A Weak Argument for Freedom of Speech

Greg Lukianoff, president of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), is (of course) an ardent proponent of freedom of speech. I like most of what Lukianoff posts on his Substack blog, The Eternally Radical Idea, but a recent post falls short of what I expect from him.

In “Mill’s Trident: An Argument Every Fan (or Opponent) of Free Speech Must Know“, Lukianoff writes:

John Stuart Mill’s observ[es] in his 1859 masterpiece “On Liberty” that in any argument there are only three possibilities: You are either wholly wrong, partially wrong, or wholly correct — and in each case free speech is critical to improving or protecting those positions.

Why? According to Lukianoff:

If you are wrong, freedom of speech is essential to allow people to correct you.
If you are partially wrong, free speech and contrary viewpoints will help you get even closer to the truth.
If you are 100% correct (which is unlikely) you still need free speech for dissent, disagreement, and attempts to disprove you, both to check your arguments and to strengthen them.

This is an excellent example of preaching to the choir, albeit a relatively small one.

Mill’s arguments for freedom of speech omit a crucial assumption. There are people out there — perhaps a vast majority — who don’t seek the truth. They seek comfort in beliefs that they have acquired (often as a matter of belonging to the “right” group), and they seek to enforce those beliefs. Enforcement these days, is usually accomplished by laws, regulations, and the coercive use of state power (e.g., suppression of dissent from the Covid narrative by Big Tech execs anxious to retain their exemption from liability laws). Truth only gets in the way of comfort and power, the latter of which is a powerful elixir.

The truth, in short, is an inconvenience sought by the naïve, the powerless, and the increasingly rare person of principle.

As for On Liberty, it doesn’t deserve Lukianoff’s praise (or anyone else’s). See “On Liberty“, “My View of Mill, Endorsed“, and “The Harm Principle Revisited: Mill Conflates Society and State“.

Why Freedom of Speech?

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter dismays the left and elates the right. Why? Because of the expectation that Twitter will henceforth stop censoring “misinformation”, that is, facts and arguments that subvert the tenets of wokeism. Chief among those tenets are:

Gender fluidity (e.g., the beliefs that “men” can bear children and that sex is “assigned” at birth)
Climate change as mainly a human-caused “problem”
The dictatorship of “science” (when certain “scientists” proclaim “truths” favored by the woke, such as the aforementioned commitment to human-caused warming as a “scientific fact”, which it isn’t)
Conservatism and constitutionalism as fascistic (a classic case of psychological projection)
Blacks as oppressed victims of whites, who are all racists (despite strong evidence that blacks earn less than whites, have less wealth than whites, and commit crimes more often than whites because of innate differences in intelligence and cultural reinforcement of dysfunctional behavior).

There’s much more (see this, for example), but you get the idea.

Imagine what the worlds of politics, journalism, entertainment, advertising, and employment would be like if conservatives had been as successful at suppressing the ideas of wokeism as wokeists have been successful at suppressing their ideological opponents’ views. If you liked the 1950s, you’d love the absence of wokeism.

Wokeism has succeeded largely because of the mistaken idea, held by many on the right. that absolute freedom of speech is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Absolute freedom of speech is the devil’s playground. It fosters the operation of an intellectual version of Gresham’s law: Bad ideas drive out good ones. This perversion of the “marketplace of ideas” is reinforced by the government’s (i.e., the left’s) command of public ~~education~~ indoctrination; the legalistic trick (known as section 230 of the Communications Decency Act) that allows leftist information brokers to suppress conservative views; and the removal of all constraints on what the left-dominated media may present as “entertainment” and “news”. The latter two instruments of left-wing subversion were and are enabled by free-speech absolutists on the right.

I have elsewhere and at length (e.g., here and here) explained and explored the wrongness and consequences of free-speech absolutism. Here, I will focus on the question posed by the title of this post: Why freedom of speech, that is, what is the good of it?

Has it ever occurred to you that there is no such thing as “free speech”? Think of the many times you that have held back or softened your views out of consideration for the feelings of others, out of fear that you couldn’t adequately defend your views, or because you feared the repercussions of candidly stating your views (e.g., derision, outrage, ostracism, and violence)?

Free speech — speaking one’s mind without restraint at all times and in all places — is the province of innocents and madmen. For most human beings, speech approaches (and sometimes attains) openness and candor only among intimates. Even then — when marriages, romances, and friendships fail — the limitations of openness and candor (“free speech”) become apparent.

Even among academics who work in fields that are supposedly objective (e.g., the “hard sciences” and mathematics) there are rivalries, jealousies, and political differences that stand in the way of openness and candor. It’s not that academics don’t say what they really think; they are notorious for doing so. It’s that the purported objective of free speech — the pursuit of truth through the competition of ideas — is unlikely to be attained when hypotheses and facts are skewed by academicians’ biases. A leading example of this phenomenon is the ~~scientific consensus~~ group-think about “climate change“, which is a shining example of a hypothesis that has been disproved by evidence but survives and thrives on ignorance and emotionalism. (As do many other ruinous manifestations of “free speech”, such as recycling, “green” energy, anti-COVID masking, the innocence of Trayvon Martin, and the saintliness of George Floyd.)

Freedom of speech, at bottom, is really the freedom to express an opinion (or emotion), however wrong-headed and socially acceptable that opinion may be. And, to reiterate, there is no guarantee that the mythical “marketplace of ideas” will favor opinions that foster social comity or scientific truth. To the contrary, given the left’s dominance of the “marketplace of ideas”, favored opinions will be (and are) those that foster social discord and hysterical attachments to pseudo-scientific fraudulence.

Freedom of speech therefore favors irrationality and emotionalism. It does not — as evidenced by the current state of America — favor truth, justice, or the general well-being of the citizenry.

What is the alternative? It is certainly not Biden’s ~~disinformation czardom~~ ministry of truth, or any of its stealth successors, which will only make things worse.

Freedom of speech, which is really freedom of political speech, is beneficial only if a vast majority of the populace shares certain fundamental values:

Free markets produce the best outcomes, especially when people take personal responsibility for their economic situation.
Social comity rests on taking personal responsibility for one’s actions, not making excuses or blaming “the system”.
The last six of the Ten Commandments are the best guides to proper behavior.
Duly enacted laws are to be upheld until they are duly revised or rescinded.
Social and economic freedom come down to mutual trust, mutual respect, and mutual forbearance, which describes the state of liberty. Without those things, there is no liberty.

Those who do not hew to the foregoing tenets are the enemies of society and liberty and should not be heard or read. The Framers of the Constitution could not envision a free society in which the foregoing tenets were routinely and gleefully violated. That is because there can be no free society where the foregoing tenets are routinely and gleefully violated.

Would you expose your children to the allurements of socialists, pedophiles, drug dealers, etc., etc.? If not, then why on earth would you give socialists, etc., free rein to teach in public schools, dominate the airwaves, and run for political office?

Liberty is not license, despite the serpent-like pleadings of the licentious.

To put a point on it, freedom is culturally determined. Those who do not subscribe to the fundamental norms of a culture of freedom should be ostracized and, if that doesn’t work, sent packing.

More Thoughts about the “Marketplace of Ideas”

In “The ‘Marketplace’ of Ideas” I observe that

[u]nlike true markets, where competition usually eliminates sellers whose products and services are found wanting, the competition of ideas often leads to the broad acceptance of superstitions, crackpot notions, and plausible but mistaken theories. These often find their way into government policy, where they are imposed on citizens and taxpayers for the psychic benefit of politicians and bureaucrats and the monetary benefit of their cronies.

The “marketplace” of ideas is replete with vendors who are crackpots, charlatans, and petty tyrants. They run rampant in the media, academia, and government.

Caveat emptor.

I have more to say in “Revisiting the ‘Marketplace of Ideas’“.

Now comes Tom Smith of The Right Coast:

Think [about] Nazism, Communism, various religions, Rastafarianism, and other -isms without number. Millions of people actually believe these things, often without reservation. The marketplace of ideas at best works only, ah, imperfectly, you might say. You also might say it’s always just a half-step away from disaster.

I would say that it often leads to disaster. Bringing the U.S. economy to its knees in the name of combating climate change is today’s Exhibit A. (Though it has stiff competition from Critical Race Theory, the transgender fad, abortion-on-demand, and a bunch of other things.

Equilibrium in the “marketplace of ideas”, were it ever to be realized, would be a consensus about “truth” of some kind or other. The problem is that even if such an equilibrium could be attained, a lot of damage (often irredeemable) would occur before nirvana arrives.

There are many historical parallels he tortuous and often futile search for “truth”, and to the damage that is wrought during that search.. One parallel that springs to mind — and which ought to horrify you — 100,000,000 human beings in the years between Hitler’s rise to power and the defeat of his regime.

The Paradox That Is Western Civilization

The main weakness of Western civilization is a propensity to tolerate ideas and actions that would undermine it. The paradox is that the main strength of Western civilization is a propensity to tolerate ideas and actions that would strengthen it. The survival and improvement of Western civilization requires carefully balancing the two propensities. It has long been evident in continental Europe and the British Isles that the balance has swung toward destructive toleration. The United States is rapidly catching up to Europe. At the present rate the intricate network of social relationships and norms that has made America great will be destroyed within a decade. Israel, if it remains staunchly defensive of its heritage, will be the only Western nation still worthy of the name.

Some Conundrums

Here are five (my answers are below):

1. Why are killers (too often) not killed for their crimes?

2. Why can some parties suppress and distort the speech of others, yet continue to enjoy the liberties (including freedom of speech) that enable their actions?

3. How is it that some very-rich persons claim to pay “too little” in taxes, yet they (a) do not voluntarily contribute to the U.S. Treasury and (b) want to impose higher taxes on persons who are not very rich?

4. If “climate change” is a problem that causes the governments of some cities and States to impose extraordinary regulations (e.g., extra gasoline taxes, tighter emissions standards), why do those same governments countenance any activity that (supposedly) contributes to “climate change” (e.g., municipal transit, official travel, subsidized arenas, the construction of houses larger than, say, 2,000 square feet)? (And do the officials who push such regulations bother to compute the vanishingly small effect of those regulations on “climate change”, assuming that there is any effect?)

5. Why do so many people choose to live in metropolitan areas — only to complain about crime, traffic congestion, high prices, and stress — when they could be relieved of those woes by moving out? The opportunities are rife:

Answers:

1. The opposition to capital punishment is an exemplar of politically correct (i.e., muddled) thinking. It is epitomized in this common combination of attitudes: aborting an innocent fetus is all right; killing a killer is bad. Why? Because killing is “bad”, regardless of the end it serves. It is like the PC idea that saying “gun”, drawing one, or owning one is bad because guns are “bad”, no matter what (unless your hired bodyguard carries a gun).

2. Leniency with respect to entities that suppress speech is of a piece with pacifism. It invites the aggressor to do unto you what you should do unto him before he can do it unto you.

3. Some very-rich persons are empty-headed twits who care more about virtue-signalling than they care about the welfare of their fellow citizens (those who pay taxes, at any rate), and they are hypocrites, to boot.

4. Change the preceding answer by substituting “municipal and State officials” for “very-rich persons”.

5. The are many reasons for staying in a metropolitan area, some of them good ones; for example, moving to an extra-metropolitan area would mean the loss of ready access to “culture” (arts, entertainment, dining, organized sports), the abandonment of established social relationships, and very possibly (because of a dearth of suitable jobs) a drastic reduction in one’s standard of living despite lower housing costs. There are, however, some reasons that are merely self-defeating, namely, inertia and pride (e.g., reluctance to give up the Lexus SUV and McMansion). Putting up with crime, traffic congestion, high prices, and stress — while complaining about such things — points to the uselessness of most surveys. Talk is cheap.

Freedom of Speech and the Real Resistance

Freedom of speech, under present law, encompasses many things, including this small sample of repugnant acts:

counseling abortion

disrespecting the emblems of the United States

advocating illegal immigration

“guiding” children toward transgenderism

advocating socialism

advocating the disarmament of the United States

The real resistance in America consists of those Americans who push back against the disruptive and destructive movements that have been empowered by “freedom of speech” — such as those represented above.

Freedom of Speech, to What End?

The left, in its drive to impose its agenda on the nation, has become censor-at-large. (See, for example, this, this, this, this, this, and this. Also, this, which addresses Google’s slanting of search results about climate research. YouTube is at it, too.)

If you have followed this blog for many years, you will know that I am not a free-speech absolutist. (See this, this, and this, for example.) Nor do I subscribe to the conceit that the “best” ideas will emerge triumphant in the so-called marketplace of ideas. (See this and this.) The “marketplace of ideas” ensures only that the most popular ideas or those with the strongest political backing will prevail. Nor is science immune to persistent error.

Regarding freedom of speech, I draw on James Burnham‘s The Struggle for the World:

Democracy in practice has never, and could never, interpret the right of free speech in an absolute and unrestricted sense. No one, for example, is allowed to advocate, and organize for, mass murder, rape, and arson. No one feels that such prohibitions are anti-democratic….

We may generalize as follows. The principles of an organized society cannot be interpreted in practice in such a way as to make organized society impossible. The special principles of a special form of government, in this case democratic government, cannot be interpreted in practice in such a way as to make that form of government impossible.

Here is Burnham again, in Suicide of the West:

Liberalism [of the kind that prevailed in the early 1960s] defines free speech and the related freedoms of assembly and association, as it does “peace” and “disarmament,” in abstraction, without tying them to specific persons and circumstance. For liberalism, these freedoms are the procedural rules sustaining a democratic society that rests on the will of the majority and solves its internal conflicts of interest and opinion through continuous discussion, negotiation and compromise. But this meaning of free speech and the related freedoms is significant and operable only for those who share the wish or at least willingness to have and preserve some sort of free and constitutional society. For those others— and they are not few among us— whose aim is to subvert, overthrow and replace free and constitutional society, these freedoms of speech, assembly and the rest are merely convenient levers to use in accomplishing their purpose.

The liberal ideologue is thus caught in the inescapable dilemma of his own making that we have previously examined. If he extends the freedoms to the subverters, they will use them, as they have done in one nation after another, to throw the free society into turmoil and in the end to destroy it. But if he denies the freedoms to anyone, he will feel, does feel, that he has betrayed his own principles, “imitated the methods of the enemy,” and thus joined the company of subverters. So, when a showdown with the subverters comes, as it comes from time to time to all nations, the liberals are demoralized in advance, if they do finally forget ideology and decide to resist, by the guilt generated from this feeling of self-betrayal. Let us note that this is a purely ideological trap. Common sense, unlike ideology, understands that you can play a game only with those who accept the rules; and that the rules’ protection does not cover anyone who does not admit their restrictions and penalties.

Bear in mind that Burnham was writing when “liberals” actually subscribed to the notion of unfettered speech — in principle, at least. The ACLU, a leading “liberal” institution, had consistently defended the speech rights of so-called hate groups and political figures deemed unpalatable by the left. I say “had” because the ACLU has joined the ban-wagon against “hate” speech, that is, speech which offends the sensitivities of “liberals”.

If there is one idea that today’s “liberals” (leftists) share with conservatives, it is that absolute freedom of speech can undermine liberty. The rub is that leftists mean something other than liberty when they use the word. Their idea of liberty includes, among many anti-libertarian things (e.g., coerced redistribution of income), the rejection and suppression of facts and opinions just because they are disagreeable to the left. (In addition to the items linked to in the first paragraph, see this item about the reaction to the mayor of Chicago’s statement about the cause of the high homicide rate in his city, and this small sample of relevant posts: here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

In sum, the left’s stance on freedom of speech has nothing to do with the preservation of liberty and everything to do with the advancement of an anti-libertarian agenda.

