I have long been a critic of Northwestern University and its president Morton Schapiro for policies undermining free speech and academic freedom. In the past, I have contrasted the vastly different approaches of my two alma maters, Northwestern and University of Chicago, the latter taking a courageous stand in favor of free speech rights. Chicago rejected the premise of safe zones on its campus. Conversely, Schapiro has ridiculed those questioning the need for “safe zones” as “lunatics” and denounced “absolutist” views of free speech. At the same time, his school has refused to discipline students who prevent professors from teaching objectionable classes. Now, Northwestern students have moved from attacking classes on campus to assaulting police in downtown Evanston. Schapiro is expressing shock at the conduct despite his controversial history of enabling students who are intolerant of opposing views.
Students were calling for the disbanding of the Northwestern police department and marched into downtown Evanston. They proceeded to hurl “rocks and bricks at police officers,” point lasers at police officers’ eyes to blind them, and damage property.
Schapiro called such acts an “abomination.”
After years of ridiculing free speech advocates, Schapiro found his own home being defaced and picketed. It is a cycle that has become familiar as those who enabled such conduct in the past have found themselves denounced as reactionaries.
Schapiro never supported violence and correctly condemned the recent attacks on businesses and police. However, he has long been one of the most prominent advocates of protections from free speech rather than for free speech on campus. He is viewed by many as yielding to the rising intolerance on campus while treating the exercise free speech as potentially harmful to students. This includes his advocacy of “safe zones” to protect students from the trauma and harm caused by dissenting views or opposing values. Under his leadership, Northwestern has been given the lowest rating for the protection of free speech by groups like FIRE. While he later walked back calling free speech advocates “idiots” in a commencement speech, he remains one of most vocal voices against free speech protections.
My principal objection however is to environment that he has created on campus by his failure to lead and to act. I previously discussed the incident involving a Sociology 201 class by Professor Beth Redbird. The class examined “inequality in American society with an emphasis on race, class and gender.” Redbird came up with an interesting comparison for her students by inviting both an undocumented person and a spokesperson for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement to separate classes. Members of MEChA de Northwestern, Black Lives Matter NU, the Immigrant Justice Project, the Asian Pacific American Coalition, NU Queer Trans Intersex People of Color and Rainbow Alliance organized to stop other students from hearing from the ICE representative. However, they could not have succeeded without the help of Northwestern administrators (including Dean of Students Todd Adams). The protesters were screaming “F**k ICE” outside of the hall. Adams and the other administrators then said that the protesters screaming profanities would be allowed into the class if they promised not to disrupt the class. They promised not to disrupt the class. As soon as the protesters were allowed into the classroom, they prevented the ICE representative from speaking. The ICE representatives eventually left and Redbird canceled the class to discuss the issue with the protesters that just prevented her students from hearing an opposing view.
The comments of the Northwestern students were predictable after being told by people like Schapiro that some offensive speech should be treated as a form of assault. SESP sophomore April Navarro rejected that faculty should be allowed to invite such speakers to their classrooms for a “good, nice conversation with ICE.” She insisted such speakers needed to be silenced because they “terrorize communities” and profit from detainee labor. Here is the face of the new generation of censors being shaped by speech-intolerant academics like Schapiro:
“We’re not interested in having those types of conversations that would be like, ‘Oh, let’s listen to their side of it’ because that’s making them passive rule-followers rather than active proponents of violence. We’re not engaging in those kinds of things; it legitimizes ICE’s violence, it makes Northwestern complicit in this. There’s an unequal power balance that happens when you deal with state apparatuses.”
These students were identified in interviews by name. They had no fear of any consequence in stopping a professor from teaching a class at Northwestern. They were right. The official response to students shutting down a class to silence an opposing view resulted in a statement that the actions of the students were “disappointing that the speakers were not allowed to speak.”
The environment on campus has become increasingly confessional and cringing. We recently discussed how the Northwestern Law Dean declared publicly “I am James Speta and I am a racist.” He was followed by Emily Mullin, executive director of major gifts, who said, “I am a racist and a gatekeeper of white supremacy. I will work to be better.”
Yet, it is the disruptions of classes and events that is most unnerving at Northwestern. The University was finally compelled to act when students prevented former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, including forcing their way through windows and doors in a takeover of the event. As we discussed, one of the students declared “There’s a limitation to free speech. That ends at overtly racist old white dudes.” The response from Northwestern? Small fines. That’s right. So students stop an event with a former cabinet member and, according to a university statement, a “small number of individuals” were each given $125 citations by the department for interfering with certain duties of a police officer. When students on campus sought to pass a simple resolution over the denial of free speech on campus this year, it was tabled by the student government. When the student newspaper simply covered disruptions of student events by protesters, the editors from The Daily were forced to apologize for their coverage. The objection was that the photos and coverage of students taking over the events were “retraumatizing and intrusive.”
It now appears that Schapiro has moved from the “disappointing” to the “abomination” stage. It only took his own house to be defaced and police to be attacked in the streets of Evanston.
“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
_____________
Understanding that property damage and bodily injury are prohibited by statute law, Congress has no authority to “claim or exercise dominion” over Northwester University.
Private property is not public property.
Congress has no power to regulate anything other than the value of money, “Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;” and land and naval Forces.
