Tag: free speech

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education and schooling First Amendment rights

Bully for Your Thoughts

Professor William Jacobson, a Cornell Law School professor who also publishes the popular Legal Insurrection blog, got into trouble last summer by criticizing the violent Marxist organization Black Lives Matters.

BLM’s standard weapons include rioting, burning, looting, and screaming.

Jacobson had argued that the “Hands up, don’t shoot” version of the Michael Brown case is a lie and, in another post, that all the “bloodletting and wilding” around the country was primarily about tearing down the country, not about George Floyd.

These opinions upset the bullies.

Being a conservative professor on a liberal campus had all along made Jacobson feel like a “mouse waiting for the cat to pounce.” After 12 years at Cornell, though, the summer of 2020 was the first time that fellow Cornellians actively sought his ouster.

Six months later, we sure hope Professor Jacobson has managed to land on his feet. And he has. Back then, he was a professor at Cornell Law School. Today, he is a professor at Cornell Law school.

Why didn’t he seek friendlier pastures?

“I don’t see why I should be forced to change my life because they are so intolerant and they are so malicious,” he recently told The Daily Signal podcast. “Why don’t they leave? I’m not going to leave voluntarily. And if they do try to interfere in the renewal of my contract in a year and a half, I will take them to court over it.”

Bully for you, Professor. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture

Totalitarians Gloat

The Odyssey, Ulysses

For generations, even millennia, boys read The Iliad with admiration for Achilles, and men referenced the clever Odysseus from that other Homeric epic, The Odyssey. 

By my day, neither were required reading. If I’ve read The Odyssey, it was the same version the Coen Brothers referenced when concocting their terrific film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) — the Classic Comics version.

Nowadays, teachers gloat, online, about expunging the poem from the canon.

Rod Dreher, in “Cancel Cult Comes For Homer,” explains the context for this latter development: the politically correct “intersectionalism” of public school teachers in the “#DisruptTexts” movement. “‘Be like Odysseus and embrace the long haul to liberation (and then take the Odyssey out of your curriculum because it’s trash),’ tweeted Shea Martin in June. ‘Hahaha,’ replied Heather Levine, an English teacher at Lawrence (Mass.) High School. ‘Very proud to say we got the Odyssey removed from the curriculum this year!’”

Why? All that ancient racism and sexism.

Expelling the classics from schooling is absurd, of course, exposure to a diversity of ideas and historical achievements being what we used to call a “liberal education.” But today’s canon controllers are not liberal activists. They are, Dreher insists, totalitarian ones.

And they are quite emboldened — their ground-up, crowdsourced movement gets the usual pat approval by tax-funded educational institutions. It’s not a conspiracy if they boast about it on Twitter.

Here is a fun fact about The Odyssey: Samuel Butler, author of Erewhon (1872) and The Way of All Flesh (1903), conjectured that the real author of the poem was a woman. Yes, an “authoress.”

Nevertheless, that would not likely convince woke cultists to put The Odyssey back on your kids’ reading lists.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights Internet controversy

Ron Paul vs. Fauci, YouTube vs. You

Ron Paul, Fauci, Covid, censorship, free speech, 1st Amendment

It’s new news but also, unfortunately, old news.

Tech-giant providers of forums for public discussion keep banning discussion of the issues of the day. The latest victim: Ron Paul, medical doctor, former congressman and presidential candidate, father of U.S. Senator Rand Paul.

Alphabet/Google/YouTube has pulled a video from Dr. Paul’s YouTube channel in which he criticized Fauci for, among other things, reversing his advice about wearing masks to combat COVID-19. YouTube warns of further suppression if this kind of thing (debate, I guess) continues. You can still watch the video, since there are competitors to YouTube (and we hope there will be many more). SoundCloud has it.

Paul linked to an image of the YouTube communiqué. “Your content was removed due to a violation of our Community Guidelines. . . . Medical misinformation.”

“If this happens again,” Paul’s channel will be hobbled for a week.

And if even then he still speaks freely, like any red-blooded American would? Still more sanctions, presumably.

Alas, there are many examples of these obnoxious policies.

We’ve recently complained about YouTube’s removal of a Mises Institute talk — once again, for failure to follow the pandemic panic party line. We’ve also complained about how WordPress buzz-sawed The Conservative Treehouse blog for nebulous violations of policy, violations suddenly discovered after years of hosting the blog.

We could go on. We probably will. Like the proverbial “broken record.” 

When’re we gonna stop?

Well, right after the tech giants stop their accelerating efforts to suppress debate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture

Cry No More

Jordan Peterson, censorship

And the children sing: “you can’t always get what you want.”

It’s a Rolling Stone song, and its album version does actually feature a children’s chorus (over adult singers).

I mention it not because I’ve just listened to the non-choral version put up in April by the famous rock group, a special pandemic recording. Though I just did. And perhaps it’s on my mind because the song was used by Donald Trump on his way to the White House, and at the present moment it sure doesn’t look like he’s going to get a second term.

