Cartoon Roundup: Freedom of Speech

By Rich Kozlovich

 

   

  

   

  

   

   

 

 

 

P&D and The Week That Was

 

 Truth is the Sublime Convergence of History and Reality

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De Omnibus Dubitandum, (Everything is to be questioned!)

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This Link will take you to My Commentaries. 

 

By Rich Kozlovich

 

 

There are approximately 2.2 million federal civilian employees.  The average cost of a federal employee, including salary and benefits, is around $143,643.  How much money is that in salaries and benefits every year? $316,014,600,000.    

 

Recently it was reported Trump said 1 million federal workers ‘could be fired.’  That's a minimum savings of $172, 371,600,000.  That doesn't count all the other expenses involving employees, such as buildings and the cost of maintaining them.  That's a lot of money, but when you compare saving a hundred and seventy five billion and more dollars to the nation's debt of almost 37 trillion dollars, that's chump change.  But if that's the pattern that plays out in everything they do, then we're talking real money.   I'm convinced by the end of Trump's first year in office, his DOGE team and the generals he's appointed to be heads of these government bureaucracies, are capable of eliminating a trillion dollars in spending. 

I've told this story before, but I think it's  worth repeating.  Some years ago my friend Jay Lehr, who attended Princeton and met Einstein, said when Einstein first came to Princeton he gave seven lectures.  He said the first few were so packed you couldn't beg, steal, borrow, or buy a seat.  By the end of the series there were a lot of empty seats.  I was surprised and I asked him why.  He said Einstein was lecturing some of the smartest people in the world, and they didn't have a clue what he was talking about.  You can only image how that effected their egos.  They didn't dare suggest Einstein didn't know what he was talking about since he was considered the most brilliant man alive.  

Well, I will be the first to acknowledge I'm far more clueless about physics than those sitting in that lecture hall.  But by just watching from the back row there's one thing I've gleaned.  Much about physics is based on a lot of "maybes".  Maybes that can't be proven via the scientific method of observation, experimentation, and analysis.   They can observe, and they can analyze, but how do they experiment?  Take black holes for example, how do you experiment with a black hole?  Now, all of a sudden everything they "knew" about black hole astronomy might be wrong.  As I see it, it's all guess work, and they don't have a clue either, yet they're absolutely positive ..... again.  

Truth be told I find it all interesting and fascinating, and I always have, but in the final analysis, I really don't care.  I consider this to be academic welfare, like so much of what academia does, much of which should not be funded by the government since there's not one iota of practical value in so much of what they do.  If that makes me a neanderthal, I can live with it. 

Fani Willis, of Georgia prosecutor who played the bully role in her attempt to "get Trump" is now crying that Jim Jordan is bullying her.  Imagine that, and doing so in violation of his oath of office.  What? Investigating a known corrupt prosecutor is a violation of his oath?  Really? Why?  Because it's black history month, and he should be celebrating that instead of "bullying" her!  It seems her deck of race cards has no limit.  

The FBI is heading into a maelstrom from which many will not return.  If this true, and I'm betting it is, the "new" FBI has launched an investigation into James Comey, and it's being reported the FBI is destroying evidence including the files on the JFK assassination.

This is the crack national law enforcement agency that raided the home of a mom of four children,  who protested at a school board meeting resulting in an invasion of her home by a FBI SWAT team, knocking down her door, bursting into the house with guns and handcuffing her while she was homeschooling her children.  

The FBI is broken, and it's not just a matter of bad leadership; it's the system itself.  And guess what?  A lot of these miscreants are worried they're going to be thrown in jail, and they have good reason to be worried.  Remember.... no one is above the law.  Their only recourse?  Destroy the evidence! 

I really like being right, and this is one time I wished I wasn't.  The covid shots were not vaccines, not only did they not prevent infections, they weren't designed to do so, and that was right from the mouth of Deborah Birx, who designed their vaccination policy.  A person who needs to be charged with crimes against humanity, or at the very least depraved indifference, right along with Fauci.  Only Fauci has been given a pardon, Brix hasn't.  Fauci isn't immune to  non-federal criminal charges, or civil actions against him. 

 ;

We're seeing a lot of kickback from Democrats over DOGE and all they're exposing, and there's a reason why.   Here's one example,  Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse Backed Legislation That Funneled Millions to His Wife’s Nonprofit.  They're in on the take, and feeding at the government's trough is addictive.  And ya just gotta love pencil neck Schiff.  He knows there are millions of Americans who are downright ashamed of Trump.   And he's right, they're called nitwits, halfwits, dipsticks, and misfits, all of which are Democrats and RINO's.   And we should care why?

Think about this.  Someone recently pointed out: "There are 18 intelligence agencies, and somehow they had no idea that Hamas was going to attack Israel or that Syria was going to collapse. What were they doing? I would say that is a lot of duplicative waste."  Well, it appears we now know a lot about what some of them were doing.  Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard fires 100 perverts spewing out their drooling on government computers and time. 