Grievances may be settled in courts of law.
Northwestern University is responsible only to its customers.
_______________________________________________
“You can’t handle the truth.”
– Colonel Jessup
______________
You can’t handle the enormity of American freedom.
Many have no grasp of the scope and breadth of American freedom.
Government is severely limited and restricted and exists merely to facilitate the maximal freedom of individuals.
I love this column. Not because it will change anything, but because it needed to read into the record and defined as what it was and what it means. Because Professor Turley continues to feed my insatiable appetite for the legal underpinnings of America’s passage through this time in history by focusing in on the canary in the coal mine events as they occur, I want to bequeath him this YouTube, which I would consider an intellectual tiramisu. A discussion between Camille Paglia and Jordan Peterson on Post modernism but with a wonderful first row seat from Camille on how a particular species of authoritarians took their seat in academia and bred and festered there for decades resulting in the phenomenon that continues to baffle Turley, how the Universities became anathema to and betrayed their most basic function in American society. It’s a horrid realization that you might one day find yourself wondering how to unplug academia as you would a Mothership in some Sci-fi flick, where it’s been determined, is producing dangerous anti-social spawn that has been programmed to reject reason, decency and fair play and are simultaneously willing to do “anything” in pursuit of their warped ideology. https://youtu.be/v-hIVnmUdXM?t=19
ha i like Camille Paglia a lot. her books are swell.
one wonders what all these sandal wearing marxists she talked about, who did not go to graduate school actually did with their lives? communes and drugs, she says, apparently. oh well
or maybe into new age stuff? well there’s null result
so the postmodernists are the careerists? middle brow philistines? well of course they are.
she is closer to understanding the intellectual differences between postmodernism and marxism than he is;
but Peterson is closer to understanding them on the emotional level, as Nietzscheans, in the sense of will-to-power
of course there is more than one way to understand Nietzsche. He sort of lends himself to being understood in many contradictory ways
See she is kind of living the Faustian side of the Romantic and avant garde eras, which were gone by 1930. Just gone.
Peterson is trying to think about things as they are now.
They are both interested in Jung, is their nexus
We already looked at an earlier report of yours in Texas. The video shows the SUV most likely with a Biden team member driving his van into the lane of a pick up truck causing an accident. Your own videos demonstrate that most of what you post isn’t true.
How did the framer’s intend for the citizens to measure the government they get? Why do they take an oath of office if the people have no interest in what that oath actually means? Do the American people know the difference between politics and governance? Isn’t politics merely the process of selling promises and governance is what is delivered?
In the progressive era, the people have been mesmerized by politics at the expense of constitutional governance. They’ve become willing dupes to charismatic political charlatans that will sell them on promises that they fail to deliver. This process went on for decades until the Trump era. He was/is an outsider that upset the political order. In 2016, he was that salesperson unapologetically trashing that order. If you cared more about politics than governance, it was easy to not like him. Once he got the nomination, the promise of good governance outweighed the personalities.
This election cycle is once again being pitched by Biden/Democrats as a referendum on personalities and by Trump/Republicans on governance. Both for good reasons: This time however, the President has a record of accomplishments, (promises fulfilled) to compare with Biden. Which way will our divided house fall?
TRUMP WILL WIN
By definition and for good purpose. Children are meant to be seen studying and not heard. Students by age and by action are classified as children. Even the Hand Guns Int’l anti gun people classify children as up to age 24 years 364 days. Ways to attain adulthood. Two plus years in the military four plus years in university preferably one not funded by the government except for GI Bill or similar but the most of all ‘ACT like an adult.” The latter is not guaranteed considering Pelosi as a role model.
Evanston is not a big “town” it is also an expensive place to live
last time I heard it was still nearly impossible to get a liquor license but the new marijuana dispensaries an easier time of it. think about that.
The troublemaker brat “students” who attack police should all end up with felony records
Restore order ye pathetic Democrat leaders
Aided and abetted by Northwestern faculty and staff, some students went from this: “The protesters were screaming ‘F**k ICE’ outside of the hall. Adams and the other administrators then said that the protesters screaming profanities would be allowed into the class. [] As soon as the protesters were allowed into the classroom, they prevented the ICE representative from speaking.” To this: Students “marched into downtown Evanston. They proceeded to hurl ‘rocks and bricks at police officers,’ point lasers at police officers’ eyes to blind them, and damage property.”
It reminds me of the following phenomenon: Parents raise a spoiled brat. There are no standards, limits, consequences. There is no such thing as good behavior or bad behavior. There is merely Johnny’s “right” to indulge his desire to run screaming through a crowded restaurant. (Other diners be damned.)
Then spoiled Johnny grows up to be a serial rapist or murderer (or “peaceful” protestor). And the coddling parents are “shocked, just shocked.” “How could that happen?”
Note to such parents: When you encourage a child to be a monster, don’t be shocked if he turns into a monster.
I wonder who in the real worlds of business would hire one of theses Stalinists from Smith college or other far left schools?
At some companies, it seems as if the marketing department and the HR department contain a critical mass of such people. Our major corporations are a stew of principal-agent problems.
Those who appease the alligator are the last to be eaten….