Here’s the game plan:

Define opposition to illegal immigration, Islamic terrorism, same-sex marriage, transgenderism, and other kinds violent and anti-social behavior as “hate“.

Associate “hate” with conservatism.

Watch as normally conservative politicians, business people, and voters swing left rather than look “mean” and put up a principled fight for conservative values.

Watch as Democrats play the “hate” card to retake the White House and Congress.

With the White House in the hands of a left-wing Democrat (is there any other kind now?) and an aggressive left-wing majority in Congress, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and property rights will become not-so-distant memories. “Affirmative action” (a.k.a. “diversity”) will be enforced on an unprecedented scale of ferocity. The nation will become vulnerable to foreign enemies while billions of dollars are wasted on the hoax of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and “social services” for the indolent. The economy, already buckling under the weight of statism, will teeter on the brink of collapse as the regulatory regime goes into high gear and entrepreneurship is all but extinguished by taxation and regulation.

All of that will be secured by courts dominated by left-wing judges — from here to eternity.

The left’s game plan is threatened by those who speak against illegal immigration, Islamic terrorism, etc.; for freedom of association, property rights, etc.; and for the right to speak about such things. Thus the left’s virulent, often violent, and increasingly conspiratorial attacks on conservatives and the suppression of conservative discourse.

This all came to pass because of free-speech absolutism. Unfettered speech isn’t necessary to liberty. In fact, it can undermine it, given that liberty, properly understood, is not a spiritual state of bliss. It is, as I have written,

a modus vivendi, not the result of a rational political scheme. Though a rational political scheme, such as the one laid out in the Constitution of the United States, could promote liberty.

The key to a libertarian modus vivendi is the evolutionary development and widespread observance of social norms that foster peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial cooperation.

Unfettered speech, obviously, can undermine the modus vivendi. It can do so directly, by shredding social norms — the bonds of mutual trust, respect, and forbearance that underlie the modus vivendi that is liberty. And it can do so indirectly by subverting the institutions that preserve the modus vivendi. One of those institutions, in the United States, is the rule of law under a Constitution that was meant to limit the power of government, leaving people free to govern themselves in accordance with the norms of civil society. The steady rise of governmental power has in fact shredded social norms and subverted civil society. Which is precisely what the left wants, so that it can remake “society” to its liking.

It follows, therefore, that liberty can be rescued only by suppressing the left’s anti-libertarian actions. If that seems anti-libertarian, I refer you back to James Burnham.

Winning and preserving liberty is not for the faint of heart, or for free-speech absolutists whose rationalism clouds their judgment. They are morally equivalent to pacifists who declare that preemptive war is always wrong, and who would wait until the enemy has struck a mortal blow before acting against the enemy — if then.

The left is at war against liberty, and has been for a long time. Preemptive war against the left is therefore long overdue. If the left wins, will there be freedom of speech and a “marketplace of ideas” (however flawed)? Of course not.

Ironically, leftists subscribe to the view that “extremist ideas” should be suppressed. This is from a piece at The Verge by Laura Hudson (writing before Twitter joined the ban-wagon against Alex Jones):

While many, including [Jack] Dorsey [co-founder of Twitter] seem to fear that striking Jones down from media platforms will only make him more powerful, media manipulation research lead Joan Donovan at the research institute Data & Society tells The Verge that throughout her work, she has observed the opposite: once you remove the biggest megaphones from bad actors, their power diminishes and their ability to attract larger audiences and sow disinformation decreases. Instead of promoting no-holds-barred speech, he might instead embrace the principle suggested by Boyd and Donovan in their case for quarantining extremist ideas: “all Americans have the right to speak their minds, but not every person deserves to have their opinions amplified, particularly when their goals are to sow violence, hatred and chaos.”

The second link in that quotation leads to an article at The Guardian by Arwa Mahdawi. She begins with the American Nazi Party of George Lincoln Rockwell:

Campus by campus, from Harvard to Brown to Columbia, [Rockwell] would use the violence of his ideas and brawn of his followers to become headline news. To compel media coverage….

Contemporary Jewish community groups challenged journalists to consider not covering white supremacists’ ideas. They called this strategy “quarantine”….

In regions where quarantine was deployed successfully, violence remained minimal and Rockwell was unable to recruit new party members….

Strategic silence is not a new idea. The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s considered media coverage their most effective recruitment tactic and accordingly cultivated friendly journalists. According to Felix Harcourt, thousands of readers joined the KKK after the New York World ran a three-week chronicle of the group in 1921. Catholic, Jewish and black presses of the 1920s consciously differed from Protestant-owned mainstream papers in their coverage of the Klan, conspicuously avoiding giving the group unnecessary attention. The black press called this use of editorial discretion in the public interest “dignified silence”, and limited their reporting to KKK follies, such as canceled parades, rejected donations and resignations. Some mainstream journalists also grew suspicious of the KKK’s attempts to bait them with camera-ready spectacles. Eventually coverage declined….

The emphasis of strategic silence must be placed on the strategic over the silencing. Every story requires a choice and the recent turn toward providing equal coverage to dangerous, antisocial opinions requires acknowledging the suffering that such reporting causes. Even attempts to cover extremism critically can result in the media disseminating the methods that hate groups aim to spread, such as when Virginia’s Westmoreland News reproduced in full a local KKK recruitment flier on its front page. Media outlets who cannot argue that their reporting benefits the goal of a just and ethical society must opt for silence.

Newsrooms must understand that even with the best of intentions, they can find themselves being used by extremists. By contrast, they must also understand they have the power to defy the goals of hate groups by optimizing for core American values of equality, respect and civil discourse. All Americans have the right to speak their minds, but not every person deserves to have their opinions amplified, particularly when their goals are to sow violence, hatred and chaos [emphasis added].

I agree completely with the italicized passage. Leftists are violent and hateful toward those who disagree with them. Their return to power and the success of their agenda, which may not be far away, will result in the complete destruction of the social norms and civilizing institutions that held this country more or less together between the end of the Civil War and the 1960s. The left’s return to power will result in the suppression and criminalization of anything and anyone standing in the way of its destructive agenda.

Will a new (shooting) civil war result if (when) the left takes full control of the central government? There is much talk about the possibility, accompanied by inflated rhetoric about the people with guns (mainly conservatives) “kicking ass” of the people without guns (mainly leftists). But that is wishful and possibly suicidal thinking. If a new (shooting) civil war comes it will come only after the left has assumed control of the central government and begun its reign of terror. It will then control surveillance systems, troops, and weapons for which a mostly untrained “army” of rifle-toting patriots will be no match. Terrorist acts by the patriots, unless carefully aimed at government installations and troops actually engaged in suppressive operations, will only backfire and cause the silent majority to scurry into the protective arms of the central government.

I counsel a step back from the brink of civil war. But it’s a step that can be taken only while there is a Republican president in the White House. The left is right about strategic silence. And it works both ways. The left’s censorious ways must be , for liberty’s sake. Here is how to do it, constitutionally.

Freedom of Speech: Getting It Right

Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech….

Constitution of the United States, Amendment I

* * *

[T]he sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others….

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1869), Chapter I and Chapter II

* * *

[T]he character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from an injunction against uttering words that may have all the effect of force. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Schenck v. United States (1919)

* * *

To justify suppression of free speech there must be reasonable ground to fear that serious evil will result if free speech is practiced. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the danger apprehended is imminent. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the evil to be prevented is a serious one.

Louis D. Brandeis, Whitney v. People of State of California (1927),
joined by Holmes

* * *

The First Amendment has been systematically misapplied for the past 100 years, thanks mainly to Holmes and Brandeis. Mill’s generalizations are fatuous nonsense. Here is a palate-cleanser:

[O]nly where advocacy of and organization for an overthrow of government is deemed to be a “clear and present danger” can such advocacy or organization be curbed. Which is somewhat like waiting to shoot at an enemy armed with a long-range rifle until you are able to see the whites of his eyes. Or, perhaps more aptly in the 21st century, waiting until a terrorist strikes before acting against him. Which is too late, of course, and impossible in the usual case of suicide-cum-terror.

And therein lies the dangerous folly of free-speech absolutism….

The First Amendment, in the hands of the Supreme Court, has become inimical to the civil and state institutions that enable liberty….

[Mill’s harm principle] is empty rhetoric….

Harm must be defined. And its definition must arise from voluntarily evolved social norms. Such norms evince and sustain the mutual trust, respect, forbearance, and voluntary aid that — taken together — foster willing, peaceful coexistence and beneficially cooperative behavior. And what is liberty but willing, peaceful coexistence and beneficially cooperative behavior?

Behavior is shaped by social norms. Those norms once were rooted in the Ten Commandments and time-tested codes of behavior. They weren’t nullified willy-nilly in accordance with the wishes of “activists,” as amplified through the megaphone of the mass media, and made law by the Supreme Court. What were those norms? Here are some of the most important ones:

Marriage is a union of one man and one woman. Nothing else is marriage, despite legislative, executive, and judicial decrees that substitute brute force for the wisdom of the ages.

Marriage comes before children. This is not because people are pure at heart, but because it is the responsible way to start life together and to ensure that one’s children enjoy a stable, nurturing home life.

Marriage is until “death do us part.” Divorce is a recourse of last resort, not an easy way out of marital and familial responsibilities or the first recourse when one spouse disappoints or angers the other.

Children are disciplined — sometimes spanked — when they do wrong. They aren’t given long, boring, incomprehensible lectures about why they’re doing wrong. Why not? Because they usually know they’re doing wrong and are just trying to see what they can get away with.

Drugs are taken for the treatment of actual illnesses, not for recreational purposes.

Income is earned, not “distributed.” Persons who earn a lot of money are to be respected. If you envy them to the point of wanting to take their money, you’re a pinko-commie-socialist (no joke).

People should work, save, and pay for their own housing. The prospect of owning one’s own home, by dint of one’s own labor, is an incentive to work hard and to advance oneself through the acquisition of marketable skills.

Welfare is a gift that one accepts as a last resort, it is not a right or an entitlement, and it is not bestowed on persons with convenient disabilities….

A mother who devotes time and effort to the making of a good home and the proper rearing of her children is a pillar of civilized society. Her life is to be celebrated, not condemned as “a waste.”

Homosexuality is a rare, aberrant kind of behavior. (And that was before AIDS proved it to be aberrant.) It’s certainly not a “lifestyle” to be celebrated and shoved down the throats of all who object to it.

Privacy is a constrained right. It doesn’t trump moral obligations, among which are the obligations to refrain from spreading a deadly disease and to preserve innocent life.

Addiction isn’t a disease; it’s a surmountable failing….

Justice is a dish best served hot, so that would-be criminals can connect the dots between crime and punishment. Swift and sure punishment is the best deterrent of crime. Capital punishment is the ultimate deterrent because an executed killer can’t kill again.

Peace is the result of preparedness for war; lack of preparedness invites war.

The list isn’t exhaustive, but it’s certainly representative. The themes are few and simple: respect others, respect tradition, restrict government to the defense of society from predators foreign and domestic. The result is liberty: A regime of mutually beneficial coexistence based on mutual trust and respect. That’s all it takes — not big government bent on dictating new norms just because it can.

But by pecking away at social norms that underlie mutual trust and respect, “liberals” have sundered the fabric of civilization….

The right “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” has become the right to assemble a mob, disrupt the lives of others, destroy the property of others, injure and kill others, and (usually) suffer no consequences for doing so — if you are a leftist or a member of one of the groups patronized by the left, that is.

But that’s not the end of it. There’s a reverse slippery-slope effect when it comes to ideas opposed by the left. There are, for example, speech codes at government-run universities; hate-crime laws, which effectively punish speech that offends a patronized group; and penalties in some States for opposing same-sex “marriage”….

In sum, there is no longer such a thing as the kind of freedom of speech intended by the Framers of the Constitution. There is on the one hand license for “speech” that subverts and flouts civilizing social norms — the norms that underlie liberty. There is on the other hand a growing tendency to suppress speech that supports civilizing social norms.

“Freedom of Speech and the Long War for Constitutional Governance“,
Politics and Prosperity

* * *

Academic Freedom, Freedom of Speech, and the Demise of Civility

A professor has been suspended after claiming that anyone witnessing white people in mortal danger should “let them fucking die.”

Daniel Payne, The College Fix (June 27, 2017)

Predictably, the suspension of the professor — one Johnny Eric Williams of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut — and a similar case at Essex County (New Jersey) College caused the usual (left-wing) suspects to defend the offenders and claim that their “academic freedom” and “freedom of speech” were being violated. (Boo hoo.) I will be unsurprised if the ACLU doesn’t weigh in on the side of hate.

This is what happens when the law becomes an abstraction, separate and apart from social norms. There is no better example of the degradation of the law, and of public discourse, than the case of Snyder v. Phelps, which I addressed in “Rethinking the Constitution: ‘Freedom of Speech and of the Press’“. What follows is based on that post.

Contrary to the current state of constitutional jurisprudence, freedom of speech and freedom of the press — and, by implication, academic freedom — do not comprise an absolute license to “express” almost anything, regardless of the effects on the social fabric.

One example of misguided absolutism is found in Snyder v. Phelps, a case recently and wrongly decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. This is from “The Burkean Justice” (The Weekly Standard, July 18, 2011):

When the Supreme Court convened for oral argument in Snyder v. Phelps, judicial formalities only thinly veiled the intense bitterness smoldering among the parties and their supporters. At one table sat counsel for Albert Snyder, father of the late Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, who was killed in al Anbar Province, Iraq. At the other sat Margie Phelps, counsel for (and daughter of) Fred Phelps, whose notorious Westboro Baptist Church descended upon Snyder’s Maryland funeral, waving signs bearing such startlingly offensive slogans as “Thank God for IEDs,” “God Hates Fags,” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.” A federal jury had awarded Snyder nearly $11 million for the “severe depression” and “exacerbated preexisting health conditions” that Phelps’s protest had caused him.

In the Supreme Court, Phelps argued that the jury’s verdict could not stand because the First Amendment protected Westboro’s right to stage their protest outside the funeral. As the Court heard the case on a gray October morning, Westboro protesters marched outside the courthouse, informing onlookers that God still “Hates Fags” and advising them to “Pray for More Dead Soldiers.”

Amidst that chaos, the Court found not division, but broad agreement. On March 2, 2011, it held that Westboro’s slurs were protected by the First Amendment, and that Snyder would receive no compensation, let alone punitive damages, for the emotional injuries that he had suffered. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the Court’s opinion, speaking for all of his brethren, conservatives and liberals alike—except one.

Justice Samuel Alito rejected the Court’s analysis and wrote a stirring lone dissent. “The Court now holds that the First Amendment protected respondents’ right to brutalize Mr. Snyder. I cannot agree.” Repeatedly characterizing Westboro’s protest as not merely speech but “verbal assaults” that “brutally attacked” the fallen Snyder and left the father with “wounds that are truly severe and incapable of healing themselves,” Justice Alito concluded that the First Amendment’s text and precedents did not bar Snyder’s lawsuit. “In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims. . . . I therefore respectfully dissent.”

There is more:

Snyder v. Phelps would not be the last time that Alito stood nearly alone in a contentious free speech case this term. Just weeks ago, as the Court issued its final decisions of the term, Alito rejected the Court’s broad argument that California could not ban the distribution of violent video games without parental consent. Although he shared the Court’s bottom-line conclusion that the particular statute at issue was unconstitutional, he criticized the majority’s analysis in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association as failing to give states and local communities latitude to promote parental control over children’s video-game habits. The states, he urged, should not be foreclosed from passing better-crafted statutes achieving that legitimate end.