And this is at the nation's most top secret agency, the NSA, involving the CIA and others.  The questions that now need answering is how did this happen, who in leadership knew about this, when did they know it and is it likely to happen again? Since all these people are being fired, I think I can say, not in the near future, and now, not in the military.  

As for how this happened, and it happened like a things from the left, "a slow march through the institutions", as this article There’s a Trans Cult Inside the NSA, by Christopher F. Rufo explains:

An insider tells the story of the intel agency’s ideological capture..........But according to our whistleblower, these sex chats were just the tip of the iceberg. This longtime NSA insider tells me that the ideological capture of the NSA began a decade ago. Trans activists have entrenched themselves in positions of power, pressured employees to undergo reeducation trainings, and compromised national security in the name of ideology........

It's clear this is deeply entrenched, and it's also clear that many of those who will be thrown out of these top secret agencies may well decide to commit treason in order to get back at those who fire them.  It truly is an "iceberg" problem.

Trump has made it clear any state that doesn't end transgenderism in sports will have their funds cut off, and Maine has made it clear, they don't' care.  They're even going to punish a   GOP Congressman for opposing transgenderism, and they've even attacked a female state Senator for challenging Maine's actions claiming she's done "irreparably breaking the public trust."  The left's capability to use more words in more twisted ways is mind boggling.

As a side bar...did you get a look at their governor?   How does someone that dumb, that strange, and that ugly get elected? There's just gotta be something in the water in Maine. 

 

Another favorite of mine is that great intellectual and moral giant,Michael Moore, with his latest rant filled with logical fallacies claiming one of these deported illegal migrant children might have cured cancer, or stopped an asteroid from hitting the planet.  But then again, maybe they wouldn't.   But if he can show us which ones would be able to do that, we'll keep them.  

In the meanwhile they're criminals because they're here illegally, eating up American's tax money, overwhelming our public services, committing a lot of crimes, forming criminal organizations, and even creating groups to overthrow the United States, much of which Joe Biden can take "credit".  Other than Michael Moore and his ilk, all suffering from mental delusions, the rest of this call this blame, not credit. 

Finally, I was a surprised that all of a sudden DOGE, and the President, want Fort Knox audited.  I thought... really... what's that all about?   There were two show audits in 1953 and 1974, but there's never been a real audit of the gold supply...ever.  And there's some kickback over this, why?  

What really triggered this?  I'm guessing of course, but I'm kinda getting the feeling something unexpected has turned up in one of the DOGE investigations, and I think there's something going on in the background they're not divulging, and it shook them.  But, we'll see.   

This week I've posted eight commentaries of my own, and twenty one by others.  I hope you find them worthy of your time.

Best wishes, 

Rich 

My Commentaries

1. Media Collapse is Inevitable, and it's a Good Morning in America! Part VII, Fake News
2. Media Collapse is Inevitable, and it's a Good Morning in America! Part VI
3. Media Collapse is Inevitable, and it's a Good Morning in America! Part V
4. We Do Need to Return to the Past
5. Are We Entering a Golden Age?
6. Judicial Boundaries Need to be Imposed
7. It's Time For a Constitutional Confrontation With the Federal Judiciary
8. Often Wrong, Never in Doubt

Commentaries

1. Extra! Extra! Changes Coming to The Washington Post Opinion Page By Leesa K. Donner
2. DOGE Is Very Popular With Americans, New Poll Finds By Leesa K. Donner
3. Wishful Thinking: Leftists Say Trump ‘Coup’ Has Failed By Tim Donner
4. Mine, Baby, Mine – Right Here in the USA!  By Paul Driessen
5. AI: How to Teach Critical Thinking By John Droz, Jr.
6. The President, the Special Counsel and his Lawyers By Daniel Greenfield
7. Searching for Condemnations in the Muslim World  By Daniel Greenfield
8. Is There a Constitutional Right to Castrate Children?  By Daniel Greenfield
9. Washington DC: The March of Folly By Robin Itzler
10. Black History Month: 2020 BLM George Floyd riots By Robin Itzler
11. Birthright citizenship and Democrat hypocrisy By Robin Itzler
12. Maybe We Need a Government Shutdown By Robin Itzler
13. HHS Job Cuts: Pork or Purge? By John Klar
14. The Case Against Socialism, Part IV By Dan Mitchell
15. What Country Has the Best System of Health Care? By Dan Mitchell
16. The Process Of Rescinding The Endangerment Finding Has Begun By Francis Menton
17. Amicus Brief Filed In Glen Oaks Village Owners v. City Of New York By Francis Menton
18. Karma for Comey: Is the FBI Investigating Its Former Director? By Graham J. Noble
19. Operation Whirlwind Targets Democrats’ Incendiary Rhetoric By Graham J. Noble
20. The Wall Street Journal Completes Its ‘Woke’ Transition By Joe Schaeffer
21. Ethel Rosenberg and the Model UN By Michael D. Shaw

Permanent Links

1. 45 Communist Goals to Destroy America as Listed in the 1963 Congressional Record
2. My Seven Rules of Geopolitics
3. The John Boyd Legion of Honor

 No matter what anyone says, you can’t marginalize the truth!  You can suppress it, you can ignore it, you can avoid it, you can attempt to undermine it, you can attempt to subvert it, you can attempt to organize against it, you can even laugh at it, but if we have the courage and the fortitude to stand and confront the lies, irrespective of the personal costs, the truth will stand the test of time, because truth and time are on the same side.