I am not real big on “anthem” type songs, but this one is great! Fantastic #walkaway song!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID7G4F0jssM&feature=emb_logo
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Ms. Jodi Shaw, a staff member and alumna, at women’s college Smith College, has pushed back on her employer wrt critical race theory. The Rubin Report posted on her youtube video page, inviting her to chat. The President of Smith College is not pleased though Jodi is protected by her union. Title VII presumably. Should be interesting.
“Dear Smith College: I Have a Few Requests”.
“Stop reducing my personhood to a racial category.”
“Stop telling me what I must think and feel about myself, because I feel like you do that a lot. I know you do that a lot…and I need you to stop…”
“Stop presuming to know who I am or what my culture is based upon my skin color…”
“Stop asking me to project stereotypes and assumptions onto others based upon their skin color, because I feel like that’s what you [have] asked me to do incessantly over and over again for the past three years, and I’m not going to do that. I don’t think it’s right.
“Stop telling me young women of color have no power or agency in this world, because that’s not true.”
“Stop telling me that young white women have power and privilege over everyone else—equally not true.”
“Stop demanding that I admit to White Privilege and work on my so-called Implicit Bias as a condition of my continued employment.”
“Stop telling me that as a white person, I am, quote, ‘especially responsible for doing the work of dismantling racism.’”
“Stop emboldening students to act abusively toward staff by refusing to hold them accountable for their own egregious behavior.”
“Last[ly], we have the right to work in an environment free from the ever-present terror that any unverified student allegation of racism or any other “-ism” has to crush our reputations, ruin our livelihood, and even endanger the physical safety of ourselves or our family.”
There was roughly 150 students involved in the violence against police in Evanston, out of over 22,000 students currently enrolled at Northwestern.
It is a testament to the pantywaists enrolled there than none of them have taken this into their own hands.
When I was in college we would have just located the ringleaders and given them beatdowns as a reward for interfering with our ability to get the education we were paying for.
If that didn’t stop the problem, more beatdowns would be in order until the problem was eliminated.
Who cares? Go out and vote for Trump and end the Leftist madness at its source. Hopefully, he locks down these communista factories in higher education and purges the faculty and student body. If not, just deny them federal funds. Judging by my inbox, they’re dying on the vine as I get a plea a week for “urgently needed” money. It’s a Red Wave coming and it sinks all Leftist boats.
Don’t believe me? Just find out where invulnerable Biden is today? Hint: Western PA and Lady Gaga go together like flaming indian arrows and covered wagons.
I hear they are giving out free pizza, too, haha. Maybe that will help get some bigger Biden crowds? Wonder if Joe and Gaga appearing together will draw the rockstar-sized crowd of more than 50,000 who showed up for Trump’s campaign stop in Butler, PA the other day?
BWAHAHAHAHAHA this: “After years of ridiculing free speech advocates, Schapiro found his own home being defaced and picketed.”
Dr. Stupidstein meets the Stupidstein Monster.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Northwestern’s Medill school of journalism is one of the nation’s most prestigious. They’re pumping out young ideologues to media outlets nationwide. Check out this gem in today’s WSJ:
“Law Firm Clients Demand More Back Attorneys.”
Intel will only hire US law firms whose US equity partnerships are comprised of at least 21% woman and 10% underrepresented minorities.“You’ll see the same associate staffed on all the great cases and think, “why am I not getting those same opportunities?”” said Duvol Thompson a partner at Holland and Knight. “The consistent challenge is attempting to rise through the ranks based on knowledge, experience and ability rather than being minimized, diminished or judged based on the color of our skin.” Spot on Duvol, but not for the reasons you think.
Follows an article over the weekend about Kamala Harris’ sophisticated fashion sense. Complete with pictures of Kamala rocking a chocolate-hued suit and sporting her signature pearl necklace.
They should all spend more time reading Glenn Greenwald.
Epstein, wait until Intel needs really good legal representation for some thorny issue. Then they (and their shareholders) may learn the hard way that merit counts more than color.
And guess what. Mediocre black law students get top dollar in employment at big law. Because they need to hire them due to these demands from corporate clients. And there are few black law students. and more women then men. year on year
The trend is decades long. White law students know it . White male law students ,know especially. Zero AA advantage, total disadvantage.
White male law students, “get to the back of the bus!”
BIGLAW is an abomination
Well sure, but now you have to pay $5 per month to read Greenwald, or Taibbi. I guess that puts a muzzle on him. But I have to highly recommend paying the fee on Substack.
As always, the student ‘protesters’ are agents of the worst elements on the faculty and in the administration. As for Schapiro, he’s with scant doubt a vain and self-centered twit. If Northwestern had a board of trustees worthy of the name, he would be out on his can tomorrow and the new university president would clean house (starting with the dean of students).
Note, Northwestern has quite competitive admissions. You have these problems because (1) they ignore civil rights laws (and fancy they’re too excellent to be bound by them) and have relaxed admissions standards for their mascot groups. That means you have a pool of ‘visible minorities’ who aren’t up to the pace set by the ordinary students at the school and (2) they don’t have any screens up to exclude and expel loosely-wired youngsters and may in fact have proxy variables in place that actively recruit them.
