Tag Archives: morality

Naked Censorship

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Now Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook is being blatant about censoring inconvenient truths.  He and Connecticut’s Chris Murphy are peas in a pod.

Elizabeth Heng is a Republican candidate for Congress from a California district centered on Fresno.  Her parents are emigres from Cambodia who also had escaped the genocide of the ’70s that Pol Pot had tried to inflict.  Heng tried to run a campaign ad that touted that fight, that survival, and her parents’ recovery from that terror.  When she put her ad on Facebook, Zuckerberg and his censorship algorithm-programming IT experts said Nope.

We don’t allow ads that contain shocking, disrespectful, or sensational content, including ads that depict violence or threats of violence[.]

Because an illustration of triumph over murderous adversity, when it comes from a Conservative, is shocking, disrespectful, or sensational.

No.  As Heng tweeted (because Facebook showed itself not reliably available to her, I speculate)

It’s unbelievable that @facebook could have such a blatant disregard for the history that many people, including my own parents, have lived through. I’m sure it is “shocking” for people to hear about this kind of injustice, but this is reality.

Once again, an illustration of the Left’s view of free speech.

Free Speech According to the Progressive-Democratic Party

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Senator Chris Murphy (D, CT) wants to spread censorship about and vastly broaden it.  All in the name of democracy—Progressive-Democrat style.

Infowars is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart. These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it[.]

Censorship.  Because the only speech that should be free is that speech approved by our Betters.  Because ordinary Americans are just too grindingly stupid to be trusted with deciding for ourselves what to say, what to hear, and how to evaluate what we hear.

This is the “freedom” that the Progressive-Democratic Party will allow us.

Integrity

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Recall that Paul Manafort, briefly a campaign mucky-muck for then-Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, is on trial for a number of tax and bank fraud charges.

One of those charges relates to a tax return filed by Manafort that supposedly

contained inaccurate information [that] falsely reduced his tax liability by classifying millions of dollars she believed was income as loans.

The accountant who filed the return, Cindy Laporta (“she” in the above cite) testified under oath last week at Manafort’s trial that [emphasis added]

manipulating tax returns in such a way was “inappropriate” and that she knew it was wrong, but did it because Mr Manafort was a longtime client of her firm. “I prepared the tax returns and communicated with banks based on information that [Richard] Gates and Mr Manafort provided to me that I didn’t believe[.]”

This included such incidents as

Ms Laporta said she agreed to help finesse [Manafort’s] company’s income, recasting $900,000 as a loan, based on a two-page loan agreement that appeared to be from one of Mr Manafort’s clients, Telmar, that she suspected was fake.

And another:

Messrs Manafort and Gates pressed her to send to the banks what she believed were false documents purportedly forgiving the previously booked loans, after the banks had asked to see more income to provide the mortgages.

She could have refused to do these things.  She chose, instead, to be serially dishonest.

Laporta was granted immunity for this testimony.

Given her testimony that she contributed to falsifying tax documents—Federal felonies (and State felonies if these affected any State taxes)—why should any of her testimony be believed?  She’s confessed to being dishonest; how can we take any of her testimony as other than dishonest?

On the other hand, Mueller’s Manafort prosecutors traded her immunity for her testimony.  On what basis then, can we conclude she simply didn’t sell her testimony like a Thursday night hooker?  Alternatively, on what basis can we conclude she wasn’t brow-beaten, with those felonies of hers as cudgel, into testifying the way she has?  Either way, it seems clear to me that it was the Mueller prosecutors, not Laporta, who testified during Laporta’s time on the stand; they were just using her mouth to do so.

College Admissions and Diversity

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Harvard is claiming that it needs to select preferentially for race in its admissions in order to achieve its student body diversity goals.

…it has tried alternatives to race-conscious affirmative action to diversify its undergraduate student body, but such efforts would harm both the diversity and academic strength of the class.

This is nonsense.

“Affirmative action” programs, giving preferential treatment as they do (however small the preference is claimed to be) to persons based on their race (and/or sex in most other such programs), are fundamentally racist. More broadly, when there are limited classroom seats (let’s say) discriminating in favor of one group—whether by race or by merit—necessarily discriminates against other groups: those not preferred.

Harvard’s claim that they need race-based affirmative action admissions is at best cynical. Were Harvard serious about improving diversity, they’d be moving to improve the quality of education in K-12 schools so that diversity would fall out of the merit of those graduates and not out of race-based selection. Harvard is silent on its actions in that milieu.

Tolerance

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According to the Left.  It seems that liberal actor Mark Duplass had tweeted some praise for the Conservative Ben Shapiro.  Duplass committed the unpardonable sin of saying Shapiro was a “genuine person,” and he

encouraged “fellow liberals” to follow Shapiro if they are interested in hearing perspective from the other side of the political aisle.

Oh so tolerant (and loudly and proudly tolerant) Left got on Duplass about that.  Rather than going on about his business, ignoring that wind in the trees, though, Duplass cowered under his desk and apologized for his offense.

So that tweet was a disaster on many levels. I want to be clear that I in no way endorse hatred, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, or any such form of intolerance.  My goal has always been to spread unity, understanding, and kindness.

As Shapiro put it in response to the diatribe,

…write a nice tweet about someone with whom you disagree politically, get labeled a racist sexist homophobe. Good stuff, guys. Really showing that tolerant streak[.]

Duplass’ cowardice has demonstrated the Left’s hatred and intolerance.