"pushing back against the jack-booted, religion-hating thugs in government"

In the Ace of Spades blog, co-blogger CBD posts,

This is heartening news...pushing back against the jack-booted, religion-hating thugs in government is always a good thing, especially when it sounds like the restrictions placed on religion are capricious. And by "capricious" I mean viciously anti-religion, pro-progressive, and antithetical to everything this country stands for.

Chattanooga church sues city for banning drive-in services
The lawsuit claims the city of Chattanooga violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments and there is no justification for banning drive-in services.

"The City and Mayor have specifically targeted churches by banning drive-in services, despite permitting packed parking lots at retail establishments and drive-in restaurants."

This stems from a post by Mayor Berke ahead of Easter stating that, "drive-in services . . . even in their cars with the windows rolled up, for any length of time will be considered a violation of our shelter-in-place directive."

Extending that tortured logic just a bit...so people stuck in traffic jams are also violating that order? And how about people in line at the drive-through windows of fast-food joints?

First Amendment does not apply on YouTube?

Jon Brodkin reports in ars Technica,

YouTube is a private forum and therefore not subject to free-speech requirements under the First Amendment, a US appeals court ruled today. "Despite YouTube's ubiquity and its role as a public-facing platform, it remains a private forum, not a public forum subject to judicial scrutiny under the First Amendment," the court said.

PragerU, a conservative media company, sued YouTube in October 2017, claiming the Google-owned video site "unlawfully censor[ed] its educational videos and discriminat[ed] against its right to freedom of speech."

PragerU said YouTube reduced its viewership and revenue with "arbitrary and capricious use of 'restricted mode' and 'demonetization' viewer restriction filters." PragerU claimed it was targeted by YouTube because of its "political identity and viewpoint as a non-profit that espouses conservative views on current and historical events."

But a US District Court judge dismissed PragerU's lawsuit against Google and YouTube, and a three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld that dismissal in a unanimous ruling today.

...PragerU claims YouTube is a "public forum" because YouTube invites the public to use the site to engage in freedom of expression and because YouTube representatives called the site a "public forum" for free speech in testimony before Congress.

Read more here.

I don't blame Trump for his criticisms of John McCain!

Andrew is critical of Donald Trump for Trump's criticisms of John McCain. I don't agree. We finally have a Republican president who fights back, even if his enemy is dead! McCain did Trump dirty. McCain got the ball rolling accusing Trump of colluding with Russia. McCain kept Obamacare alive. Andrew later gives Trump credit for so many important accomplishments. He wants Trump to be careful not to alienate voters who might otherwise appreciate what Trump is doing with the economy and foreign policy, for example.

Matt Fradd, the author of The Porn Myth, is Andrew's guest on this podcast. Do you experience sexual desire? If not, you may be dead!

Andrew concludes the podcast by referring to Trump's efforts to force educational institutions to uphold First Amendment freedoms. We are in a battle between the Left and free speech, the Left and liberalism. Our extremists are in the comments section at Breitbart. Their extremists are in the government!

Is Primary-rigging protected by the First Amendment?

At a website called Disobedient Media, Elizabeth Vos reports that

The ongoing litigation of the DNC Fraud Lawsuit and the appeal regarding its dismissal took a stunning turn yesterday. The defendants in the case, including the DNC and former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, filed a response brief that left many observers of the case at a loss for words.

The document, provided by the law offices of the Attorneys for the Plaintiffs in the case, Jared and Elizabeth Beck, and appears to argue that if the Democratic Party did cheat Sanders in the 2016 Presidential primary race, then that action was protected under the first amendment. Twitter users were quick to respond to the brief, expressing outrage and disgust at the claims made by representatives of the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Read more here.

Expanding the coverage of the First Amendment to citizens of other countries

Tucker: "How does the First Amendment of the Constitution apply to people who have never been here?

Is flag burning protected speech?

The topic of flag burning has been in the news. Malcolm Pollack writes,

Donald Trump’s been tweeting about enforcing “consequences” for it, and the New York Times responded with a prim article (perhaps “snotty” would be a better adjective) chiding him for his ignorance of the Constitution. (The Times is completely unable to conceal its contempt for, and visceral loathing of, Mr. Trump, but of course that shouldn’t surprise anyone; it is of a piece with the general superiority their social class feels toward the traditional American nation and those who would empower it, and it is why they lost this election. Nor should the Times be surprised to see itself increasingly marginalized, and even reviled, as the tectonic plates upon which they have built their Cathedral continue to shake and shift.)

