Privacy, Autonomy, and Responsibility

In a recent post I addressed portions of Judge Raymond Randolph‘s speech to the Federalist Society’s National Lawyer’s Convention on November 11. I focused on Judge Randolph’s too-ready dismissal of all forms of substantive due process. In particular, I defended the substantive due process of Lochner (1905) and its progeny, which enforced the Constitution’s explicit guarantee of liberty of contract.

But, as I wrote in that same post, “[i]n a single year (1934) the Supreme Court demolished liberty of contract and created out of whole cloth what amounts to an unlimited “police power” for the States — liberty and property be damned.” Police powers traditionally extend to public safety, health, welfare, and morals. Morals had to go when the “Age of Aquarius” dawned in the 1960s. Thereupon, the Supreme Court felt compelled to concoct (in Griswold v. Connecticut [1965]) a general right to privacy (not to be found or implied in the Constitution), with which it began to strike down — as a matter of substantive due process — certain legislation bearing on morals, most notably in Roe v. Wade (1973, abortion) and Lawrence v. Texas (2003, homosexual sodomy).

This post focuses on Judge Randolph’s remarks about the concocted general right to privacy:

As Judge [Henry] Friendly anticipated [in an unpublished opinion drafted three years] before Roe v. Wade, and as many critics of [Roe v. Wade] have noted since, it is exceedingly difficult to see abortion as a right of privacy, even if such a right might be found in the Due Process Clause. Privacy deals with preserving seclusion, or with keeping personal information secret.

Although the Constitution does not use the term “privacy,” it is fair to say . . . that portions of First, Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendments deal in certain, specific ways with protecting seclusion and secrecy. This still leaves the question why abortion is a right of privacy. Among its many faults, the opinion in Roe v. Wade never even attempted to supply an answer.

Over the years many people, lawyers and non-lawyers alike, have come around to Judge Friendly’s view that abortion is not about privacy. Only last month, Richard Cohen, a thoughtful columnist for the Washington Post who does not oppose abortion, wrote that the “very basis of” the Roe decision now “strikes many people as faintly ridiculous.” He continued: “As a layman, it’s hard for me to raise profound constitutional objections to the decision. But it is not hard to say it confounds our common-sense understanding of what privacy is.” [Oct. 20, 2005 column]

The Court itself may have entertained similar doubts. In cases after Roe, a subtle change took place. The Court began stressing that the privacy involved was a woman’s “private decision” to have an abortion, with the Court often italicizing the word “decision.” But this explanation could not hold for long. It was not the decision to have an abortion that was at stake in Roe. It was the carrying out of that decision. People make all kinds of decisions in private. One person may privately decide to rob a bank. Another may decide in private to smoke crack cocaine. Someone else may decide to commit suicide, or to give a speech. That the decision is made in private says nothing about whether the person is exercising a constitutional right in carrying out the decision.

Precisely. As I wrote here:

Privacy, to the extent that it exists as right, cannot be a general right. . . . If privacy were a general right, a murderer could claim immunity from prosecution as long as he commits murder in his own home. . . .

The Supreme Court conveniently discovered a general right to privacy for the purpose of granting certain specific “rights” that it had somehow failed to recognize for nearly two centuries, overriding long-standing legislation in the process. From there, the Court went on to enshrine a peculiar conception of liberty, namely, autonomy without responsibility. Judge Randolph explains:

Maybe the Court realized as much [about the distinction between private decisions and the actions that follow them]. For whatever reason, the right of privacy, as first conceived [in] Griswold, no longer drives the Supreme Court in substantive Due Process cases, even in those involving abortion. In more than a decade, the Court has not decided a single case on the basis of a general right of privacy. Little appreciated, lost in the rhetoric of privacy, a transformation has occurred. Griswold and Roe have morphed.

Griswold’s zone of privacy for married couples and Roe’s right of privacy for women in matters of abortion have become everyone’s right to do as he or she pleases so long as there is no harm to others. This is the principle of John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, a principle Judge Friendly rejected, as had Justice Holmes in his Lochner dissent. . . .

. . . The Court majority [in the mid-1980s] began framing the constitutional right involved in Roe not simply in terms of a private decision but in terms of “individual dignity and autonomy.” Planned Parenthood v. Casey, handed down in 1992, was the watershed. The joint opinion of Justices O’Connor, Kennedy and Souter described Roe as resting on a “rule (whether or not mistaken) of personal autonomy and bodily integrity . . . .” The opinion repeated several other times that “personal dignity and autonomy” were “central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment” Justice Blackmun, in his concurring opinion, picked up on the theme. He re-framed his opinion in Roe as one resting on “decisional autonomy.”

Some thought the 1997 decision in Washington v. Glucksberg, the case rejecting a constitutional right to assisted suicide, put an end to the personal autonomy rationale. The Court rejected the idea that just because many of the rights protected under the Due Process Clause could be characterized as sounding in personal autonomy, “any and all important, intimate, and personal decisions are so protected.” Rather, any new Due Process right of this sort had to be firmly rooted in this country’s history and traditions. This at least gave the appearance – and the hope – that, in the guise of due process, the Court was not simply making it up.

But two years ago the Court turned its face from Glucksberg. Texas had a law making homosexual sodomy a Class C misdemeanor, a traffic ticket, punishable by a fine only. The Supreme Court’s opinion in Lawrence v. Texas held that the Texas law violated the Due Process Clause. The Court therefore overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, thus adding to the long list of cases the Supreme Court has overruled. Lawrence not only tossed out the analytical framework of Glucksberg, it contradicted a host of other precedents dealing with the States’ police power, precedents dating back to the 1800’s. The Congressional Research Service, by the way, reports that through the October 2003 Term, the Supreme Court has overruled 324 of its past decisions, in whole or in part. So much for stare decisis.

Without mentioning Glucksberg or any of its state police power cases, Lawrence created a new constitutional right to engage in homosexual sodomy, at least if this were not done in a public square. Autonomy was back. Lawrence is full of rhetoric having only a remote connection to the facts of the case, and no clear connection to anything in the Constitution. After quoting the autonomy language of Casey, the Lawrence Court said this: “Liberty presumes an autonomy of self” and the “instant case involves liberty of the person both in its spatial and in its more transcendent dimensions.” . . .