Constant as the North Star

Observations From the Back Row

By Rich Kozlovich

The Canada Free Press is on my subscription list, and so I get daily announcements of articles that are appearing there, and most of them are pretty good.  On Saturday they sent out this piece,  The Fight Continues, saying:

The fight continues. It will be a fight against globalists, Democrat operatives, bureaucrats, and get-along, go-along Republican RINOs who envision a different America. MAGA has proved they can stand up to it...Yes, Donald Trump won the presidency again. He won the popular vote and the electoral vote. He has the Senate and the House of Representatives. He enjoys a clear mandate to fix this country...to fix what the Democrat Party broke...our inflated economy, our immigration system.

The article went on to show how these misfits have done everything in their power to mislead the public on who and what they are.  They've claimed they love democracy, yet have imposed tyranny at every opportunity.   Whether is been these false claims regarding the covid pandemic,  or their claims they need to control the economy, energy production, agriculture, information to prevent misinformation.  Or the world is in danger of being destroyed by climate change as a result of CO2 emissions, all of which if accepted would lay groundwork to eliminate billions of people. 

Well, the world is telling these nitwits "that dog just don't hunt", as Coal Continues to Grow because: 

Naïve puzzlement that renewable energy is not replacing coal. Folks still have not worked out that countries like China and India know that they cannot run their economies on the vagaries of wind and solar power. 

Ignore the propaganda, the proof is in the pudding, and all this alternative energy horsepucky isn't an alternative at all.  It's a failure that's wasted trillions of dollars worldwide funding green lunatics.  Western nations have reduced coal production a lot, but in nations that have little of no oil production, coal is the answer, and it's growing.  China has massive coal reserves, but not oil, so China's building coal fired electric plants.  A lot of them.   

These hysterical claims by leftists made a huge impact on society and the reason why was because the main stream media, (the Pravda Media) is massively corrupt, and not only promoted the propaganda, they censored anyone that opposed their lies and vilified them.  But now they've not only been exposed as liars no longer deserving society's trust, they're also being sued for their attacks on people and they're losing, to the tune of millions of dollars.

In this article, Struggle against liberal mainstream is gaining momentum, the author notes:  

Electing Donald Trump as the 47th president of the USA fueled an overt struggle against liberal mainstream. The president-elect is known for using negative rhetoric towards left-wing media companies, calling them enemies of the American people and their representatives – “the most dishonest human beings on Earth”. In November, 2024, Trump filed a number of lawsuits against the American media organizations totaling $10 billion, accusing them of slander and bias .  

And the consensus that Trump is exactly right has grown, and will continue to grow as CNN, MSNBC, NBC, WAPO, and the rest of the Pravda media go down the drain. The battle isn't about Trump, as he says, he's just in the way.   The battle is over the continued existence of the Constitution, and Fighting for Freedom of Speech:

People need to learn how to discuss partisan matters for real, not just copying memes or shouting insults in comment sections. We need to share honest information and work together to develop functional compromises.

 Freedom of speech is the first amendment in the Bill of Rights. Free speech was rare at the time of our Founding. Kings and Czars could imprison or kill anyone who dared to criticize them. When the Founding Fathers set up their republic they realized that freedom of speech was an essential check on government.

We think elections are contentious these days, early campaigns were chock full of overstatements, mistruths and insane accusations, but our Republic survived.

The author goes on to give some examples of how truth was corrupted by politicians were even at the beginning of the nation's foundation, and that included the foundation fathers, and even American heroes.

• 1800 - Thomas Jefferson accused John Adams of being a hermaphrodite. Adams' supporters, in turn, called Jefferson an atheist and a French revolutionary sympathizer.
• 1828 - Andrew Jackson's wife was accused of bigamy, while John Quincy Adams was accused of pimping out an American girl to the Russian czar.

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  1876 - Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden accused each other of voting fraud and corruption, leading to one of the most contested elections in U.S. history.
• 1884 - Grover Cleveland was accused of fathering an illegitimate child, while James Blaine was accused of corruption and accepting bribes.
• 1888 - In Harrison vs. Cleveland, voter fraud and the improper use of funds were major issues, with accusations of vote-buying on both sides.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  But now we have the Pravda media dying and the alternative media becoming ascendant.  Who knows, we may even have truth become common.

Hillary, Newsom, and Free Speech Under Fire

Democrat heavyweights openly seek to criminalize citizens’ freedom of expression.

by Joe Schaeffer | Sep 19, 2024 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags:  Articles, First Amendment, Opinion

Gavin Newsom and Hillary Clinton . (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Hillary Clinton and California Gov. Gavin Newsom have stirred up another hornet’s nest on the fundamental issue of free speech. In doing so, the two superstar Democrats have once again exposed the Achilles’ heel of the progressive ruling establishment: its inability to abide being mocked.