Pollack links to a post by Bill Vallecilla:

[T]he editorial board of The New York Times betrays a failure to grasp the distinction between the U. S. Constitution and Supreme Court rulings about it. In the 1989 case “Texas v. Johnson,” SCOTUS handed down a 5-4 ruling according to which flag burning was a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. Now if you read the amendment you will find no reference to flag burning. The subsumption of flag burning under protected speech required interpretation and argument and a vote among the justices. The 5-4 vote could easily have gone the other way, and arguably should have.

So Trump’s tweet, “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag . . . ,” does not show a lack of understanding of the Constitution. After all, SCOTUS rulings can be overturned. On a charitable interpretation, Trump was advocating an overturning of the 1989 and 1990 flag burning rulings.

Ought flag burning come under the rubric of protected speech? Logically prior question: Is it speech at all? What if I make some such rude gesture in your face as ‘giving you the finger.’ Is that speech? If it is, I would like to know what proposition it expresses. ‘Fuck you!’ does not express a proposition. Likewise for the corresponding gesture with the middle finger. And if some punk burns a flag, I would like to know what proposition the punk is expressing.

The Founders were interested in protecting reasoned dissent, but the typical act of flag burning by the typical leftist punk does not rise to that level. To have reasoned or even unreasoned dissent there has to be some proposition that one is dissenting from and some counter-proposition that one is advancing, and one’s performance has to make more or less clear what those propositions are. I think one ought to be skeptical of arguments that try to subsume gestures and physical actions under speech.

The First Amendment also mentions religion. If flag desecration counts as speech, what would not count as religion? Is godless communism a religion? Why not, if a majority of the black-robed ones say it is?

The Constitution is a magnificent document worthy of great respect and a sort of secular reverence, attitudes one might hesitate to cherish with respect to certain members of the Supreme Court.

Am I saying that there should be a flag burning amendment? No. Let the states decide what to do with the punks who desecrate the flag.

As for Hampshire College, pull their federal funding if they refuse to fly the flag. That should get their attention.

Malcolm agrees with Vallecilla that flag burning is not protected speech, but for different reasons.

"Banning flag burning dilutes the very freedoms that make the flag worth revering."

Judge Andrew Napolitano writes in the Washington Times,

Is flag burning protected speech? This old issue returned front and center earlier this week after President-elect Donald Trump tweeted that he found it so reprehensible, it should be criminal. He even suggested a punishment — loss of citizenship or one year in jail. Is the president-elect correct? Can the government punish acts that accompany the expression of opinions because the government, or the public generally, hates or fears the opinions?

For the sake of this analysis, like the U.S. Supreme Court, which has addressed this twice in the past 27 years, I am addressing whether you can burn your own American flag. The short answer is: Yes. You can burn your flag and I can burn mine, so long as public safety is not impaired by the fires. But you cannot burn my flag against my will, nor can you burn a flag owned by the government.

The First Amendment, which prohibits Congress from enacting laws infringing upon the freedom of speech, has consistently been interpreted in the modern era so as to insulate the public manifestation of political ideas from any government interference, whether the manifestation is by word or deed or both. This protection applies even to ideas that are hateful, offensive, unorthodox and outright un-American. Not a few judges and constitutional scholars have argued that the First Amendment was written for the very purpose of protecting the expression of hateful ideas, as loveable or popular ideas need no protection.

...The amendment was also written for two additional purposes. One was, as Justice Jackson wrote as quoted above, to keep the government out of the business of passing judgment on ideas and deciding what we may read, speak about or otherwise express in public. The corollary to this is that individuals should decide for themselves what ideas to embrace or reject, free from government interference.

...Justice Jackson also warned that a government strong enough to suppress ideas that it hates or fears was powerful enough to suppress debate that inconveniences it, and that suppression would destroy the purposes of the First Amendment. The Jacksonian warning is directly related to the amendment’s remaining understood purpose — to encourage and protect open, wide, robust debate about any aspect of government.