Moreover, Alito’s opinions in those cases followed a solo dissent late in the previous term, in United States v. Stevens, where eight of the nine justices struck down a federal law barring the distribution of disturbing “crush videos” in which, for example, a woman stabs a kitten through the eye with her high heel, all for the gratification of anonymous home audiences.

The source of Alito’s positions:

[T]hose speculating as to the roots of Alito’s jurisprudence need look no further than his own words—in public documents, at his confirmation hearing, and elsewhere. Justice Alito is uniquely attuned to the space that the Constitution preserves for local communities to defend the vulnerable and to protect traditional values. In these three new opinions, more than any others, he has emerged as the Court’s Burkean justice….

A review of Alito’s Snyder, Brown, and Stevens opinions quickly suggests the common theme: Alito, more than any of his colleagues, would not allow broad characterizations of the freedom of speech effectively to immunize unlawful actions. He sharply criticized the Court for making generalized pronouncements on the First Amendment’s reach, when the Court’s reiterations of theory glossed over the difficult factual questions that had given rise to regulation in the first place—whether in grouping brutal verbal attacks with protected political speech; or in equating interactive Duke Nukem games with the text of Grimm’s Fairy Tales; or in extending constitutional protection to the video of women illegally crushing animals. And Alito was particularly sensitive to the Court’s refusal to grant at least a modicum of deference to the local communities and state officials who were attempting to protect their populations against actions that they found so injurious as to require state intervention.

A general and compelling case against the current reign of absolutism is made by David Lowenthal in No Liberty for License: The Forgotten Logic of the First Amendment. My copy is now in someone else’s hands, so I must rely on Edward J. Erler’s review of the book:

Liberty is lost when the law allows “freedom of speech, and of the press” to undermine the social norms that enable liberty. Liberty is not an abstraction, it is it is the scope of action that is allowed by socially agreed upon rights. It is that restrained scope of action which enables people to coexist willingly, peacefully, and cooperatively for their mutual benefit. Such coexistence depends greatly on mutual trust, respect, and forbearance. Liberty is therefore necessarily degraded when courts sunder social restraints in the name of liberty.

The Left and Evergreen State: Reaping What Was Sown

Tiana Lowe writes with misguided enthusiasm at National Review:

In the past fortnight, the Evergreen State College mob has incited violence against a professor, gotten said professor, Bret Weinstein, to flee campus in fear for his physical safety, inflicted $10,000 in property damage on campus, shut down classes, and forced graduation to be held off-campus as a result.

… Prior to going quiet after receiving mass-murder threats, Weinstein wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal warning: “The Campus Mob Came for Me—and You, Professor, Could Be Next.”… [T]he New York Times has found a mob victim sympathetic enough in Weinstein, a liberal professor, to publicly lambaste the mobs at Evergreen, who counter every question, comment, and even a hand gesture by shouting, “RACIST.”

“It’s just the way discourse goes these days,” Evergreen president George Bridges told the Times’s Frank Bruni. Even the Seattle Times, which has previously let Bridges wax poetic on, “Why students need trigger warnings and safe places” in its editorial pages, condemned Evergreen as having “no safety, no learning, no future.”…

With the world witnessing Evergreen’s Mizzou-scale collapse in real time, perhaps the Left has finally woken up to its own tendency to eat its own. [“Evergreen State Faces Condemnation from [T]he Seattle Times and [T]he New York Times“, June 8, 2017]

Lowe links to a piece by Frank Bruni, an unsurprisingly left-wing columnist at The New York Times (“These Campus Inquisitions Must Stop“, June 3, 2017). Bruni opens with a morally relativistic, irrelevant, and sweeping statement:

Racism pervades our country. Students who have roiled college campuses from coast to coast have that exactly right.

Pervades? Perhaps Bruni is thinking of the attitude of blacks toward whites. Most American whites don’t have the time or inclination to be racist; they’re trying to get into universities and get hired and promoted despite the favoritism that’s showered on less-qualified blacks by their condescending, leftist “betters”. Yes, there is a hotbed of racism in the U.S., and it is located in the media, among the professoriate, and in the soul of every collegian of whatever color who sees life through the lens of “racism”.

Bruni, having shored up his left-wing credentials, actually says a few sensible things. After recounting the travails of Professor Weinstein, whose cause is laudable to leftists because Weinstein is a leftist, Bruni turns to

that awful moment … when one of the dozens of students encircling Nicholas Christakis, a professor [at Yale], shrieked at him: “You should not sleep at night! You are disgusting!”

He and his wife, Erika, were masters at one of Yale’s residential colleges, and she had circulated an email in which she raised questions about the university’s caution against any Halloween costumes that might be seen as examples of cultural appropriation or hurtful stereotyping.

“American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience,” she wrote. “Increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition. And the censure and prohibition come from above, not from yourselves! Are we all O.K. with this transfer of power? Have we lost faith in young people’s capacity — in your capacity — to exercise self-censure?”

“Talk to each other,” she added. “Free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society.”

Agree or disagree with her, she was teeing up precisely the kind of contest of ideas that higher education should be devoted to. And she did so, if you read the whole of her email, in a considered, respectful fashion.

No matter: She was pushing back at something — the costume guideline — that was draped in the garb of racial sensitivity. And that made her, ipso facto, an enemy of illumination and agent of hate.

She and her husband were driven from their roles in the residential college, though he still teaches at Yale. He posted several sympathetic tweets last week about Weinstein’s vilification. In one he wrote that his wife “spent her whole career” working with “marginalized populations” and has a “deep, abiding humanity.”

“But still they came for her,” he added.

You would think that the Christakises, having been mugged by reality, would have changed their political stripes. Life is an IQ test, and they failed the mid-term.

Bruni continues:

Like plenty of adults across the political spectrum, they use slurs in lieu of arguments, looking for catharsis rather than constructive engagement. They ratchet up their language to a degree that weakens its currency for direr circumstances. And they undermine their goals — our goals — by pushing away good-hearted allies and handing ammunition to the very people who itch to dismiss them.

Right-wing media have had a field day with Evergreen, but not because they’ve faked a story. No, the story was given to them in ribbons and bows.

That’s the real problem. Bruni is afraid that Evergreen State will be used to discredit “progressivism”. But “progressivism” discredits itself, every day in every way. The riots at Evergreen State and other universities are merely the contemporary equivalent of Stalin’s purges and “show trials“.

Another piece linked to by Lowe is an unsigned editorial in The Seattle Times, “The Evergreen State College: No Safety, No Learning, No Future” (June 5, 2017). Here’s some of it:

The public state college near Olympia has become a national caricature of intolerant campus liberalism in both The New York Times and Fox News. At least one professor has been harangued and classes disrupted by shouting mobs of students accusing the famously progressive campus of “systemic racism.”

That coverage apparently has incited anonymous threats of mass murder, resulting in the campus being closed for three days. In the critical last week of school, students have been deprived of learning by extremes on the left and right.

Caricature? How can reality be a caricature? How did the “extreme” right get into the act? It’s news to me that there were and are rightists of any kind among the thugs who seized control of Evergreen.

Since the corrosive 2016 presidential election, Americans increasingly comprise a nation with citizens sealed in ideological bubbles; college campuses are often the most hermetically sealed of bubbles. When Weinstein, the professor, asked a yelling mob of students if they wanted to hear his answer, they shouted “No!”

Left-wing craziness at universities long predates the 2016 election. This is another transparent (but failed) attempt to spread some of the blame rightward.

Leftists like Bruni and the editorial board of The Seattle Times can’t see the real problem because they’re part of it. They’re like the never-say-die apologists for socialism who protest that “real socialism” has never been tried. What they can’t face up to — despite the failure of the too-long-lived Soviet experiment — is that “real socialism” necessarily leads to suppression and violence. The Soviet Union, Communist China, Castro’s Cuba, and other socialist regimes are real socialism in action, not failed substitutes for it.

Bruni and his ilk, past and present, are responsible for the turmoil at Evergreen and other campuses. Bruni and his ilk — too many parents, most school teachers, most professors of the soft stuff, most pundits, too many politicians — have been spoon-feeding leftism to the young people of this country for more than a century. That is to say, they’ve been spoon-feeding generations of young people an intolerant ideology which prevails only through violence or the clear threat of it. The particulars of the ideology shift with the winds of leftist fashion, but its main catch-words are these:

liberty — to do whatever one feels like doing, and to suppress whatever one doesn’t like
equality — which others will be forced to pay for, à la socialism, and bow to, as in “some are more equal than others”
fraternity — but only with the like-minded of the moment.

Bruni and his ilk seem surprised by the virulence of their intellectual offspring, but they shouldn’t be. Dr. Frankenstein was a mere amateur by comparison with his 20th and 21st century successors, who must be blamed for loosing the monsters — students, faculty, administrators — who are destroying universities. Far worse than that, they and their elders are destroying the institutions of civil society.

Roundup: Civil War, Solitude, Transgenderism, Academic Enemies, and Immigration

Civil War II

Solitude for the Masses

More about the Transgender Fad

The Academic Enemies of Liberty

The High Cost of Untrammeled Immigration

Civil War II

Are Americans really in the midst of Civil War II or a Cold Civil War? It has seemed that way for many years. I have written about it in “A New (Cold) Civil War or Secession?”, “The Culture War“, “Polarization and De-facto Partition“, and “Civil War?“.* Andrew Sullivan, whom I quit following several years ago for reasons that are evident in the following quotation (my irrepressible comments are in boldface and bracketed), has some provocative things to say about the situation:

Certain truths about human beings have never changed. We are tribal creatures in our very DNA; we have an instinctive preference for our own over others, for “in-groups” over “out-groups”; for hunter-gatherers, recognizing strangers as threats was a matter of life and death. We also invent myths and stories to give meaning to our common lives. Among those myths is the nation — stretching from the past into the future, providing meaning to our common lives in a way nothing else can. Strip those narratives away, or transform them too quickly, and humans will become disoriented. Most of us respond to radical changes in our lives, especially changes we haven’t chosen, with more fear than hope. We can numb the pain with legal cannabis or opioids, but it is pain nonetheless.

If we ignore these deeper facts about ourselves, we run the risk of fatal errors. It’s vital to remember that multicultural, multiracial, post-national societies are extremely new for the human species [but they are not “societies”], and keeping them viable and stable is a massive challenge. Globally, social trust is highest in the homogeneous Nordic countries, and in America, Pew has found it higher in rural areas than cities. The political scientist Robert Putnam has found that “people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down,’ that is, to pull in like a turtle.” Not very encouraging about human nature — but something we can’t wish away, either. In fact, the American elite’s dismissal of these truths, its reduction of all resistance to cultural and demographic change as crude “racism” or “xenophobia,” only deepens the sense of siege many other Americans feel….

… Within the space of 50 years, America has gone from segregation to dizzying multiculturalism; … from homosexuality as a sin [or dangerous aberration] to homophobia as a taboo; from Christianity being the common culture to a secularism no society has ever sustained before ours [but mainly within the confines of the internet-media-academic complex, except where they have successfully enlisted government in the task of destroying social norms]….

And how can you seriously regard our political system and culture as worse than ever before in history? How self-centered do you have to be to dismiss the unprecedented freedom for women, racial minorities, and homosexuals? [How self-centered to you have to be to dismiss the fact that much of that “unprecedented freedom” has been bought at the expense of freedom of speech, freedom of association, property rights, and advancement based on merit — things that are at the very heart of liberty?]….

If the neo-reactionaries were entirely right, the collapse of our society would surely have happened long before now [Strawman alert: How does Sullivan know when “society” would have collapsed?]. But somehow, an historically unprecedented mix of races and cultures hasn’t led to civil war in the United States. [Not a shooting war, but a kind of civil war nevertheless.] … America has assimilated so many before, its culture churning into new forms, without crashing into incoherence. [Strawman alert 2: “America”, note being a “society”, doesn’t have a “culture”. But some “cultures” (e.g., welfare-dependency, “hate whitey”, drugs, political correctness) are ascendant, for those with eyes to see.] [“The Reactionary Temptation“, New York, April 30, 2017]

All in all, I would say that Mr. Sullivan protests too much. He protests so much that he confirms my view that America is smack in the middle of a Cold Civil War. (Despite that, and the fatuousness of Mr. Sullivan’s commentary, I am grateful to him for a clear explanation of the political philosophy of Leo Strauss,** the theme of which had heretofore been obscure to me.)

For other, more realistic views of the current state of affairs, see the following (listed in chronological order):

David French, “A Blue State ‘Secession’ Model I Can Get Behind” (National Review, March 19, 2017)

Daniel Greenfield, “The Civil War Is Here” (Frontpage Magazine, March 27, 2017)

Daniel Greenfield, “Winning the Civil War of Two Americas” (Frontpage Magazine, April 4, 2017)

Rick Moran, “War Between U.S. Government and Sanctuary Cities Heating Up” (American Thinker, April 10, 2017)

Angelo M. Codevilla, “The Cold Civil War” (Claremont Review of Books, April 25, 2017)

Solitude for the Masses

Paul Kingsworth reviews Michael Harris’s Solitude in “The End of Solitude: In a Hyperconnected World, Are We Losing the Art of Being Alone?” (New Statesman, April 26, 2017):

Harris has an intuition that being alone with ourselves, paying attention to inner silence and being able to experience outer silence, is an essential part of being human….

What happens when that calm separateness is destroyed by the internet of everything, by big-city living, by the relentless compulsion to be with others, in touch, all the time? Plenty of people know the answer already, or would do if they were paying attention to the question. Nearly half of all Americans, Harris tells us, now sleep with their smartphones on their bedside table, and 80 per cent are on their phone within 15 minutes of waking up. Three-quarters of adults use social networking sites regularly. But this is peanuts compared to the galloping development of the so-called Internet of Things. Within the next few years, anything from 30 to 50 billion objects, from cars to shirts to bottles of shampoo, will be connected to the net. The internet will be all around you, whether you want it or not, and you will be caught in its mesh like a fly. It’s not called the web for nothing….

What is the problem here? Why does this bother me, and why does it bother Harris? The answer is that all of these things intrude upon, and threaten to destroy, something ancient and hard to define, which is also the source of much of our creativity and the essence of our humanity. “Solitude,” Harris writes, “is a resource.” He likens it to an ecological niche, within which grow new ideas, an understanding of the self and therefore an understanding of others.

The book is full of examples of the genius that springs from silent and solitary moments. Beethoven, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Einstein, Newton – all developed their ideas and approach by withdrawing from the crowd….

Yet it is not only geniuses who have a problem: ordinary minds like yours and mine are threatened by the hypersocial nature of always-on urbanity….

So, what is to be done about all this? That’s the multibillion-dollar question, but it is one the book cannot answer. Harris spends many pages putting together a case for the importance of solitude and examining the forces that splinter it today….

Under the circumstances – and these are our circumstances – the only honest conclusion to draw is that the problem, which is caused primarily by the technological direction of our society, is going to get worse. There is no credible scenario in which we can continue in the same direction and not see the problem of solitude, or lack of it, continue to deepen….

… Short of a collapse so severe that the electricity goes off permanently, there is no escape from what the tech corporations and their tame hive mind have planned for us. The circle is closed, and the net is being hauled in. May as well play another round of Candy Crush while we wait to be dragged up on to the deck.