On Sept. 16, with remarkable nonchalance, Clinton told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow that American citizens should face civil and criminal penalties for “parroting Russian talking points.” The first question that instantly comes to mind is, who gets to decide what opinions expressed by American citizens amount to foreign agitprop? Supporting Donald Trump is the first big clue.

Fighting Russia Tops Your Constitutional Rights

“I think it’s important to indict the Russians, just like [special counsel Robert] Mueller indicted a lot of Russians who were engaged in direct election interference and boosting Trump back in 2016,” Clinton told Maddow, harking back to the feverish days of a thoroughly discredited federal Russiagate campaign against her Republican opponent.

“But I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda and whether they should be civilly or, even in some cases, criminally charged is something that would be a better deterrence because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever stand trial in the United States.”

With breathtaking honesty, Clinton acknowledged that she can’t stop Americans from voting as they see fit, but she does want to prevent them from exercising their right to free speech if that crosses a line drawn in her mind.

“I think we need to uncover all the connections and make it very clear that you can vote however you want, but we are not going to let adversaries, Russia, China, Iran or anybody else, basically try to influence Americans as to how we should vote in picking our leaders,” Clinton stated.

Too Clever to Be Free Speech?

Meanwhile, on the West Coast, Newsom signed three bills into law on Sept. 17, each ostensibly meant to crack down on AI “deepfake” videos.

“The California ban on campaign deepfakes will allow courts to issue injunctions blocking people from distributing intentionally deceptive political content during election season, and it exposes people who share deepfakes to civil penalties,” Politico reported.

But while Newsom stressed he seeks to eliminate deception, he was spurred to immediate action on the issue by a video shared by X owner Elon Musk that is clearly a parody.

In July, Musk posted a video featuring the AI-generated voice of current Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, calling herself a deep state puppet and diversity hire. No sensible person could possibly be confused into thinking the audio is genuine.

Newsom then called out Musk, vowing to sign a bill “in a matter of weeks” prohibiting such material.

Now, he has done so. The law will go into effect before the November election, meaning Californians who violate it face prosecution this autumn.

That may turn out to be an awful lot of court cases. On Sept. 18, Musk fired back at Newsom.

“The governor of California just made this parody video illegal in violation of the Constitution of the United States,” Musk wrote in an X post, again sharing the Harris video Newsom explicitly sought to criminalize. “Would be a shame if it went viral.”

Soon after, the video was trending on X. Musk’s post had 24 million views and more than 120,000 reposts and climbing as of the afternoon of Sept. 18.

Beyond infantilizing Americans as morons wholly unable to detect satire without the watchful eye of big government to guide their way, Clinton’s words and Newsom’s actions bring another disturbing factor into the free speech debate: selective enforcement of the law.

“I could [not] care less if it was Harris or Trump,” Newsom told Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff about the new laws, Politico noted. “It was just wrong on every level.”

A notorious Biden administration lawfare assault on an online prankster reveals the hollowness of this claim.

During the 2016 presidential election, Douglass Mackey, who ran the popular Twitter account Ricky Vaughn, posted a series of memes mocking Clinton and progressives.

Bored? Check This Out!

“The memes he generated included #draftourdaughters, a satirical campaign identifying Hillary as a warmonger who would put the country’s young women in fatigues to fight her foreign military adventures. Another suggested people could simply text in their vote for Clinton instead of visiting the polls,” Liberty Nation News’ Scott Cosenza related.

Again, no reasonable person would find either meme to be authentic. Nevertheless, as soon as Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland took over the Justice Department in 2021, he went after Mackey, who was eventually convicted “for spreading falsehoods via Twitter,” as the Associated Press reported it, and was sentenced to seven months in prison for the text-your-vote meme.

Democrats were obviously nursing a grudge against Mackey throughout the four years of Trump’s presidency. They sure don’t like being laughed at.

Being convicted for parody is bad enough, but Mackey was not the only Twitter user to make the joke. “Hey Trump Supporters! Skip poll lines at #Election2016 and text in your vote! Text votes are legit. Or vote tomorrow on Super Wednesday,” Kristina Wong posted on Election Day 2016. Garland has still not gotten around to Wong, who has more than 26,000 followers today.

This is just one aspect of the slippery slope invoked when the government is deployed to police the free speech of American citizens. Murky interpretations of what is and is not a violation of an ill-defined, politically motivated law inevitably lead to selective enforcement based on bias.

And partisan enforcement of the law is the epitome of tyranny.

~

Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

 

Read More From Joe Schaeffer

Orwell Exposed the Cowardice of Journalists and Intellectuals

Barry Brownstein

George Orwell had little hope that the lies of totalitarians would be exposed by a free press. His essay “The Freedom of the Press” was intended as the preface to Animal Farm, but was not published until 1972. Orwell revealed that the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Information (MOI) (created during the Second World War) advised Orwell’s publisher not to publish Animal Farm since it would be offensive to “Russian Soviets.”