All these values were addressed by the Supreme Court in 1989 and again in 1990 when it laid to rest the flag burning controversies by invalidating all statutes aimed at suppressing opinions.

...The American flag is revered because it is a universally recognizable symbol of the human sacrifice of some for the human freedom of many. Justice Scalia recognized that flag burning is deeply offensive to many people — this writer among them — yet he, like Justice Jackson before him, knew that banning it dilutes the very freedoms that make the flag worth revering.
Read more here.

Unconstitutional censorship of free speech

Kevin Williamson writes,

Mrs. Clinton seeks to unmoor the Supreme Court from the Constitution in order to pursue her own repressive and self-interested political program, namely the censorship of publications, organizations, and institutions that are critical of her.

Lost in all of the deeply stupid rhetoric (“Money isn’t speech!”) surrounding the Citizens United case is the fundamental issue that was at question, to wit whether the federal government can censor films of which it disapproves. The film in question was called Hillary: The Movie, and it was very critical of Mrs. Clinton while she was seeking the Democratic nomination in 2008. The government attempted to forbid the distribution of the film on the grounds that it was critical of a political figure, which was at the time impermissible, under what is cynically known as “campaign finance” law, unless done in strict compliance with narrow and restrictive federal regulations, and then only at certain times. The Supreme Court rightly threw the law behind that out as rankly unconstitutional censorship of political speech.

What those beef-witted partisans who abuse the word “liberal” fail to appreciate is that the principle behind the so-called campaign-finance laws they support is an open-ended power of federal censorship of all political speech, journalism, literature, films, television, radio, and other communication. Some of the more sinister forces on the left understand that perfectly well, and the glee with which Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders present the proposal of silencing their political critics is both astounding and horrifying.

Read more here.

Free Speech

I like free speech. I like to use good ideas to challenge bad ideas. I think the whole point of political correctness is to erase our ability even to entertain thoughts about freedom, justice, and our inherent (not government-given, but inherent) rights as set forth in the Bill of Rights. I therefore have been untroubled by the Alt-Right movement, even though I know some nasty people have slipped in on the fringes.

I’m just grateful that, being a conservative, these racists and antisemites do live only on the fringes of a freedom-based political movement. If you’re on the Left, the racists and antisemites sit dead center.

From their perch at the top of the Democrat political heap, the Leftist racists demean blacks by saying that blacks are so stupid and helpless that they can function only with government support and guidance. From that same perch, they also offer unflinching support for genocidal Palestinians and for the BDS movement that aids the Palestinians in their genocidal goals. Indeed, this antisemitic rage has become a central pillar of the modern Democrat movement.

Meanwhile, even as Hillary was castigating a group that likes to tweak noses and yank chains, and most especially make a mockery of political correctness, she was receiving an endorsement from the Communist Party of the United States. A little historic reminder is useful here: The Communist Party of the United States actively seeks to bring about the same regimes that killed more than a 100 million people in the 20th century, and that are still going strong in various parts of the world.

Read more here.

State power

Bookworm notes,

...the more power one vests in the state, the more likely one is (and by that I mean anyone is) to become a victim of that same state power.

I know one other thing: If Hillary is elected, her Supreme Court (which she will create in one fell swoop by nominating Scalia’s replacement) will destroy the First Amendment swiftly and completely.

A political movement based on the First Amendment

How are "journalists" portraying Donald Trump? Joe Bob Briggs writes at Taki Magazine,

...Of all the words used by the press to describe Donald Trump, the million-hit (Google) wonders are these:

bully 1.4 million
self-obsessed 2.5 million
vicious 9.1 million
rude 13.3 million
cruel 13.3 million
liar 16.2 million
angry 19.3 million
And the winner—drum roll, please:
idiot 20.5 million

Notice that five of the eight are internal attributes, only one can be fact-checked, and the most popular epithet of them all is the last refuge of sputtering incoherent rage.

...Of course, as we know from the recent convocation of the Illuminati at Bohemian Grove, there are many reasons for Trump’s popularity, but they all come down to one reason, the reason given over and over again, the reason so ingrained into the consciousness of the editor of the Lotus Grove Daily Arapaho that he tells his own readers why they are all ignoramuses and deluded throwbacks.