The . . . Lawrence opinion confirms Judge Friendly’s insight into the true nature of controversies of this sort. The “general rule,” the Lawrence Court wrote, is “against attempts by the State, or a court, to define the meaning of the relationship or to set its boundaries absent injury to a person . . . ” This is John Stuart Mill writ large. The Court repeated the same theme later in its opinion, emphasizing that the case did not “involve persons who might be injured or coerced” – a statement nicely blending Mill’s no-harm-to-others principle with Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics. . . .

Judge Friendly wrote in his draft that the 14th Amendment did not enact Mill’s On Liberty. Lawrence v. Texas ruled otherwise. . . . To suppose that the 14th Amendment incorporated Mill’s principle, one would have to believe that at the same time Congress was telling Utah to abolish polygamy, it was sponsoring an amendment that would make any such state law unconstitutional. . . .

Among the Court’s failings in Lawrence was its inability to see, or if it saw, to admit, the many problems Mill’s principle raises. What kind of harm to others should be recognized? Why should a legislature be forbidden from legislating on the basis of morality? Is that even possible? . . .

When Mill talked about the absence of harm to others, and when the Supreme Court did the same in Lawrence, who exactly are the “others” they have in mind? The Court assumes that the “others” are only those living now. But what of the unborn and the generations that will follow us? They will be affected by the society we leave behind. I know of no principled reason to exclude them from consideration, even if Mill’s principle reflected constitutional law. And neither did Judge Friendly. . . . [A]fter stating the Mill principle, the Judge confronted it on its own terms. He wrote that even if the harm principle were constitutional law, the State had made a rational judgment in treating the fetus as an “other” worthy of protection. . . .

Mill’s principle, and the Court’s adoption of it, moves in the direction of radical autonomy. Some on the left, and some libertarians, welcome this. The Lawrence Court denied that it was imposing its own moral code. But autonomy is itself a moral value and it is one that tends to crowd out other values. As Jennings and Gaylin point out in their book The Perversion of Autonomy, “[a]utonomy now preempts civility, altruism, paternalism, beneficence, community, mutual aid, and other moral values that essentially tell a person to set aside his own interests in favor of the interests of other people” or the good of the community. . . .

The Lawrence Court never even acknowledged its countless decisions, dating back to the 1800’s, which held that a State’s power to regulate – its police power – extended not only to the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens, but also to matters of morality. Even Lochner recognized this. Yet the Lawrence Court, ignoring this huge body of precedent, declared: “the fact that the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice . . . .”

. . . Throughout the country, in case after case, Lawrence and the reformulated Griswold and Roe are now being used in efforts to strike down a vast array of laws, some with deep historical roots. Lawrence is invoked in suits seeking to force states to recognize homosexual marriage. It is used as a defense to obscenity prosecutions; and to attack laws against pedophelia; adoption of children by homosexuals; prostitution; polygamy; sex offender registration; statutory rape; and the military’s don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy. A note in the Harvard Law Review plausibly relies on Lawrence to argue that there is a constitutional right to use marijuana for medicinal purposes. And a law professor has written a lengthy article using Lawrence to claim that laws outlawing consensual sex between a teacher and student in a state university are invalid under the Due Process Clause. Most of these efforts have not been successful – yet. But where it will lead is anyone’s guess.

The joint opinion in Casey, in a sentence the majority opinion in Lawrence adopted, wrote: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

Judge Bork had this comment:

“This is not an argument but a Sixties oration. It has no discernible intellectual content; it does not even tell us why the right to define one’s own concept of ‘meaning’ includes a right to abortion or homosexual sodomy but not a right to incest, prostitution, embezzlement, or anything else a person might regard as central to his dignity and autonomy.”

There is a lot more to liberty than personal autonomy, as I will explain in a future post. Liberty, for real people living in the real world, bears no resemblance to the sterile dogmas of libertarian philosophers or to the “anything goes” blandishments of pseudo-anarchists.

I’ve Changed My Mind (08/15/04)
Next Stop, Legal Genocide? (09/05/04)
Here’s Something All Libertarians Can Agree On (09/10/04)
It Can Happen Here: Eugenics, Abortion, Euthanasia, and Mental Screening (09/11/04)
Creeping Euthanasia (09/21/04)
PETA, NARAL, and Roe v. Wade (11/17/04)
Flooding the Moral Low Ground (11/19/04)
The Beginning of the End? (11/21/04)
Peter Singer’s Fallacy (11/26/04)
Notes on the State of Liberty in American Law (01/01/05)
Taking Exception (03/01/05)
Protecting Your Civil Liberties (03/22/05)
Where Conservatism and (Sensible) Libertarianism Come Together (04/14/05)
Conservatism, Libertarianism, and Public Morality (04/25/25)
The Threat of the Anti-Theocracy (05/03/05)
The Consequences of Roe v. Wade (06/08/05)
The Old Eugenics in a New Guise (07/14/05)
The Left, Abortion, and Adolescence (07/21/05)
Law, Liberty, and Abortion (10/31/05)
Don’t Just Take My Word For It (11/07/05)
Abortion and the Slippery Slope (11/20/05)

Making an Exception

Maverick Philosopher notes this this post of mine about Brian Leiter:

. . . I agree with [the author of Liberty Corner] that Leiter’s ‘easy’ questions are not at all easy. But I am puzzled by what [he] says about the ‘hard’ questions:

Leiter’s “hard” questions are nothing more than the kind of intellectual pornography that stimulates professional academics and pseudo-intellectuals to engage in endless, meaningless bouts of mutual, mental masturbation.

What say you, MP commenters? Am I an intellectual pornographer? A pseudo-intellectual? Our debates are some of them endless, but are they meaningless? Social, political and economic debates are also endless; are they meaningless for that reason? Is it all just a circle-jerk of the mind?

Brian Leiter once called me a “noxious mediocrity.” Better that than an intellectual pornographer.

A perusal of Maverick’s blog reveals that he is anything but an intellectual pornographer or pseudo-intellectual. I withdraw my general condemnation of philosophical inquiry, except as it applies to noxious weasels of Leiter’s ilk.

