Tag Archives: ethics

Free Speech, Free Assembly

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Here is how two clauses of our Constitution’s First Amendment will be enforced under a Progressive-Democrat administration.

Officials in the city of Houston, Texas have cancelled the state’s Republican convention. On Wednesday, Democrat Mayor Sylvester Turner announced he has instructed the city’s convention center to cancel the event.

Today I instructed the Houston First Corporation to exercise its right contractually in cancelling the State’s Republican Convention that was set to take place next week at GRB. #COVID19
— Sylvester Turner (@SylvesterTurner) July 8, 2020

It was supposed to be held there next week, but Turner claimed it would’ve posed a “clear and present” danger.

Notice: the Progressive-Democrat mayor carefully waited until virtually the last minute to block the Texas Republican Party’s convention. By waiting until so late in the game, Turner has made it exceedingly difficult if not impossible for the party and its members to exercise their free assembly rights and free speech rights, except on a schedule acceptable to the Progressive-Democrats. Which Turner has carefully omitted to lay out.

It’s Been Going On for a Year

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This is what Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, in a series of tweets, said so weakly about antifa on 2 July 2019 after that gang assaulted journalist Andy Ngo and others, putting them in the hospital:

Portland has always been a beacon of free speech. We are proud of that history.
— Mayor Ted Wheeler (@tedwheeler) July 1, 2019

But in the last couple of years, some have increasingly used their opportunity to exercise their 1st amendment rights, as an opportunity to incite violence.
— Mayor Ted Wheeler (@tedwheeler) July 1, 2019

Over the weekend some chose to engage in violence in Portland, which is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.
— Mayor Ted Wheeler (@tedwheeler) July 1, 2019

Wheeler then said ‘twarn’t him:

I wasn’t even here. I wasn’t even in the United States. I was with my family in Ecuador on a wildlife tour.

Because he was out of all contact with the world.

No, wait–his Number Two wasn’t following the command set and instructions he’d left behind when he went on his trip.

No, wait–no one was following the corporate culture he’d so carefully set up when he took office.

Now we have this:

Police in Portland, OR, declared a riot around 11 pm local time Saturday as Independence Day marked the 38th consecutive day of civil unrest in the city.

Not peaceful protesting for 38 days, civil unrest—and Saturday was the second consecutive day the police have had to declare a riot and move to disperse the gathered thugs and rioters.

Riot? The “gathering” was shooting fireworks, not into the air in celebration, but directly at the Multnomah County Justice Center. Yes, riot.

This is another example of Progressive-Democrat governance.

Revolution

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On the eve of the 2008 Presidential election, then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama (D) bragged

We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.

In 2015, then-Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D) insisted

[D]eep seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.

Current Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden is declaring via tweet

Joe Biden @JoeBiden · 14h
We’re going to beat Donald Trump. And when we do, we won’t just rebuild this nation — we’ll transform it.

Progressive-Democrats like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ilhan Omar (MN), Rashida Tlaib (MI) all are calling for the elimination of police departments. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) are demanding nakedly wealth redistributive tax codes.

Progressive-Democrat supporters are busily assaulting, attempting to tear down (and too often succeeding) statues to our Founders and to heroes who supported and fought for equality under law for all Americans—statues to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln (including a statue celebrating the emancipation and Lincoln’s welcome of a rising, newly freed black to his new life), Ulysses Grant, Frederick Douglass, Mathias Baldwin, the Shaw Memorial.

Now we have this, from Jamal Chapel:

We need a revolution in order to overthrow this system, bring a whole new communist world into being that can actually ensure the rights of black and brown people.

This is the fundamental change we’re in for if we elect a Progressive-Democrat government. And not just this fall. Ever.

Disingenuosity

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Thy name is TikTok. India has banned TikTok along with a potful of other PRC apps on national security—cybersecurity—grounds. In response, TikTok’s CEO Kevin Mayer said that

Chinese authorities had never requested the data of their Indian users, and even if they had, the company wouldn’t comply.

Right.

“Never requested” is a cynically offered non sequitur. Not having been asked is entirely separate from never will be asked.

It’s more serious than that, though. The People’s Republic of China enacted a law in 2017 that requires all PRC-domiciled companies to comply with PRC intel community requests for information. Not “pretty please,” not “strongly encouraged.” It’s “stand and deliver, stand in violation of law.”

This past week, the PRC enacted an additional law, that while nominally aimed at Hong Kong, has the effect of fleshing out that 2017 law. This latest rule by law enactment tells the PRC government that it’s authorized to go outside the nation’s borders to enter other nations to arrest and bring to the PRC for trial those who violate or threaten PRC national security. Mayer’s pious claim that TikTok wouldn’t comply with such a request would be a clear violation—in PRC government eyes—and subject him and his staff to arrest and removal to the PRC.

Article 38 of that law specifically says this:

This Law shall apply to offences under this Law committed against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from outside the Region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the Region.

Beijing has long said that Hong Kong is critical to the PRC’s national security—and that’s the PRC’s rationale for this additional law. From that, any company not complying with an intel request, by threatening PRC security, offends against Hong Kong.

Mayer knows that. He’s not an ignorant or oblivious man.

Cancelation

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There’s cancelation and there’s cancelation.

The Left is busily canceling folks and institutions over historical transgressions—nearby or old, real or perceived, major or minor—including canceling heroes of the fight to end slavery because they were flawed. Why, then, are they so studiously not working to cancel the symbols of the Democratic Party, the leaders and other prominent members of that party, and the party itself? After all, it’s the Democratic Party that

  • actively fought for slavery anti-bellum and created the KKK post-bellum
  • moved to enact gun control laws explicitly to keep blacks unarmed and helpless against continued depredations
  • enacted Jim Crow laws
  • resegregated the Federal government under Woodrow Wilson
  • refused to integrate the military under FDR
  • nationalized minimum wage laws explicitly to keep blacks from competing for jobs by being willing to work for less than white union members wanted to
  • created today’s “welfare” system that keeps blacks (and other poor) trapped in welfare cages
  • perpetuates racist segregation with their identity politics today
  • and on and on.

Oh, wait—that would mean the Left and the Party would have to cancel themselves.