History professors Matthew Garrett and Erin Miller are suing the Kern Community College District over free speech. The District includes colleges like Bakersfield College, Porterville College, and Cerro Coso Community College. In their lawsuit, the professors alleged the denial of free speech and academic freedom after they publicly denounced social justice spending. One of the officials being sued is Christopher W. Hine, the General Counsel of Kern Community College District, who is accused of writing the Administrative Determinations against the professors and, according to the complaint, warning them not to engage in further such speech.
Garrett argued that grant funds were being used by certain faculty members to push a partisan “social justice” agenda at the college and urged for an investigation into the grant expenditures. Bond and Rosales are recipients of some of those grants as part of the college’s Social Justice Institute. Bond and Rosales then filed human resource complaints with the district against Garrett and Miller.
The school has reportedly refused to share the complaint against Garrett and Miller.
What is known is that Miller filed the public records request in October 2019. On October 11 and 19, 2019, Professors Bond and Rosales file HR complaints against Dr. Garrett and Professor Miller arising out of the September 12, 2019 lecture. According to the complaint, Bakersfield College Vice President Billie Jo Rice then asked Dr. Garrett to stop requesting public records to the grants and to remove the publicly posted video of the September 12, 2019 lecture. That is deeply disturbing, if true. These professors have every right to speak on these subjects and to seek such public information. Even requesting that a subordinate remove such material and abandon such requests is highly inappropriate and chilling.
That brings us to the role of general counsel, Christopher W. Hine. On October 8, 2020, Hine issued a KCCD Administrative Determination containing the following statements and findings (again according to the Complaint):
(a) Professor Miller, in her introduction to Dr. Garrett’s speech, made a number of statements implying that both Dr. Oliver Rosales and Professor Andrew Bond “were improperly misusing grant funds and BC resources to finance various ‘social justice’ platforms.”
(b) Dr. Garrett, during his speech, repeated the above allegations “in greater detail” (i.e., that Rosales and Bond were improperly misusing grant funds).
(c) Dr. Garrett’s and Professor Miller’s comments constituted allegations of “financial impropriety” and of misappropriation of grant funds by Rosales and Bond.
(d) Dr. Garrett and Professor Miller’s purported accusations that Rosales and Bond had engaged in “financial improprieties” constituted unprofessional conduct.
(e) Dr. Garrett and Professor Miller made these accusations against Rosales and Bond “without giving them a reasonable chance to explain the grants in question or defend themselves.”
(f) Dr. Garrett “made the situation worse by repeating the allegations on a radio station after Dr. Rosales and Professor Bond properly complained.”
The speech itself is the exercise of free speech and there should be a default in favor of such values before engaging in any formal act of investigation or condemnation by a university. Likewise, the complaint asserts that both Rosales and Bond were offered to participate in a debate. Thus, finding (e) is a bit difficult to square in saying that they were denied any opportunity to respond. What does such an opportunity mean specifically? Hine does not say.
I can see the concern over any accusation of “financial improprieties.” I do believe that, as academics, we need to take care to maintain civility and fairness in such comments, particularly when the underlying facts are unclear. I have no reason to believe that Rosales or Bond engaged in any financial impropriety. I agree that the university should discourage any allegations of impropriety in public between colleagues without confirmed facts. It is unfair to the accused colleagues and inimical to the college community as a whole. However, Garrett and Miller insist that they were calling for an investigation into possible “improprieties,” not declaring guilt. The thrust of the remarks were objections to the attack on free speech and the funding of social justice programs. Hines’ findings are conspicuously short on specifics as to what was objectionable in the public comments.
These findings were used by Hine to declare that Garrett and Miller “engaged in unprofessional conduct, as defined in Section A.3 of Article Four of the CCA collective bargaining agreement, in their statements and allegations regarding misuse and misappropriation of grant funds by Dr. Rosales and Professor Bond.” The professors were warned that they are now on a type of hair-trigger for further investigation.
Hine further referenced California Education Code § 87667, which provides that “A contract or regular employee may be dismissed or penalized for one or more of the grounds set forth in Section 87732.” Finally, he said that the report will be referred to the President of Bakersfield College “to determine what disciplinary actions and remedial actions are necessary based upon the findings.”
The question is whether the specific condemnations will be treated by a court as sufficiently concrete to justify judicial review and intervention. The university can claim that it is allowed to reach a determination on unprofessional conduct and note that the professors have not been fired or fined or suspended. They can also note that requests that the professors withdraw requests for information or request to refrain from further public comments are not disciplinary actions. Deans and administrative officials (and colleagues) often suggest restraint or de-escalation in such disputes.