Oh, That Privacy Right

I have written here and here, for example, about the “right to privacy” conjured in Roe v. Wade and its precedents. Of course, judge-made rights can be overturned as quickly as judges want to overturn them. Tom Smith of The Right Coast explains:

Skeptics about Roe v. Wade have long railed about the invention of a right of sexual privacy by the US Supreme Court in that controversial case. Where was that controversial right supposed to come from? Sex, let alone abortion, is mentioned nowhere in the Constitution. Yet find such a right the Court did. Legal scholars wondered, as well they might, where such a right, once invented, would find its limit. Does the right of sexual privacy imply a right to gay marriage? To any form of sexual conduct, no matter how alarming?

Now, in a bold decision positively reeking of integrity, Judge Stephen Reinhardt has laid down the law, finally proclaiming that this murky right goes so far, but no further. Strict constructionists everywhere may breathe a sigh of relief. How ironic, and indeed inspirational, it is that this paradoxical opinion comes from a judge some brand as among the most liberal and activist on the ever amusing Ninth Circuit.

The case arose when irate parents objected to the Palmdale School District’s giving their children, including first graders, a questionaire including sexually explicit questions, along the lines of whether the children played with their “private parts”, had sexual feelings, and so on. Parents asserted a constitutional right not to have the school introduce young children, many of whom do not yet know where babies come from, to concepts such as masturbation, sexual abuse, and sex generally. However foolish the notion may be that parents should want to shield first graders from intrusive sexual investigation, one can understand how, in a world of expansive conceptions of sexual privacy, they could have imagined they had such a ridiculous privilege. But no more. They have been educated, as harshly as their children, by the Ninth Circuit. . . .

This is really an important lesson for everyone interested in constitutional law. We frequently jump to the conclusion that words like “privacy” mean what they mean in ordinary contexts. But this is not so. “Privacy” does not mean such things as a family exercising control over whether state employees ask their six year olds about their private parts and whether they ever touch them. (After all, what possible motive could a teacher have for posing such a question, other than a benign one? What possible dangers could such questions pose?) It means something much more complicated than that. Thus, the right to privacy includes the right to choose to terminate the life-like process of an otherwise about-to-be-born non-person person-like post-fetal entity, but not to control the early education of such entity in its early stages of personhood, once that small person or near-person has been put into the hands of the state educational system. That is, to strip the point of its many deeply intriguing nuances, you may kill the thing, but not control its education; the former is privacy, the latter is not.

The lesson is this: Judges will find rights where it’s convenient to find rights and they will repudiate rights where such rights might get in the way of the outcomes they want to achieve.

If only Judge Reinhardt’s “principled” view of privacy had been understood by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1965 (Griswold v. Connecticut) and 1973 (Roe v. Wade).

Further Erosion of the Employment Relationship

UPDATED TWICE BELOW

From the law firm of McGuireWoods:

The National Labor Relations Board recently held that an employee’s statements to a local newspaper and subsequent postings on an Internet message board in the context of labor organizing were protected activity under the National Labor Relations Act.

Following the purchase of a manufacturing facility and subsequent layoff of roughly 200 employees by the new owner, the union attempting to organize the facility’s employees approached a retained employee to talk to a newspaper about the firings. The newspaper quoted the employee that the layoffs “left gaping holes in this business”. The company warned the employee that such comments violated the employee handbook because they were disparaging to the company, and that the employee would be fired if he did it again. Two weeks later, the same employee responded to an anti-union posting on the newspaper’s internet message board. Among other statements, the employee stated in his post that the company was “being tanked by a group of people that have no ability to manage it.” He was fired soon after, and the union filed an unfair labor practice.

Affirming the statement that management “cannot be too thin-skinned,” the Board affirmed the ALJ’s decision that the activity was protected for three reasons. First, the newspaper quote and internet posting both involved employment matters. Second, there was a sufficient link between the statements and the ongoing controversy. Finally, the Board ruled that the comments were “not so egregious” as to fall outside the realm of protected activity.

Clearly, the NLRB remains in the grip of Left-wing doctrines, if not in the grip of Left-wing members. It takes a lot of specious reasoning to hold for the employee in the case cited by McGuireWoods. First, the newspaper quote and internet posting were statements by the employee, not the employer. Second, the employee made the link between the statements and the “ongoing controversy.” Finally, the employee’s statements could be found to be “not so egregious” only by a body that is already biased against employers. In sum, the employee bad-mouthed his employer and got away with it simply because of an “ongoing controversy” about unionization. It’s an invitation to disgruntled employees to incite unionization. Apparently almost anything goes under the cover of an effort to unionize a workplace.

Is there a free-speech issue involved? Not at all. The Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech is — or was intended to be — nothing more than a guarantee that government cannot suppress speech. Of course, that guarantee has been vitiated by restrictions on such things as commercial speech and campaign speech.

Nothing in the Constitution gives anyone the right to disparage an employer and duck the consequences. In fact, nothing in the Constitution gives government the right to legislate unionism, in particular, or to interfere in employment relationships, in general.

The NLRB’s ruling is another dreary reminder of the many unconstitutional excesses of the New Deal.

UPDATE: A reader objects to my opening comment on the NLRB decision: “Clearly, the NLRB remains in the grip of Left-wing doctrines, if not in the grip of Left-wing members.” He says:

Left-wing doctrines maybe, but to imply the current Board members are a bunch of left-wingers is an absurdity. Anybody who even casually follows Board decisions readily admits that the Board has moved sharply toward management-side on the whole in recent years. If you feel the statute is left-wing, then your gripe is with Congress, not the Board–unless you can point to an example of the Board interpreting the statute in a left-biased way, which I expect you can’t.

My reply:

Regardless of the Board’s current ideological composition, it’s clear that the Board acted in a Left-biased way in the case at hand. I need look no further. The Board chose to interpret the employer’s actions as an act of interference with an attempt to unionize. I would have interpreted the employer’s actions as a justifiable course of discipline against an employee who contravened the employer’s stated policies.

I have had dealings with a similar body (the EEOC), and I doubt very much that the problem is statutory. No statute can prescribe precisely how a body like the NLRB must judge the motivations of employer and employee in a particular case. The Board made a judgment call, which smacks of complaisant adherence to decades of Left-wing precedent. Perhaps the Board is too willing to accept the recommendations of its Regional Directors and their long-serving staff employees, many of whom are likely to be imbued with the “rightness” of Left-wing interpretations of the NLRA.