It’s The Angry White Man.

There’s an Angry White Man abroad. This AWM is so infused with rage that he has become a ballot-box terrorist and votes for Trump. He is determined to tear down the very foundations of the American experiment and return to some sort of gun-toting western wilderness where women are chattel and homosexuals are tarred and feather-boaed. When asked to produce one of these Angry White Men, fingers are pointed at that guy, the one with the wild hair and the crazy eyes at a Trump rally in Akron—yes, that guy that looks just like Timothy McVeigh. I’m waiting on the actual interview with the Angry White Man, but in the meantime we have a list of all the reasons he’s angry.

The main reason he’s angry, detailed at great length in President Obama’s speech at the Democratic convention, is that he lost his factory job. He’s a man with a hardhat and a lunch pail and nowhere to go. I don’t know how many times the Democrats used “loss of industrial jobs” to explain why people would want Donald Trump in office, but I’ve got news for you people: The factory closed in 1974!

That guy has grandchildren who don’t even know the factory existed. That factory became a derelict building in 1980, a Superfund site in 1985, a scientific laboratory in 1990 when Rutgers University biologists discovered the pollution was creating new mutant fish species in the Hackensack River, a vacant lot with a few structural walls still standing in 2000, a federally funded “redevelopment project” in 2005, a multi-purpose retail-and-residential high-rise in 2010, and today is advertised as The Factory Lofts: Luxury Starts at a Million Dollars.

“Well then,” says the journalist explaining The Trump Phenomenon, “it’s people who hate immigrants because they think they’re taking their jobs.”

Actually the main complaint about immigrants in Texas, my native state, is that they don’t learn English and so it’s hard to order at Whataburger. You would think the only state that fought two actual wars with the Mexicans and has a sacred monument to Mexican-killing martyrs would be inclined to take a hard line on Mexican immigration, but in fact there’s been so much wandering back and forth across the Rio Grande the past 300 years that it’s more like an irksome annoyance that comes and goes. The rate of illegal immigration actually flat-lined in 2005, partly because we built all these American factories in Nuevo Laredo and Juarez and Matamoras and—my own personal favorite border town—Piedras Negras, and partly because the Mexican economy got better in general.

...If it’s not the hardhat reason and it’s not the wetback reason, then it must be the Mythical Golden Age reason. This is the idea that there are millions of people in the backwoods of the Ozarks who are upset about the integration of the schools in 1957 and wish they could drive their pickups down picturesque dirt roads and go to fiddle conventions with other white people who belong to the Eureka Springs Free Will Pentecostal Tongue-Talkin’ Church, which is full of Aryan Brotherhood gun nuts who own tattoo shops in East Tulsa. The whole “mythical golden age” reason was apparently invented by West African exchange students at the Berkeley School for Public Policy who spend way too much time watching Country Music Television.

...First, stop with the psychoanalysis. Trump doesn’t believe anything. Trump is like Luminol. Luminol is the chemical used on Forensic Files to find blood after the crime scene has already been scrubbed. You just spray Luminol all over the floor and walls, and if human blood has ever touched anything in the room, it will phosphoresce like a red-headed hobo’s nose after seven bottles of Night Train. So Donald Trump is Human Luminol. He doesn’t have any real opinions. He just seeps into an environment like a grievance-seeking gas. He finds whatever people are mad about and says “I can fix it.” He probably can’t fix it, but he’s talking about things that nobody else wants to fix. He sees the blood on the floor.

Second, it’s the very people who hate Trump the most who created Donald Trump.

...There are all kinds of ordinary people who are gonna vote for Trump, and they’re not chasing a mythical golden age, and they don’t wear hard hats, and they don’t wanna live under a dictatorship. They’re what’s referred to in the mainstream press as “working class”—a strange term implying that they’re to be feared because they’re out there working instead of doing what the other classes do. Running Silicon Valley start-up deals? Managing trust funds? I don’t know why the Democrats, especially, equate “working class” with the Angry White Man, but they do.

My point is that the Donald Trump voters have consistently told us why they’re voting for Trump, but it doesn’t fit any of the stereotypes and so it’s never mentioned. What’s the first thing out of a Trump voter’s mouth when he’s asked about it?