Orwell’s thesis was that journalists, not the government, are the biggest censors:

[T]he chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of the MOI or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face.

Today’s cowardly journalists have suppressed stories of Hunter Biden’s laptop, doubts about the efficiency of masks and lockdowns, questionable safety profiles of vaccines, concerns that vaccines didn’t prevent transmission, questions about U.S. policy in Ukraine, and challenges to the global warming orthodoxy. 

While the Biden administration did twist the arms of social media companies to censor ordinary people, it didn’t have to censor journalists. Orwell wrote: “Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.” He explained, 

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it… Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

In the following paragraph, Orwell painted a portrait of our time. As you read, substitute vaccines, gender reassignment surgery for teens, green energy, etc., for “Soviet Russia”: 

At this moment what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia. Everyone knows this, nearly everyone acts on it. Any serious criticism of the Soviet régime, any disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep hidden, is next door to unprintable. And this nation-wide conspiracy to flatter our ally takes place, curiously enough, against a background of genuine intellectual tolerance. For though you are not allowed to criticise the Soviet government, at least you are reasonably free to criticise our own.

Orwell was not surprised by “the servility with which the greater part of the English intelligentsia have swallowed and repeated Russian propaganda,” even though they had “no direct pressure to falsify their opinions.”

Big Pharma’s power was already an issue almost eighty years ago. Orwell observed, “Notoriously, certain topics cannot be discussed because of ‘vested interests’. The best-known case is the patent medicine racket.”

Unfortunately, despite raising the alarm, Orwell adds a qualifier to his support for freedom of speech:

If the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of western civilisation means anything at all, it means that everyone shall have the right to say and to print what he believes to be the truth, provided only that it does not harm the rest of the community in some quite unmistakable way.

Today, of course, the harm to the community qualifier is used by Google and others to censor legitimate differences of opinion. 

Just as Hayek warned in The Road to Serfdom, Orwell warned, “It is only, or at any rate it is chiefly, the literary and scientific intelligentsia, the very people who ought to be the guardians of liberty, who are beginning to despise it, in theory as well as in practice.”

Today, authoritarians claim they are defending democracy yet do so by illiberal means. Orwell observed these tactics and reported “a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means.” 

The enemies to be crushed included “those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines.” Today’s censors also use this misinformation argument. 

Worse, Orwell explains intellectuals justified Stalin’s purges by claiming the victims’ “heretical opinions … ‘objectively’ harmed the régime, and therefore it was quite right not only to massacre them but to discredit them by false accusations.” 

This is not an essay to consider the cancellation of health professionals, authors, and academics. But if you believe intellectuals oppose “false accusations” in service of their perceived good cause, Orwell would say you are wrong.

Orwell observed great enthusiasm for Stalinist Russia was “only a symptom of the general weakening of the western liberal tradition.” He warned, “If you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you.” 

Any tribal adoption of an “orthodoxy” is problematic. Orwell observed, “The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.”

Can Western civilization survive the illiberalism Orwell observed? Orwell had his doubts:

[I]intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition without which our characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our intellectuals are visibly turning away. They have accepted the principle that a book should be published or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according to political expediency. And others who do not actually hold this view assent to it from sheer cowardice. 

Orwell wrote, “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” Today,  journalists and intellectuals tell us that freedom of expression is not essential; rather than being a condition by which civilization progresses, freedom of expression is a menace to “democracy.” With such beliefs, Orwell would warn, we are creating our own dystopia.

READ MORE

Barry Brownstein

Barry Brownstein is professor emeritus of economics and leadership at the University of Baltimore.  He is the author of The Inner-Work of Leadership, and his essays have appeared in publications such as the Foundation for Economic Education and Intellectual Takeout.  To receive Barry’s essays in your inbox, visit mindsetshifts.com  

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Blasphemy Laws Are Back: Denmark Prepares to Ban Qur’an Burnings

Oliver JJ Lane 25 Aug 2023

 “The unfree, medieval forces of the Middle East have won a victory today”, Denmark’s former immigration minister has said as the nation’s present government ploughs on to mollify criticism from the Muslim world by banning Qur’an burnings. Denmark was the last Scandinavian country to still have historic blasphemy laws on the books when it scrapped its 334-year-old statute in 2017, but now the nation’s left-led government is bringing them back. A new law is being drafted, targeted at a surge in Qur’an burning protests recently which would make desecrating any holy book illegal, with the government saying the legislation is a matter of national security..........To Read More...

Denmark’s Signal to the World, It says, "We're cowards." - September 7, 2023 by Bruce Bawer 30 Comments - n Scandinavia, this has been the summer of Koran burnings – scores of them. Opponents of Islam, and of the steady Islamization of Western Europe, have chosen this means of protest – which is usually carried out in public squares, or in front of mosques or important government buildings, in some of the region’s larger cities – to register their hostility to the totalitarian ideology spelled out in Islam’s holiest book. Some of these Koran burners are ethnic Scandinaivans who have felt their countries and cultures slipping gradually away from them for years; others are freedom-loving immigrants from the Muslim world who are alarmed to see the countries to which they escaped looking more and more like the countries from which they fled.............