Anyway, the sentence to which you object . . . means this: “The NLRB remains in the grip of Left-wing doctrines (interpretations of statutory authority), even though its members may (or may not) be Leftists.” . . .

I might have written this: “Clearly, the NLRB remains in the grip of Left-wing precedents that the Board’s current membership is too gutless to reverse.” But I’ll leave it as it stands.

UPDATE 2: My correspondent rightly notes that the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act), which established the NLRB, “could have been an overwhelmingly destructive statute.” Although it has been destructive enough, I agree that things could have been worse had the anti-business (and therefore anti-growth) intentions of its framers been executed down the line. But in spite of the intentions of the Act’s framers, its words (in my opinion) give the NLRB leeway for pro-employer decisions. It’s a shame that the NLRB didn’t take advantage of that leeway in the case highlighted by McGuire Woods.

The FEC and Bloggers: Stay Tuned

McQ of QandO says: “In between the bookend hurricanes, the FEC still has bloggers in its focus.” In the linked story, Federal Election Commission vice-chairman Michael Toner

argued that political activity on the Internet fails to meet the campaign finance law’s threshold to stop corruption or the appearance of corruption. Toner urged Congress to pass a law that pre-empts the court’s action and ensures that the Internet remains exempt from campaign finance rules.

But

Scott E. Thomas, the FEC [chairman], said his agency’s original exemption for the Internet was a mistake and the FEC should come up with rules for Internet campaign ads in light of the $14 million spent on Internet ads in the 2004 campaign.

Thomas said Congress should hold off on any legislation until the FEC acts.

Another commissioner, Ellen Weintraub, said the agency preferred a “less is more” approach.

“This is appropriate because the focus of the FEC is campaign finance,” she said. “We are not the speech police.”

Glad to hear it, but the FEC is currently acting under an order from U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, which struck down the FEC regulations that had allowed those advertising on the Internet to avoid many of the requirements of McCain-Feingold. And so, if the judge has her way and you say anything positive about a candidate, or negative about the candidate’s opponent, you might be found to have given a campaign contribution in kind to the candidate. Then the FEC could have its way with you.

Thanks a bunch, judge. Also thanks a bunch to U.S. Reps. Christopher Shays and Marty Meehan, who brought the suit against the FEC, and to those great defenders of freedom of speech, Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold, who filed an amicus brief in support of Shays and Meehan. What those paragons of liberty and their brethren in Congress want is for all of us to shut up, because silence favors incumbents.

What should happen is this: When the U.S. Supreme Court has its full complement of justices, some persons with standing (bloggers among them) would file a challenge McCain-Feingold. The challenge by Senator Mitch McConnell failed in part because he was deemed to lack standing, but it failed mainly because of the Court’s balance. Chief Justice Rehnquist wasn’t a wholly reliable support of free speech; Justice O’Connor is even less so. Two new justices, Roberts and ?, could swing the balance back toward freedom of speech.

But no matter how it comes out, they’ll have to pry this blog from my cold, dead hands.

A Values-Free Government?

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, is quoted in an L.A. Times article* as saying, “We are not to turn the Holy Scriptures of any group into public policy.” That says a lot about the depth of religiosity to be found in an organization like Americans United, which is to the defense of religion as the American Civil Liberties Union is to the defense of liberty.

Now, I wouldn’t expect Americans United to endorse the first four of the Ten Commandments, which are about God, or even numbers 5 (honor parents), 7 (eschew adultery), 9 (don’t lie), or 10 (don’t covet others’ possessions). But you’d think that even Americans United would be in favor of laws that forbid (if not punish) murder (number 6) and outright theft (number 8). I guess not.

Related post: Religion and Liberty (with links to many other related posts)
__________
* Reguires a free subscription. Or get an e-mail ID and password at bugmenot.com, then search for “Grooming Politicians for Christ” (the title of the article).

Religion and Liberty

Excerpts of a long post at Liberty Corner II:

Many libertarians — especially the strident atheists among them — are quick to say that religious morality is unnecessary because morality — standards of right and wrong — can be supplied by other sources: libertarianism, for example. There’s something to that, if you can bring yourself to believe that the gospel of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Friedrich Hayek could attract a much wider audience than its present, minuscule, market share.

For libertarianism to grow and thrive, it must be planted in fertile ground. As Jennifer Roback Morse wrote in “Marriage and the Limits of Contract,”

[l]ibertarians recognize that a free market needs a culture of law-abidingness, promise-keeping, and respect for contracts. . . . A culture full of people who violate their contracts at every possible opportunity cannot be held together by legal institutions, as the experience of post-communist Russia plainly shows.

Neither the state nor the stateless Utopia of anarcho-capitalist dreams can ensure a moral society, that is, one in which there is law-abidingness, promise-keeping, and respect for contracts. Where, then, do we turn for moral education? To the public schools, whose unionized teachers preach the virtues of moral relativism, big government, income redistribution, and non-judgmentalism (lack of personal repsonsibility)? I hardly think so.

That leaves us with religion, especially religion in the Judeo-Christian tradition. . . .

The weakening of Judeo-Christianity in America is owed to enemies within (established religions trying in vain to be “relevant”) and to enemies without (Leftists and nihilistic libertarians who seek every opportunity to denigrate religion). . . .

I believe that incessant attacks on religion have helped to push people — especially young adults — away from religion, to the detriment of liberty. It’s not surprising that modern liberals tend to be anti-religious, for they disdain the tenets of personal responsibility and liberty that are contained in the last six of the Ten Commandments. It is disheartening, however, when libertarians join the anti-religious chorus. They know not what they do when they join the Left in tearing down a bulwark of civil society, without which liberty cannot prevail.

Humans need no education in aggression and meddling; those come to us naturally. But we do need to learn to take responsibility for our actions and to leave others alone — and we need to learn those things when we are young. Public schools can’t foster that learning, nor can a relative handful of libertarians. Parents can do it, if they have the right background for it; that background is to be found in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Most importantly, children can learn for themselves, if they are raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition. . . .

