Monthly Archives: December 2020

Campus Speech

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Under some pressure and an appellate court ruling in a Speech First suit, the University of Texas has agreed to stop limiting freedom of speech on campus.

…administrators agree to dismantle the bias-response team and amend policies that chill speech. Gone is a ban on “uncivil behaviors and language that interfere” with the “welfare, individuality or safety of other persons.” Also stricken is a definition of “verbal harassment” that prohibited “ridicule” or “personal attacks.”
Under the settlement, UT reserves the right “to devise an alternative” to its bias-response team, but “Speech First is free to challenge that alternative.”

It’s a step, but only a small one, and it’s unfortunate that Speech First agreed to settle. A court ruling would have been much more binding and over a much broader reach of jurisdiction.

Any settlement is only as good as the integrity of the parties to the settlement, and UT (and ISU and UM, two other institutions that have settled speech matters with Speech First) have already demonstrated their level of integrity by having attempted to ban free speech in the first place. The same personnel who assaulted speech, after all, are the signatories to the settlement and are still in place at those institutions. And this settlement promises more UT-provoked expensive litigation as those personnel dream up other ways to try to limit speech.

Along with this, UT’s band continues to refuse to play The Eyes of Texas over what those associated with the band are pleased to call “politically correct” reasons. Those same UT administrators are pretending to review that position.

Apologies

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Daniel Henninger had a thought in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal on the relationship between the Wuhan Virus situation (my term, not his) and apologies.

I have my own thought on the broader matter of apologies themselves.

…difficult this year to tell which is greater—the number of people infected with Covid-19 or the number of politicians issuing apologies….

Other than Operation Warp Speed’s chief, General Gustave Perna, I’ve heard almost no politician apologize for anything. In truth, though, the apology was killed long ago.

What is issued in lieu of apology, and not only by politicians, has long been an expression of “regret” for “any offense that might have occurred.” Never mind that offense plainly was taken, or there’d have been no objection. Doubting that is dishonest.

On top of that, the utterer piously announces his regret—for an offense that he’s not convinced even occurred—but he has not a syllable of actual apology for his misbehavior that led to the offense. Masquerading his utterance as an apology is a very large lie.

Aside from that, “accepting responsibility,” “owning the matter,” and similar self-serving claims are cynically meaningless phrases, uttered only to distract from the fact that the speaker does nothing to change his behavior or otherwise to correct his error.

National Independence and Military Capability

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Joe Biden (D) has strange ideas regarding this relationship, expressed most plainly in his plans for our nuclear weapons arsenal.

Mr Bidens campaign pledge to narrow the role that nuclear weapons play…stating that their “sole purpose” should be to deter or respond to a nuclear attack.

Biden is willing to have us forced to surrender after being beaten in a conventional or cyberwar, rather than have nuclear weapons available or usable to preserve our existence—and that of our friends—as independent, unconquered polities.

Mr Biden has said that he wants to extend the New START treaty with Russia….

Because extending a nuclear weapons treaty with an enemy nation that routinely violates treaties with us is a good idea. It’s especially sensible after he unilaterally disarms us doctrinally.

No. Neither Biden nor his handlers can possibly be that naive; this can only be a deliberate weakening of our military security. Gives new meaning to Biden’s push for international “cooperation.”

Missiles based in underground silos have long been considered a destabilizing system by arms-control groups….

No, what’s destabilizing is surrendering military superiority—cyber, conventional, or nuclear—to our enemies.

A Thought on Section 230

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Rick White, Republican Representative from Washington at the end of the last century, had a thought on Section 230—he wants to repair it rather than eliminate it—and so (of course) do I. He began with this:

…some saying it allows big tech companies to censor political views, and others saying it enables the spread of disinformation.

What far too many who should know better miss, though, is that both of these are true; it’s not a matter being mutually exclusive, or even a matter of one or the other.

What those worthies also miss is that only one of them is of any concern at all. Regardless of the bleatings of the Know Betters in the press and in our political elites, ordinary Americans are fully capable of discriminating (uncensored) disinformation from (uncensored) misinformation from (uncensored) information.

One idea that White suggested in lieu of eliminating Section 230 was this, and he was serious about it:

We could also establish a plan for self-regulation by the online industry.

It’s hard to see how White could be so naive or so…misinformed. The online industry isn’t the problem. The small cartel of social media is the problem. And we’re already seeing what Jack Dorsey’s, Mark Zuckerberg’s, and Sundar Pichai’s self-regulation looks like.

Section 230 is beyond repair; the conditions extant when it was written no longer obtain. Pipelines don’t manage the information flowing through them. Publishers do.

The Section needs repeal.

“Good Union Jobs”

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That was Joe Biden’s mantra all through his campaign.  Now Karl Zinsmeister, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed asks this question: Will Biden’s Education Nominee Stand for Students or for Unions?

Supposedly, his nominee, Miguel Cardona, is pro-student:

Dacia Toll, CEO of the Achievement First charter-school network that operates in Connecticut, says of Mr Cardona: “I haven’t found him to be driven by ideology and politics. He is more focused on making sure every kid gets an excellent education than the type of school they go to.”

Zinsmeister hopes Cardona is made of stern stuff and will resist the pressure he’ll get from the unionists in his administration, elsewhere in his Cabinet, and in Congress.

I’m not that sanguine. Who has this good union man, Joe Biden, nominated? At best, a token offered as a sop to all those in Congress who are to the right of the radical left progressives (but I repeat myself) who are the Progressive-Democratic Party. More likely, a shiny object cynically offered to distract those worthies from the far more broadly insidious policies of the Progressive-Democrats.