“No, you can’t always get what you want want./ But if you try sometime, you just might find/ You get what you need.”

A silver lining for Trump voters?

No. It just came to mind when I learned that employees at Penguin broke down in tears when they learned that the huge publishing company was going to publish Jordan Peterson’s follow-up to his 2018 best-seller, 12 Rules for Life.

There was weeping, and it wasn’t for joy.

You see, the young people in the company said that Peterson is “an icon of hate speech and transphobia.” Oh, and he’s also “an icon of white supremacy,” and the lamenter admitted that “regardless of the content of his book, I’m not proud to work for a company that publishes him.”

It is really hard to sympathize. A major publishing company in an open society must be expected to publish a wide variety of material. So, buck up, as Peterson likes to say. Unless you own the place, you can’t always publish what you want.

More importantly, note that word: icon. That’s an image that stands for something by looking like that something.

How does Peterson look like a white supremacist or transphobe? 

By imputation. By ignoring his arguments. And by treating his fans as wholly other and as a unified mass.

Who can be hated and denied ever getting what they want. 

But such desired censorship is certainly not what we need.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture

Buzz-Sawing the Conservative Treehouse

Big Tech, censorship, free speech, first amendment,

“They’re really showing their hand now, aren’t they?” 

That is how one blogger puts it. And the “They” are the leftward tech giants that provide platforms on which all of us can (in theory) have our say.

“They” — Google, Twitter, Facebook, WordPress — have provided these platforms in a country where freedom of speech is protected, if imperfectly, by the First Amendment and allied ideas, institutions, habits, and sensibilities.

But the First Amendment cannot, by itself, protect speakers of speech from having the rug yanked out from under them by these service providers. With increasing frequency and brazenness, the tech giants are de-platforming speakers they disagree with despite past assurances of being open to all comers (not using speech to do anything illegal).

In this case, “they” means WordPress, which has notified a popular political blog, The Conservative Treehouse, that its days are numbered. Because “your site’s content and our terms” are incompatible, “you need to find a new hosting provider and must migrate the site by Wednesday, December 2.”

It took many years and, apparently, the (apparent) election of Joe Biden for WordPress to discover this “incompatibility.”

Says the Treehouse: “After ten years of brutally honest discussion, opinion, deep research and crowdsourcing work” by the site, WordPress can cite no violation of any term of service “because CTH has never violated one.”

So, what’s the upshot? At a minimum, if you’re using a big-tech platform but aren’t toeing the big-tech ideological line, seek alternatives. Pronto.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture

The Latest Fake Mystery

alt tech, social media, MeWe, Gab, Parler

We Americans want to have our say, speak our piece — we do not wish to be gagged. No mystery to that. No puzzle. No strange, arcane, unexpected turn of our temper.

But that’s how it must seem to Nathan Bomey, author of “Parler, MeWe, Gab gain momentum as conservative social media alternatives in post-Trump age,” gracing the pages of USA Today.

“America’s crisis of political segregation — we increasingly don’t live alongside, associate with or even marry people who think differently from us — is increasingly leading conservatives to congregate together on social media outlets designed specifically for people who think like them.”

This is a passage of surpassing dumbness.

To pick one fundamental ideological divide at random: capitalist twitterers have never had any problem with posting tweets “alongside” socialist twitterers. The problem is the growing censorship of tweets that officials and employees at tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, and Google happened to dislike or disagree with for any reason.

This censorship was revved up during the recent election.

Bomey does mention claims of censorship by the persons being censored, but treats these as the ravings of “the extremist crowd.” He adds: “Experts on political polarization say [the rise of alternative social media] is a natural outgrowth of our divided culture. . . .”

Again: a major reason the alternatives to Twitter etc. are gaining such traction is the censorship. People are leaving the Big-Tech-sponsored discourse because they are being censored. 

You don’t kick people out of the room and then scratch your head in wonderment, asking, “Gee willikers, why are you guys going away?”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. I have Minds and Gab accounts, but do not use them. Should I start again? I just set up a MeWe account. What alternative social media apps do you use?

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Thought

Something to Hate

hate speech, free speech, surveillance, freedom

Headline: “Hate talk in homes ‘must be prosecuted.’”

“Must”?

The proposed legislation targets speech alleged to promote prejudice. It is backed by Scotland’s secretary for justice, Humza Yousaf.

Might the law be deployed to squelch debate regarding, say, radical Islam?

“Are we comfortable giving a defence to somebody whose behaviour is threatening or abusive, which is intentionally stirring up hatred against, for example, Muslims?” Yousaf asks. “Are we saying that that is justified because that is in the home?”

I suspect that here we have someone who has never attended a sizable family gathering. Many attendees might report “hate talk” but oppose fining or imprisoning the so-called hate-talkers.