“I like him because he says what’s on his mind.”
“He’ll say anything.”
“He doesn’t sugar-coat it.”
“He says things no one else will say.”

It’s a political movement based on the First Amendment.

Shouldn’t we, at the very least, be looking at why 40-plus-percent of the American population would feel stifled and silenced? Shouldn’t this be what we’re examining instead of the cerebral cortex of Donald Trump’s addled ego? Wouldn’t this be the reporterly thing to do?

So why do they feel muzzled? It probably started with something minor. Their third-grade son gets sent home for calling a girl “fat” in the school yard. But it doesn’t end there. The parents are called in. The student is required to attend Soviet-style reeducation classes. When the parents complain that “you’re making a big deal out nothing,” they are reminded that their progeny may have damaged a tender young girl for life.

And so, from a very early age, their kid is taught that he has to shut up about certain things. When a guy named al-Khalifa Mustafa bin Muhammad bin Chaka Khan shoots up a synagogue in Atlanta or slits a priest’s throat in Budapest, most Americans assume that a) he’s a Muslim, b) he’s a radical terrorist, and c) he should be shot on sight and his associates should be jailed or executed. But don’t say this out loud. There are local committees—and, again, it’s likely to come from the school—imploring our communities to “assume the best about all religions” and “resist the temptation to profile.” After all, there might be radical Jews or radical Christians bursting into mosques with AK-47s.

And then there are the examples with real, immediate consequences. A private joke at work becomes a disciplinary matter and possibly a loss of employment. An allegation of “sexual harassment” based on locker-room humor turns into an article in the paper and a civil lawsuit. Your daughter goes to college, gets the female lead in Carousel, but is told the drama teacher will be rewriting the final speech because it’s considered politically incorrect. You’re constantly put in situations where you’re not sure whether to mention your church affiliation for fear of being branded a yahoo. You post some photos on Facebook of your child’s first deer hunt and you’re smothered with online abuse as a Neanderthal killer and child abuser. God forbid you say something with a racist tinge, lest “hate speech” laws send you to jail.

Most Americans don’t believe in dividing speech into “protected speech” and “hate speech.” Most Americans believe that all speech is protected, even speech that some people regard as hateful. Most Americans think it’s okay to be an old coot with unpopular opinions. Most Americans feel that the federal government should get out of their business. And many Americans blame the Supreme Court for allowing the national social norms, set in New York and Washington, to filter into their communities in Wichita Falls, Boise and Spokane. They fear Hillary because they fear that more of their speech will be taken away, and more of their local control. They don’t love Donald but they know he’ll “say whatever he wants.”

They remember a time when they could also say whatever they wanted to say, too, but that time was more than thirty years ago. Meanwhile, there’s some guy at the Daily Arapaho telling them they’re idiots for voting for Donald Trump. They remember that guy, he’s the snooty one who went to McNeese State. He’s a clueless media type. Otherwise he would know that they’re not voting for Donald Trump because he’s a swell guy, they’re voting for the restoration of their personal liberty. Fortunately for their cause, the very fact that the media opposes them means they’re even more certain that it’s the right decision.

Read more here.

You should probably answer that knock at your door.

Stephen Kruiser is very pessimistic about our country's future. He writes at PJ Media,

Those in academia, who along with teachers’ unions form the Indoctrination Wing of the Democratic Party, have been assailing free speech for years (they’ve been doing a lot of the ground work in the assault on due process too). Anything uttered on most college campuses that doesn’t fit the liberal narrative is deemed “hate speech” or blamed for “triggering” an unhinged emotional response in weak students who would probably be better served by full-time supervision in a mental health facility. Many American campuses now have their own little KGB response teams to ID and punish verbal offenders.

Some hope might exist if the press were responsible and worried about their freedom. Sadly, major media is now a fully functioning propaganda apparatus for the Democrats, shamelessly pimping the Narrative du jour. They know that as long as they remain faithful lapdogs, their jobs are safe.

...Should the Democrats retake the Senate, that means Dame van der Cankles is in the White House and the Executive Action Machine will be working overtime. Oh, they'll also have a Supreme Court judge, and won't have to worry about any more pesky judicial branch interference with the Executive dream.