Well, the answer doesn’t lie in the kind of defeatism exemplified by Harris (whose book is evidently full of diagnosis and empty of remedy) or Kingsworth. It’s up to each person to decide whether or not to enlarge his scope of solitude or be defeated by the advance of technology and the breakdown of truly human connections.

But it’s not an all-or-nothing choice. Compromise is obviously necessary when it comes to making a living these days. That still leaves a lot of room for the practice of solitude, the practice and benefits of which I have addressed in “Flow“, “In Praise of Solitude“, “There’s Always Solitude“, and “The Glory of the Human Mind“.

More about the Transgender Fad

Is the transgender fad fading away, or is it just that I’m spending more time in solitude? Anyway, is was reminded of the fad by “Most Children Who Identify As Transgender Are Faking It, Says ‘Gender Clinic’ Psychiatrist” (The College Fix, April 17, 2017). It’s a brief post and the title tells the tale. So I’ll turn to my own post on the subject, “The Transgender Fad and Its Consequences“. Following a preamble and some long quotations from authoritative analysis of transgenderism, I continue with this:

Harm will come not only to those who fall prey to the transgender delusion, but also to those who oppose its inevitable manifestations:

mandatory sex mingling in bathrooms, locker rooms, and dorm rooms — an invitation to predators and a further weakening of the norms of propriety that help to instill respect toward other persons

quotas for hiring self-described transgender persons, and for admitting them to universities, and for putting them in the ranks of police and armed forces, etc.

government-imposed penalties for saying “hateful and discriminatory” things about gender, the purpose of which will be to stifle dissent about the preceding matters

government-imposed penalties for attempts to exercise freedom of association, which is an unenumerated right under the Constitution that, properly understood, includes the right to refuse business from anyone at any time and for any reason (including but far from limited to refusing to serve drug-addled drag queens whose presence will repel other customers)….

How did America get from the pre-Kinsey view of sex as a private matter, kept that way by long-standing social norms, to the let-it-all-hang-out (literally) mentality being pushed by elites in the media, academy, and government?

I attribute much of it to the capitalist paradox. Capitalism — a misnomer for an economic system that relies mainly on free markets and private-property rights — encourages innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. One result is that a “capitalist” economy eventually produces enough output to support large numbers of persons who don’t understand that living off the system and regulating it heavily will bring it down….

The social paradox is analogous to the capitalist paradox. Social relations are enriched and made more productive by the toleration of some new behaviors. But to ensure that a new behavior is enriching and productive, it must be tested in the acid of use.* Shortcuts — activism cloaked in academese, punditry, and political posturing — lead to the breakdown of the processes by which behaviors become accepted because they are enriching and productive.

In sum, the capitalist paradox breeds the very people who are responsible for the social paradox: those who are rich enough to be insulated from the vicissitudes of daily life, where living among and conversing with similar folk reinforces a distorted view of the real world.

It is the cossetted beneficiaries of capitalism who lead the way in forcing Americans to accept as “natural” and “of right” behavior that in saner times was rarely engaged in and even more rarely flaunted. That restraint wasn’t just a matter of prudery. It was a matter of two things: respect for others, and the preservation of norms that foster restraint.

How quaint. Avoiding offense to others, and teaching one’s children that normal behavior helps them to gain the acceptance and trust of others. Underlying those understood motivations was a deeper one: Children are susceptible creatures, easily gulled and led astray — led into making mistakes that will haunt them all their lives. There was, in those days, an understanding that “one thing leads to another.”…

… If the Kennedy Court of Social Upheaval continues to hold sway, its next “logical” steps will be to declare the illegality of sexual identifiers and the prima facie qualification of any person for any job regardless of “its” mental and physical fitness for the job….

… [T[he parents of yesteryear didn’t have to worry about the transgender fad, but they did have to worry about drinking, drug-taking, and sex. Not everyone who “experimented” with those things went on to live a life of dissolution, shame, and regret. But many did. And so, too, will the many young children, adolescents, and young adults who succumb to the fad of transgenderism….

When did it all begin to go wrong? See “1963: The Year Zero.”

Thank you for working your way through this very long quotation from my own blog. But it just has to be said again and again: Transgenderism is a fad, a destructive fad, and a fad that is being used by the enemies of liberty to destroy what little of it is left in America.

The Academic Enemies of Liberty

Kurt Schlichter quite rightly says that “Academia Is Our Enemy So We Should Help It Commit Suicide“:

If Animal House were to be rebooted today, Bluto – who would probably be updated into a differently–abled trans being of heft – might ask, “See if you can guess what am I now?” before expelling a whole mass of pus-like root vegetable on the WASPrivileged villains and announcing, “I’m a university – get it?”

At least popping a zit gets rid of the infection and promotes healing. But today, the higher education racket festers on the rear end of our culture, a painful, useless carbuncle of intellectual fraud, moral bankruptcy, and pernicious liberal fascism that impoverishes the young while it subsidizes a bunch of old pinkos who can’t hack it at Real World U….

If traditional colleges performed some meaningful function that only they could perform, then there might be a rationale for them in the 21^st Century. But there’s not. What do four-year colleges do today?

Well, they cater to weenies who feel “unsafe” that Mike Pence is speaking to their graduates. Seventy-some years ago, young people that age were feeling unsafe because the Wehrmacht was trying to kill them on Omaha Beach….

And in their quest to ensure their students’ perpetual unemployment, colleges are now teaching that punctuality is a social construct. Somewhere, a Starbucks manager is going to hear from Kaden the Barista that, “I like, totally couldn’t get here for my shift on time because, like intersectionality of my experience as a person of Scandinavianism and stuff. I feel unsafe because of your racist vikingaphobia and tardiness-shaming.”

Academia is pricing itself out of reach even as the antics of its inhabitants annoy and provoke those of us whose taxes already pick up a big chunk of the bill even without the “free college” okie-doke….

The quarter million dollar academic vacation model is economically unsustainable and poisonous to our culture. The world of Animal House was a lot more fun when it didn’t mean preemptive bankruptcy for its graduates and the fostering of a tyrannical training ground for future libfascists. It’s time to get all Bluto on the obsolete boil that is academia; time to give it a squeeze. [Townhall, April 13, 2017]

Cue my post, “Subsidizing the Enemies of Liberty“:

If there is a professional class that is almost solidly aligned against liberty it is the teachers and administrators who control the ideas that are pumped into the minds of students from kindergarten through graduate school. How are they aligned against liberty? Most of them are leftists, which means that they are statists who are dedicated to the suppression of liberty in favor of current left-wing orthodoxies. These almost always include the coddling of criminals, unrequited love for America’s enemies, redistribution of income and jobs toward less-productive (and non-productive) persons, restrictions on speech, and the destruction of civil society’s bulwarks: religion, marriage, and family.

In any event, spending on education in the United States amounted to $1.1 trillion in 2010, about 8 percent of GDP. Most of that $1.1 trillion — $900 billion, in fact — was spent on public elementary and secondary schools and public colleges and universities. In other words, your tax dollars support the leftists who teach your children and grandchildren to bow at the altar of the state, to placate the enemies of liberty at home and abroad, and to tear down the traditions that have bound people in mutual trust and respect….

And what do tax-paying Americans get for their money? A strong left-wing bias, which is inculcated at universities and spreads throughout public schools (and a lot of private schools). This has been going on, in earnest, since the end of World War II. And, yet, the populace is roughly divided between hard-headed conservatives and squishy-minded “liberals.” The persistence of the divide speaks well for the dominance of nature over nurture. But it does not change the fact that American taxpayers have been subsidizing the enemies of liberty who dominate the so-called education system in this country.

See also “Academic Bias“, “Politics, Sophistry, and the Academy“, “Academic Ignorance“, and John C. Goodman’s “Brownshirts, Subsidized with Your Tax Dollars” (Townhall, May 20, 2017).

The High Cost of Untrammeled Immigration

The third entry in “Not-So-Random Thoughts (XVIII)” is about illegal immigration. It opens with this:

Ten years ago, I posted “An Immigration Roundup”, a collection of 13 posts dated March 29 through September 22, 2006. The bottom line: to encourage and allow rampant illegal immigration borders on social and economic suicide. I remain a hardliner because of the higher crime rate among Hispanics (“Immigration and Crime“), and because of Steven Camarota’s “So What Is the Fiscal and Economic Impact of Immigration?“ [National Review, September 22, 2016].

I suggest that you go to Camarota’s article, which I quote at length, to see the evidence that he has compiled. For more facts — as opposed to leftish magical thinking about immigration — see also “Welfare: Who’s on It, Who’s Not” (Truth Is Justice, April 16, 2017), which draws on

a report called “Welfare Use by Immigrant and Native Households.” The report’s principle finding is that fully 51 percent of immigrant households receive some form of welfare, compared to an already worrisomely high 30 percent of American native households. The study is based on the most accurate data available, the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). It also reports stark racial differences in the use of welfare programs.

I’ll throw in some excerpts:

Needless to say, the percentage of immigrants using some form of welfare varies enormously according to the part of the world from which they come. Rates are highest for households from Central America and Mexico (73 percent), the Caribbean (51 percent), and Africa (48 percent). Those from East Asia (32 percent), Europe (26 percent), and South Asia (17 percent) have the lowest rates….

A majority of native black and Hispanic households are on some form of means-tested welfare, compared to just 23 percent of native white households….

A striking 82 percent of black households with children receive welfare–double the white rate. Hispanic families are not far behind blacks….

Among natives, blacks receive cash handouts at more than three times the white rate; Hispanics at more than twice the white rate. Rates for black and Hispanic immigrants are relatively lower due to often-ignored restrictions on immigrant use of these programs….

Among all households, native blacks and Hispanics receive food handouts at three times the white rate; for Hispanic immigrants, the figure is four times the white rate. Among households with children, nearly all immigrant Hispanics–86 percent–get food aid. Native blacks and Hispanics aren’t far behind, with rates of 75 and 72 percent, respectively.

The takeaway: Tax-paying citizens already heavily subsidize native-born blacks and Hispanics. Adding welfare-dependent immigrants — especially from south of the border — adds injury to injury.

As long as the welfare state exists, immigration should be tightly controlled so that the United States admits only those persons (with their families) who have verifiable offers of employment from employers in the United States. Further, an immigrant’s income should be high enough to ensure that (a) he is unlikely to become dependent on any welfare program (federal, State, or local) and (b) he is likely to pay at least as much in taxes as he is likely to absorb in the way of schooling for his children, Social Security and Medicare benefits, etc.

(See also: Bob le Flambeur, “Against Open Borders“, Rightly Considered, February 8, 2017.)

* Sharp-eyed readers will notice that with this post I am adopting a “new” way of using quotation marks. The American convention is to enclose commas and periods within quotation marks, even where the commas and periods are not part of the quoted text or other material that belongs inside quotation marks (e.g., the title of a post). The American convention creates some ambiguity and awkwardness that is avoided by the British convention, which is to enclose inside quotation marks only that punctuation which is part of the quoted text or other material.

** This is from the article by Sullivan cited in the first section of this post:

[Leo] Strauss’s idiosyncratic genius defies easy characterization, but you could argue, as Mark Lilla did in his recent book The Shipwrecked Mind, that he was a reactionary in one specific sense: A Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, Strauss viewed modernity as collapsing into nihilism and relativism and barbarism all around him. His response was to go back to the distant past — to the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Maimonides, among others — to see where the West went wrong, and how we could avoid the horrific crimes of the 20th century in the future.

One answer was America, where Strauss eventually found his home at the University of Chicago. Some of his disciples — in particular, the late professor Harry Jaffa — saw the American Declaration of Independence, with its assertion of the self-evident truth of the equality of human beings, as a civilizational high point in human self-understanding and political achievement. They believed it revived the ancient Greek and Roman conception of natural law. Yes, they saw the paradox of a testament to human freedom having been built on its opposite — slavery — but once the post–Civil War constitutional amendments were ratified, they believed that the American constitutional order was effectively set forever, and that the limited government that existed in the late-19th and early-20th centuries required no fundamental change.

Freedom of Speech and the Long War for Constitutional Governance

Freedom of speech is at the heart of the war between the friends and enemies of liberty. The Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech is misunderstood. The social order that underlies liberty has been undermined by the Supreme Court’s free-speech absolutism. At the same time, the kind of speech that should be protected by the First Amendment is increasingly suppressed by the enemies of liberty, who will find succor in Justice Kennedy’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.

The restoration of freedom of speech, properly understood, will take a long time and determined action by conservatives. It will require a counter-revolution against the insidious, decades-long spread of leftist doctrines by “educators” and the media.

THE SLIPPERY SLOPE AWAY FROM REASONED DISSENT

Bill Vallicella (Maverick Philosopher) characteristically asks a tough question, and answers it:

Ought flag burning come under the rubric of protected speech? Logically prior question: Is it speech at all? What if I make some such rude gesture in your face as ‘giving you the finger.’ Is that speech? If it is, I would like to know what proposition it expresses. ‘Fuck you!’ does not express a proposition. Likewise for the corresponding gesture with the middle finger. And if some punk burns a flag, I would like to know what proposition the punk is expressing.

The Founders were interested in protecting reasoned dissent, but the typical act of flag burning by the typical leftist punk does not rise to that level. To have reasoned or even unreasoned dissent there has to be some proposition that one is dissenting from and some counter-proposition that one is advancing, and one’s performance has to make more or less clear what those propositions are. I think one ought to be skeptical of arguments that try to subsume gestures and physical actions under speech.

The only reasonable objection to Vallicella’s position is that a government which can outlaw flag-burning or finger-flipping can outlaw any form of expression. The objection is a slippery-slope argument: allow X (suppression of certain forms of expression) and Y (suppression of any kind of expression, at the whim of government) is sure to follow.

What has happened, in fact, is the opposite: Forms of expression (i.e., speech and symbolic acts) that had been outlawed have been made legal by the U.S. Supreme Court. Examples are the showing of films that the authorities of a State considered obscene, the utterance or publication of statements advocating the overthrow of government, and flag-burning. The Court has developed something like an absolute position regarding freedom of speech — or, more accurately, freedom of expression.

For example, only where advocacy of and organization for an overthrow of government is deemed to be a “clear and present danger” can such advocacy or organization be curbed. Which is somewhat like waiting to shoot at an enemy armed with a long-range rifle until you are able to see the whites of his eyes. Or, perhaps more aptly in the 21st century, waiting until a terrorist strikes before acting against him. Which is too late, of course, and impossible in the usual case of suicide-cum-terror.

And therein lies the dangerous folly of free-speech absolutism. A general and compelling case against the current reign of absolutism is made by David Lowenthal in No Liberty for License: The Forgotten Logic of the First Amendment. Lowenthal’s case is summarized in Edward J. Erler’s review of the book (“The First Amendment and the Theology of Republican Government,” Interpretation, Spring 2000):

The thesis of David Lowenthal’s [book] is as bold as it is simple: “the First Amendment, intended as a bulwark of the republic, has become a prime agent of its destruction” (p. xiv). Lowenthal rightly argues that the First Amendment was adopted for a political purpose; it sought to protect only those liberties necessary for the preservation of republican government. Today, however, the focus of the First Amendment is on “individual rights” rather than the common good, at it is this “over-expansion of individual liberty” that Lowenthal believes has led to the vast decline of the “moral and political health of the republic,” a decline that undermines the very foundations of liberty itself. Indeed, the Supreme Court has “made individual freedom its god — at the expense of the moral, social, and political needs of ordered society” (p. xiv).

