Tag Archives: free speech

Scapegoating

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…and fake apologies.

Recall that Doctor Li Wenliang, a resident of Wuhan, Hubei Province, People’s Republic of China and an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, gave early warnings about the dangers and contagious nature of the Wuhan virus. Recall further that subsequent to his warnings, the police were sicced on him and that they threatened him if he didn’t shut the hell up. Li subsequently died of that same Wuhan virus.

Now the Communist Party of China is pretending to apologize to his family for that behavior.

The party’s top disciplinary body said the police force in Wuhan had revoked its admonishment of Dr Li Wenliang that had included a threat of arrest.
It also said a “solemn apology” had been issued to Li’s family and that two police officers, identified only by their surnames, had been issued “disciplinary punishments” for the original handling of the matter.

Punishing two cops who were caught up in the early stages of the CPC’s attacks: nothing like a couple of scapegoats to put an end to the escapade.

Sure.

An Illustration

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A businessman in the People’s Republic of China, Ren Zhiqiang—who also is a member of the Communist Party of China—has been for some time an outspoken critic of PRC President Xi Jinping’s handling of the nation’s COVID-19 epidemic, a mishandling that allowed an early infection to blow out of control within the PRC and to become a global pandemic.

Outspoken critic: among other things, Ren wrote a widely disseminated essay that took issue with a 23 Feb speech by Xi. He wrote of a

“crisis of governance” within China’s Communist Party and blamed restrictions on freedom of speech and the press for slowing down the response to combat the novel coronavirus, thereby worsening the outbreak.

And

…after analyzing the President’s [Xi’s] speech he “saw not an emperor standing there exhibiting his ‘new clothes,’ but a clown stripped naked who insisted on continuing being emperor[.]”

Then Ren posted on Weibo

When does the people’s government turn into the party’s government? … Don’t waste taxpayers’ money on things that do not provide them with services.

Then his post was deleted, his Weibo account blocked. Ren also has been put on “probation” from the CPC.

And now he’s gone missing, making his point beautifully.

Progressive-Democrats’ Tuesday Debate

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Some are calling it rowdy; others say raucous.  There’s this more concrete description, too, from Tony Katz:

Everyone else is talking to each other, yelling at each other, yelling at the moderators, yelling at the guy in the rafters….

And talking over each other, interrupting each other, trying to drown out each other. Recall the 2015-2016 Republican primary debates—they were rowdy, often rude, as participants occasionally interrupted or tried to talk over each other.  Tuesday’s Progressive-Democrat debate was nothing but a constant rolling drumbeat of that.

I have a different take on that debate from “some,” “others,” and Katz.

This debate was a clear and present demonstration of Progressive-Democrats’ view of free speech.  Their interruptions and talkings-over were not occasional, nor were they done in the heat of the moment, for all the zeal of their arguments.

No, their interruptions and talkings-over were demonstrative of their attitude toward the speech of anyone who disagrees with them.  What any particular Progressive-Democrat decides he has to say is the only thing worth hearing.  What others have to say—are already saying—is just too trivial, too unimportant to waste time on; the new speaker will just start talking, and those others should just shut up.

It’s of a piece with one of them insisting that the others should drop out of the primaries altogether and get out of his way.

Tuesday’s verbal melee also was demonstrative of their views of us in the audience and in TV viewer-land.  Progressive-Democrats will tell us what we should hear; they will tell us what we will be permitted to hear. We’re wholly unfit to decide that for ourselves.

And that’s what they’ll inflict on our free speech rights if they gain the White House and the Senate and hold the House. Freedom’s just another word for “Shut up; I’m talking.”

This Loss is No Loss

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Recall the fact of the tweet that the NBA’s Houston Rockets General Manager sent in support of the Hong Kong freedom protesters.  Recall further the NBA’s abject cowardice in deeply kowtowing to the People’s Republic of China in response to the latter’s projected upset over the tweet and the NBA’s impudence.  The kowtowing was rationalized from the league on down to individual players that they all had money at risk from the GM’s tweet—as if their personal pocketbooks could compare with the sacrifices of life and limb, in addition to economic loss, of those freedom protesters as they struggled for their basic freedoms.

That cowardice was only emphasized, not mitigated, by NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s refusal to tell his teams they had to limit what they said. That came lately.

Recall further, the hoo-raw over the picayune nature of the NBA’s kowtowing and the cynically fiscally-driven rationalizing in which the NBA engaged in defending its response to the PRC government—and its institutional abandonment of those Hong Kong freedom protesters.

Now some information is coming out regarding the cost of the NBA’s behavior—the cost to those pocketbooks the NBA has been so desperate to protect.

The loss “will be in the hundreds of millions,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said on Saturday, the first time he’d used such a number to estimate the cost to the league’s China business. The hit amounted to “probably less than $400 million,” Silver said in response to speculation that the losses could reach $1 billion….

Silver added,

We were taken off the air in China for a period of time, and it caused our many business partners in China to feel it was therefore inappropriate to have ongoing relationships with us.

The NBA is still receiving only greatly reduced coverage in the People’s Republic of China.

This isn’t a cost, or a loss. It’s the beginning (and, sadly, probably the end) of the price the NBA should pay for abandoning our American principles, and with them the good people of Hong Kong, in favor of the good opinion of an American enemy.

Upset

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Republicans have run a video montage that pairs House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D, CA) SOTU speech rip-up with individual quotes from President Donald Trump’s speech.  The Progressive-Democrats have their panties thoroughly twisted over that. Here’s the offending video.

Here’s Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s Deputy Chief of Staff with a canonical example of the angst:

The latest fake video of Speaker Pelosi is deliberately designed to mislead and lie to the American people, and every day that these platforms refuse to take it down is another reminder that they care more about their shareholders’ interests than the public’s interests[.]

“These platforms” are Twitter and Facebook, where the ridicule is posted.

With this plaint—and these folks really are serious—Progressive-Democrats once again display their utter contempt for average Americans. With this Pelosi speech-tearing video, they’re saying average Americans are just too grindingly stupid to recognize satire, ridicule, campaign rhetoric when we see it.

These are the thin-skinned ones, or the So-Much-Smarter ones, who want to run our nation. These are the easily triggered ones who want to face Vladimir Putin, Ali Khamenei, Kim Jong-Un, Xi Jinping.  Emmanuel Macron, Boris Johnson.

Wow.