And you’re not acknowledging the source of Schapiro’s viewpoint: the notion among faculty (and professional-managerial people generally) that free speech is for peers (and that peers can allocate franchises to their preferred mascots). Indicative of the status-conscious nature of higher education would be the faculty committee system, which has sets of professors vetting policies on matters in regard to which they have no particular expertise. Non-faculty employees are at least as likely to bring something to the table in re the buildings-and-grounds committee, but only faculty and perhaps some specialty administrators are on such committees.
A partial solution to this might be a revision to state corporate law which ends the practice of constituting unwieldy boards composed through a self-regeneration process and has boards elected by a postal ballot of those alumni who are registered to vote in the state in which the school in question is located. And which are limited in number to five or to the senary or quinary root of the number of alumni on the voter roll maintained by the state board of election or secretary of state. Another revision would be to amend the powers of the board so that they are a better counterweight to the administration and to have a standard oath of office to which such trustees must swear (which oath would make plain their responsibility for seeing to the integrity of the instructional programs at the school).
Another partial solution would be to end the applicability of state and federal civil rights law to private education. Instead, each such institution would be forced to issue an annual report on coarse demographic breakdown of the stock and flow of their student body, their faculty, their administrators, and their other employees. In regard to the students, the report would have to include the medians and the standard deviations of their board and achievement test scores. Such reports would have to be audited by an outside party and in case of deception and lying, the school, it’s auditors, and particular officials thereof could face federal prosecution. They might discriminate like mad against whites, but they would be forced to admit it publicly.
“The enrolled student population at Northwestern University, both undergraduate and graduate, is 44.2% White, 13.7% Asian, 8.48% Hispanic or Latino, 5.09% Black or African American, 3.51% Two or More Races, 0.109% American Indian or Alaska Native, and 0.05% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders.”
They don’t relax for Asians. They have plenty, they are “over-represented” as the bean counters say. But I doubt they will push their numbers down- I suspect that development views their families as key resources for future endowment
But, they do relax standards for the remaining 10% the Latinos and blacks. One suspects they will usually take this out of the white male population. That’s the usual method.
” a revision to state corporate law which ends the practice of constituting unwieldy boards composed through a self-regeneration process and has boards elected by a postal ballot of those alumni who are registered to vote in the state in which the school in question is located.”
Quite an interesting suggestion.
Again, JT does not layout where he draws the line between between tolerable and intolerable speech. He constantly avoids the tough question. Will he not answer the question- can we ignore a Neo-Nazi extolling the virtues of the Final Solution? May we refuse to listen to his speech? Can we not refuse to give him a platform? Or must we resign ourselves to explaining why genocide is a bad idea? I know your objection will be that the speech at issue is not such egregious hate speech, but that is hardly the point. The fact is that there is a line even JT would agree cannot be crossed though he will not acknowledge it because he does not wish to concede that his principles are *not* absolute. And once he concedes that there are exceptions to unfettered Free Speech, he loses the argument because the exceptions inevitably swallow the rule as liberals and conservatives will necessarily disagree about what kind of rhetoric constitutes speech which is beyond the pale.
Jeffrey Silberman:
International Law perspective from the UN:
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/UN%20Strategy%20and%20Plan%20of%20Action%20on%20Hate%20Speech%2018%20June%20SYNOPSIS.pdf
“Rather than prohibiting hate speech as such, international law prohibits the incitement to discrimination, hostility and violence (referred to here as ‘incitement’). Incitement is a very dangerous form of speech, because it explicitly and deliberately aims at triggering discrimination, hostility and violence, which may also lead to or include terrorism or atrocity crimes. Hate speech that does not reach the threshold of incitement is not something that international law requires States to prohibit. It is important to underline that even when not prohibited, hate speech may to be harmful.”
So in terms of a threshold, we must start with a clear international understanding of “incitement.”
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/8/16/16152088/nazi-swastikas-germany-charlottesville
“While America protects the right of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, and other hate groups to hold public rallies and express their views openly, Germany has strict laws banning Nazi symbols and what’s called Volksverhetzung — incitement of the people, or hate speech. Like more than a dozen European countries, Germany also has a law criminalizing Holocaust denial.”
Though not required under international law, UN Member states may prohibit hate speech, and several do.
At this point, it looks like it would take a Constitutional amendment before US states could ban public flag desecration and hate speech, although to some degree it might still turn on what we mean by an Originalist interpretation of the First Amendment.
“Like more than a dozen European countries, Germany also has a law criminalizing Holocaust denial.”
How long before we have laws here in America criminalizing ‘Climate Change denial’?
Is not the ban of the swastika, and the criminalizing of speech, in Germany, “plus ca change, plus le meme chose?”
Germany did not have tolerance for dissenting views before the end of WW II; nor after. Only the victors changed the acceptable labels for public display
HOW VERY GERMAN OF THEM!
I will tell you my hypothesis for why contemporary Germans dislike the Third Reich and all its hall-marks.
BECAUSE THEY LOST
nobody smart ever really wants to run with a loser. simple as that. no vaunted ideals either of fascism nor liberalism; only herd instinct
Good info to know! Thank you!
I would also remind people that Julius Streicher was executed at Nuremburg.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
We have an established body of statutory and case law which define what constitutes sedition. An ICE agent explaining policies to a classroom of youths is not the equivalent of Rap Brown exhorting a mob to burn the neighborhood down. Neither Germany nor the United States have any need of sedition laws more elaborate and extensive than those necessary to put Rap Brown in prison along with the looters and arsonists.