Rather than join the Left in attacking the Judeo-Christian tradition, libertarians ought to accommodate themselves to it and even encourage its acceptance — for liberty’s sake. There is much to gain and — given the separation of church and state, which most religionists prefer — almost nothing to lose.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL POST.

Treasonous Speech?

Eugene Volokh considers treason and speech. He offers several candidate First Amendment rules:

Speech is unprotected whenever the speaker knows that it’s likely to aid the enemy. . . .

Speech is unprotected whenever the speaker has the purpose of aiding the enemy. . . .

Speech is unprotected only when the speaker has the purpose of aiding the enemy, and is paid for such speech. . . .

Speech is unprotected only when the speaker has the purpose of aiding the enemy, and is coordinating his speech with the enemy. . . .

Speech is unprotected only when the speaker has the purpose of aiding the enemy, and is actually employed by the enemy. My friend and fellow lawprof Tom Bell takes this view.

Speech is protected regardless of the speaker’s purpose of aiding the enemy or coordination with the enemy. . . .

I addressed Bell’s view (Volokh’s option 5) several months ago:

If it’s treason, it’s treason. An unpaid traitor can do just as much harm to the nation as can a paid traitor.

It would be better to do away with the law of treasonous expression altogether than to draw an arbitrary line between paid and unpaid traitors. If a person’s treachery goes no further than expressions of hatred for America or sympathy with America’s enemies, let that person suffer the consequences in the forum of public opinion.

I prefer Volokh’s option 2, an option that Volokh doesn’t like because

prohibiting all speech that intentionally helps the enemy risks punishing or deterring even speakers who intend only to protect American interests, but whose intentions are mistaken by prosecutors and juries — a serious risk, especially in wartime.

I suppose. But presumably an intention to aid the enemy would have to be proven in a court of law. I doubt very much that an unsubstantiated intention would survive an appeal. Why not give it a try and see how the Supreme Court rules on the issue — as surely it would be asked to do.

Just to be clear about it, I’m not suggesting charges of treason against those who sympathize with the enemy. The friend of our enemy is not our friend, but neither is he or she necessarily our enemy. Just don’t turn your back.

Getting It Wrong: Civil Libertarians and the War on Terror (A Case Study) (05/18/04)
The Illogic of Knee-Jerk Privacy Adocates (10/06/04)
Treasonous Blogging? (03/05/05)
Absolutism (03/25/05)
Shall We All Hang Separately? (08/13/05)
Foxhole Rats (08/14/05)

Defending My Right to Be Bombed

Now we learn this from The Times Online:

Mohammed Atta and three other men who hijacked aircraft on September 11, 2001 were identified by the US Government as possible members of an al-Qaeda cell more than a year before the attacks, it was reported today. . . .

The secret military team, known as Able Danger, recommended that the identities of the four men be shared with the FBI and other parts of the military, but the recommendation was never taken up, according to a Republican Congressman, Curt Weldon, quoted by the newspaper. . . .

The CIA tracked the men through 2000 before passing their information to the FBI in the spring of 2001.

According to Mr Weldon, who said he has tried to share this information since September 2001, when it first came to his notice, the risk posed by Atta and his cohorts never spread through America’a law enforcement agencies because of the uneasy co-operation between the FBI and the military. . . .

The classified military intelligence unit used sophisticated “data mining” techniques, which process huge amounts of data to find patterns, to identify Atta and the three other men as likely members of an al-Qaeda cell within two months of their arrival in America in 2000.

And from The International Herald Tribune:

. . . Able Danger, prepared a chart in the summer of 2000 that included visa photographs of the four men, including the ringleader, Mohammed Atta. The unit recommended to the military’s Special Operations Command that the information be shared with the FBI, the former official and the Republican congressman, Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, said Monday.

The recommendation was rejected, and the information was not shared, they said, apparently at least in part because Atta and the others were in the United States on valid entry visas.

Under U.S. law, intelligence agencies may not collect intelligence on individual citizens and permanent residents. That protection does not extend to visa holders, but Weldon and the former official said it may have reinforced a sense of discomfort[*] common before Sept. 11 about sharing intelligence information with a law enforcement agency.

So we have here two lessons:

Data mining can actually detect bad guys.

Intelligence sharing might well have led to the capture of the bad guys before they did something terribly bad.

But knee-jerk civil libertarians won’t have any of it. They want to defend my right to be bombed.
__________
* There was more than “discomfort” about intelligence-sharing, there was a wall between criminal investigators and intelligence agents.

Technorati tag: Civil Liberties and the War on Terror

Moral Issues

A common complaint from the Left about the Right (especially the religious of the Right) is that the Right seeks to impose its moral values on everyone. I don’t know about that, but I do know that the Left — with help from the Center — has been imposing its moral values on everyone since the 1930s. Among the moral values revealed by the Left’s political successes and present agenda are these:

Murder is wrong, except when it is committed against the unborn, the newborn, and other defenseless persons.

It is better to allow innocent persons to be victimized than to execute dangerous criminals or put them away for good.

Theft is wrong, except when it is committed by the state in the name of “compassion” (i.e., taking from the productive and giving to the unproductive) or for any “public purpose.”

Discrimination is wrong, except when it is committed against white males (soon to be white, heterosexual males).

Two wrongs don’t make a right, except when the aforementioned discrimination is committed in the name of rectifying “injustices” by discriminating against white (heterosexual) males who had no hand in the “injustices.”

People should be free to live their own lives, except that they shouldn’t be able to smoke in “public” places (i.e., privately owned businesses), decide with whom they will do business, decide how to run their own businesses, send their children to schools of their own choosing (unless they pay extra for the privilege), and on and on, into the night.

War is wrong — even though it saved Europe from Hitler — and large defense budgets are wasteful and provocative — even though they brought an end to the Cold War.

Free speech is a paramount value, except when it comes to politics, business, and non-Leftish opinions on campus.

I’ve got mine, now we can impoverish those who don’t have theirs, in the name of environmentalism.

The question for the floor is this: How on earth can the Left and its fellow travelers claim to be offended by the Right’s putative insistence on imposing its morality on everyone else? The Left’s moral obtuseness is of a kind with its refusal to admit “liberal bias” in the media.

