, why is this different now?

Because, I submit, Facebook is just another area the folks pushing such obvious breaches of the First Amendment — politicians and most of the media — do not yet control.

Competition mustn’t be tolerated.  

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo credit: by John Nakamura Remy

 

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Accountability crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom government transparency local leaders moral hazard Regulating Protest too much government U.S. Constitution

Lock Her Up

Deyshia Hargrav, superintendent, schoolboard, Vermilion Parish school board, free speech, government, local government, Lozman v. Riviera Beach, Florida, Supreme Court

“Who Are We?” I asked Sunday at Townhall.com.

Today’s question: What have we come to?

Under a seemingly click-bait headline in The Atlantic, “Can Government Officials Have You Arrested for Speaking to Them?” Garrett Epps examines last week’s outrageous handcuffing and arrest of a Louisiana teacher, Deyshia Hargrave, for speech displeasing to the Vermilion Parish school board at a public meeting.

The elementary school teacher complained about a $30,000 raise the board was giving the superintendent, noting that teachers had not seen an increase in nearly a decade. After asserting that the raise would be “basically taken out of the pockets of teachers,” she was ruled out of order by the school board president and then asked to leave the premises. She calmly left the meeting room . . . only to be forced to the floor, handcuffed and arrested once in the hallway.

Police claimed the arrest was for “remaining after having been forbidden” and “resisting an officer.”

The school district announced it won’t press charges. Very funny. Anyone can see from the video that her treatment was excessive.

Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Lozman v. Riviera Beach, Florida, where an arrest was clearly retaliatory, but the city is newly claiming another violation it could have used to arrest Mr. Lozman.

Does this after-the-fact adding on of charges provide governments with an escape clause? As Epps argues, a Lozman decision “could either rein in, or embolden, the tiny-handed tyrants who rule county buildings and city halls around the country.”

If respectfully challenging our so-called public servants in meetings designed for that can lead to being arrested, handcuffed and dragged off, we no longer live in ‘the land of the free.’

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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