He constantly avoids the tough question.
He doesn’t. His answer is apparently something you prefer to avoid. Of course the neo-Nazi has the right to speak and no, you don’t have to listen. Leave that to rational people that aren’t cowards to provide counter-points. This is not that difficult.
That depends. If the neo-Nazi is whipping up hatred and violence against Jews, and you are Jewish, or merely feel the same threat could be whipped up against you personally, then are you still willing to defend his freedom of speech?
What we need to work on is are red-line definitions for how militantly anti-social and threatening speech can become and still be protected under the 1st Amendment.
Of course, I support a neo-Nazi’s speech freedom so long as it’s civil – so long as it’s not putting a target on someone’s back.
The problem is, that freedom may not be “enough” for the neo-Nazi.
You asked and answered your own question. I support freedom of speech…period; not freedom of actions that violate one’s life, liberty and property.
You will notice that Turley was holding Shapiro responsible for the actions of his students on account of his mere speech or lack thereof. It is not evident that there is a clearly discernible line between speech and actions. Would that it were so.
Olly: Spot on (yet again)!
Ever notice the fascists’ contradiction on this issue? Speech they don’t like is an “act of violence.” Violence they do like is an act of free speech.
Great point Sam!
Silverman,
Yes, you may have to explain why genocide is a bad idea.
How else could we discuss the ban in the Old Testament? The ban on Amalek, Jericho, and others. Hebrew: חרם, ḥērem
Let’s read some ancient “hate speech”:
Joshua 6:16 NIV:
“The seventh time around, when the priests sounded the trumpet blast, Joshua commanded the army, “Shout! For the Lord has given you the city! 17 The city and all that is in it are to be devoted[a] to the Lord. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared, because she hid the spies we sent. 18 But keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it. 19 All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord and must go into his treasury.”
20 When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city.
21 They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.”
So let me get this right. Out of Jerhico, every inhabitant was slaughtered, including the women children and babies– and the livestock! What did the poor donkeys do to deserve that, eh?
Well, I guess we are going to have to have a conversation about genocide if we’re going to understand the Hebrew Scriptures, yes? Im not sure how the theologians in Europe sort this one out. They have to tread very carefully!
Kutz, I’m an atheist so I won’t debate your Bronze Age myths. I don’t need religion; if you do, good luck with that.
Jeffrey, not accusing you but to many leftism is their new religion.
Silberman says: “must we resign ourselves to explaining why genocide is a bad idea?”
Tell me why the Hebrew Scriptures say God was angry with King Saul.
Is not not because he refused to fully execute the genocidial order of God to destroy Amalek? herem
Is not because he kept one hostage, the very King, even as all others including the babies– were exterminated? oh lest I forget, Saul kept some of the livestock instead of slaughtering them all.
1 samuel 15: 1-9
“3 Now go and attack[a] Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’ ”
4 So Saul gathered the people together and numbered them in Telaim, two hundred thousand foot soldiers and ten thousand men of Judah. 5 And Saul came to a city of Amalek, and lay in wait in the valley.
6 Then Saul said to the Kenites, “Go, depart, get down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them. For you showed kindness to all the children of Israel when they came up out of Egypt.” So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites. 7 And Saul attacked the Amalekites, from Havilah all the way to Shur, which is east of Egypt. 8 He also took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. 9 But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were unwilling to utterly destroy them. But everything despised and worthless, that they utterly destroyed.”
See that last thing? This failure to complete the genocide made God mad. He said kill them all!
verse 10:
“10 Now the word of the Lord came to Samuel, saying, 11 “I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not performed My commandments.”
IE, GOD SAID SLAUGHTER ALL THE AMALEKITES. SAUL DID NOT FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS TO THE T!~
Query: did God Himself command— genocide?
How ever could we discuss such a perplexing topic if we had the stupid European incitement laws to trouble us.
Here’s an example of what could get me thrown in jail in Europe in such a discussion
“My my, how ironic!”
What’s wrong with having to explain why genocide is a bad idea?
“Again, JT does not layout where he draws the line”
From what I have read and heard from Turley your analysis is far from accurate. You want him to spell out hypotheticals that are unrelated to his topics. He has a legal view and a political one. I think the former is admirable and the latter open to criticism or praise based on the ideology of the individual listening to him.
As a scholar who propounds as theory of an First Amendment Originalism, it is encumber JT to define its limitations, if any. But he knows that drawing lines is often seen as arbitrary and would only alienate many on this blog. Like a politician, Turley does not wish to burn his bridges with either side of the political divide since he wants to hold himself out as being above the fray in a bid to be regarded as non-partisan.
He has handled your question from multiple angles. He just hasn’t answered your hypothetical. I’ll try and answer for him. Can Nazi’s march in Skokie? Yes. Can Nazi’s say terrible things? Yes. Can Nazi’s say or do things that can or caused injury to others? No, if you can provide a causal relationship.
Not everything has a bright line of distinction. Many socialists dream that such lines exist but that is part of their dreams.
I think what you are seeing is his political face, not his legal face.
Much like the NBA, a financial/sports entity that changed their behavior after their ratings (i.e. cash flow) dried up, and the NFL, which disallowed kneeling when people tuned out, universities will only change when the alumnae stops contributing.