A Note to Larry Summers

Larry,

It’s okay to suggest that women have different aptitudes than men, as long as those aptitudes are superior:

Chris Clarke, the America-based CEO of Boyden, a firm of headhunters, and a visiting professor at Henley Management College in England, argues that women are superior to men at multi-tasking, team-building and communicating, which have become the essential skills for running a 21st-century corporation. Maria Wisniewska, who headed a Polish bank, Bank Pekao, and is an international adviser to the Conference Board, says: “The links between the rational and emotional parts of the brain are greater in women than in men. If so, and if leadership is about making links between emotion and intelligence, then maybe women are better at it than men.”

Read the whole thing, and weep.

Regards,
LC

Technorati tag: Political Correctness

Putting His Money Where His Mouth Is

BBC News reports:

Pizza man fined for war racism

A Danish pizzeria owner who refused to serve German and French customers because of their countries’ position on the Iraq war has been convicted of racial discrimination.

Aage Bjerre, who owns Aage’s Pizza in Nordby on the tourist island of Fanoe, was fined 5,000 kroner ($787).

Mr Bjerre, 44, said he would appeal, but would rather go to prison than pay the fine.

“I don’t want to sell pizza to people from those two countries,” he said.

“Every day I turn tourists down, but my conscience is doing fine.”

He added: “I feel that I was convicted for supporting the coalition.”…

Mr Bjerre said he had received many messages of support from the US, including job offers, and did not rule out accepting one of them.

He says he has already lost nearly 50,000 kroner ($7,800) because of a drop in business, and because of vandalism to his restaurant.

Note Denmark’s typically European approach to freedom of speech* — there is none. It’s a McCain-Feingold paradise. It prompts me to suggest a new bumper-sticker for Volvo-driving American liberals:

I ♥ freedom, European style.

(Thanks to my son for the lead.)
__________
* Consider, for example, the “incitement to religious hatred” bill now being pushed (again) by Britain’s Labour Party.

Round Up the Usual Hypocrites

From the Associated Press:

British Gov’t Under Fire Over Bomber Probe

LONDON – Criticism of the British government grew Monday over the revelation that the vaunted domestic intelligence service did not detain one of the London attackers last year after linking him to a suspect in an alleged plot by other Britons of Pakistani descent to explode a truck bomb in the capital.

Can you imagine the furor if the Briton of Pakistani descent had been detained?

Alter’s Ego

Jonathan Alter of Newsweek disgorges a few hundred self-serving words in “You Shield Us, We’ll Shield You.” Here’s the core of Alter’s argument for a federal shield law:

The Supreme Court refused [last week] to rule in the Valerie Plame case, leaving a federal judge free to jail innocent reporters. When Norman Pearlstine, editor in chief of Time Inc., agreed to turn over Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper’s sources to the prosecutor, the chilling message to any other anonymous sources thinking of telling their stories to Time Inc. publications was clear: don’t. Your identity cannot be protected. Reporters will now have to tell their confidential sources two things: (1) I’ll go to jail to protect you; and (2) I’ll never turn over my notes to my corporate bosses. That’s not going to be very comforting to whistle-blowers (see Time’s “Persons of the Year,” 2002) who put their jobs on the line when they talk to the press.

Innocent or not, Matt Cooper and the other jailed reporter (Judith Miller of The New York Times) have refused to give crucial testimony in a criminal case. What puts them above the law?

Alter studiedly ignores the fact that the two reporters were asked to reveal sources in the Plame case because Plame’s outing as a CIA agent, if done knowingly, was a crime. I certainly hope that the Supreme Court’s refusal to consider the reporters’ appeal in the Plame case will have a chilling effect on illegal disclosures.

Alter’s holier-than-thou defense of the press’s right to consort with criminals knows no logic:

[C]onsider that Judith Miller of The New York Times (who, unlike Cooper, is fully backed by her corporate boss) will likely go to jail soon over a story she never wrote. She simply talked to someone in the government, then did nothing.

Miller didn’t simply “talk to someone in the government.” She talked to someone who may have committed a crime by telling Miller something that neither Miller nor any other nor any other reporter had a right to know. The fact that Miller didn’t write a story based on the information she received is beside the point. Miller, and all other reporters in the case, should be compelled to cooperate in the pursuit of justice. But Alter doesn’t think so, because he’s a reporter. Well, he thinks of himself as one.

Alter’s scare-mongering aside, the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear Miller and Cooper’s appeal is unlikely to have a chilling effect on legal disclosures. For one thing, Congress has absolute power to investigate matters of its choosing and to subpoena relevant witnesses. For another thing, most whistle-blowing is born of an irrepresible desire to settle scores, which works just as much against the powers-that-be as in their favor. The Supreme Court’s action in the Plame case upholds the rule of law without harming the public’s so-called right to know.

I Dare Call It Treason

The New York Times today reports on a CIA cover operation. Winds of Change summarizes:

Today’s New York Times provides intimate detail on the charter flights used by the CIA to ferry prisoners across the globe. The names of the charter companies are disclosed. The types of aircraft flown are revealed. The points of departure and destinations of these flights are stated. There is even a picture of one of the charter craft, with the identification number of the aircraft in full display.

All of this is extremely valuable to al Qaeda members who may have an interest in rescuing, or if deemed appropriate, conducting a suicide attack against suspected extraction flights. A successful attack resulting from this story can endanger the lives of CIA, security and civilian personnel involved in these missions, as well as deprive the intelligence and military communities of valuable information that can be gained from interrogations….

What exactly is the purpose of the New York Times in reporting on sensitive issues such as these? Do they even care about the consequences of making such information pubic? It appears the editors of the New York Times feel that breaking a titillating story about sensitive CIA operations is much more important than national security and the lives of those fighting in the war. All to our detriment.

If the Times‘s reporting isn’t “aid and comfort” to the enemy, I don’t know what is. As I wrote here:

The preservation of life and liberty necessarily requires a willingness to compromise on what — in the comfortable world of abstraction — seem to be inviolable principles. For example:

The First Amendment doesn’t grant anyone the right to go on the air to compromise a military operation by American forces…

The NYT article about a CIA operation being conducted in support of an authorized war amounts to the same thing. The right to publish cannot be absolute and should not exempt anyone from a charge of treason.

The Threat of the Anti-Theocracy

The following is an adaptation of Stanley Kurtz’s parody of the left’s view of the religious right’s political agenda.