Artur Pawlowski Found Guilty of Inciting Mischief and Eco-terrorism: A Threat to Canadian Freedom of Expression and Religion

By Cindy Chafian July 19, 2023

 Calgary Alberta, July 18, 2023 - In a recent ruling, Artur Pawlowski has been found guilty by a judge of inciting mischief and eco-terrorism, leaving Canadians concerned about the erosion of their fundamental rights to freedom of expression and freedom of religion. The sentencing for this case is scheduled for August 9, 2023, unless further legal actions are taken to challenge the verdict.

The implications of this ruling are far-reaching, as it poses a significant threat to the cherished principles that have defined Canadian society for generations. If not struck down, it could set a dangerous precedent whereby any individual, including politicians, journalists, and private citizens, who dare to oppose the ruling party, expose corruption, or voice dissent against tyranny, may face up to 10 years of imprisonment....To Read More......

I've been following this from the beginning, and here's my Pawlowski file:

• Canadian Pastor Gets “Total” Win In Court – “Jail Time…Censorship…Fines Against Him Were Illegal”
• Justin Trudeau’s ‘Sting of Spite’ Against Political Prisoner Pastor Artur Pawlowski
• Canada Doubles Down on Arresting Christians
• Calgary police finally got their revenge against Pastor Pawlowski

 

Showdown on Europe’s Freedom of Expression

July 11, 2023 by Robert Spencer1 Comment  

 Will Europe embrace and defend the freedom of expression or blasphemy laws? And once Europe makes its choice, what will the United States of America do in turn about the same issue? The showdown is coming in Europe, and it’s coming quickly. Last Sunday, Phedon Phedonos, who is the mayor of the city of Paphos in Cyprus, posted a video on Facebook of young Muslim migrants demonstrating in his city. 

They weren’t protesting over any local issue, but over the burning of a copy of a Qur’an in faraway Sweden. The implications of this are even more far-reaching, for Europe and the entire world.Greek City Times reported Tuesday that Phedonos commented, “The march of young Muslims today in the tourist area of ​​Paphos with the Qu’ran [sic] in hand with obvious religious fanaticism should concern the government and our State and, in general, everyone for the actions that must be taken immediately. History does not forgive mistakes and omissions.”.............

Their fanaticism was also evident from the fact that they were demonstrating in Cyprus over something that happened in Sweden. Islamic apologists and their Leftist allies in the West frequently accuse foes of jihad violence of engaging in collective blame of the entire Muslim community for the actions of a few “extremists,” if those foes speak honestly about the Islamic doctrinal roots of jihad violence. But if any collective blaming is actually being done, it’s on the Islamic side. Jihadis and their allies and enablers tend to see all Europeans as Christians and all Christians as responsible for the recent Qur’an-burning in Sweden, which was actually carried out by an Iraqi ex-Muslim named Salwan Momika. ...............To Read More.....

We are headed for a dark age in science

December 6, 2022 By Robert Arvay

Science has had a long and difficult path to its success, and to its well deserved respect over its main competitors: superstition and falsehood.  Arguably, in 1945, that respect reached its zenith, with the detonation of the nuclear weapons that are credited with ending World War 2.  Science-based technology literally exploded onto the public consciousness.  No one could argue with its awesome demonstration of power.  Nor could anyone doubt that the predictions of scientists, no matter how fantastic, must eventually come true.  Why, by 1966, we will all have flying cars!

Of course, we did not.  That is certainly forgivable, but scientific technology has fallen short of public expectations in more ways than just that.  Some years ago, an eminent physicist published a commentary lamenting the transformation of science from an evidence-based endeavor into a proposal-based activity — a guessing game.  Instead of observation, hypothesis, and experiment, physics seemed to have moved its laboratories to the blackboard.  We are all familiar with the confusing maze of cryptic, Greco-Arabic symbols that describe for us such unproved pronouncements as the existence of multiple universes, subatomic strings, and "dark" physics, for none of which there is direct physical evidence.  Yet these educated guesses enjoy a degree of acceptance rivaling that of confirmed experimental results, blurring the line between scientific fact and speculative conjecture.

The resulting destruction of society from corrupt scientists is appalling.  Billions of people are to be impoverished by futile attempts to adjust the climate to some unspecified parameters.  Untold numbers of children are being castrated and otherwise mutilated to serve the transgender gods.  Inadequately tested drugs are being sold, even mandated, to prevent self-limiting diseases, while effective therapies are being suppressed.  In the meantime, actual scientists who dare to report facts are being demonized and deprived of their livelihoods.  Yale medical students recently shouted down a speaker rather than question his data and conclusions.  Medical students!  As Elon Musk might say, let that sink in.  In the near future, how will we trust the medical advice of ideological M.D.s?

Matters have only gotten worse since 1945, a worsening compounded by ineptitude, fraud, and political/ideological partisan bias, not to mention money.  Ineptitude: According to a commentary in the Irish Times,..........To Read More....