Lowenthal argues that this corruption in First Amendment jurisprudence was caused by the deliberate departure from the intentions of its framers: “the great impetus for movement in the direction of extreme liberty came not from within the system but from new philosophies and theories, mostly imported from abroad…. The main culprit here, according to Lowenthal, is John Stuart Mill who, in the hands of Justices Holmes and Brandeis, became the intellectual guide for a “second, hidden founding” (pp. 54, 45, 248, 250, 253, 267, 273). It was Mill who “supplied a new theoretical foundation for liberty, calling for its vast expansion in the name of freedom of thought,” and by the middle of the twentieth century, those forces set in motion by modernity, “relativism and subjectivism,” had become the dominant mode of thought informing constitutional interpretation (p. 267). Mill and his epigones replaced the founders as the source for understanding the Constitution.

The efforts of Holmes and Brandeis, of course, were part of the larger Progressive movement. The explicit goal of Progressivism was to free the Constitution from its moorings of the founding, most particularly from the “static” doctrines of the Declaration of Independence and its reliance on the permanent truths of the “laws of nature and nature’s God.” Progressivism itself was only one strain of modernity, but it shared with the other strains the depreciation of both reason and revelation as sources of moral and political authority. Progressivism was phenomenally successful in it debunking of the founding and its reformist zeal appealed wholly to the passions. It sought to liberate the passions from the constraints of morality, whereas the founders appealed to the “reason … of the public” (The Federalist, No. 49 [Rossiter, ed.] p. 317) as the foundation of moral and political order. The appeal to reason will always be more difficult than the appeal to passion, especially when the appeal to passion has itself assumed a kind of “moral” authority. It should not be surprising therefore that the success of the “Holmes-Brandeis school of jurisprudence,” in Lowenthal’s estimation, “is wholly out of keeping with its intrinsic merits” (p. 61).

Progressivism was a wholly alien doctrine; it derived not from any thought of the founding, but from Continental thought, principally of Hegel. The result was moral relativism verging on nihilism. But Lowenthal rightly questions “whether any alien doctrines, any doctrines other than those of the founders and framers, written into the language of the Constitution, should be so employed” (p. 54). Lowenthal supports original intent jurisprudence because the ideas of the framers and founders “remain constitutionally, politically, and morally superior to those that have displaced them” (p. xxii). Lowenthal does not minimize the difficulty of restoring the founding to its rightful place; he believe the republic is in grave danger and the danger is more than abundantly evident in the current understanding of the First Amendment. Lowenthal’s account is not that of a mere intellectual; it is written with a verve, moral passion, and deep understanding that is almost unknown among intellectuals.

The First Amendment, in the hands of the Supreme Court, has become inimical to the civil and state institutions that enable liberty. The Court has been so busy protecting the right of the media to subvert the national defense, that it hasn’t spared the time to extend its free-speech absolutism by striking down speech codes at taxpayer-funded universities. That’s perverse because, among many things, speech codes are intended to suppress the very kind of political dissent that the First Amendment was meant to protect. It isn’t protected because it’s conservative dissent from “liberal” orthodoxy.

ENTER THE AMORPHOUS HARM PRINCIPLE

One aspect of that orthodoxy, which Lowenthal addresses, is John Stuart Mill’s harm principle:

[T]he sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. [John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1869), Chapter I, paragraph 9.]

This is empty rhetoric. Theodore Dalrymple exposes its emptiness in “The Simple Truth about J.S. Mill’s Simple Truth” (Library of Law and Liberty, July 20, 2015). Dalrymple writes about the legalization of drugs, but his indictment of the harm principle is general:

I can do as I please, and take what I like, so long as I harm no others.

One can easily sympathize with this attempt to delimit the relations between the individual and the state or other powerful authorities. Every government today is in practice vastly more oppressive than that of George III in the American colonies. Which of us does not feel an increasing weight on him of regulation, prohibition, and compulsion from on high—most of it nowadays supposedly for our own good—to help us lead a better or a longer life whether we want it or not? How are we to hold back the flood of official intrusion into our lives without a principle to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate intrusion?…

The objections to the Millian premise of the call to drug legalization are well-known. Man is a social as well as a political animal, and except for the very few who live in genuine isolation, almost all that we do affects someone else….

We may, indeed we ought to, have a bias or presumption in favor of individual liberty, and we should also have a lively appreciation of the fact that interference with liberty to prevent harm to others may actually cause more harm than it prevents. Moreover, because liberty is a good in itself, loss of liberty is a harm in itself, always to be taken into account.

None of this means that there is a very clear principle that can lay down in advance the limits of liberty, such as Mill wants (and the would-be legalizers of drugs rely upon)….

The libertarian position with regard to drugs would be more convincing if the costs of the choices of those who took them could be brought home to them alone. We know that, in practice, they are shared….

In short, there is no “very simple principle” of the kind that Mill enunciated, with an eloquence that disguised a certain hollowness, that establishes as inherently wrong the forbidding of citizens to take whatever drugs they like. By the same token, there is no very simple principle that will determine which drugs should be permitted and which banned.

If it is right to begin permitting the consumption of a heretofore banned drug, it must, therefore, be on other grounds than that “the sole end for which mankind are warranted individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection.” As Einstein said, a theory should be as simple as possible, but not simpler than possible.

(See also: “Toleration Extremism: Notes on John Stuart Mill“, Maverick Philosopher, January 14, 2015.)

THE SUBVERSION OF SOCIAL NORMS IS THE SUBVERSION OF LIBERTY

Marriage is a union of one man and one woman. Nothing else is marriage, despite legislative, executive, and judicial decrees that substitute brute force for the wisdom of the ages.

Drugs are taken for the treatment of actual illnesses, not for recreational purposes.

Welfare is a gift that one accepts as a last resort, it is not a right or an entitlement, and it is not bestowed on persons with convenient disabilities.

Sexism (though it isn’t called that) is nothing more than the understanding — shared by men and women — that women are members of a different sex (the only different one); are usually weaker than men; are endowed with different brain chemistry and physical skills than men (still a fact); and enjoy discreet admiration (flirting) if they’re passably good-looking, or better. Women who reject those propositions — and who try to enforce modes of behavior that assume differently — are embittered and twisted.

Privacy is a constrained right. It doesn’t trump moral obligations, among which are the obligations to refrain from spreading a deadly disease and to preserve innocent life.

Addiction isn’t a disease; it’s a surmountable failing.

Justice is for victims. Victims are persons to whom actual harm has been done by way of fraud, theft, bodily harm, murder, and suchlike. A person with a serious disease or handicap isn’t a victim, nor is a person with a drinking or drug problem.

Peace is the result of preparedness for war; lack of preparedness invites war.

But by pecking away at social norms that underlie mutual trust and respect, “liberals” have sundered the fabric of civilization. There is among Americans the greatest degree of mutual enmity (dressed up as political polarization) since the Civil War.

The mutual enmity isn’t just political. It’s also racial, and it shows up as crime. Heather Mac Donald says “Yes, the Ferguson Effect Is Real,” and Paul Mirengoff shows that “Violent Crime Jumped in 2015.” I got to the root of the problem in “Crime Revisited,” to which I’ve added “Amen to That” and “Double Amen.” What is the root of the problem? A certain, violence-prone racial minority, of course, and also under-incarceration (see “Crime Revisited”).

The Ferguson Effect is a good example of where the slippery slope of free-speech absolutism leads. More examples are found in the violent protests in the wake of Donald Trump’s electoral victory. The right “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” has become the right to assemble a mob, disrupt the lives of others, destroy the property of others, injure and kill others, and (usually) suffer no consequences for doing so — if you are a leftist or a member of one of the groups patronized by the left, that is.

THE REVERSE SLIPPERY-SLOPE

Justice Kennedy’s egregious majority opinion in Obergefell v.Hodges lays the groundwork for more suppression. This is from Chief Justice Roberts’s dissent (references omitted):

Respect for sincere religious conviction has led voters and legislators in every State that has adopted same-sex marriage democratically to include accommodations for religious practice. The majority’s decision imposing same-sex marriage cannot, of course, create any such accommodations. The majority graciously suggests that religious believers may continue to “advocate” and “teach” their views of marriage. The First Amendment guarantees, however, the freedom to “exercise” religion.Ominously, that is not a word the majority uses.

Hard questions arise when people of faith exercise religion in ways that may be seen to conflict with the new right to same-sex marriage—when, for example, a religious college provides married student housing only to opposite-sex married couples, or a religious adoption agency declines to place children with same-sex married couples. Indeed, the Solicitor General candidly acknowledged that the tax exemptions of some religious institutions would be in question if they opposed same-sex marriage. There is little doubt that these and similar questions will soon be before this Court. Unfortunately, people of faith can take no comfort in the treatment they receive from the majority today.

Perhaps the most discouraging aspect of today’s decision is the extent to which the majority feels compelled to sully those on the other side of the debate. The majority offers a cursory assurance that it does not intend to disparage people who, as a matter of conscience, cannot accept same-sex marriage. That disclaimer is hard to square with the very next sentence, in which the majority explains that “the necessary consequence” of laws codifying the traditional definition of marriage is to “demea[n]or stigmatiz[e]” same-sex couples. The majority reiterates such characterizations over and over. By the majority’s account, Americans who did nothing more than follow the understanding of marriage that has existed for our entire history—in particular, the tens of millions of people who voted to reaffirm their States’ enduring definition of marriage—have acted to “lock . . . out,” “disparage,”“disrespect and subordinate,” and inflict “[d]ignitary wounds” upon their gay and lesbian neighbors. These apparent assaults on the character of fairminded people will have an effect, in society and in court. Moreover, they are entirely gratuitous. It is one thing for the majority to conclude that the Constitution protects a right to same-sex marriage; it is something else to portray everyone who does not share the majority’s “better informed understanding” as bigoted.

Justice Alito, in his dissent, foresees that the majority opinion

will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy. In the course of its opinion,the majority compares traditional marriage laws to laws that denied equal treatment for African-Americans and women. The implications of this analogy will be exploited by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent.

Perhaps recognizing how its reasoning may be used, the majority attempts, toward the end of its opinion, to reassure those who oppose same-sex marriage that their rights of conscience will be protected. We will soon see whether this proves to be true. I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools.

I expect Roberts and Alito to be proved right unless the election of Donald Trump soon results in a conservative majority on the Court, that is, the replacement of Kennedy or one of his allies in Obergefell v. Hodges.

A WAR BY ANY OTHER NAME

What I have just described is a key component of the left’s continuing and relentless effort to reshape the world to its liking. Leftists don’t care about the licentious consequences of free-speech absolutism because they’re insulated from those consequences (or so they believe). Their motto should be “I’m all right, Jack.”

But leftists do care about making government big and all-powerful, so that it can enact the programs and policies they favor. To that end, leftists seek to suppress political dissent and to subvert voluntary cooperative behavior, which is found not only in evolved social norms but also in free markets. The people must be brought to heel at the command of big brother, who knows best.

It is war, in other words, and more than a culture war. It’s a war between the enemies of liberty and those who want liberty, not license. The problem is that too many of those who want liberty don’t know that there is a war. For one thing, those who want liberty aren’t necessarily self-described libertarians; rather, they’re traditional conservatives (Burkean libertarians) who, by nature, are attuned to beneficial cooperation, not ideological conflict. For another thing, many of those who want liberty have been brainwashed into believing that leftists also want liberty but are misguided about how to attain it.

It may be too late to pull victory from the jaws of defeat. But while there is still freedom to challenge the enemies of liberty there is still hope for the restoration of constitutional governance.

I would return to first principles. The United States was reconstituted in 1788 when the Constitution was ratified. As stated in the preamble to the Constitution, one of the purposes for reconstituting the nation was to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Why, then, should the government of the United States tolerate the promulgation of anti-libertarian views? It is evident that in practice the free-speech slippery slope really leads away from liberty not toward it. I’m referring not just to riotous, licentious behavior that flouts civilizing norms and undermines them. I’m also referring to something much deeper and more subversive than that: the toleration of speech that has turned the Constitution on its head by converting the central government from a miserly, non-interfering night watchman to a partisan, micro-managing nanny with deep pockets into which almost everyone is allowed to dip.

This means, at a minimum, and end to free-speech absolutism, which has become a license for two-percent tyranny and the destruction of civilizing social norms. It also means taking a hard line with respect to advocates of big, intrusive government. It will be a cold day in hell before there is a president and a Congress and a Supreme Court who consistently and concertedly take a hard line — and carry it into action. Donald Trump is preferable to Hillary Clinton, but he is a far cry from Ronald Reagan, let alone Calvin Coolidge (my favorite president). The Republican majorities in Congress are infested with special pleaders who will log-roll until the cows come home. The Supreme Court will continue to be the Kennedy Court until Trump is able to replace Kennedy or one of the leftists with whom he allies increasingly often — assuming that Trump will stay true to his word about the conservative character of his nominees.

In sum, there’s no prospect of quick or certain victory in the war to restore constitutional governance to Washington and liberty to the land.

THE LONG WAR AHEAD

Conservatives must be prepared for and committed to a long war, with the aim of changing the character of the institutions that — in addition to family — hold the most sway over the minds of future leaders and the voters who will select those leaders: public schools, universities, and the media.

The long war will be a war to transform fundamentally the prevailing ethos of a nation that has sunk gradually into decadence and despotism. (Barack Obama’s “fundamental transformation” was nothing more than the proverbial frosting on the proverbial cake.) How does one even begin to wage such a war?

I would begin by following a key maxim of war-fighting: concentration of force. Roll up one enemy unit at a time instead of attacking on a broad front. As each enemy unit falls, the rest become relatively weaker by having fewer friendly units to call on for support.

Imagine, for example, a conservative takeover of several major universities,* which might be abetted by a concentrated campaign by conservative trustees with the support of friendly forces within the universities, and a few sympathetic media outlets, all backed by a loud and sustained chorus of supportive reporting, commentary, and outright propaganda emanating from the blogosphere. University administrators, as we have seen, are especially sensitive to changes in the prevailing direction of opinion, especially if that opinion is fomented within universities. Thus, if one major university were to move sharply in a conservative direction, it would take less effort to move a second one, even less effort to move a third one, and so on.

With universities falling into line, it would be a fairly simple task to remake the face of public education. It is universities, after all, which are mainly responsible for the left-wing indoctrination that most public-school teachers and administrators have been spreading throughout most of the land for many decades. It wouldn’t take a generation for the new, conservative disposition to spread. It would spread almost like wildfire for the same reasons that it would spread rapidly among universities: the desire to be “on the right side of history,” no matter what side it is. It would become more or less permanent, however, as new waves of students leave the universities that have converted to conservatism and begin to spread its gospel in public schools.

The conversion of the media would proceed in parallel with the conversion of public schools. It would be a self-inflicted conversion, born of the desire to please an audience that is becoming more and more conservative. The act of pleasing that audience would, in turn, result in the dissemination of stories with a conservative slant, which would help to speed the conversion of the as-yet unconverted members of the audience.

As for how to arrange a conservative takeover of a major university, I would begin with those few that have shown themselves ripe for conversion. Perhaps it’s one of the 27 universities that is a rated a “green-light institution” by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). The University of Chicago is a recent and prominent addition to that list.

Wherever the campaign begins, it should begin with a university whose trustees, sources of income, faculty, and current ideological balance make it ready to be pushed into the ranks of conservative institutions. Perhaps it would be a matter of electing a few more conservative trustees, with the help of a major donation from a conservative source. Perhaps a key department could be moved to the conservative side of the ledger by the hiring of a few faculty members. Perhaps the university needs only a slight push to become a leader in the refutation of speech codes, “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings,” and in the open embrace of conservative speakers and movements.