In my view, the actions of the District are chilling and inimical to free speech. I am particularly concerned about the request that these professors withdraw their public information requests. If true, it is a particularly odd request since they were reprimanded for speaking without sufficient support. Moreover, the Hine report relies on the same general grounds without the level of specificity that should be part of any such action. Finally, I am concerned about the lack of due process. The speed and lack of transparency of the process leading to the Hine’s finding is troubling.
We will be following the case.
Read this; it just goes on and on.
https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/civil-rights-lawsuit-teacher/
These two professors have not been fired and the Administrative Determination relegates the potential of disciplinary action to the college administration. The Administrative Determination in this case also does not recommend any disciplinary action based upon political views expressed by the two professors. The two situations are very different.
I encourage everyone in this thread actually interested in learning more about the course of events articulated in the law suit to watch the video below. Free speech is alive and well at Bakersfield College. No one is trying to suppress anyone’s free speech or political views. I applaud attorney Hine’s Administrative Determination and the independent investigation that was thoroughly researched by an outside attorney who concluded not only was there no evidence of financial misappropriation, but that it was unprofessional to make allegations publicly while side-stepping district policy. If one suspects financial misgivings within the district, there are reporting procedures that ensure claims of policy violation will be thoroughly investigated.
https://youtu.be/AytuUDCR34c
If course they are.
While many here debate your contention that this was not a form of woke bribery, that is really not the issue.
Free speech requires that even repugnant, reprehensible and false expression is permitted. ‘
Much of what is reported each day on the left wing nut media is “misinformation” – no one seeks to censor MSNBC or WaPo for the innumerable egregious errors they have made in the past 5 years.
Should that happen I will stand behind the lunatics in the left wing press and they absolute right to spew absolute nonsense.
But those on the left are not so tolerant. Further they are ignorant of history. Free speech – including speech deemed wrong of false must be tolerated or society itself fails. It is the voices of dissent – even lunatic dissent, it is challenges to orthodoxy, it is confronting accepted dogma, conventional wisdom that ultimately brings us to the truth.
Failure to grasp this is one of the more significant errors of those on the left. If Alex Jones can not speak then neither can Gallelio.
Truth is NOT determined by consensus. We recognize something as true when it holds up against all challenges – both intelligent and lunatic.
The suppression of views you do not like ultimately makes us all worse off.
This is why the first amendment exists. Government is required to be neutral – to take no position, so that we resolve what is true and what is not through debate – often contentious.
While I disagree with the hyperbole expressed in your comment, I appreciate your viewpoint. I also don’t disagree that these comments would have been fine if expressed in the town square, but they weren’t. They were made in a public employee context.
That only makes it worse.
Most corruption can only exist in the context of public power.
It is moral for product vendors to pay grocery stores for prime placement of their products.
It is not moral for anyone to pay those in government to gain an advantage or government benefit.
There is very little corruption in free markets that is not government corruption.
With respect to the allegations here – absolutely – left or right I want to here from anyone alleging public corruption.
Further they only have to make a prima fascia case to REQUIRE a public investigation.
If you see what you think id public corruption – SPEAK OUT – any way you can.
Whether those involved are on the left or right.
Further the standard with respect to public conduct is NOT actual corruption – but the mere APPEARANCE of corruption.
Too many here on the left wish to pretend there is somehow parity between allegations of public corruption or incompetence and investigations, and allegations regarding private conduct.
That is HorseSchiff.
Benghazi was relentlessly investigated first because it was public incompetence, and then because of the lies and coverup.
The actual event though egregious was not as significant as the Beruit Bombing.
The difference is that Reagan took responsibility quickly and a real and thorough investigation actually occured.
The issue with Benghazi was that it happened in close proximity to an election and the truth – that executive incompetence had allowed terrorists to murder a US ambassador would harm Obama’s re-election.
I understand the right is interested in expanding free speech within the context of public employees. Still, the public employees in this context, according to the college district, should have filed their complaints alleging “financial misappropriation” prior to delivering public remarks that made such interpretations, be it of “public corruption,” appearance thereof, or whatever word choice is preferred. Then, their speech would have been protected. In this case, the plaintiffs made their public statements first, then wanted to do research. Research should have been done first before making public allegations based on false information.
This is a ludicrous argument – and that has nothing to do with right or left.
Your right to free speech does not disappear because you failed to file the right paperwork.
You are actually making the very content based argument that the constitution forbids.
You are essentially saying that you can say “look over there, that red house magically turned blue”, because you have free speech.