What is the real agenda of the anti-religious far Left? I’ll tell you what it is. These nuts have practically taken over the federal government. Now they want to effect total control of the populace through Hitlerian eugenics, namely, abortion and euthanasia. They want to perpetuate our enslavement to the state by raising taxes to confiscatory levels and by regulating every mode of social and economic intercourse. They want to execute anyone found guilty of thinking that abortion and pre-martial, extramarital, or homosexual sex are wrong. Otherwise, they want to abolish the death penalty, empty the prisons, and allow criminals to roam the streets, where they can prey on innocent, disarmed citizens.

But aren’t extremists like this far from political power? On the contrary, the anti-religious political movement called “Liberalism” or “Leftism” has gained control of the Democrat party, and often controls Congress and the White House as well. Having already taken over most of the judiciary, the conversion of America to a politically correct, socialist, slave state is well in hand.

It is estimated that 100 million Americans are Liberals or Leftists, although many of them are unaware of the true effects of their beliefs and goals on liberty. It would be a mistake, by the way, to think of Liberals and Leftists as simple working people. Their leadership and funding comes from the super-rich, the influential intelligentsia, and political power brokers at all levels of government. The quest of these cryptofascists for power and world domination is a self-conscious program of pure, unmitigated evil.

You don’t believe me? Well, consider the fact that Hillary Clinton is positioning herself to run from the center-right in the 2008 election. From that point on the political spectrum, she will draw enough votes to capture the White House and bring in a Democrat Congress on her skirt-tails. She will then be in a position to appoint Leftist justices to the Supreme Court, ensuring permanent dominion of the Leftist agenda in America.

For Leftists, the most important event of the last half of the 20th century occurred when Bill Clinton proved that Leftists would support a demonstrably corrupt leader for the sake of gaining and holding onto power.

There is an infection, an anti-religious and political pathology that has corrupted our politics. The Left has embraced evil. Let us pray that Americans will go to the voting booth and finally free this country from the Democrat Leftist menace.

The Case Against Campus Speech Codes

The per curiam opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969):

The appellant, a leader of a Ku Klux Klan group, was convicted under the Ohio Criminal Syndicalism statute for “advocat[ing] . . . the duty, necessity, or propriety [445] of crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform” and for voluntarily assembl[ing] with any society, group, or assemblage of persons formed to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism. Ohio Rev.Code Ann. § 2923.13. He was fined $1,000 and sentenced to one to 10 years’ imprisonment. The appellant challenged the constitutionality of the criminal syndicalism statute under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, but the intermediate appellate court of Ohio affirmed his conviction without opinion. The Supreme Court of Ohio dismissed his appeal sua sponte “for the reason that no substantial constitutional question exists herein.” It did not file an opinion or explain its conclusions. Appeal was taken to this Court, and we noted probable jurisdiction. 393 U.S. 94 (196). We reverse.

The record shows that a man, identified at trial as the appellant, telephoned an announcer-reporter on the staff of a Cincinnati television station and invited him to come to a Ku Klux Klan “rally” to be held at a farm in Hamilton County. With the cooperation of the organizers, the reporter and a cameraman attended the meeting and filmed the events. Portions of the films were later broadcast on the local station and on a national network.

The prosecution’s case rested on the films and on testimony identifying the appellant as the person who communicated with the reporter and who spoke at the rally. The State also introduced into evidence several articles appearing in the film, including a pistol, a rifle, a shotgun, ammunition, a Bible, and a red hood worn by the speaker in the films.

One film showed 12 hooded figures, some of whom carried firearms. They were gathered around a large wooden cross, which they burned. No one was present [446] other than the participants and the newsmen who made the film. Most of the words uttered during the scene were incomprehensible when the film was projected, but scattered phrases could be understood that were derogatory of Negroes and, in one instance, of Jews. [note 1] Another scene on the same film showed the appellant, in Klan regalia, making a speech. The speech, in full, was as follows:

This is an organizers’ meeting. We have had quite a few members here today which are–we have hundreds, hundreds of members throughout the State of Ohio. I can quote from a newspaper clipping from the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch, five weeks ago Sunday morning. The Klan has more members in the State of Ohio than does any other organization. We’re not a revengent organization, but if our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race, it’s possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken.

We are marching on Congress July the Fourth, four hundred thousand strong. From there, we are dividing into two groups, one group to march on St. Augustine, Florida, the other group to march into Mississippi. Thank you. [447]

The second film showed six hooded figures one of whom, later identified as the appellant, repeated a speech very similar to that recorded on the first film. The reference to the possibility of “revengeance” was omitted, and one sentence was added: “Personally, I believe the nigger should be returned to Africa, the Jew returned to Israel.” Though some of the figures in the films carried weapons, the speaker did not.

The Ohio Criminal Syndicalism Statute was enacted in 1919. From 1917 to 1920, identical or quite similar laws were adopted by 20 States and two territories. E. Dowell, A History of Criminal Syndicalism Legislation in the United States 21 (1939). In 1927, this Court sustained the constitutionality of California’s Criminal Syndicalism Act, Cal.Penal Code §§ 11400-11402, the text of which is quite similar to that of the laws of Ohio. Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927). The Court upheld the statute on the ground that, without more, “advocating” violent means to effect political and economic change involves such danger to the security of the State that the State may outlaw it. Cf. Fiske v. Kansas, 274 U.S. 380 (1927). But Whitney has been thoroughly discredited by later decisions. See Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494, at 507 (1951). These later decisions have fashioned the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action. [note 2] As we [448] said in Noto v. United States, 367 U.S. 290, 297-298 (1961), “the mere abstract teaching . . . of the moral propriety or even moral necessity for a resort to force and violence is not the same as preparing a group for violent action and steeling it to such action.” See also Herndon v. Lowry, 301 U.S. 242, 259-261 (1937); Bond v. Floyd, 385 U.S. 116, 134 (1966). A statute which fails to draw this distinction impermissibly intrudes upon the freedoms guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. It sweeps within its condemnation speech which our Constitution has immunized from governmental control. Cf. Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298 (1957); De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353 (1937); Stromberg v. California, 283 U.S. 359 (1931). See also United States v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258 (1967); Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589 (1967); Elfbrandt v. Russell, 384 U.S. 11 (1966); Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500 (1964); Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. 360 (1964).