The devil is in the details, and I’m not conversant enough with the state of any university to suggest how or where to begin the campaign. But begin it must — and soon, before it’s too late to reverse the incoming tide of leftist regimentation of all aspects of our lives.
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* A takeover is better than a startup. A takeover not only means that there’s one less “enemy” to fight, but it also means that some “enemy” forces have been converted to friendly ones, which sets a precedent for more takeovers. Fox News Channel is a case in point. Its creation didn’t reduce the number of left-wing outlets. And the growth of FNC’s market share at the expense of left-wing outlets (mainly CNN) merely tapped into a ready market for a somewhat conservative outlet; it didn’t create that market. Further, FNC isn’t “serious” in the way that a university is, and so its slant is more easily dismissed as propaganda than would be the emanations from a major university.

Revisiting the “Marketplace” of Ideas

In “The ‘Marketplace’ of Ideas” I observe that

[u]nlike true markets, where competition usually eliminates sellers whose products and services are found wanting, the competition of ideas often leads to the broad acceptance of superstitions, crackpot notions, and plausible but mistaken theories. These often find their way into government policy, where they are imposed on citizens and taxpayers for the psychic benefit of politicians and bureaucrats and the monetary benefit of their cronies.

The “marketplace” of ideas is replete with vendors who are crackpots, charlatans, and petty tyrants. They run rampant in the media, academia, and government.

Caveat emptor.

Theodore Dalrymple reminds us just how easily crackpot ideas gain wide acceptance:

Rather against my better judgment, and that of my wife, I allowed myself to be persuaded to take part recently in a debate, or public conversation, about prostitution….

The two women on the panel with me took different views of the matter, though both were somewhat opposed to me. The question supposedly before us was, fortunately, soon forgotten. The first of the women was a representative of a prostitutes’ organised pressure group, and herself a prostitute, and the second a sociologist….

The spokeswoman for the prostitutes of England … believed that prostitution was an evil brought about by the current economic dispensation. Women, many of them single mothers, had no choice but to prostitute themselves. They could earn much more by prostitution than in respectable jobs; increasing poverty and desperation drove them to it.

I asked her whether she was saying that all women in a certain situation were prostitutes, having no choice in the matter: in which case there would surely be millions more than there are?…

She replied that in an ideal world there would be no prostitution, but that so long as many people had to do jobs at low pay in occupations that they detested, prostitution was a reasonable choice. (The fact that prostitution in her opinion was undesirable suggested that she did not agree with the sociologist that it was a job like any other, that there was something intrinsically wrong or degrading about it.)

What she was really asking for, then, was a world in which everyone did a job, other than for reasons of pay, that he or she found agreeable and conformable to their wishes. This was a kind of Marxist Utopia, as expressed in The German Ideology [by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels], in which

nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

I said that what the prostitute wanted, in effect, was the abolition of both the division of labour and the labour market. To my surprise, a portion of the audience, far from taking this as absurd, was extremely enthusiastic about it. They wanted (at least in theory) the abolition of the division of labour and the labour market. Furthermore, as members of the bourgeoisie themselves, in its intellectual branch, they benefited from precisely what they wanted to abolish.

This suggested to me what in fact I had long suspected, namely that victories in the field of social, economic and philosophical thought are never final, but that the battles have to be fought over and over again, no matter what experiences Mankind has gone through in the meantime.

And so it is that ideas which are not only preposterous but also anti-libertarian take root and destroy liberty. As I have said:

Liberty is lost when the law allows “freedom of speech, and of the press” to undermine the civil and state institutions that enable liberty.

Free Speech Ends at the Northern Border

But you already knew that if you’ve followed the travails of Ezra Levant, and Mark Steyn, who fought Canada’s “hate speech” laws with some degree of success — but not complete success, it seems:

A business professor at a college in Canada has lost his job after posting a vehemently antigay message on Facebook.

Rick Coupland, a professor at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Ont., last week shared a report from a Florida TV station about the raising of LGBT flags in St. Petersburg for Pride Month. He added this comment: “It’s the queers they should be hanging, not the flag.”

After college administrators received complaints, they began investigating the matter, and today on the school’s Facebook page, they announced, “Mr. Coupland is no longer an employee at St. Lawrence College.” An earlier post had noted that his comment was “not a reflection of our college values.”

St. Lawrence College is funded by the Province of Ontario, and therefore a government institution. In the United States, St. Lawrence College would be bound by the First Amendment, and Coupland’s remarks would be protected speech.

When I learned of the politically correct lynching of Coupland at a blog that I follow, I posted this comment:

I thought that only a humor-challenged leftist would consider a remark like Coupland’s as an actual death wish, which — even if it were — wouldn’t constitute an actual threat. I take Coupland’s remark as nothing more than a commentary about the extent to which “celebration” of gayness has gone over the top. If he actually hates gays, they’re free to return the favor on Facebook or any other forum of their choosing.

This led to the following exchanges between a reader of the French-Canadian persuasion (hereinafter “Pepsi“) and me (hereinafter “Moi’):

Pepsi — He is very clearly advocating genocide, and as such it is a crime under section 318 of the Criminal Code of Canada. I wouldn’t even try spinning such a perfectly clear statement into something innocuous. He was duly fired.

Moi — As I said, humor-challenged.

Pepsi — Don’t be ridiculous. What he said was crystal-clear and requires no exegesis…. The professor most clearly did not have the right to say this under Canadian law. He will be lucky to escape without a criminal complaint. He has lost his job, so I assume most will consider the matter closed.

Moi — Luckily, I don’t live in Canada.

Pepsi — Or practically anywhere else in the Western world. But you could enjoy the freedom to hate anyone you want in private. As one of my ex-FB friends from the USA said when discussing a similar issue, “I love my hate.” Too bad for those who would hope for the freedom to live without being publicly targeted by hatred; it just does not count for freedom on your side of the border.[*]

Moi — Ah, the reflexive application of the “h” word to those who disagree with you. I don’t hate homosexuals or anyone else, unless they’re actively trying to deprive me of life, liberty, or property. You’re jumping to another unwarranted conclusion, just as you were when you assume — I repeat, assume — that Coupland was actually advocating genocide. Unless you have information about Coupland that I lack, I venture to say that you don’t know whether he was advocating genocide, expressing his disdain for homosexuals, or expressing his weariness with the subject of homosexuality. On the evidence of your comments, I gather that you would take “va te faire foutre”[**] literally, though no one who says it means it literally.

End of discussion.

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* This incomprehensible statement leads me to believe that “Pepsi” is either mentally retarded or has a poor command of English — though both could be true.

** The French version of a rather rude expression that is often used by speakers of American English. You can quickly find its meaning by using your favorite internet search engine.

* * *

Related reading [added 07/24/15]: Mark Steyn, “Is the Alberta ‘Law’ Society Even Crazier than the Crazy ‘Human Rights’ Commission?,” SteynOnline, July 24, 2015

* * *

The Tenor of the Times

Below are some links that I’ve collected about the culture war, political correctness, political hypocrisy, and other disturbing features of the contemporary scene. I don’t agree with everything said by the writers, but I believe that they are broadly right about the madness into which America seems to be rapidly descending.

Each link is followed by an excerpt of the piece that is linked. The excerpt — usually but not always the lede — is meant to entice you to follow the link. I urge you to do so.

* * *

Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky, “Author Retracts Study of Changing Minds on Same-Sex Marriage after Colleague Admits Data Were Faked,” Retraction Watch, May 20, 2015 (et seq.):

In what can only be described as a remarkable and swift series of events, one of the authors of a much-ballyhooed Science paper claiming that short conversations could change people’s minds on same-sex marriage is retracting it following revelations that the data were faked by his co-author. [Leftists love to fake data to make political points (e.g., economics and climate studies). — TEA]

Jason Morgan, “Dissolving America,” American Thinker, June 29, 2015

The instant media consensus is in: the Confederate flag atop the South Carolina statehouse has got to go. The battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, we are told, just doesn’t represent who we are as a nation anymore.

But if we are going to take the Confederate flag down because it no longer represents us, then there is no reason why we shouldn’t take the American flag down, too. Not just from the government buildings in South Carolina, but from every home, ship, office, and church throughout the entire American territory. Because neither flag has anything to do with who we are anymore. Old Glory is now just as much a meaningless relic as the republic that created it — as obsolete as the Stars and Bars became in April of 1865.

Bill Vallicella, “SCOTUS and Benedict,” Maverick Philosopher, June 30, 2015:

[Quoting Rod Dreher]:

It is time for what I call the Benedict Option. In his 1982 book After Virtue, the eminent philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre likened the current age to the fall of ancient Rome. He pointed to Benedict of Nursia, a pious young Christian who left the chaos of Rome to go to the woods to pray, as an example for us. We who want to live by the traditional virtues, MacIntyre said, have to pioneer new ways of doing so in community. We await, he said “a new — and doubtless very different — St. Benedict.”

So now you are out in the desert or the forest or in some isolated place free of the toxic influences of a society in collapse. The problem is that you are now a very easy target for the fascists. You and yours are all in one place, far away from the rest of society and its infrastructure. All the fascists have to do is trump up some charges, of child-abuse, of gun violations, whatever. The rest of society considers you kooks and benighted bigots and won’t be bothered if you are wiped off the face of the earth. You might go the way of the Branch Davidians.

Heather Mac Donald, “The Shameful Liberal Exploitation of the Charleston Massacre,” National Review, July 1, 2015:

In fact, white violence against blacks is dwarfed by black on white violence. In 2012, blacks committed 560,600 acts of violence against whites (excluding homicide), and whites committed 99,403 acts of violence (excluding homicide) against blacks, according to data from the National Crime Victimization Survey provided to the author. Blacks, in other words, committed 85 percent of the non-homicide interracial crimes of violence between blacks and whites, even though they are less than 13 percent of the population. Both the absolute number of incidents and the rate of black-on-white violence are therefore magnitudes higher than white-on-black violence. There is no white race war going on.

Steve McCann, “America’s Destiny in the Balance,” American Thinker, July 1, 2015:

Beginning in the 1930’s, under the aegis of Franklin Roosevelt, the nation began a drift to the left as a reaction to the Great Depression. However, those truly committed to socialist/Marxist philosophy and tactics remained in the shadows until the 1960’s. The Viet Nam war protests unleashed far more than just a demand for an end to the war. Those that blamed America for all manner of alleged sins in the past and determined to transform the United States into a socialist/Marxist nirvana were able to step out from behind the shadows and enter the mainstream of national legitimacy. This swarm of locusts soon enveloped the higher levels of academia spawning countless clones to further infiltrate all strata of society — most notably the mainstream media, the entertainment complex and the ultimate target: the Democratic Party. These vital segments of the culture are now instruments of indoctrination, propaganda and political power.

Victoria Razzi, “Asian American Studies Professors Stay Silent on Asian vs. Black Integration,” The College Fix, July 1, 2015:

An 80-year-old Duke University professor recently argued that Asian Americans have integrated into America better than African Americans, a controversial and contentious assertion that caused uproar and prompted the scholar to be labeled a racist.

Eugene Slavin, “The White Privilege Lie,” American Thinker, July 1, 2015:

Of all the invectives launched against the United States by the resurgent American Left, the charge that in America, White Privilege reigns supreme is the most insidious and culturally ruinous.

Its intent is unambiguous: leftists perpetuate the White Privilege lie to smear America and its institutions as inherently racist, and therefore unworthy of adulation and in need of fundamental socioeconomic transformation.

David Limbaugh, “I Told You Things Are Getting Crazier,” CNSNews.com, July 7, 2015:

The world is upside down, inside out, sideways, crazy, nutso. Bad is good; up is down. Left is right; right is wrong. Evil is good; insanity is sanity. Abnormal is normal. Circles are squares. Hot is cold. Luke warm is red hot — among Republicans, anyway. Common sense is uncommon. The world is otherworldly. Dissent is “hate.” Diversity means conformity. The good guys are the bad guys; virtue is vice; sophistry is intellectualism; jerks are celebrated; debauchery is glorified; the holy is debauched. Let me share some of these headlines, which speak for themselves — loudly and depressingly.

Robert Joyner, “The Hypocrisy of #Black Lives Matter, July 4th Edition” Theden, July 9, 2015:

As Theden has argued before, the Black Lives Matter movement is one that very clearly does not care about its own stated goals. The name implies that the movement exists to protect and enrich the lives of blacks, but it spends its time protesting often spurious cases of police brutality and, more recently, the flying of “offensive” flags. It is conspicuously silent on the number one threat to black lives in America, which is other blacks. The movement routinely hectors whites, but frankly the preponderance of evidence shows that whites already value black lives more than blacks do themselves.

Fred Reed, “‘Payback’s a Bitch’: Rural Wisdom and the Gathering Storm,” Fred on Everything, July 9, 2015:

The furor over the Confederate flag, think I, has little to do with the Confederate flag, which is a pretext, an uninvolved bystander. Rather it is about a seething anger in the United States that we must not mention. It is the anger of people who see everything they are and believe under attack by people they aren’t and do not want to be—their heritage, their religion, their values and way of life all mocked and even made criminal.

Bill Vallicella, “Is Reason a White Male Euro-Christian Construct?,” Maverick Philosopher, July 10, 2015:

[Quoting John D. Caputo]:

White is not “neutral.” “Pure” reason is lily white, as if white is not a color or is closest to the purity of the sun, and everything else is “colored.” Purification is a name for terror and deportation, and “white” is a thick, dense, potent cultural signifier that is closely linked to rationalism and colonialism. What is not white is not rational. So white is philosophically relevant and needs to be philosophically critiqued — it affects what we mean by “reason” — and “we” white philosophers cannot ignore it.

This is truly depressing stuff. It illustrates the rarefied, pseudo-intellectual stupidity to which leftist intellectuals routinely succumb, and the level to which humanities departments in our universities have sunk.

It’s all depressing. Have a nice day.

The Beginning of the End of Liberty in America

SEVERAL ITEMS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE LIST OF RELATED READINGS SINCE THE INITIAL PUBLICATION OF THIS POST ON 06/26/15

Winston Churchill, speaking in November 1942 about the victory of the Allies in the Second Battle of El Alamein, said this:

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

We may have reached the end of the legal battle over same-sex “marriage” with today’s decision by five justices of the Supreme Court in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges. But that decision probably also marks the beginning of the end of liberty in America.

Consider these passages from Chief Justice Roberts’s dissent (citations omitted):

…Today’s decision … creates serious questions about religious liberty. Many good and decent people oppose same-sex marriage as a tenet of faith, and their freedom to exercise religion is—unlike the right imagined by the majority—actually spelled out in the Constitution.

Respect for sincere religious conviction has led voters and legislators in every State that has adopted same-sex marriage democratically to include accommodations for religious practice. The majority’s decision imposing same-sex marriage cannot, of course, create any such accommodations. The majority graciously suggests that religious believers may continue to “advocate” and “teach” their views of marriage…. The First Amendment guarantees, however, the freedom to “exercise” religion. Ominously, that is not a word the majority uses.

Hard questions arise when people of faith exercise religion in ways that may be seen to conflict with the new right to same-sex marriage—when, for example, a religious college provides married student housing only to opposite-sex married couples, or a religious adoption agency declines to place children with same-sex married couples. Indeed, the Solicitor General candidly acknowledged that the tax exemptions of some religious institutions would be in question if they opposed same-sex marriage…. There is little doubt that these and similar questions will soon be before this Court. Unfortunately, people of faith can take no comfort in the treatment they receive from the majority today.

