Category Archives: rights

Love Me that Censorship

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That’s what that icon of the Left, Juan Williams, says.

The reality is that [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg doesn’t seem to understand, from my perspective, that he’s undermining his brand by allowing political lies to be put on his platform. That, to me, lessens the trust that the consumer has.

Because censoring speech—especially politically speech—is the way to win the hearts and minds and trust of the consumer.

Certainly, controlling speech and allowing only that which the Left approves—what Juan Williams personally approves—can be a tool for winning controlling the hearts and minds of citizens, but trust? No. Censorship destroys trust.

But, hey—the Left doesn’t approve.  Juan Williams doesn’t approve.  That makes it all OK.

Williams had this gem, too, accusing folks who disagree with him on this—Conservatives—of flip flopping:

I remember when the right was always on Facebook, “Oh, you’re trying to silence…conservatives.”  Now it’s like, “Oh, yeah, put Trump’s lies there, please.”

Because objecting to censorship is flip floppery.  And that last bit: the Right Reverend Juan Williams is the arbiter of lies, distortions, and facts because us ordinary Americans are just too grindingly stupid to make the discriminations for ourselves.

This is another example of the Left’s—the Progressives’—utter contempt for those who don’t agree with them.

Typical

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Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, has struck again.  Now he’s banning “all political advertising on Twitter globally.”  He’s justifying this move with this bit of fantastical rationalization:

We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.

I suppose, then, he believes television, radio, print media—along with his competitors, Facebook, Alphabet, et al.—also should ban political advertising on their platforms.  After all, political message reach should be earned, not bought.

A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people.

This contempt for ordinary Americans is just Liberal Know Better-ism. No one is forced to read the material whose promotion is paid for; we all can make our own decisions to read or to scroll past. It’s even already clearly identified by Dorsey’s minions as promoted material.  Beyond that, it may be the case, especially with the rapidity with which the Twitter feed runs, that the first many folks learn of a political message is when a promoted one appears at the top of their feed.

We don’t need the Big Brothers of the Left to lead us around by the nose, instructing us on what we’re to read or not to read.

Maybe Dorsey should just get out of the censorship business.

The Doings of a Star Chamber

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Here are some, from the House Intelligence Committee’s canonical Star Chamber, chaired by Congressman and Intell Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D, CA):

a single, printed transcript of every interview…of its impeachment inquiry. Only members of the three committees…allowed to view that printout, and only in the presence of a Democratic staffer

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R, NY) has the right of this one:

Ms Stefanik—an elected member of Congress who sits on the Intelligence Committee—will be babysat while reading by an unelected employee of the Democrats.
“It’s outrageous, and it’s an abuse of power,” Ms Stefanik said in an interview. “Every constituent across this country deserves to have their members have access to all the facts.”

Here’re more of Schiff’s Star Chamber rules:

  • witnesses locked behind secure doors
  • shield the whistleblower who prompted this “impeachment” proceeding from cross- much less direct examination
  • public, press, representatives of his selection barred from secret, though unclassified, hearings
  • carefully scripted and executed leaks and accusations
  • Progressive-Democratic staff supervision of Republican members
  • bar Republicans from calling opposing witnesses
  • withhold official documents including nearly two dozen letters from the committee…that had not been uploaded to the committee repository
  • Republicans not allowed to know the questions Schiff is asking
  • refuse to allow White House counsel in the room to hear the accusations against the president

This is what we can look forward to under a Progressive-Democratic Party reign.

Secular Authority and Morals

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A letter writer in a recent Wall Street Journal‘s Letters to the Editor section, demurred from Attorney General William Barr’s remarks on secularism and religion at the University of Notre Dame’s Law School and de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. The letter’s author wrote,

Our society can teach morality, ethics, civility, self-reliance, and humility without reference to religion or any particular faith. Children can be taught….

Certainly, such principles can be taught.  But how to enforce them? Relying on Government for enforcement means relying on the men who are in Government from time to time, men with views on the legitimacy of those principles and the means of their enforcement that are as variable as those men. And each man’s views will vary over time.

No, moral and ethical principles are universal and timeless, and the only even moderately sure way of enforcing them is through appeal to a higher power—in fine, to religion, which is what our republic’s founding documents do, and our Founders did.

There are Bribes

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…and there are bribes.  Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam tried to bribe the good people of Hong Kong the other day.  She gave her annual address on her policies for the coming year, and in it she “promised” (because we’ve seen the value of her commitments in her promise to completely withdraw and rescind her draft extradition law, a promise on which she has since welched)

to boost the supply of low-cost homes, offer mortgage assistance for first-time buyers, and increase mass-transit fare subsidies

if only Hong Kong’s people would just shut up, go home, and submit.

Those folks didn’t, and don’t, believe her.

Mrs Lam’s speech this week “has not really focused on the protest itself,” a 26-year-old demonstrator…said Sunday.

And tens of thousands of Hong Kong’s finest hit the streets again Sunday, to be met with tear gas and water cannon firing abrasive, dyed liquids shot at them by Hong Kong’s increasingly thuggish police.  It’s true enough, some demonstrators also have resorted to violence—lighting fires in street intersections, trashing some store fronts, the rare Molotov cocktail tossed at those police.  It’s also true enough that incitement to violence, even when the incitement comes from police, is not, by itself, an excuse for responding with violence.

However, given that Lam and her city government have utterly ignored the desires of the people over whom she reigns as PRC President Xi Jinping’s satrap, their increasing frustration and violence are completely understandable.

Lam’s bribes, which insult those citizens’ integrity and intelligence, only add fuel to that frustration.