But you can not say “I see bribery extortion and fraud” – without following procedure.
If there speech is defamatory – file a tort claim.
The government MAY NOT regulate speech based on content – that includes limiting speech regarding fraud and corruption to specific forums
This is one of the problems with leftism – it is incredibly shallow and poorly thought out.
It does not and can not work.
I would note that I do not agree with your claim that the allegations were false.
False allegations of this type are defamatory. That is a tort. I have as of yet not heard of anyone filing a defamation claim.
You are also engaged in a bizzare appeal to authortiy.
The truth of the statements made is determined by the FACTS – not by the number of so called experts who found otherwise.
Galleleo found the earth orbited the sun – thousands of “experts” at the time did not alter the FACTS.
If these allegations are spurious – file a defamation claim.
I would further question why do you expect those allegedly being blackmailed or bribed to admit that ?
Nearly every lawsuit ever filed makes allegations “on information and beleif”.
Fundimentally that means “I can not yet PROVE. my claim, but I do have evidence that appears to support the truth of my claims”.
This case is essentially the same.
I would absolutely expect claims like these to be made publicly and THEN contested. I do not expect those engaged in bribery blackmail and extortion to investigate themselves privately on complaint and conclude they were engaged in bribery extortion and blackmail.
I would further note that you have a really bizzare understanding of public and private.
The conduct of government, government entities, government agents is inherently PUBLIC conduct.
If might still be “secret”, but it is not in anyway private conduct. With few exceptions there is a right of the public to know all that they want of the conduct of those in public service. Coversely the speech of those in question here is PRIVATE conduct. While it is made openly possibly in a public forum, it is not public conduct. These people speak for themselves – they are not in this instance agents of government.
“Research should have been done first before making public allegations based on false information.”
That is up to the speakers – not you.
There is very little in the way of actual duties with respect to free speech.
If your speech is false, and you know or should have known it and it defames an individual – you might face a tort claim.
That is the remedy – not the gobbledygook you are spewing.
There are very few instances – deliberately, where they law imposes a burden on you to speak the truth.
That is important. All of us are certain we know the truth. Most of the time we are WRONG.
We have seen this recently in numerous instances with social media censorship.
SM censored for over a year any remark that C19 might have originated anywhere but the wet markets.
That was WRONG. I am sure those doing the censoring beleived otherwise.
But they were still WRONG.
Getting things like this right is often hard. So called experts are no better than the rest of us.
There are BTW numerous studies on that.
One as an example found that criminal psycholigists did a substantially worse job of determining what inmates seeking parole were likely to reoffend than ordinary people.
In the case of the origens of Covid we now KNOW that the “experts” blackmailed and bribed those who would present conflicting views.
Pretty much like the case you are trying to defend.
Wise people understand that if you can be blackmailed, you are not going to admit it.
Hyperbolee is the addition of unnecescary adjectives.
If you disagree regarding the underlying facts – please lets address that.
That is important.
Otherwise I am not troubled by my adjectives.
John say,
“ Free speech – including speech deemed wrong of false must be tolerated or society itself fails.”
That is patently false. Nothing in the constitution or law states that speech deemed wrong or false MUST be tolerated. The entire premise of the first amendment is a prohibition on government punishing or censoring speech simply because it is offensive to others, critical of government, or suppression of ideas.
Nobody is required to tolerate speech that is offensive or false. Free speech is not about the right to be heard either. You don’t have a right to an audience. All you have is the right to express it and be free from punishment or censorship from government entities. On private platforms or private businesses you have no such rights. You can certainly be censored, punished, fired, even fined.
The 1st amendment affords no one protections from those who do not tolerate or choose to criticize your express views and ideas. It offers no protections from ridicule and from being completely ignored.
Nobody is claiming Alex Jones cannot speak. He’s still free to speak of his unhinged conspiracy theories and twisted views. But, because he was using a private platform to express his diatribes and conspiracy theories he was not protected from censorship or being denied the audience he seeks.
He doesn’t have a constitutional right to be heard. Only to express his views.
Suppression of ideas that are clearly harmful to society would be and has been permitted to be suppressed.
Would promoting suicide as an alternative to cancer treatment be allowed on private SM platforms? Should the benefits of suicide be targeted at minors or teenagers not be suppressed? What about pedophilia? Should government be neutral regarding those issues?
Misinformation regarding vaccines has created the situation we are once against going back into. Mask mandates, more business requiring employees to be vaccinated, etc. when it starts to threaten the economy again the misinformation will be suppressed most likely by private SM platforms than government.
“That is patently false.”
False.