Perhaps the most discouraging aspect of today’s decision is the extent to which the majority feels compelled to sully those on the other side of the debate. The majority offers a cursory assurance that it does not intend to disparage people who, as a matter of conscience, cannot accept same-sex marriage…. That disclaimer is hard to square with the very next sentence, in which the majority explains that “the necessary consequence” of laws codifying the traditional definition of marriage is to “demea[n]or stigmatiz[e]” same-sex couples…. The majority reiterates such characterizations over and over. By the majority’s account, Americans who did nothing more than follow the understanding of marriage that has existed for our entire history—in particular, the tens of millions of people who voted to reaffirm their States’ enduring definition of marriage—have acted to “lock . . . out,” “disparage,”“disrespect and subordinate,” and inflict “[d]ignitary wounds” upon their gay and lesbian neighbors…. These apparent assaults on the character of fair minded people will have an effect, in society and in court…. Moreover, they are entirely gratuitous. It is one thing for the majority to conclude that the Constitution protects a right to same-sex marriage; it is something else to portray everyone who does not share the majority’s “better informed understanding” as bigoted….

Justice Alito puts it more plainly:

[Today’s decision] will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy. In the course of its opinion,the majority compares traditional marriage laws to laws that denied equal treatment for African-Americans and women…. The implications of this analogy will be exploited by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent.

Perhaps recognizing how its reasoning may be used, the majority attempts, toward the end of its opinion, to reassure those who oppose same-sex marriage that their rights of conscience will be protected…. We will soon see whether this proves to be true. I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools….

…By imposing its own views on the entire country, the majority facilitates the marginalization of the many Americans who have traditional ideas. Recalling the harsh treatment of gays and lesbians in the past, some may think that turnabout is fair play. But if that sentiment prevails, the Nation will experience bitter and lasting wounds.

Erick Erickson drives it home:

Make no mistake — this is not the end of a march, but the beginning of a new march. You will be made to care. You will be forced to pick a side. Should you pick the side of traditional marriage, you can expect left to be ruthless. After all, the Supreme Court has said gay marriage is a not just a right, but a fundamental right. [“The Supremes Decide,” RedState, June 26, 2015]

Erickson counsels civil disobedience:

It’s time to defy the court on this. It’s time to fight back. Nonviolent civil disobedience is the only option we have been left under this terrible ruling. We will be heard. [“It’s Time for Civil Disobedience,” RedState, June 26, 2015]

Most citizens will, of course, attempt to exercise their freedom of speech, and many business owners will, of course, attempt to exercise their freedom of association. But for every person who insists on exercising his rights, there will be at least as many (and probably more) who will be cowed, shamed, and forced by the state into silence and compliance with the new dispensation. And the more who are cowed, shamed, and forced into silence and compliance, the fewer who will assert their rights. Thus will the vestiges of liberty vanish.

That’s how it looks from here on this new day of infamy.

* * *

Related reading:

streiff, “Obergefell and the Roadmap to Drive Christianity from the Public Square,” RedState, June 27, 2015 (Christianity isn’t the only target; anyone who challenges the legality and propriety of gay “marriage” is in the cross-hairs of the Gaystapo and it enablers.)
Scott Johnson, “The Need to Get Our Minds Right,” Power Line, June 28, 2015
F.H. Buckley, “Take Heart, Conservatives!,” The American Spectator, June 29, 2015 (an amusing but not reassuring take on Obergefell v. Hodges)
Erick Erickson, “What Actually Comes Next,” RedState, June 29, 2015
Christopher Freiman, “Indeed, Why Not Polygamy?,” Bleeding Heart Libertarians, June 29, 2015
Jennifer Kabbanny, “Conservative Professors React to Same-Sex Marriage Decision,” The College Fix, June 29, 2015
Stella Morabito, “15 Reasons Why ‘Marriage Equality’ Is about Neither Marriage Nor Equality,” The Federalist, June 29, 2015
Keith Preston, “Gay Marriage, Good News and Bad: Some Thoughts on ‘Marriage Equality’,” The Libertarian Alliance Blog, June 29, 2015
Bill Valicella, “Why Not Privatize Marriage?,” Maverick Philosopher, June 29, 2015
Ryan T. Anderson, “In Depth: 4 Harms the Court’s Marriage Ruling Will Cause,” The Daily Signal, June 30, 2015
Adam Freedman, “Obergefell’s Threat to Religious Liberty,” City Journal, July 1, 2015
Kelsey Harkness, “State Silences Bakers Who Refused to Make Cake for Lesbian Couple, Fines Them $135K,” The Daily Signal, July 2, 2015
Andrew Hyman, “George Will Turns James Madison’s Words Upside Down and Inside Out and Backwards Too,” The Originalism Blog, July 2, 2015
Daniel J. Flynn, “America Was,” The American Spectator, July 3, 2015
Tom Nichols, “The New Totalitarians Are Here,” The Federalist, July 6, 2015
Flagg Taylor, “Thought Control’s Lingua Franca,” Library of Law and Liberty, July 8, 2015
Hans von Spakovsky, “Oregon’s War on the Christian Bakers’ Free Speech,” The Daily Signal, July 18, 2015

* * *

Wrong for the Wrong Reasons

When in search of provocative material, I often flip through the pages of The Great Quotations — a left-slanted tome compiled by the late and long-lived George Seldes. Today, I came across this:

Overthrow of the Government by force and violence is certainly a substantial enough interest for the Government to limit speech. Indeed, this is the ultimate value of any society, for if a society cannot protect its very structure from armed internal attack, it must follow that no subordinate value can be protected.

That’s from Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson’s majority opinion in Dennis v. United States (1951). Here’s an outline of the case and its aftermath, as given at Wikipedia:

In 1948, eleven Communist Party leaders were convicted of advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government and for the violation of several points of the Smith Act. The party members who had been petitioning for socialist reforms claimed that the act violated their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and that they served no clear and present danger to the nation….

[In the original trial] Prosecutor John McGohey did not assert that the defendants had a specific plan to violently overthrow the U.S. government, but rather alleged that the CPUSA’s philosophy generally advocated the violent overthrow of governments.^[7] To prove this, the prosecution proffered articles, pamphlets and books (such as The Communist Manifesto) written by authors such as Karl Marx and Joseph Stalin.^[8] The prosecution argued that the texts advocated violent revolution, and that by adopting the texts as their political foundation, the defendants were also personally guilty of advocating violent overthrow of the government.^[9]…

Petitioners were found guilty by the trial court and the decision was affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court granted writ of certiorari, but limited it to whether section two or three of the Smith Act violated the First Amendment and whether the same two sections violated the First and Fifth Amendments because of indefiniteness….

Handed down as a 6-2 decision by the Court on June 4, 1951, the judgment and a plurality opinion was delivered by Chief Justice of the United States Fred M. Vinson, who was joined by Justices Stanley Forman Reed, Sherman Minton, and Harold H. Burton. Separate concurring opinions were delivered by Justices Felix Frankfurter and Robert H. Jackson. Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas wrote separate dissenting opinions. Justice Tom C. Clark did not participate in this case.

The Court rule affirmed the conviction of the petitioner, a leader of the Communist Party in the United States. Dennis had been convicted of conspiring and organizing for the overthrow and destruction of the United States government by force and violence under provisions of the Smith Act. In affirming the conviction, a plurality of the Court adopted Judge Learned Hand’s formulation of the clear and probable danger test, an adaptation of the clear and present danger test:

In each case [courts] must ask whether the gravity of the “evil,” discounted by its improbability, justifies such invasion of free speech as necessary to avoid the danger….

[I]n 1969, Brandenburg v. Ohio held that “mere advocacy” of violence was per se protected speech. Brandenburg was a de facto overruling of Dennis, defining the bar for constitutionally unprotected speech to be incitement to “imminent lawless action”.^[20]

This is from Wikipedia‘s account of Brandenburg v. Ohio:

The Court held that government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is directed to inciting, and is likely to incite, imminent lawless action.^[1]…

Brandenburg completely did away with Dennis‘s central holding and held that “mere advocacy” of any doctrine, including one that assumed the necessity of violence or law violation, was per se protected speech.

And this is from the final paragraph of the Court’s ruling in Brandenburg:

[W]e 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. 4 Such a statute falls within the condemnation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

So, in effect (though not in so many words), the Brandenburg Court found the Dennis Court to be wrong. Not wrong about the wrongness of overthrowing the government, just wrong about when the wrongness may be prosecuted. The Dennis Court was prematurely protective.

To put it another way, it’s all right to advocate wrong-doing, as long as the advocacy doesn’t lead directly to the wrong-doing.

Well, the Dennis Court may have been wrong, but not for the reason cited by the Brandenburg Court, which is also wrong. Why? Because it invites endless hair-splitting about the point at which advocacy translates to action. If the action being advocated is wrong, isn’t it also wrong — constitutional niceties aside — to advocate the action? I’m certainly not advocating thought-crime prosecution, but I am not satisfied with the Brandenburg Court’s conclusion.

If the purpose of the United States, as originally constituted, was to foster liberty, why should the government of the United States tolerate the promulgation of anti-libertarian views? Freedom of speech, after all, is just one manifestation of liberty. And that manifestation could vanish, with the rest, under an anti-libertarian regime.

Here’s the counter-argument: If government is allowed to suppress speech that promulgates the overthrow of America’s constitutional values in favor of anti-libertarian ones (e.g., communism), couldn’t the government then suppress speech that might have a tenuous connection with the idea of overthrowing America’s constitutional values? Government could, for example, suppress speech that proposes the establishment of a socialistic scheme that isn’t contemplated in the Constitution, such as Social Security. And if government could suppress speech of that kind, it could also suppress speech aimed at amending the Constitution to legalize socialistic schemes.

That wouldn’t be so bad, but the power to suppress speech is easily adapted to anti-libertarian uses. Untoward speech and thoughts about “protected groups” could be outlawed. Oops! Such speech and thoughts have been outlawed. “Hate thoughts” may be inferred as the unspoken motivation for a crime, given the personal characteristics of the (supposed) victim of the crime.

By now, you may have concluded that the problem isn’t the Constitution, it’s government. Or, more concretely, the persons and groups who are able to command the power of government. No piece of paper can protect liberty from the anti-libertarian machinations of government officials and the voting blocs to which they are beholden.

Which brings me back to the quotation at the beginning of this post, Chief Justice Vinson’s muddled rationale for the Supreme Court’s holding in Dennis v. United States:

Overthrow of the Government by force and violence is certainly a substantial enough interest for the Government to limit speech. Indeed, this is the ultimate value of any society, for if a society cannot protect its very structure from armed internal attack, it must follow that no subordinate value can be protected.

Government is not society. Nor does the United States comprise a single society, but rather multitudes of societies and interest groups: some desirous of liberty, others desirous of domination. The latter have prevailed, and have come to dominate those that desire liberty. Accordingly, “subordinate” values (e.g., free speech, property rights, and freedom of association) have not been protected by government.

Government, as it now stands, is unworthy of protection by the friends of liberty. In fact, it is (or should be) in need of protection from the friends of liberty. And may they prevail.

* * *

Defending Liberty against (Pseudo) Libertarians

(Pseudo) libertarians like to demonstrate their bogus commitment to liberty by proclaiming loudly their support for unfettered immigration, unfettered speech, unfettered abortion, unfettered same-sex coupling (and legal recognition thereof as “marriage’), and unfettered you-name-it.. In the minds of these moral relativists, liberty is a dream world where anything goes — anything of which they approve, that is.

The aim of today’s sermon is to embellish what I’ve said previously in many of the posts listed at the bottom of this one on the subject of (pseudo) libertarians and (pseudo) libertarianism. I begin with Bryan Caplan.

My disdain for Caplan’s (pseudo) libertarian, pacifistic, one-worldishness is amply documented: here, here, here, here, here, and here (second item). Caplan has been at it again, in recent posts about immigration (as in opening the floodgates thereto).

Consider this post, for example, where Caplan tries (in vain) to employ Swiftian hyperbole in defense of unfettered immigration. In the following block quotation, each of Caplan’s “witty” proposals is followed by my observations (in brackets and bold type):

Libertarians’ odd openness to using immigration restrictions to protect American freedom has me thinking. There are many statist policies that could indirectly lead to more libertarian policy. If you’re open to one, you should logically be open to all.

Here are just a few candidates:

1. Make public schools teach libertarianism. Sure, public education should be abolished. But as long as public education exists, wouldn’t it be better if the schools taught children about the value of freedom and the wonder of markets?

[Well, yes, our course it would. But public schools don’t do that — and won’t do that — because they were long ago taken over by leftist “educators.” Next stupid idea…]

2. Discourage fertility of less libertarian groups. If you really think that Muslims or Hispanics are unusually statist, their high birth rates should worry you. Indeed, any birth rate above zero should worry you. A moderate step would be to offer members of these groups extra subsidies for birth control. From there, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to subsidized sterilization, tax penalties, or a selective One Child Policy.

[But why allow the immigration of statist-leaning groups in the first place? In fact, it would be a good idea to encourage them — and others — to leave. If the encouragement were financial, it would be a good investment.]

3. Censor statist ideas. Sure, Paul Krugman has a right to free speech. But the rest of us have a right to not be ruled by people swayed by Krugman. It’s childish to deny the trade-off, no?

[It is childish to deny the trade-off. That’s why idiots like Caplan deny it. They believe that theft is wrong, but they don’t believe in preventing (or reducing) the amount of theft committed by government because statist ideas have been and are allowed to flourish. See below for more on this point.]

4. Subsidize vacations for less libertarian groups on election day. Suppose the government gave members of unlibertarian groups free trips to Cancun that conveniently coincided with election day. While some of the eligible would file an absentee ballot, there is little doubt that this would heavily depress turnout. So why not?

[Better yet — and far less expensive — establish meaningful eligibility standards for voting; for example, being at least 30 years of age, owning one’s home, and being able to read and write at the 12th-grade level. This might empower more “liberals” than conservatives, give the tendency of educated persons to adhere to statism. But their power would be constrained by the sensible prohibition of speech that advocates theft in the name of the state.]

The first link in the block quotation is to an earlier post by Caplan, in which, for practical purposes, he joins with Don Boudreaux in proclaiming (psuedo) libertarian absolutism on such other matters as freedom of speech. As Boudreaux puts it,

Freedom may well destroy itself. That’s a risk I’m willing to take, especially if the proposed means of saving freedom is to restrict it.

This reminds me of “it was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” It’s a position that defies logic; thus:

Freedom is not merely literal freedom from captivity; it is the enjoyment of that freedom through the peaceful pursuit of happiness. (Freedom, as a general condition, is possible only if everyone’s pursuit of happiness is peaceful with respect to other persons and their property.)
It is wrong to deny any person his freedom, regardless of his demonstrated enmity toward freedom as defined in 1. (This is Boudreaux’s stated position, which — taken literally — precludes the imprisonment of convicted murderers, rapists, thieves, and others whose acts deny to others the peaceful pursuit of happiness.)
Freedom, therefore, consists only of literal freedom. (This conclusion, which contradicts the full definition of freedom given in 1, is the logical consequence of Boudreaux’s position. And yet, Boudreaux would be the last person to accept this limited definition of freedom.)

