Category Archives: culture

Pesky Democracy

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We’ll have none of that here. Much too noisy. Much too disordered. Much to great a risk to our rule.

And so the People’s Republic of China has extended its despotism further into Hong Kong.

China has sharply reduced the number of directly elected seats in Hong Kong’s legislature in a setback for the democracy movement. The changes were announced Tuesday after a two-day meeting of China’s top legislature.
In the new make-up, the legislature will be expanded to 90 seats, and only 20 will be elected by the public. Currently, 35 seats, or half of the 70-seat legislature, are elected.
China’s top legislature approved amendments to Hong Kong’s constitution on Tuesday that will give Beijing more control over the makeup of the city’s legislature.

Those 20 will be carefully selected by the PRC’s Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress:

Local national-security officials will also get effective veto power over election candidates, allowing authorities to bar opposition figures from elected office.

This is not the behavior of a civilized, much less enlightened, nation. It is, though, of a piece with the barbarism of genocide against the Uyghurs, the occupation of Tibet and the South China Sea, and the threats of war against the Republic of China.

Slander

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Our slander laws are convoluted, and as part of that convolution, they put certain Americans—celebrities and politicians, for instance—out of effective reach of their protection, and they put other Americans—journalists, for instance, functionally immune to their restrictions. Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, in his Thursday Wall Street Journal op-ed, wants to niggle around their edges to improve them.

No. It’s time, to coin a phrase, to go big. Libel law, in fact, is simple enough to simplify: if someone lies about or otherwise slanders another, the liar/slanderer is liable. If someone mistakenly mischaracterizes another and doesn’t correct the mischaracterization when advised of the error, mischaracterizer is liable, if to a lesser degree.

That’s pretty simple and straightforward. The only grey area—and this is where juries earn their pay—is in that area between lie and mistaken mischaracterization.

That straightforward correction of slander laws can be made simpler, yet. The new law should apply to the press—it’s really not that hard for a pressman to tell the truth, except, apparently, in the minds of those of the journalist guild—and it should apply equally to the politician or celebrity who’s the victim.

But, but—according to Reynolds, New York Times Co v Sullivan, the Supreme Court ruling that created the imbalances involving the press and celebrities and politicians,

grew out of a concerted effort by Southern states to use libel lawsuits as a weapon in a sort of asymmetric warfare. Civil-rights organizers had powerful support from national media organizations, but local judges and juries were sympathetic to segregation.

No, it didn’t. Those judges’ rulings and their influences on juries via judicial instructions to those juries had nothing to do with slander, per se, and everything to do with those judges acting in accordance with their personal agendas rather than in accordance with the text of the laws before them.

Sullivan needs to be reversed.

“Not Renew”

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Newspeak for “Cancel.”

That’s what the University of Cincinnati has chosen to do to its now ex-instructor John Ucker in the school’s…reaction…to Ucker’s referring to our favorite virus as the “chinese virus.”

The school’s Dean of Engineering and Applied Science, John Weidner, said this about that:

These types of xenophobic comments and stigmatizations around location or ethnicity are more than troubling. We can better protect and care for all when we speak about COVID-19 with both accuracy and empathy, something we should all strive for.

Regarding that, I have a question for Weidner: what are his preferred pronouns for the Zika, Ebola, West Nile viruses? What self-identifications does he find acknowledge for the South Africa Variant, the UK Variant, the Brazil Variant of our favorite virus?

The school said last Friday that Ucker’s contract “would not renew”—that Ucker would be canceled—because he spoke with accuracy and without stigmatization or xenophobia and not from within the school’s Parameters of Preciousness.

What’s Important in a Jury

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The jury in the Derek Chauvin case, concerning the cop who’s accused of murdering George Floyd, is seated, and much is being made of its “diversity.”

…settled on [the first] 13 jurors, including five men and eight women in the trial against Derek Chauvin. Of those, seven identified themselves as white, four as Black, and two as multiracial.

And

The seated jurors include a chemist, an auditor, a nurse, a nonprofit executive, and a retiree. At least four of the 13 are married, and one is engaged. Two identified themselves as single parents, including one woman who said she is a widow.

And

The jury is significantly more racially and ethnically diverse than the general population in both Minnesota as a whole and in Hennepin County….

Never mind that what our legal system promises—it’s carved in stone above the entrance to our Supreme Court building—equal justice under law. Nothing about specially identified subgroups in that promise.

Never mind that our Constitution promises—requires—the equal protection of the laws for all Americans:

nor shall any State…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws

Nothing in there, either, about specially identified subgroups of Americans.

Never mind that our Constitution further promises—requires—that jurors comprise an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed. Nothing in here about specially identified subgroups of Americans.

Never mind that the only diversity actually required—or necessary—is that the jurors be US citizens. There’s nothing about skin color, business role, sex, marital status, or anything else in any of that.

The identity politics—in our courts, yet—that is being so enthusiastically touted is nothing more than the racist segregation of identity politics, dividing by design particular subsets of American citizens from each other.

As a Supreme Court Chief Justice once said, the way to end discrimination is to stop discriminating. Until that happens, neither the people nor the defendant can have any expectation of a truly fair and impartial trial, with a believable outcome.

“Pope Struggles to Contain Conservative-Liberal Tensions in Catholic Church”

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That’s the headline on a Wall Street Journal article about the purported struggles of Pope Francis to manage the church of which he’s the nominal [sic] head.

For me, though, as a personally religious man who’s neither a Catholic nor enamored of institutional religion in general, I’m confused by this struggle.

How can there be any struggle? Why are the tensions accepted as something to be taken seriously?

The Church’s tenets are inviolate; morals are universal and inviolate.

All that might vary over time or across cultures is the way in which those tenets, morals generally, are upheld, defended, and enforced.

The Pope needs to consider putting his foot down and enforcing—in no uncertain terms—the Church’s fundamental tenets.

That might cause a schism? Possibly. Likely, even. But there’s a major so what here. Sure, the schism itself would be painful and badly inconvenient. However, the Church has grown stronger after every schism. Christianity has grown stronger since the Catholicism-Protestantism schism.

At worst, after any schism from Francis’ putting his foot down, the Church would be rid of those who can’t support Catholic tenets and would have a clearer path forward. And those who can’t support those fundamental Catholic holdings would be free to create and support their own church with their own clearer path.

Sort of like the Church of England, for all the shabby reason for its origin.