...The Democrats have dropped the veil on their decades-long Soviet fetish and there are precious few scenarios which don't favor them getting their wishes, either incrementally or by Christmas 2017.

Of course, they won't be calling it "Christmas" then.

And you should probably answer that knock at your door.

Read more here.

First Amendment

So true!

A plan to destroy America

h/t David Adams

Try being clear about who we are. Try telling the truth!

Jim Geraghty writes today about Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who traveled to San Bernardino and offered some thoughts on what happened there and what is happening elsewhere.

We are not at war with terrorism, which is just a tactic. We are not at war with some empty sociological label called extremism. We are not even just at war with ISIS; though were obviously at war with ISIS, but there will be other enemies that will lift the black flag of death in the future even after ISIS has been routed in Syria and Iraq. This is not about workplace violence. This is not about global warming or gun shows. This is not about income inequality. This is not about kids from broken homes as tragic as that is. This is not about anything that we have done wrong. This is about who we are. This is about the nature of freedom so we are people who unite around the Constitution. We are people who come together around a First Amendment and we together, 320 million of us, believe in the freedom of religion, in the freedom of speech, and the freedom of assembly and the freedom of the press . . .

. . . We are most certainly though at war with militant Islam; we are at war with violent Islam; we are at war with jihadi Islam. We are not at war with all Muslims; we are not at war with Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan who want the American dream for their kids. But we are at war with those who believe that they will kill in the name of religion. President Obama said tonight he’s worried about a backlash against American Muslims. I am too, and you know what the best way to combat that is? With the truth. By being clear about who we are and what we stand for and by being clear about those who would try to kill us because we believe in freedom.

Read more here.

Taping the mouths of an entire country

Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal about how the Left has been prayer shaming Republicans in the aftermath of the San Bernardino murders. The best example of a prayer shamer is Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, who

came forward rather menacingly. “Your ‘thoughts’ should be about steps to take to stop this carnage. Your ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness if you do nothing—again.”

Peggy writes,

Here’s an odd thing. If you really are for some new gun-control measure, if you are serious about it, you just might wait a while, until the blood has cooled, for instance, and then try to win people over to see it your way. You might offer information, argument, points of persuasion. Successful politics involves pulling people together. You don’t use a tragedy to shame and silence those who don’t see it your way; that only hardens sides. Which has left me wondering if gun-control proponents are even serious about it. Maybe they’re just using their wedge issue at a moment of high stress to hammer people on the other side of the ideological and philosophical divide.

As long as they do this, they’ll lose. Which they must be bright enough to know. Which again suggests either cynicism or, perhaps, an assumption that they are so inarguably right that they’re above debate. They certainly point their fingers from a great height. A number of tweets and posts had an air of, “You better be asking your make-believe friend in heaven for mercy.”

I suspect part of the problem is that a number of the progressive finger-pointers do not really know what a prayer is. Maybe no one ever told them. But prayer is a very active endeavor—it takes time, energy, concentration. You have to stop everything and ask God to hear you. Father Gerald Murray defined it for me this way: “Prayer is the movement of our mind, heart and soul in which we confess our belief in God and his goodness. We ask him to manifest that goodness in answer to our petitions.”

In the case of San Bernardino those petitions were for help, consolation and safety for those in danger or mourning.

It is hard to pray, much harder than it is to punch out a series of tweets. What actually is irritating about politicians saying they’re sending thoughts and prayers is the suspicion you sometimes have that they’re not, actually, thinking or praying.

...A connected point, it seems to me, is that Americans are growing weary of being told what they can and cannot publicly say, proclaim and think. We all know what’s going on at the colleges, with the mad little Marats and Robespierres who are telling students and administrators what they are and are not allowed to say or do. This is not just kids acting up at this point, it’s a real censorship movement backed by an ideology that is hostile to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It is led by students who, though they managed to get into the greatest universities in the country, seem never to have been taught to love the little amendment that guarantees free speech and free religious observance, the two pillars without which America collapses. And too bad, because when you don’t love something you lose it.

...There’s been a great gnashing of veneered teeth by the Republican establishment about Donald Trump and his so far unstoppable rise. That rise rests on two issues: opposition to illegal immigration to the U.S. and an obvious and visceral rejection of political correctness and the shaming and silencing it entails.