 

Finnish Christian On Trial For Quoting The Bible On Twitter: ‘God Is Working’

By: Joy Pullmann February 14, 2022

Paivi Rasanen spoke to The Federalist about her free speech case that has huge implications for Christians across the West.  Today in Finland, lawyers for Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen and Bishop Juhana Pohjola will make their final arguments defending the two against “hate crimes” charges for publicly expressing their Christian beliefs. While intended to suppress Christianity and criminalize the Bible, with ramifications for the entire West, the prosecution has also created opportunities to proclaim Christian theology all over the world, Rasanen told The Federalist in an exclusive interview last week.........To Read More....

Riot Cops Forced To Break Up Massive Fights After Antifa Terrorists Storm Protest Against Mandates in Boston

By Julian Conradson November 8, 2021

On Sunday afternoon, a large group of Antifa goons targeted a Covid-19 mask and vaccine mandate protest that was held in Boston. The situation quickly escalated into violence once the black-bloc larpers arrived and began to harass the peaceful protesters, which forced the Boston Police riot squad to step in to regain control after fights several fights broke out.

The two crowds were separated by a small barrier, and it stood no chance once the fight broke out.......The wannabe jackboot thugs were antagonizing people the entire time they were present at the protest. They screamed and used noise-making equipment to disrupt the speakers during their time on stage, and even held a flag that featured the faces of Stalin, Mao, and other oppressive, murderous dictators........To Read More....

 

Cartoon of the Day

A Soviet Dissident Explains American Censorship

Barry Brownstein – January 20, 2021 

 

Many consider Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate to be the greatest Russian novel of the 20^th century. A searing portrait of Stalinist Russia, Life and Fate on its very first page exposes the bitter truth about authoritarianism: 

 

 “Everything that lives is unique. It is unimaginable that two people, or two briar-roses, should be identical … If you attempt to erase the peculiarities and individuality of life by violence, then life itself must suffocate.”

As a war correspondent, Grossman was noted for his bravery. Grossman was on the frontlines during the defense of Moscow and the battle for Stalingrad. Grossman was there too, at the aftermath of Babi Yar and Treblinka.  

Robert Chandler is Grossman’s translator. Chandler traces the emergence of a powerful voice against totalitarianism to Grossman’s early novels.

Chandler writes that “in 1932 [the writer Maxim] Gorky criticized a [Grossman] draft for ‘naturalism’ – a Soviet code word for presenting too much unpalatable reality.” Gorky suggested to Grossman that “The author should ask himself: ‘Why am I writing? Which truth am I confirming? Which truth do I wish to triumph?’”

The “truth” Gorky is referring to is, of course, the belief that Stalin’s brand of communism is the supreme way to organize society............To Read More....

Our Coddled Elites and All the Pain They Can’t Feel

Censorship of speech on social media masks the pain signals that many elites could rely on to understand the social conditions of the “Other America” they no longer wish to see.

 

By Oliver Bateman and Malcom Kyeyune  December 13, 2020 

Few developments in recent memory have had more of an impact on the conservative faith in the virtues of the market than the outsized role social media companies have come to play in our lives. At one point long ago, in a very different America, social media was a “problem” insofar as it was clearly seen as a sort of dopamine rat maze marketed to impressionable children and feckless young adults. 

Academics like Jonathan Haidt talked about the negative effects, such as a rapid spike in suicide attempts among girls that seems to have coincided with the public launch of Facebook. Meanwhile, the hegemonic libertarian orthodoxy of the Right offered a shrug in response: “Hey, it’s a free market, so if you don’t like it, log off and don’t use it!”

But those were the good old days of the 2000s and early 2010s, the heyday of a Bush and Obama-led neoliberal consensus. Back then, radical identitarian ideology, at least in the imaginations of many on the Right, was seen as a passing fad, a phase for “extremely online kids” and “liberal arts majors” who certainly would all grow out of it once they got “a real job.” 

But as it happened, the companies and the workplaces bent to the whims of these extremely online liberal arts majors, while the ideologies of the Left held firm. And thus the role of social media companies went from merely exhausting the dopamine receptors and spiking anxieties among young folks to becoming fully-fledged political actors in their own right, using their power and their platforms in order to ”guide” political discussion. 

It’s Not Just the Censorship...........To Read More.....

Will France Finally Rain Justice Down on Islamic Terrorists?

September 7, 2020 By Michael Curtis

A court case in Paris began on September 2, 2020 to render justice concerning a series of terrorist attacks in recent French history. The case is occurring after five years of investigation and delay, partly due to COVID-19, which caused the closing of most French courthouses, with the trial of 14 suspects, three in absentia, accused of being connected with those responsible for the terror attacks on the satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo in central Paris and following events — the attack on a kosher supermarket, Hypercacher, in east Paris and other sites for three days beginning on January 7, 2015.

The suspects are charged with being involved in the logistics and preparation of the events, helping finance and providing operational materials and weapons in support of the jihadists. Because of its unusual nature, and the judicial and political importance of the trial, which is expected to last two months, the high-security proceedings are to be filmed.