Once the money from former students ends and enrollments decrease we will see the obvious and easy remedy…expulsion of anyone disrupting classes or speeches. When some kid, who was admitted with less than a stellar academic record and who is only getting by dues to a loss of rigor in grading and teaching, is threatened with being tossed out of the rigged university game will we then see a change in the screeching paradigm.
The right is calling Biden a trojan horse for the radical left, i.e., Bernie Sanders and his supporters. But what would “more of Bernie Sanders” mean for freedom of speech, particularly on college campuses?
https://pen.org/bernie-sanders-on-free-expression-in-america/
“Bernie believes, fundamentally, that people have a right to speak and students have a right, if they are on a college campus, not to attend. They also have a right to ask hard questions about the speaker if they disagree with him or her, and students have the right to protest.”
“Bernie does not believe we should be afraid of somebody coming on a campus or anyplace else and speaking or that we should deny somebody else the right to express his or her point of view.”
“China: Existential Threat to America”
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16705/china-existential-threat
“Beijing is working hard to unseat President Trump. They are doing so not only with their social media feeds but also with their public pronouncements and other efforts. These efforts are much greater in scope than Russia’s in 2016 or Russia’s this year. It is not “Russia, Russia, Russia.” It really is “China, China, China!”
As an initial matter, Chinese state media and Communist Party media have gone on a bender with unprecedented numbers of news stories, pronouncements, articles, all the rest of it. As a part of this campaign, Beijing has unleashed its trolls and its bots against Trump. The New York Times reported in March that Beijing propagated, through social media feeds and text messages, the rumor that President Trump was going to invoke the Stafford Act and lock down the entire United States. Of course, Beijing knew that was false.
Beijing has also been running operations and networks, including the one called Spamouflage Dragon, which relentlessly attacked the president. YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have since taken down that network.
China’s effort is massive. We have seen periodically American social media companies take down fake Chinese accounts. In June alone, Twitter took down 174,000 fake Chinese accounts. That is just one month, one social media platform, 174,000 accounts.”
But thanks to Hunter the Blowfeld forgetting about his laptops the ChiCom’s have been exposed.
And you’re one of them, Joe.
“Gatestone Institute is a far-right think tank known for publishing anti-Muslim articles.[a][2][3][4][5] It was founded in 2008 by Nina Rosenwald, who serves as its president.[6] Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former[7] national security advisor, John R. Bolton, was its chairman from 2013 to March 2018. Its current chairman is Amir Taheri.[8][9][10][11]
Gatestone is an anti-Muslim group.[a][12] The organization has attracted attention for publishing false or inaccurate articles, some of which were shared widely.[13][14][15][16][17]…..”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatestone_Institute
Gatestone is an excellent publication and its founder Nina Rosenwald is a woman of high integrity. The writers on Gatestone are excellent and live or die by their veracity. Gatestone is against terrorism and Islamists but not against Muslims. In fact some of their articles are written by Muslims. Gatestone writes on a number of different issues.
Btb aka Joe Friday aka Jan F. aka his alias of the day is not credible. Unfortunately, Wikipedia turned political and relies mostly on leftists that provide btb the comments he wants but when one delves into some of its ideas one finds Wikipedia lacking in the research department. Take note, unnamed persons can do to Wikipedia what certain folk attempt to do on this blog. They lie.
JM, the comments were by a third party and not by Bernie so the answers provided shouldn’t be promoted as answers from Sanders.
“demonize journalists when they dare to debunk his lies.
Right off the bat, they show the writers demonstrated their true feathers. They state Trump demonizes journalists without proving that what he says are lies. Most of the significant things Trump says are true and most of the rest are not lies. The press censors Trump. Trump hasn’t censored the press. That should tell one much of what they need to know.
If this represents Sanders thinking then there is little question in my mind that Sanders believes in ‘speech for me but not for thee’.
Maxson, if we end up with a Biden-Kamala administration, Bernie will be given a sop, not a portfolio. He is trying to haul along his troops in the hopes of getting anything.
Biden-Kamala is a corporatist ticket. The main things Wall Street likes about them:
1- promise to do more deficit spending than the Republicans. starting with a fat stimulus, followed by the infrastructure spend that Pelosi stymied under Trump.
2- restart the importation of cheap migrant labor.
3- end to fair trade contretemps against the PRC and chance to begin cutting deals with Chicom cronies again
all the pro-labor, pro-worker, pro-poor talk of the Democrat side is pure fiction from A to Z.
Kurtz, your ignoranxce maybe explains your continued support for Trump, because it’s not the facts. He blew up the infrastructure bill. not Pelosi. It was also always doubtful that the GOP Senate would pass it.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/30/politics/pelosi-schumer-trump-infrastructure-meeting/index.html
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-infrastructure-pelosi-schumer-meeting-20190522-story.html
As to immigration, the number of entries has been generally declining since the early 2000, Obama deported more illegals in his last 4 than Trump has – and he targeted law breakers – and there is evidence that illegal entries are now going up.
