Category Archives: rights

Free Speech According to the Left

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On Tuesday afternoon an Israeli academic was shouted down by two dozen protesters as he tried to begin a lecture before about 100 students and faculty at the University of Minnesota. The speaker was Moshe Halbertal, a professor at NYU Law School and a professor of Jewish thought and philosophy at Hebrew University.

Dr Halbertal had been invited by the university to give the lecture, and after the disruption, he was able to proceed.

The gang of protestors bragged about it.

Today, this apologist for Zionist war crimes spoke only sporadically, as his lies were interrupted again and again by protesters who refused to listen to his anti-Palestinian hate speech.

And not only that. This gang did their best to deny everyone else their right to listen to the speech. The right of those others to determine for themselves what they will listen to is strictly in the hands of this gang. Free speech, according to these, is limited to the freedom to speak or to hear only that which these personally approve.

The silence of the rest of the Left—not even the Star Tribune, a newspaper local to the region, spent any column inches on the thing—is clear: the Left as a whole agrees with this view that only speech of which the Left approves may be freely spoken.

Religious Bigotry in our High Schools

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Bremerton, WA, High School football assistant coach Joe Kennedy has been suspended from coaching his high school football teams because after each game he leads a voluntary prayer session with his players and others wishing to join in at the 50 yard line.

The school district says it’s afraid of being seen as endorsing religion. It prefers, instead, to be seen as banning religion.

While the district appreciates Kennedy’s many positive contributions to the [Bremerton] football program, Kennedy’s conduct poses a genuine risk that the district will be liable for violating the federal and state constitutional rights of students or others[.]

This is plainly bogus. No one is forced to participate in the prayer sessions. They occur after school functions—like the football game—have ended. According to the players themselves, he doesn’t even invite them to participate: he just does his thing, and the players on their own initiative join in. Or don’t.

It gets…better. As part of Kennedy’s suspension, Superintendent Aaron Leavell told him what else he’s not allowed to do.

He was also ordered to avoid kneeling, bowing his head, or doing anything that could remotely be seen as religious.

And

Leavell had offered to let the coach engage in “private prayer” following the football games—provided no child could see the coach petitioning the Almighty[.]

Because Christianity and being Christian are such shameful things, apparently, that they need to be kept hidden away in a back bedroom.

It’s interesting, too, that Kennedy has been doing these private, voluntary prayer sessions since 2008, yet “the school district” says it only just noticed them.

That’s such blatant nonsense that it’s a clear indication of the level of integrity with which the district is approaching this problem which it’s created.

A Destroyer Sailed

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Lu Kang, Director-General of the People’s Republic of China Foreign Affairs Ministry’s Department of Information, complained about the USS Lassen’s passage through the waters surrounding the Spratly Islands in the southern part of the South China Sea.

The warship, USS Lassen, illegally entered waters near relevant islands and reefs within China’s Nansha Islands without permission from the Chinese government. To this the Chinese side expresses its strong discontentment and resolute opposition.

No, no permission was necessary for an American naval vessel—or any other nation’s vessels, military or civilian—to sail through the international waters surrounding the Spratlys.

To this the Eric Hines side expresses its strong contempt and resolute opposition to the PRC’s naked sea grab. After all, those islands and their surrounding international waters do lie within Brunei’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

The Chinese side strongly urges the US side to negotiate seriously with China, immediately rectify its mistakes, and not to undertake any risky and provocative actions that threaten Chinese sovereignty and security interests.

Sure. When will the PRC begin to negotiate seriously, immediately rectify its mistakes, desist from its ongoing risky and provocative actions that threaten the sovereignty and security interests of the Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, and the other nations around the South China Sea?

Oh, and withdraw its military equipment from those international waters and return them to PRC territory?

Democrats’ Habit of Ruling by Fiat

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Keep in mind President Barack Obama’s penchant for Executive Orders and Executive Actions whenever he can’t get his way with Congress, our elected representatives—and so whenever he can’t get his way with us. He issues these EOs and EAs, sometimes strictly legally and sometimes unconstitutionally, but nearly always in contravention of the will of Congress—of us.

Now we get Hillary Clinton’s (Democratic Presidential candidate) plans for when she’s President. Using gun control, that long-time Democratic Party attack on our 2nd Amendment, as her venue, Clinton intends to “use executive authority”—EOs and EAs, governance by fiat in the finest Democratic Party tradition—as the centerpiece of her Presidency.

Recall that Clinton has identified herself as a Proud Progressive.

Recall the words of one of her movement’s founders, Herb Croly:

To be sure, any increase in centralized power and responsibility, expedient or inexpedient, is injurious to certain aspects of traditional American democracy. But the fault in that case lies with the democratic tradition; and the erroneous and misleading tradition must yield before the march of constructive national democracy…. [T]he average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.

Recall all of this in the fall of 2016.

Free Speech

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So long as the government determines what’s free to be said.

There’s this American rock band, all of whose members are of Asian heritage, who call themselves The Slants. When they tried to trademark their name, the US Patent Office refused, claiming the name is “disparaging.” The matter is now before the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which is the appellate court that hears such cases. The Court is hearing the matter en banc, or the whole court is handling the appeal instead of the usual three-judge panel.

The government is censoring naming. At oral argument,

Judge Kimberly Moore asked what would happen if the government started rejecting copyrights for controversial art or other expressive works as it is doing with trademarks.

Would there be “no more porn? No more crucifixes in urine?”

The government is arguing, and it’s serious,

[T]he law governing trademark registrations does not violate the First Amendment…. Its purpose is not “to help people to make a political statement or prevent people from making political statement[.],

Indeed. However, the government’s lawyer, Daniel Terry, is arguing that Government is the one that will determine what is political speech that the government must protect and what is not political speech that the government gets to censor. And Terry argued with that claim that Government has determined that a name can never be political speech.