Some Speech Rights are More Equal than Others

A college newspaper, following in the footsteps of the tabloid New York Times, has fired a columnist for not complying with the paper’s, or its University’s, thoughtcrime avoidance requirements.

Syracuse University student Adrianna San Marco was fired from her gig as a columnist at a local paper, The Daily Orange, when she dismissed the notion of “institutional racism” in an opinion piece for a separate, conservative website.

And she wasn’t even writing for the ex-employing paper; her piece was published by LifeZette. Here’s Daily Orange Editor-in-Chief Casey Darnell:

We aren’t afraid of controversial views, but we have a responsibility to avoid promoting harmful ones. We don’t censor conservative columnists[.]

Not afraid? Yet he and his organization censored speech. If he doesn’t understand that, his journalism professors have failed him badly. If he doesn’t understand that suppressing speech is precisely the promotion of harm then Syracuse has failed him badly. His parents should demand their money back.

Syracuse University did not respond to a request for comment.

Of course not.

Bigotry of the Left

Within hours of each other, these happened.

A Philadelphia family court supervisor was fired after a video posted to Facebook shows him tearing down signs in support of Black Lives Matter.

Because it’s entirely appropriate to support a racist organization that prioritizes some black lives above all other lives, including other black lives. BLM doesn’t even give a rat’s patootie about all the black babies whose lives are aborted in the womb. But it’s forbidden to presume to criticize such a mob of thugs.

This, from a Progressive-Democrat Congressman:

Representative Sean Patrick Maloney (D, NY) accused conservatives of using the “bogus” term “religious liberty” in order to hide their desire to discriminate.

Because protecting—I’ll say it—religious liberty of individual Americans is dishonest, but trashing the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment of our Constitution is just fine.

This is what we can expect, in spades, with a Progressive-Democratic Party administration ruling over us.

Borderline….

According to Johns Hopkins’ CSSE data, the US has suffered 116,000 deaths from the Wuhan Virus as of 16 June. That’s not the whole story, though, and the raw number overstates the case along one critical dimension.

The US death toll from [Wuhan Virus] in nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities has topped 50,000….

That’s 43% of all our virus fatalities occurring in those old folks homes.

Those same CSSE data indicate that the US has some 2,100,000 cases—of which 250,000 have occurred in those facilities. That’s 12% of all our virus infections concentrated in those old folks homes, and a 20% fatality rate for our old folks, given infection in our old folks homes. Which compares with a 3% fatality rate outside those facilities.

Unfortunately (or conveniently, depending on perspective), many States don’t disaggregate cases effectively, so that old folks home death rate actually maybe be understated to some degree.

New York, for example, doesn’t include cases in which nursing-home residents died in a hospital….

Some States—New York and New Jersey come to mind—badly exacerbated this death toll concentration and infection disportionality by actually requiring nursing homes and the like to accept into their midst Wuhan Virus-infected patients simply because those facilities had empty beds.

Borderline? It’s right next door to criminal.

Affirmative Action in California

The good citizens of California banned discrimination on the basis of race and sex when they voted up Proposition 209 nearly 25 years ago. That proposition barred affirmative action programs.

Those citizens of a generation ago understood that affirmative action programs, by their deliberate use of race and sex as selection criteria, are fundamentally racist and sexist.

Here we have the California Assembly affirmatively supporting just that racism and sexism.

California Legislative Black Caucus Chair Dr Shirley Weber, primary sponsor of ACA 5, which is designed to rescind Prop 209 and to that end puts the matter on the November ballot, said this about her bill, claiming that the current political and social environment is

forcing Californians to acknowledge the deep-seated inequality and far-reaching institutional failures that show that your race and gender still matters[.]

However, rather than addressing the root causes of “inequality” (carefully undefined, that—inequality of outcome? of initial opportunity? of…?—of whatever seems convenient to the politician, apparently) and of “institutional failures,” the California Assembly has chosen to expand those failures, to strengthen the prejudice, by reverting to those inherently bigoted programs.

My irony alarm is sounding.

And the Assembly as a whole is proud of its bigotry.

Which Lives Matter?

For the Black Lives Matter group, lives do not matter equally: black lives matter more than blue lives, white lives, Asian lives, Hispanic lives—black lives are first among All Lives.

Not even all black lives matter to BLM.

Not David Patrick Underwood’s, a Federal contractor who was murdered guarding a Federal building in Oakland during the current spate of rioting. Not David Dorn’s, a retired St Louis police captain murdered while guarding a friend’s small business during the current spate of rioting. BLM is silent on these snuffed black lives.

Not the lives of millions of black men, women, and children killed by black thugs. BLM is silent on these snuffed black lives.

Not the neighborhood businesses owned or operated by blacks, not the neighborhood businesses employing blacks. BLM is silent on these badly damaged black lives.

Not the neighborhood businesses that are the only places millions of blacks can go to shop—for necessities like food or for nice-to-haves like haircuts or hair styling. BLM is silent on these badly damaged black lives.

BLM doesn’t care about other minorities’ welfare, either; certainly not the neighborhood businesses similarly situated by and for Hispanics, Asians, women.

BLM isn’t even an efficiently racist organization—its members just indiscriminately [sic] hate anyone not in the BLM movement.

Nestride Yumga is clear on this, as she wrote in her WSJ op-ed:

[T]he Black Lives Matter movement throws racial antagonism into this equation to create an even bigger problem by turning Americans against each other, tearing down our cities, and bringing shame and disgrace to our great country.
They don’t organize nationwide protests for other issues that seriously affect our communities. They don’t protest the police department for letting homicides go unsolved. They don’t protest Congress or the Federal Reserve for access to capital. They don’t protest the school system for failing African-American children.

This movement’s agenda is to make sure we feel oppressed and depressed, so that we hate ourselves more and despise our fellow Americans.
The person who makes you believe you’re oppressed also limits how far you can go. If African-Americans are oppressed, it is by the people who tell us we are….

The stench of racism is oppressive no matter from whom it vents.