Could the law be directed against journalists and others who publicly express loves and hatreds?

“We wouldn’t want to give the likes of Tommy Robinson a defence by saying that he’s ‘a blogger who writes for The Patriot Times,’” says Yousaf.

“Stirring up hatred” is, of course, not identical to threatening or instigating violence. Presumably it is already illegal in Scotland to plan murder and mayhem over the dinner table.

There’s an awful lot of speech out there with which we might vehemently disagree. Plenty of dumb, hateful, prejudice-laden speech that violates the rights of no one does get uttered in homes and Internets. We must preserve the distinction between “things that are wrong to say or do” and “actions that should be illegal.”

Scots should resist these hateful assaults on their right to speak freely.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people

The Itch to Edit

Glenn Greenwald

There is a place in this world for editors, but not for censors. 

What’s the difference?

Ask Glenn Greenwald: “editors should be there to empower and enable strong, highly factual, aggressive adversarial journalism, not to serve as roadblocks to neuter or suppress the journalism.”

This is from Greenwald’s statement, this week, about his resignation from The Intercept. 

Greenwald co-founded the online journalistic platform in 2013, with the proviso that he could publish what he wanted with minimal interference. But slowly, over time, the editors he and his co-founders put in place have flouted the spirit as well as (Greenwald insists) the letter of those original agreements. So much so that they refused to publish a piece by Greenwald unless he removed “all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.”

Greenwald has published that “censored” article on Substack, a platform you may be familiar with for publishing Greenwald’s fellow leftist journo, Matt Taibbi.

This fracas is not a public issue, in one sense. Greenwald lost control of an institution he set up. That’s between him and that institution and all their lawyers.

But it does show the extent to which “the pathologies, illiberalism, and repressive mentality that led to the bizarre spectacle of [Greenwald] being censored by [his] own media outlet are . . . the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom.”

We can understand why they might desperately itch to hourly edit the Twitterer in Chief. But it is a bit harder to understand that while they complain Trump has broken with established “norms,” they themselves violate long-established norms of their own profession.

I mean journalism.

Not propaganda.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights

Protest Hits the Pavement

Black Lives Matter, Washington D.C.

Social justice activists and Washington D.C. city officials have collaborated to paint the slogan “Black Lives Matter” on 16th Street near the White House. 

The city has also allowed the words “Defund the Police” to be painted on the street.

Does this mean that the roadways of our nation’s capital city are now a public forum accessible to anyone who files the proper forms?

So far, doesn’t look like it. 

So Judicial Watch (JW) is suing for the right to paint its own motto, “Because No One is Above the Law,” on a DC street. JW went to court because its applications to perform a similar paint job have fallen on deaf ears.

It contends that its First Amendment right of freedom of speech is being violated.

“We have been patient,” Judicial Watch says. “We also have been flexible. We have stated our willingness to paint our motto at a different location if street closure is necessary and the city is unwilling to close our chosen location. All we ask is that we be afforded the same opportunity to paint our message on a DC street that has been afforded the painters on 16th Street.”

I can’t wait until all this gets cleared up. I suppose it’ll be one or two paint jobs per applicant. 

“ThisisCommonSense.org” has a nice ring to it, eh? 

Something about “unalienable rights [to] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” would also be a great message, assuming it’s still legal to quote the Founders whose legacy we celebrated over the weekend.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies too much government

A Modest Extrapolation

civil rights, discrimination, 1st Amendment, free speech,

The big news from yesterday’s Supreme Court decisions (in June, they typically come in chunks) regards discrimination law, in which the court decided, 6-3, with Neil Gorsuch writing the majority opinion, that discrimination “against an employee for being gay or transgender violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” As covered at Reason it makes for fascinating reading.

Still, there are many problems here. The whole employment discrimination issue assumes that people have a right to be judged suitable for employment based only on strict consideration of job performance.

This is intrusive into private decision-making, and opens up hiring and firing to huge legal costs.

But a bigger issue lurks here.

It is now commonplace for employees to be fired under public pressure for merely having political opinions that have little or nothing to do with their jobs.

Anti-discrimination civil rights law was designed to curb this sort of thing — public pressure for reasons of antipathy and social mania — but only on a limited number of criteria, racism and sexism against protected groups being the areas carved out.

Since we have a First Amendment right to speak, mightn’t that right be applied via discrimination law to prohibit mob deplatforming or resulting loss of employment?

Sure, 1964’s Civil Rights Act limited the scope of its intervention into employment contracts and the “public accommodations” realm of commerce to the above-mentioned isms, on grounds of a long history of bigotry and invidious private discrimination. But right now, that sort of discrimination is primarily an ideological matter, not racial or sexual. 

Extending the scope of the First Amendment via an anti-discrimination rationale would seem a natural.

At least for those who favor consistent government intervention over freedom. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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