...Why doesn’t some thoughtful candidate on the Republican side address the issue of shaming and silencing? Why doesn’t someone give a deep and complete speech on what the First Amendment means, how it must be protected, how we pay a daily price for it in terms of anger, hurt, misunderstandings and crudity, but it’s worth it. Why doesn’t someone note that you fight bad speech with better speech, you don’t try to tape up the mouths of an entire country.

The censorship movement is radical. It is starting to make everyone in the country feel harassed and anxious. It is odd to see candidates miss a rising issue that is giving pause to so many Americans.

I pray someone will address it. Literally, I just did.

Read more here.

The bullies won

Alex Griswold reports at Mediaite,

The Missouri University Police Department (MUPD) sent an email to students Tuesday morning urging them to call them and report any hurtful speech they encounter on the campus.

In an email that was flagged by several Missouri-based journalists, the MUPD asked “individuals who witness incidents of hateful and/or hurtful speech or actions” to call the department’s general phone line “to continue to ensure that the University of Missouri campus remains safe.” They suggest that students provide a detailed description of the offender, their location or license plate number, and even to take a picture if possible.

In the email, MUPD readily admits that hurtful or hateful speech is not against the law. But, they write, “if the individuals identified are students, MU’s Office of Student Conduct can take disciplinary action.”

In a statement to Mediaite, the MUPD confirmed that the email was real. When asked about the potential First Amendment implications, a spokesman responded simply, “We are simply asking them to report what they feel is hurtful and/or hateful speech.”

He added that the police did not consider the hateful speech “a criminal matter.” However, “We also work for the University and uphold the Universities Rules and Regulations.”

The email comes one day after University President Tim Wolfe and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin resigned under pressure from students and faculty alike for what they considered a lackluster response to racial incidents. The same day, protesters and members of the media clashed, with protesters declaring a “no media safe space.”

This is what happens when parents do not speak out against public school political correctness. This is what happens when parents allow their children to bully them.

Yesterday at the supermarket a little boy was throwing a tantrum because his mom would not buy him some candy at the checkout stand. Soon his older sister chimed in with her complaints. When the groceries were almost all bagged and the cashier was tallying up the order, the mother inexplicably caved in and let each child have their chosen candy bars. The bullies won.

Twisting

That's what I think Clarence Page is doing in this column in which he asks, "What's wrong with a Muslim president?" Dr. Ben Carson was asked if he would support a Muslim for president, and he candidly answered no, on the grounds of our belief in the First Amendment and "the values and principles of America." Page manipulates that statement into this, the first sentence in his Chicago Tribune article:

After reaching the top tier of Republican presidential candidates in polls, Dr. Ben Carson has given us another historic milestone: He has boldly called for religious discrimination against Muslims who run for president.

Page goes on to assert that

Rest assured, there is no danger of the Islamic-based legal system of Shariah taking over other American laws.

After these Obama years, I am not sure about that claim.

Page concludes,

At least Carson doesn't appear to be pandering to the angry, fearful and ignorant as vigorously as the Grand Old Party's current front-runner, Donald Trump. The billionaire TV star recently pandered to the worst of the anti-Obama conspiracy theories including the ridiculous notion that he's a secret Muslim.

Even when Trump was asked after Carson's remarks if he thought a Muslim should be elected to the presidency, he sarcastically quipped that "some people" think we already have. Har, har.

I would add, in the spirit of an old line from TV's "Seinfeld," "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

Page claimed in an interview with Craig Silverman this morning on radio station KNUS, that Carson's supporters are "ideologues." The Left and Clarence Page are not ideologues?

Read more here.

Dr. Carson is correct

People from both parties and the media are criticizing Dr. Ben Carson for saying Islam is not compatible with our Constitution. It isn't. It is a theocratic political system. The very First Amendment to our Constitution guarantees us freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Fox News reports that Carson said this on Facebook:

"Under Islamic Law, homosexuals – men and women alike – must be killed. Women must be subservient. And people following other religions must be killed. I know that there are many peaceful Muslims who do not adhere to these beliefs. But until these tenants are fully renounced ... I cannot advocate any Muslim candidate for President."