Tag Archives: rights

A No-Deal Brexit

Posted on by
Reply

The Wall Street Journal opined earlier this week that, in the words of the piece’s subheadline,

A no-deal crash out of the EU may be the best outcome now.

The rest of the thing was a string of rationalizations of why this is true, but the heart of the matter is that subhead.

In fact, though, a no-deal departure always has been the best outcome.

A priori because that’s what the Brits voted for in their referendum—they wanted their sovereignty and control of their own borders back. Full stop.

In retrospect because Brussels has acted in bad faith, solely to punish the Brits for their effrontery, ever since. EU leadership, lately in the person of Donald Tusk, has acted in echo of Jacques Chirac’s slam on eastern European nations:

It is not really responsible behavior. It is not well brought-up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet.

There’s no reason at all for the Brits to talk further with the EU regarding the terms of Great Britain’s departure for freedom.

Update: Yesterday, the British Parliament voted against a no-deal Brexit and in favor of going to Brussels and beg for more time to negotiate. What happened to the courage that led Great Britain to build a globe-spanning empire?

Fortunately, Parliament’s move is non-binding. We’ll see whether Prime Minister Theresa May has the courage required to stay with the scheduled date for British departure, currently 29 March.

Expanding Government for Freedom

Posted on by
Reply

That’s the Progressive-Democrats’ Orwellian claim about their HR1 bill, just passed on party lines.  It’s for the children, too.  If it saves just one life….  Here is some of what’s in the bill:

Mandates a nationalized system to publicly finance federal elections. It would allocate federal money to match certain small-dollar donations 6-to-1 and deposit those funds in campaign accounts.

We already can designate, on our tax returns, a donation to a Federal fund for Presidential campaigns; the monies to be divided equally between the political parties.  That’s been a complete failure over the years, with the amounts designated falling, and private money going directly to the parties, candidates, PACs, etc, expanding. The Progressive-Democrats’ answer is to “correct” that by forcing us to donate to political campaigns in even larger amounts, whether we want to or not.

Requires several classes of politically active organizations, including tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups, to disclose donors who have given $10,000 or more during an election cycle.

Because anonymity is as anathema to Progressive-Democrats as it is critical to free speech and to liberty generally.

Changes the membership of the Federal Election Commission to five members, with the president’s party in the majority, from its current six members, evenly split between Democratic and Republican appointees.

Because balancing the membership also is anathema to Progressive-Democrats: they desperately need a purely partisan facility for overseeing our elections.

Fortunately, Republicans still have a majority in the Senate.

A Few Impertinent Questions about Hate Speech

Posted on by
Reply

One of the things French President Emmanuel Macron has proposed for strengthening of the European Union’s governance—the EU’s Government—is

enhanced protection against hate speech

In particular, in his op-ed For European renewal [emphasis Macron’s]

creating a European Agency for the Protection of Democracies, which will provide each Member State with European experts…European rules banish all incitements to hate and violence from the Internet

This is to be done under the guise of

respect for the individual is the bedrock of our civilisation of dignity.

My questions aren’t specific to Macron, though, or to the EU—they’re general in their application.

How is it respect for the individual that Government tells him he’s too mind-numblingly stupid to decide for himself to what speech he should attend and what speech he should ignore, to what speech he should provide answer—and how? To tell him he’s too cowardly to respond coherently and that Government must…protect…him?

How long will it be, do you think, before Government decides that speech that counters hate speech—Louis Brandeis’ instruction—is itself hate speech, thereby allowing the original to stand unchallenged?

When will we recognize that Government’s enforced silence is not, cannot be, the answer to “hate speech?”

When will we recognize that the enforced silence of Macron’s proposal is itself hate speech?

The Problem with this Kind of Law Suit

Posted on by
Reply

The State of Michigan, through its Attorney General and Department of Civil Rights, has decided to use the Southern Poverty Law Center’s claimed identifications of “hate groups” to spearhead those two agencies’ pretended protection of Michigan citizens from the ravages of hatred.

One of the targets of the State’s AG and MDCR, selected from the SPLC’s smear lists, is the American Freedom Law Center, an Evil Judeo-Christian law firm.  Far from being cowed, the law firm is pushing back, in spades: they’ve filed suit against Dana Nessel, the AG, and Agustin Arbulu, the MSCR’s Executive Director.  Robert Muise, AFLC’s Co-Founder and Senior Counsel:

It’s one thing for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is a private organization, to engage in political propaganda and political hyperbole.  [It’s a violation of the Constitution] when you have the Attorney General who’s relying on that political propaganda to investigate and target us with the power of the state.
You now have the government giving its endorsement to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s nonsense—that now triggers our constitutional protections[.]

The AFLC is bringing three charges to their suit:

violation of free speech rights under the First Amendment; violation of expressive association rights under the First Amendment; and violation of equal protection as guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Here’s a bit of the central evidence against Nessel and Arbulu according to the AFLC’s suit:

According to the SPLC report relied upon by Defendants, Plaintiff [AFLC] is identified as a “hate” group because it is allegedly “anti-Muslim,” and according to SPLC’s “Hate Map,” Plaintiff is located in the Ann Arbor area. Consequently, Plaintiff is one of the very groups that Defendants referred to in their public announcement as an “extremist and hate organization in Michigan.”

The AFLC also alleges in its suit that Nessel’s and Arbulu’s goal is to legitimize the SPLC’s own hatred of those disagreeing with them, to

create in the collective mind of the public that organizations designated by SPLC as “hate” groups are criminal organizations rather than legitimate charitable organizations.

And so on.  RTWT.

Trouble is, though, even if the AFLC wins its suit—which ultimately it should, based on published information—nothing serious will change.  Nessel and Arbulu still will be in place, and they’ll still pursue their anti-freedom policies.  They’ll just be doing it sub rosa.  These two persons and their senior staffs have to go.  That’s the only way there can be any hope that the policies they’ve put in place overtly can be believed to be beginning to be prevented from continuing covertly.

Precedents and Progressive-Democrats

Posted on by
Reply

Progressive-Democrats in Congress are threatening President Donald Trump with “precedents” if he doesn’t withdraw his declaration of a national emergency over the crisis on our southern border.

Julian Castro:

I will come into office with a strong belief that climate change is a national emergency, that the fact that so many people in this country die because of gun violence, that is a national emergency….

Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris:

It’s time we address the actual emergencies plaguing our nation: gun violence, lack of access to health care, and climate change.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA):

The one-year anniversary of another manifestation of the epidemic of gun violence in America. That’s a national emergency.

Senators and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and possible candidate Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown insist that

Gun violence is a real national emergency

and Senator Chris Murphy (D, CT) is threatening to use a national emergency declaration to ban “assault” weapons.

The thing is, the next Progressive-Democratic President will do these things, anyway; there’s no real concern for precedent here.  Ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) unprecedented Pen-and-Phone as substitute for Congress has already set that particular precedent, and the current Progressive-Democratic Party leadership, with their threats if they don’t get their way, are confirming that the precedent already exists.

As if they need a precedent to do their trick.