It doesn’t matter whether the person whose demonstrated hostility toward freedom (properly defined) is a thief or a socialist. One is the same as the other when it comes to the defense of freedom (properly defined). Boudreaux and his ilk would be consistent (though wrong) if they were to say that thieves shouldn’t be imprisoned, but I doubt that they would say such a thing because they are staunch defenders of property rights. Why then, do they defend the right of statists to spread the gospel of government control over our lives and livelihoods, which is nothing but government-sponsored theft and demonstrably more damaging than garden-variety theft?

As I say at the end of this post,

Liberty is lost when the law allows “freedom of speech, and of the press” to undermine the civil and state institutions that enable liberty.

There is a very good case for the view that the First Amendment sought to protect only those liberties necessary for the preservation of republican government. The present statist regime is a long way from the kind of republican government envisioned by the Framers.

Another staple of (pseudo) libertarian thought is a slavish devotion to privacy — when that devotion supports a (pseudo) libertarian position. Economists like Caplan and Boudreaux are cagy about abortion. But other (pseudo) libertarians are less so; for example:

I got into a long conversation yesterday with a [Ron] Paul supporter who took me to task for my criticisms of Paul’s positions. For one thing, he insisted, Paul’s position on abortion wasn’t as bad as I made it out, because Paul just thinks abortion is a matter for the states. I pointed out that in my book, saying that states can violate the rights of women [emphasis added] is no more libertarian than saying that the federal government can violate the rights of women.

Whence the “right” to abort an unborn child? Here, according to the same writer:

I do believe that abortion is a liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment….

This train of “logic” is in accord with the U.S. Supreme Court’s manufactured “right” to an abortion under the Fourteenth (or was it the Ninth?) Amendment, which I have discussed in various places, including here. All in the name of “privacy.”

Here, again, we see devotion to a value for its own sake, regardless of the implications for liberty. As I say here,

if privacy were an absolute right, it would be possible to get away with murder in one’s home simply by committing murder there. In fact, if there are any absolute rights, privacy certainly isn’t one of them.

(Psuedo) libertarians choose not to characterize abortion as murder. They prefer to think of it as a form of control over one’s own body. But an unborn child is not “one’s own body” — it is its own body, created (in the overwhelming majority of cases) by consensual sex between the mother and a male person. Abortion is nothing more than a murderous flight from personal responsibility, which is a trait highly praised (in the abstract) by (pseudo) libertarians. And it is a long step down a very slippery eugenic slope.

It is no wonder that many (pseudo) libertarians like to call themselves liberaltarians. It is hard to distinguish (pseudo) libertarians from “liberals,” given their shared penchant for decrying and destroying freedom of association and evolved social norms. It is these which underlie the conditions of mutual respect, mutual trust, and forbearance that enable human beings to coexist peacefully and cooperatively. That is to say, in liberty.

The Sunstein Effect Is Alive and Well in the White House

Although Cass Sunstein, Obama’s erstwhile “czar” for regulatory matters, has returned to academe, his spirit lives on in the White House. Sunstein is infamous for at least two things. One of them is his advocacy of something known as “libertarian paternalism,” which is the antithesis of libertarianism. The other is his advocacy of censorship.

For more about the latter, see (for example) this post, where I say this:

Perhaps the most frightening item on Sunstein’s paternalistic agenda ties into Sen. Rockefeller’s proposal to give the president the power to shut down the internet — which amounts to the power to control the content of the internet. And make no mistake about it, Sunstein would like to control the content of the internet — for our own good, of course. I refer specifically to Sunstein’s “The Future of Free Speech,” in which he advances several policy proposals, including these:

4. . . . [T]he government might impose “must carry” rules on the most popular Websites, designed to ensure more exposure to substantive questions. Under such a program, viewers of especially popular sites would see an icon for sites that deal with substantive issues in a serious way. They would not be required to click on them. But it is reasonable to expect that many viewers would do so, if only to satisfy their curiosity. The result would be to create a kind of Internet sidewalk, promoting some of the purposes of the public forum doctrine. Ideally, those who create Websites might move in this direction on their own. If they do not, government should explore possibilities of imposing requirements of this kind, making sure that no program draws invidious lines in selecting the sites whose icons will be favoured. Perhaps a lottery system of some kind could be used to reduce this risk.

5. The government might impose “must carry” rules on highly partisan Websites, designed to ensure that viewers learn about sites containing opposing views. This policy would be designed to make it less likely for people to simply hear echoes of their own voices. Of course, many people would not click on the icons of sites whose views seem objectionable; but some people would, and in that sense the system would not operate so differently from general interest intermediaries and public forums. Here too the ideal situation would be voluntary action. But if this proves impossible, it is worth considering regulatory alternatives. [Emphasis added.]

There is more in a later post:

Alec Rawls, writing at his blog, Error Theory:

As Congress considers vastly expanding the power of copyright holders to shut down fair use of their intellectual property, this is a good time to remember the other activities that Obama’s “regulatory czar” Cass Sunstein wants to shut down using the tools of copyright protection. For a couple of years now, Sunstein has been advocating that the “notice and take down” model from copyright law should be used against rumors and conspiracy theories, “to achieve the optimal chilling effect.”

Why?

Sunstein seems most intent on suppressing is the accusation, leveled during the 2008 election campaign, that Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists.” (“Look Inside” page 3.) Sunstein fails to note that the “palling around with terrorists” language was introduced by the opposing vice presidential candidate, Governor Sarah Palin (who was implicating Obama’s relationship with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers). Instead Sunstein focuses his ire on “right wing websites” that make “hateful remarks about the alleged relationship between Barack Obama and the former radical Bill Ayers,” singling out Sean Hannity for making hay out of Obama’s “alleged associations” (pages 13-14).

What could possibly be more important than whether a candidate for president does indeed “pal around with terrorists”? Of all the subjects to declare off limits, this one is right up there with whether the anti-CO2 alarmists who are trying to unplug the modern world are telling the truth. And Sunstein’s own bias on the matter could hardly be more blatant. Bill Ayers is a “former” radical? Bill “I don’t regret setting bombs” Ayers? Bill “we didn’t do enough” Ayers?

For the facts of the Obama-Ayers relationship, Sunstein apparently accepts Obama’s campaign dismissal of Ayers as just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” In fact their relationship was long and deep. Obama’s political career was launched via a fundraiser in Bill Ayers’ living room; Obama was appointed the first chairman of the Ayers-founded Annenberg Challenge, almost certainly at Ayers’ request; Ayers and Obama served together on the board of the Woods Foundation, distributing money to radical left-wing causes; and it has now been reported by full-access White House biographer Christopher Andersen (and confirmed by Bill Ayers) that Ayers actually ghost wrote Obama’s first book Dreams from My Father.

Whenever free speech is attacked, the real purpose is to cover up the truth. Not that Sunstein himself knows the truth about anything. He just knows what he wants to suppress, which is exactly why government must never have this power.

As Rawls notes, Sunstein also wants to protect “warmists” from their critics, that is, to suppress science in the name of science:

In climate science, there is no avoiding “reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.” The Team has always been sloppy about concealing its machinations, but that doesn’t stop Sunstein from using climate skepticism as an exemplar of pernicious conspiracy theorizing, and his goal is perfectly obvious: he wants the state to take aggressive action that will make it easier for our powerful government funded scientists to conceal their machinations.

Now, in response to the recent, deadly, and continuing anti-American violence in the Middle East — the excuse for which is “Innocence of Muslims” — we read this of the Obama administration:

Administration officials have asked YouTube to review a controversial video that many blame for spurring a wave of anti-American violence in the Middle East.

The administration flagged the 14-minute “Innocence of Muslims” video and asked that YouTube evaluate it to determine whether it violates the site’s terms of service, officials said Thursday. The video, which has been viewed by nearly 1.7 million users, depicts Muhammad as a child molester, womanizer and murderer — and has been decried as blasphemous and Islamophobic.

“Review” it, or else. When the 500-pound gorilla speaks, you say “yes, sir.”

Way to go, O-blame-a. Do not stand up for Americans. Suppress them instead. It’s the Sunstein way.

Related reading:
Mary Katherine Ham, “The Eight Dumbest Things Said about Free Speech This Week,” Hot Air, September 14, 2012
Eugene Volokh, “Why Punishing Blasphemous Speech That Triggers Murderous Reactions Would Likely Lead to More Deaths,” The Volokh Conspiracy, September 15, 2012

Another Entry in the Sunstein Saga

Alec Rawls, writing at his blog, Error Theory:

As Congress considers vastly expanding the power of copyright holders to shut down fair use of their intellectual property, this is a good time to remember the other activities that Obama’s “regulatory czar” Cass Sunstein wants to shut down using the tools of copyright protection. For a couple of years now, Sunstein has been advocating that the “notice and take down” model from copyright law should be used against rumors and conspiracy theories, “to achieve the optimal chilling effect.”

Why?

Sunstein seems most intent on suppressing is the accusation, leveled during the 2008 election campaign, that Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists.” (“Look Inside” page 3.) Sunstein fails to note that the “palling around with terrorists” language was introduced by the opposing vice presidential candidate, Governor Sarah Palin (who was implicating Obama’s relationship with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers). Instead Sunstein focuses his ire on “right wing websites” that make “hateful remarks about the alleged relationship between Barack Obama and the former radical Bill Ayers,” singling out Sean Hannity for making hay out of Obama’s “alleged associations” (pages 13-14).

What could possibly be more important than whether a candidate for president does indeed “pal around with terrorists”? Of all the subjects to declare off limits, this one is right up there with whether the anti-CO2 alarmists who are trying to unplug the modern world are telling the truth. And Sunstein’s own bias on the matter could hardly be more blatant. Bill Ayers is a “former” radical? Bill “I don’t regret setting bombs” Ayers? Bill “we didn’t do enough” Ayers?

For the facts of the Obama-Ayers relationship, Sunstein apparently accepts Obama’s campaign dismissal of Ayers as just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” In fact their relationship was long and deep. Obama’s political career was launched via a fundraiser in Bill Ayers’ living room; Obama was appointed the first chairman of the Ayers-founded Annenberg Challenge, almost certainly at Ayers’ request; Ayers and Obama served together on the board of the Woods Foundation, distributing money to radical left-wing causes; and it has now been reported by full-access White House biographer Christopher Andersen (and confirmed by Bill Ayers) that Ayers actually ghost wrote Obama’s first book Dreams from My Father.

Whenever free speech is attacked, the real purpose is to cover up the truth. Not that Sunstein himself knows the truth about anything. He just knows what he wants to suppress, which is exactly why government must never have this power.

As Rawls notes, Sunstein also wants to protect “warmists” from their critics, that is, to suppress science in the name of science:

In climate science, there is no avoiding “reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.” The Team has always been sloppy about concealing its machinations, but that doesn’t stop Sunstein from using climate skepticism as an exemplar of pernicious conspiracy theorizing, and his goal is perfectly obvious: he wants the state to take aggressive action that will make it easier for our powerful government funded scientists to conceal their machinations.

Rawls’s thesis is entirely unsurprising to me. This is from “Fascism with a Friendly Face,” a post I wrote almost three years ago:

Regarding the suppression of dissent, it is noteworthy that Obama’s has tagged Cass Sunstein (a Chicago crony) to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the White House. (See this article for more about the likely direction of OIRA under Sunstein.) My biggest concern about Sunstein, who figures to be a strong influence on Obama, is his embrace of the oxymoronical thing known as “libertarian paternalism.” (For an exposition of its flaws, see this post and its predecessors, linked therein.)

“Libertarian paternalism” is nothing more than a dressed-up version of paternalism, in which the government is used to “nudge” people toward making the kinds of decisions that Sunstein and his ilk would make. That is to say, Sunstein (like too many other bright individuals) likes to believe that he knows what’s best for others. (That conceit is demolished in the posts mentioned at the end of the preceding paragraph and in these posts by an avowed utilitarian.)

“Libertarian paternalism” may seem innocuous, but there’s more to it than a bit of “nudging” (hah!) by the one-ton gorilla in the room (i.e., the federal government). Perhaps the most frightening item on Sunstein’s paternalistic agenda ties into Sen. Rockefeller’s proposal to give the president the power to shut down the internet — which amounts to the power to control the content of the internet. And make no mistake about it, Sunstein would like to control the content of the internet — for our own good, of course. I refer specifically to Sunstein’s “The Future of Free Speech,” in which he advances several policy proposals, including these:

4. . . . [T]he government might impose “must carry” rules on the most popular Websites, designed to ensure more exposure to substantive questions. Under such a program, viewers of especially popular sites would see an icon for sites that deal with substantive issues in a serious way. They would not be required to click on them. But it is reasonable to expect that many viewers would do so, if only to satisfy their curiosity. The result would be to create a kind of Internet sidewalk, promoting some of the purposes of the public forum doctrine. Ideally, those who create Websites might move in this direction on their own. If they do not, government should explore possibilities of imposing requirements of this kind, making sure that no program draws invidious lines in selecting the sites whose icons will be favoured. Perhaps a lottery system of some kind could be used to reduce this risk.

5. The government might impose “must carry” rules on highly partisan Websites, designed to ensure that viewers learn about sites containing opposing views. This policy would be designed to make it less likely for people to simply hear echoes of their own voices. Of course, many people would not click on the icons of sites whose views seem objectionable; but some people would, and in that sense the system would not operate so differently from general interest intermediaries and public forums. Here too the ideal situation would be voluntary action. But if this proves impossible, it is worth considering regulatory alternatives. [Emphasis added.]

A Left-libertarian defends Sunstein’s foray into thought control, concluding that

Sunstein once thought some profoundly dumb policies might be worth considering, but realized years ago he was wrong about that… The idea was a tentative, speculative suggestion he now condemns in pretty strong terms.

Alternatively, in the face of severe criticism of his immodest proposal, Sunstein merely went underground, to await an opportunity to revive his proposal. I somehow doubt that Sunstein, as a confirmed paternalist, truly abandoned it. The proposal certainly was not off-the-cuff, running to 11 longish web pages. Now, judging by the bulleted list above, the time is right for a revival of Sunstein’s proposal. And there he is, heading the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The powers of that office supposedly are constrained by the executive order that established it. But it is evident that the Obama adminstration isn’t bothered by legal niceties when it comes to the exercise of power. Only a few pen strokes stand between Obama and a new, sweeping executive order, the unconstitutionality of which would be of no import to our latter-day FDR.

Cass Sunstein is a dangerous man because he is intelligent, power-hungry, and overtly in favor of liberty, even as he fosters its demise.

* * *

Tag: freedom of speech

A Weak Argument for Freedom of Speech

Why Freedom of Speech?

More Thoughts about the “Marketplace of Ideas”

The Paradox That Is Western Civilization

Some Conundrums

Freedom of Speech and the Real Resistance

Freedom of Speech, to What End?

Freedom of Speech: Getting It Right

Academic Freedom, Freedom of Speech, and the Demise of Civility

The Left and Evergreen State: Reaping What Was Sown

Roundup: Civil War, Solitude, Transgenderism, Academic Enemies, and Immigration

CONTENTS

Civil War II

Solitude for the Masses

More about the Transgender Fad

The Academic Enemies of Liberty

The High Cost of Untrammeled Immigration

Freedom of Speech and the Long War for Constitutional Governance

Revisiting the “Marketplace” of Ideas

Free Speech Ends at the Northern Border

The Tenor of the Times

The Beginning of the End of Liberty in America

Wrong for the Wrong Reasons

Defending Liberty against (Pseudo) Libertarians

The Sunstein Effect Is Alive and Well in the White House

Another Entry in the Sunstein Saga

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CONTENTS

Civil War II

Solitude for the Masses

More about the Transgender Fad

The Academic Enemies of Liberty

The High Cost of Untrammeled Immigration

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