This case is important not only in itself, but also because of its relevance in the ongoing highly controversial debate on the limits to freedom of speech and the importance of intellectual and cultural freedom........To Read More.....

Liberals Versus Political Speech

The Left wants to put people behind bars for expressing opinions that it doesn’t like. 

John O. McGinnis

Once upon a time, liberals pushed free speech at every opportunity. They lauded Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis for protecting unpopular views via the First Amendment early in the last century, for instance. During the 1960s, Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement demanded the right to demonstrate politically on campus—and liberals championed the cause. Similar progressive cheers rang out when the Supreme Court extended the First Amendment to protect inarticulate expression, like nude dancing and flag burning.

But now liberals want to empower the government to put people behind bars for advancing political ideas, come election time. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has declared one litmus test for a Supreme Court justice: a commitment to overrule Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, the 2010 Supreme Court opinion upholding Americans’ First Amendment right to use a corporate form to criticize or praise politicians running for office. (The politician criticized in that case was none other than Hillary Clinton.) Worse still, Democratic senators have introduced a constitutional amendment that goes beyond reversing Citizens United and gives Congress substantial discretion to regulate how electoral debates are conducted.

This dramatic shift suggests that liberals have lost faith in their arguments—above all, at the ballot box. If you hold sway over the media and the academy and yet still fail to convince a majority of voters with your views, suppressing speech that counters those views can start to seem like a constitutional imperative.........To Read More.....

An Open Letter to Sergey Brin

Dennis Prager Oct 15, 2019

Dear Mr. Brin: Fifty years ago this week, when I was a 21-year-old college senior, I was in the Soviet Union, sent by the government of Israel to smuggle in Jewish religious items and smuggle out names of Jews who wanted to escape the Soviet Union and could then be issued a formal invitation to Israel.

I was chosen because I was a committed Jew and because I knew Hebrew and Russian. I was no hero, but the trip did entail risk. The Soviets did not appreciate people smuggling out names of Soviet citizens who sought to emigrate, information the Israeli government and activist groups in America used to advocate on their behalf.

My four weeks in the USSR were, of course, life-changing. This young American, lucky beyond belief to have spent his entire life in the freest country in the world, experienced what it was like to live in a totalitarian police state.............That has changed............The company that you co-founded, Google, the greatest conduit of speech in world history, is also suppressing speech. I have asked myself over and over: How could the company founded by a man whose parents fled the Soviet Union do this?...........To Read More.....

A Shameless Lying MSNBC Hack is the Face of the Media

Lies, smears and the new media normal.

September 4, 2019  Daniel Greenfield 

At the end of July, MSNBC’s biggest and dullest conspiracy theorist got some very bad news.
After over a year of booming ratings, The Rachel Maddow Show’s viewership had crashed. It had been a long road for Maddow, the former blonde Catholic high school girl who had decided she wanted to be a media personality and ended up with an MSNBC show through the efforts of Keith Olbermann.

And after Keith was gone, MSNBC had to settle for a slightly less effeminate version of Olbermann.
Maddow had retained the key elements of Olbermann’s personality, the unhinged conspiracy theories, histrionic delivery, the dark hair and even the fashionably ugly boxy black glasses. The former blonde not only looked and sounded like Olbermann, but she had learned to hit the same buttons in her audience.

One man had made her MSNBC career possible and another moved her show into the top cable spot.
That man was Robert Mueller. There was no Russian conspiracy theory too bizarre or insane to earn a rant from Rachel. Going where few dared go, Maddow began insisting that Russia was conducting a “continuing operation” and might even be in control of the White House and the entire country now.

And then the Mueller Report and later, Mueller’s testimony, destroyed all of Maddow’s conspiracies.............To Read More......

A manifesto of freedom

March 2, 2019 By Robert Arvay

What is more valuable to a free man than his freedom? Is it safety? Comfort? Love? Whatever treasures one can name, each of them, without freedom, is, sooner or later, forfeit.

Our freedoms are not separate items on a list. They are all interlocked and interdependent. Take away any part of freedom, and all of it begins to crumble. Without freedom of speech, all of freedom suffocates in a soundless vacuum. Without freedom of worship, the soul of freedom is lost. Without the freedom to arm oneself, defeat by tyranny is inevitable. Freedom is a way of life.

Moreover, add to the body of freedom anything that it is not, and then there also, freedom is cheapened and eroded. There is no freedom from being offended, no freedom from want, or any freedom that guarantees happiness.................Read more

The Founders Specifically Meant ALL Political Speech Should be Free

The misinterpretation of the Founders’ intent has the liberal media frothing at the mouth.

December 17, 2018 By Warner Todd Huston

For the last few decades liberals and left-wingers have been in a war against free speech in general, but political speech in particular. While the founders never envisioned complete license to speak, they did intend that every, any, and all speech on political matters should be unfettered.

The left is currently in all-out war against anyone with a center-right political viewpoint and are working daily to quash the opinions of the center-right. If you are a conservative on Twitter, Facebook, or social media, or if you are conservative in the media, you are targeted for destruction.

But the founders did not want this........To Read More.....