Trump’s China strategy was based ona vanity foreign policy, not smart dealing. It has wiped out an important market for Midwestern farmers – who are now many on Federal welfare to the tune of $23 billion, the taraiff is costing American families on average over $2000 a year, and rewarded steel companies while penalizing those that use steel, as well as companies that relied on China made components. The CHinese are falling far short of their promised purchases for this year.
Read a newspaper sometime.
Joe, it’s true that Obama deported a lot of illegals. He had plenty to chose from. I don’t find his record all that bad in that respect.
I have some other criticisms of Obama immigration policy, but they’re old news and not all that relevant to what’s happening now. No sense if quibbling over details gone by.
However, Trump has cut into immigration across the board, in many dimensions, true to his 2016 electoral promise, overall
Here is a detailed breakdown, of the many different policy areas. The article seems fair enough to me, as newspapers go
https://www.azcentral.com/in-depth/news/politics/immigration/2020/10/25/donald-trump-2016-immigration-border-promises-did-he-deliver/3723336001/
observe the number of refugees admitted went down from 85,000 to 15,000. wow!
the benefit is to the American low-skills worker, who generally is the one first to be harmed by competition from increased numbers of illegal aliens, who through to unskilled day labor jobs.
Kurtz, “refugees” are not illegal immigrants. The former are barely a problem for us to absorb and a humanitarian effort. Illegal immigration – which is where the cheap border labor comes from, has not decreased.
You ignore the other subjects you raised and which do not reflect what you claimed – Infrastructure plans and Chinese trade policy.
refugees can be a crime problem and Minnesota proves it
I did not restrict my comments to illegal immigration, I was talking about all aspects of migration policy
infrastructure, you claim what you do. i doubt it but you could be right for all i know. trump promised it and we know he is a spender. I suspect Pelosi didn’t want to give him a win. but, you could be right that McConnel would have spiked it. it barely matters now.
I dispute your characterization of the China trade policy. as to one specific, that steel companies AND WORKERS were benefitted but consumers ie corporate purchasers of American steel, paid a price, presumably, by paying more for better American steel, rather than the cheaper Chinese steel, which was unfairly and illegally dumped into our markets, to that I can only say, GOOD GOOD GOOD, FANTASTIC! HAIL TRUMP
Oh Ill bite on “farmers” too. The “family farm” of American history and imagination, has been going away for decades. Most farming is done now by sophisticated agri-bsuiness, like those Kroch bros you hate so much., I don’t cry for them, sorry. Why are you carrying water for agribusiness billionaires like the Koch bros, Joe? Sad!
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/06/koch-brothers-network-breaks-with-trump-over-china-trade-war.html
Kurtz, “refugees” are not illegal immigrants. The former are barely a problem for us to absorb and a humanitarian effort.
Here’s someone who doesn’t give much thought to
1. Proper taxonomies and
2. Feedback effects.
What democrats want:
An end to free speech
Socialism.
Outsourcing jobs and industry to China and elsewhere.
What Republicans want:
Freedom
👍 Allan
I’d like to thank you for your insightful article about how the true threat to free speech in this country at this time is Donald Trump’s all out war against truthtellers within his own administration…
I knew you’d come around to it eventually on your star spangled awesome blog.
“Trump’s all out war against truthtellers”…..oh man….guessing you don’t know Obama’s nasty record on going after whistleblowers, truthtellers, leakers, and even journalists during his reign? Here is a quick refresher on how Obama treated the press ————>
“Here are 11 moments Obama abused the press:
1. Campaign plane “hijacking” journalists. In 2008, the Obama campaign flew 25 members of the media to Chicago — without telling them then-Sen. Obama was not, in fact, on board. CNN reported: “[T]he press was essentially held hostage with no candidate and no choice but to fly to Chicago on a chartered plane.”
2. Closing White House events to all but the official photographer. Obama barred the media from events — including, ironically, an award ceremony where he was recognized for “transparency” — and often restricted photographers’ access, only releasing images taken by the official White House photographer.
3. Trying to shut out Fox News. The Obama administration targeted Fox News for isolation and marginalization, arguing that it was not a legitimate news organization but “the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.” That served as a warning to other potentially critical outlets.
4. Stonewalling FOIA requests. The Obama administration “set a record” for failing to provide information requested by the press and the public under the Freedom of Information Act. The low point was Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, where tens of thousands of emails were hidden on a private server and deleted.
5. Prosecuting journalists and their sources. The Obama administration pursued Fox News reporter James Rosen’s private emails — then misled Congress about it. CNN’s Jake Tapper — to his credit — pointed out that Obama had used the Espionage Act against leakers more than all of his predecessors combined.
6. Wiretapping the Associated Press. After the Obama administration’s snooping on the AP was exposed in 2013, a senior NBC correspondent excused President Obama on the grounds that he would not have been nasty enough to alienate “one of the president’s most important constituencies, the press.”
7. Refusing to hold press conferences. For long stretches of his presidency, Obama refused to hold press conferences at all, going 10 months without a formal press conference in a critical stretch from 2009 to 2010. He heeled the lowest average annual number of press conferences of any president since Ronald Reagan.
8. Filibustering at press conferences. When Obama did, finally, hold press conference, he often limited the number of questions by delivering long, rambling, often condescending answers. He “wastes reporters’ time by refraining from answering questions with any candor,” Jack Shafer complained in Politico in 2016.