Measured by this test, Ohio’s Criminal Syndicalism Act cannot be sustained. The Act punishes persons who “advocate or teach the duty, necessity, or propriety” of violence “as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform”; or who publish or circulate or display any book or paper containing such advocacy; or who “justify” the commission of violent acts “with intent to exemplify, spread or advocate the propriety of the doctrines of criminal syndicalism”; or who “voluntarily assemble” with a group formed “to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism.” Neither the indictment nor the trial judge’s instructions to the jury in any way refined the statute’s bald definition of the crime [449] in terms of mere advocacy not distinguished from incitement to imminent lawless action. [note 3]

Accordingly, we are here confronted with a statute which, by its own words and as applied, purports to punish mere advocacy and to forbid, on pain of criminal punishment, assembly with others merely to advocate the described type of action. [note 4] Such a statute falls within the condemnation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The contrary teaching of Whitney v. California, supra, cannot be supported, and that decision is therefore overruled.

Reversed.

With that precedent in mind, I have to ask why it is permissible for a publicly funded university to have a speech code of any kind.

Favorite Posts: Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech

The McCain-Feingold Insurrection

I have joined it. See the sidebar.

(Thanks to Josh’s Weblog for the tip.)

Absolutism

The preservation of life and liberty necessarily requires a willingness to compromise on what — in the comfortable world of abstraction — seem to be inviolable principles. For example:

The First Amendment doesn’t grant anyone the right to go on the air to compromise a military operation by American forces.

An armed person or group of persons demonstrably bent on committing mayhem must be disarmed before the mayhem occurs, the Second Amendment notwithstanding.

Regardless of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, a person who is caught in the act of transmitting a command to a terrorist cell should be deprived immediately of all the rights normally accorded a criminal suspect and questioned by the most effective means, for as long as it takes.

There can be no absolute liberties where life is at stake. Without life liberty is meaningless.

It’s Not Anti-intellectualism, Stupid

The New York Sun reports:

[A] former provost of [Columbia University], Jonathan Cole, who in a speech on Tuesday night before a restive gathering of professors and students strongly suggested that [President] blinker wasn’t doing enough to defend faculty members from accusations that they have intimidated Jewish students.

Speaking for almost an hour and drawing applause from the audience, which included some of the scholars under investigation, Mr. Cole said in no uncertain terms that Columbia is under attack by what he described as outside political forces.

When the content of a professor’s views is under attack, Mr. Cole said, “leaders of research universities must come to the professor’s defense.”

He said the pressures bearing down on the university reminded him of the climate that existed on American campuses a half-century ago during the McCarthy era.

“We are witnessing a rising tide of anti-intellectualism,” Mr. Cole said, calling the present situation at the university “another era of intolerance and repression.”…

In recent months, Mr. Bollinger has had several meetings in his office with leaders of the Jewish community – some of whom have demanded that Mr. Bollinger seriously investigate the student complaints – to assuage their concerns.

Last night, with the public spotlight on his next moves and with a number of Columbia trustees in the audience, Mr. Bollinger delivered an exegesis on the scope, meaning, and history of academic freedom.

Mr. Bollinger said it was “preposterous to characterize Columbia as anti-Semitic” and said the university would not “punish professors or students for the speech or ideas they express as part of public debate about public issues.”

He also said the university “should not elevate our autonomy as individual faculty above all other values” or accept “transgressions” among faculty members “without consequences.”

Saying the classroom must not be turned into a “political convention,” Mr. Bollinger said, “We should not accept the argument that we as teachers can do what we want because students are of sufficient good sense to know bias and indoctrination when they see it.”

The students who have aired complaints claim that some professors in the department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Culture suppress opinion sympathetic of Israel and inappropriately substitute political activism for teaching.

An assistant professor of modern Arab politics, Joseph Massad, is accused of threatening to expel a student from his classroom because she defended Israel’s military actions. Mr. Massad denies the charge. Mr. Massad is undergoing his fifth-year review. According to a source, a committee within the Middle East studies department evaluating Mr. Massad has recommended that he continue teaching in the department.

Mr. Cole on Tuesday night cast Mr. Massad as an exemplary teacher who is under no obligation to give equal weight to student opinions expressed during class. Just as a Jewish history professor doesn’t have to take seriously a student who denies the Holocaust, Mr. Massad is not required to give equal time to an argument denying the 1982 Shatila refugee camp massacre in Lebanon, he said.

“The American research university is deigned to be unsettling,” Mr. Cole said. “The university must have and always welcome dissenting voices.”…

Mr. Cole’s speech was arranged by Columbia’s Center for Comparative Literature and Society and was followed by a presentation delivered by anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani, who argued that the “classroom is being politicized from the outside.”…

Philosopher Akeel Bilgrami, a member of the audience, raised his hand and said it must be exposed that “a handful of students are responsible for the university’s crisis,” referring to the group of undergraduate students who have come forward with complaints. Mr. Bilgrami is a signer of a 2002 petition urging the university to boycott companies selling arms and military hardware to Israel.

The director of the center and the event’s moderator, Gayatri Spivak, told the audience that an electronic recording of the event was prohibited. Asked by an audience member why no recording devices could be used, she said Mr. Cole requested that his speech not be recorded and that his decision was justified because of the way the press has manipulated her own words.

While the two panelists, Messrs. Cole and Mamdani, railed against intrusion by trustees and donors into academic governance, Ms. Spivak called for outside pressure on Columbia for it to hire more female faculty members. She called gender inequality a “real problem, whereas this is made up,” referring to the complaints against the Middle East scholars.

So, outside pressure is bad if it’s aimed at leftists but good if it supports leftists. Such is leftist logic.

As for “anti-intellectualism,” I call it disgust. Disgust that universities have gone far beyond any pretense of seeking truth. Universities today — by and large — merely seek to advance an anti-capitalist, anti-free speech, anti-American agenda. If that upsets donors and trustees and causes them to bring pressure to bear on universities, I say hurrah! Donors and trustee have speech rights, too. And they should use them.

Those who fund universities — donors and taxpayers — have a legitimate interest in ensuring that universities use their money wisely.

Favorite Posts: Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: