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Tag Archives: government
The End of Free Speech
At least in Europe. The European Court of Human Rights ruled last Thursday that it’s impermissible to make crude remarks about Islam’s Muhammed if those remarks fall outside what Government deems acceptable. It seems that, in the course of a 2009 seminar, a woman commented on Muhammed’s marriage to his child bride:
[Muhammed] liked to do it with children…. A 56-year-old and a six-year-old? … What do we call it, if it is not pedophilia?
The ECHR ruled that remark unobjective, lacking historical background, and intended to disparage Islam.
Government will decide what parameters must be present in “free” speech—here, objectivity, with Government defining that parameter—Government will decide the environment and context within which “free” speech must be made. Government has decided that rude speech is verboten.
The answer to bad speech is not more speech, but—in Europe—no speech other than that which is Government approved.
Guilty Until Proven Innocent
The tentacles reach far—even into the origin of Western concepts of individual liberty. A British court has ordered
the wife of a jailed Azerbaijani banker to explain how she and her husband could afford their multimillion-pound London mansion or face having it seized.
Government does not have to prove the illegal origin of the money. No, the holder of the money must prove her innocence. Here is the outcome of the British government’s legislation ostensibly aimed at allegedly dirty money held by people with political connections or suspected of serious crime.
Think about that: someone with the wrong political connections in the eyes of someone in government, or someone whom somebody in government decides is behaving suspiciously, now must prove his lack of guilt.
Money laundering might seem a perfectly fine excuse for invading individual liberty in this way: truly laundered money does indeed have origins that are inimical to safety.
But so are individual liberties critical to the safety of each of us. What is the government’s limiting principle here? Where does the tradeoff between security and liberty naturally end?
Innocent until proven guilty is a concept that must protect even the unsavory, or apparently unsavory, among us because that protection is critical to our own safety.
The New Left
There can be no reasoning, no rational debate anymore with the Progressive-Democratic Party and the Left in general. This is made clear by the statements luminaries of that collection have made in recent days—confirming their behavior during the Kavanaugh confirmation process just concluded, during which they actively rejected a foundation of liberty: innocent until proven guilty. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) was the loudest on this, saying outright that then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh had to personally authorize an investigation into himself or he would show himself guilty.
It began earlier. Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D, CA) called for Republicans to be physically confronted wherever they are. Senator Corey Spartacus Booker (D, NJ) called on the Left to get up in the face of congresspeople.
Now the Progressive-Democrats and their Left are expanding on the thesis that there can be no rationality in discourse—if, indeed, there can be discourse at all—with those of us to the right of center. Here’s Hillary Clinton, in an interview with CNN:
You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about…. That’s why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again.
That destruction is exactly what the Progressive-Democrats are attempting. Yet, only when that Party is in control can there be any pretense of civility. Only when the Party can require debate to be on their terms, within their parameters, can there be anything like peaceful disagreement.
The threats from the Left are palpable:
- Senator Cory Gardner’s (R, CO) wife received a graphic text message with a video depicting a beheading
- Progressive-Democrat intern Jackson Cosko has been arrested for posting the personal information, including home addresses, of Senators Lindsey Graham (R, SC), Mike Lee (R, UT), and Orrin Hatch (R, UT) on Wikipedia
- Senator Jeff Flake (R, AZ) was trapped in an elevator with two screaming women “activists”
Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) worries about assassination attempts—a concern made concrete by last year’s mass assassination attempt of Republican Congressmen at a baseball practice.
Minnesota Special Education teacher, Samantha Ness, has actively called for the assassination of now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
This is just a taste of what we can expect if the Progressive-Democrats are successful in this fall’s elections. This is a taste of Progressive-Democrat “civility.” It isn’t republican democracy that these folks want for our nation. Not anymore.
Consider a Possibility
Our ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, will resign her position at the end of the year. She told President Donald Trump her intention six months ago.
That raises a couple of thoughts in my pea brain. One is to watch the utter vitriol, hatred, and character assassination with which the Progressive-Democrats will try to block any Trump replacement nominee from confirmation.
Beyond that: Nikki Haley for President in ’24. Consider further: Lindsey Graham for VP (unless we still need the Republican numbers in the Senate to protect the Supreme Court). (If Graham proves unavailable, how about Congresswoman Mia Love (R, UT)? It’d be fun to watch the Party of Identity Politics campaign against that ticket.)