9. Attacking tough questions. When a Major Garrett of CBS actually asked a tough question — about why the administration seemed not to be trying hard to free Americans held by Iran, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian — Obama scolded him: “Major, that’s nonsense, and you should know better.”
10. Appearing on fringe outlets. While media elites gripe about conservative journalists being given a chance, Obama often restricted his appearances to fringe media: Inside Edition; Funny or Die’s Between Two Ferns (which was then nominated for an Emmy); YouTube stars; and a radio show called “Pimp with a Limp.”
11. Iran deal “echo chamber.” The Obama administration created “fake news” to support the Iran deal, setting up what it later boasted was an “echo chamber” of “experts” who would comment in the media to support the White House narrative on the negotiations. Meanwhile, key details were hidden from the public.
Through it all, President Obama regarded himself as a champion of press freedom, having run the “most transparent administration ever.”
Many mainstream media journalists ignored the Obama administration’s abuses. A few spoke out against them. But most of them continued to paint him in glowing terms, regardless.” ~Breitbar reporting
btw, firing someone ‘at will’ is not the equivalent of an “all out war”…..
Ha. What’s the first thing trump does when he gets called out on his lies?
Called out? You mean by the lying fake news media that lies about him more than he could ever lie about anything else?
Here’s how Matt Taibi put it: “Trump’s opponents are lying, witch-hunting scum in their own right, a club of censorious bureaucrats whose instincts for democracy and free speech hover somewhere between the mid-seventies GDR and the Church of Scientology.”
Where are your facts?
Let’s to talk to Comey and Vindman shall we?
They already have been proven not to be truthful.
I should add, but if you think they have truthful facts:
Provide the fact.
Show its significance.
Show that it is relevant.
Provide proof that the fact exists and is true.
Then provide your point.
You don’t do this yourself, but you expect it of others. You are a hypocrite Allan.
Most people know that is a lie. They also know you run away from fact and logic.
Allan, you are once again confusing two different anonymous commenters.
“Allan, you are once again confusing two different anonymous commenters.”
Prove it.
And when you provide these things, Allan routinely denies the information, says he doesn’t have time to read the information, etc. It’s his little game and he doesn’t think, or doesn’t care, that it’s blatantly obvious what he’s doing.
Case in point: his b.s. claim that Vindman and Comey have been proven to be liars. Not even close to the truth.
Allan is wildly disingenuous.
“Allan routinely denies the information, says he doesn’t have time to read the information,”
You are lying. That is not unusual for you. Numerous times I have read what you cited and had to tell you it reported something different from what you said. The result, you ran away. You like to read headlines. and frequently don’t understand the content when you do read your own citations.
You bring up Vindman and Comey as examples. Most people even with only minimal awareness recognize that you don’t know what you are talking about.
And we should also note that Allan *never* does this himself. He’ll, at best, post an op ed that he doesn’t even recognize is an op ed couched as journalism. He’s gullible, clueless, wouldn’t recognize good science if it bit him in the butt, and will have to contend with his hero taking a gigantic L tomorrow.
“He’ll, at best, post an op ed that he doesn’t even recognize is an op ed couched as journalism. ”
That is why a good number of the things I post will have citations to prove what they say is true. Those citations might be copies of emails, Pictures, transcripts or even handwritten notes.
Don’t make yourself appear more Stupid than you appear now.
The reason why one doesn’t provide links is that when they finish providing links to ATS, the response is:
“Allan, you are once again confusing two different anonymous commenters.”
Nothing more need be said because ATS is a liar.
Take note of the date of this post. If one looks around at random for only a minute, anywhere, one finds all these pearls of Anonymous that are meant to deceive or lie.
But there is one thing you said that we can all agree on: YES, this is a “star spangled awesome blog.”
There ya go…, own the insulting cliche like it totally defines you, because, well, it does.
The words ‘star spangled awesome’ are insulting to you? Weird.
Anonymous the ChiCom troll is very familiar with an “all out war against truthtellers”.
“THE CHINESE PSYCHOPATH WHO TURNED TIBET INTO A SURVEILLANCE NIGHTMARE”
https://tibettruth.com/2019/11/11/the-chinese-psychopath-who-turned-tibet-into-a-surveillance-nightmare/
“These draconian measures were not enough for Quanguo, he also throttled and distorted the flow of information, cracking down on relatively independent news sources, replacing them with media outlets loyal to the CCP. He transformed ‘Tibetan’ TV new channels into 24/7 conduits for Chinese regime propaganda. Anyone having satellite television was required, by fear of prison, torture and forced labor, to have only a reception fixed to channels approved by the authorities.”
All you’re about is lies and propaganda, Anon.
No doubt you are an ardent admirer of Quanghuo.
Mutants all caught up in Obama fantasy. Cool thing is, starting tomorrow night, your paranoid voices have to slither back under the rock you crawled out from under.
And Rhodesy, you’re a pussy.
Fortunately, we can count on the extremists to go to excess.
Wonder if Mr. Schapiro feels just a twinge of empathy for Robespierre on the tumbrel?
Schapiro’s time will come – either defenestrated by his students, or condemned as a fool by history.
Shapiro’s academic background is in economics, he should have taken a course on the history of the the French Revolution.
maplady7: Shush! They don’t need more tips on how to conduct their Reign of Terror.