“Nothing in the constitution or law states that speech deemed wrong or false MUST be tolerated. ”
I did not make a claim about the constitution. But as YOU did – the first amendment provides a right to speak – not a right to speak only the truth.
“The entire premise of the first amendment is a prohibition on government punishing or censoring speech simply because it is offensive to others, critical of government, or suppression of ideas.”
Correct – and that applies whether the speech is true or false.
“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
— Justice Louis Brandeis in the Whitney opinion.
The constitutional remedy for false speech is MORE SPEECH not enforced silence.
I would also suggest spending a month reading JS Mill “On Liberty”
here is a PDF copy.
https://eet.pixel-online.org/files/etranslation/original/Mill,%20On%20Liberty.pdf
My argument was NOT about the constitution.
It was that society as well as govenrment can not work without free speech.
This is a lesson of history – it is not specific to the constitution.
It is not even specifically about government.
Presuming we eliminate Sec. 230 of the DMCA and we compell SM to honor the commitments the made to entice people to use them in the first place – FB and Twitter and … are free to censor as the please.
But ultimately they will fail.
There is an excellent article by Thomas Frank – about as left as you can get discussing the consequences of SM and the news supressing the lab leak hypothesis.
Frank wrote that this undermines faith in our institutions, in government, in FB and Twitter, in most everything.
Unsurprisingly trust in the media and in government is unbelievably low.
This is a big deal – the legitimacy of government comes from the trust of the people.
You have ranted about Trump lying, about the election about all kinds of other things.
But you and your ilk have been caught LYING regularly.
Maybe you beleived what you said. That does not alter the fact that you were wrong – nearly always.
When you cry wolf repeatedly – no one beleives you.
The way we determine the truth is by open argument.
As mill noted – if all you know is your own argument – you know little or nothing.
The problem with logical fallacies is not that they are false – many are not litterally false.
It is that the derail valid arguments – they prvent us from following logic to the truth.
Few of us are capable of providing the best criticisms of our own arguments.
We all suffer from confirmation bias.
One of the ways that I know the truth of my own arguments is the failure of people like you – or far smarter to refute them.
On the rare occasions that someone finds a flaw in my argument – I must rethink that argument – and everything I hold to be true that touches. Most of the time that requires minor adjustments. But I have shifted my position on many issues because they did not hold up to scrutiny.
Decades ago I bought into peak oil, and many environmental fallacies. But I found on my own and it was pointed out to me that no malthusian claim EVER had proven true.
I lived through much of the cold war – we did not end in nuclear anhiliation.
The world survived.
It survived Bush, and Clinton and obama, and trump. It will survive Biden.
Some things make it a bit worse. Some better.
I actually expect – just as with Obama we will be slightly better off than at the start of his term.
We were more than slightly better off as a result of Trump – though not as much as he likes to brag.
Biden is not actually the worst threat facing the country – The censorious intolerant woke left – YOU are.
You are oblivious to history. You have learned nothing from life. Yet you feel free to impose your broken morality on everyone else by force.
You seek to impose something close to the maoist cultural revolution on the country – and too many democrats are kowtowing to your demands.
But even you are not an existential threat.
The only question is whether we are already started the pushback or whether we have to go through years decades of nonsense before your failure becomes unsustainable.
I am also slightly worried about the reverse swing of the pendulum. It is when the left F’s up that we get actual totalitarian regimes.
The French revolution begat Napolian. The Russian Stalin, the chinese Mao.
John Say,
” Free speech – including speech deemed wrong of false must be tolerated or society itself fails.” It’s still false John. Nothing must be tolerated. Nobody is required to tolerate something they deem offensive or oppose the speech. Especially in the private sphere.
“The constitutional remedy for false speech is MORE SPEECH not enforced silence.”
That is not always the most effective solution because as we both know the constitution’s limitations are geared towards government, not the private sphere. As you note censorship by the private sector is common in both the left and the right.
“One of the ways that I know the truth of my own arguments is the failure of people like you – or far smarter to refute them.”
John, as hilarious as that claim is there have been multiple people refuting your own arguments quite handily including me. The way you handle them involve an incessant series of splitting hairs on definitions and context until you change the subject when your arguments can no longer be logically defensible.
For example the lack of acknowledgement of Trump’s incessant lying and clear contradictions of his claims regarding the election. From massive fraud claims to unhinged rantings about being spied on.
“You are oblivious to history. You have learned nothing from life. Yet you feel free to impose your broken morality on everyone else by force.
You seek to impose something close to the maoist cultural revolution on the country – and too many democrats are kowtowing to your demands.”
LOL! John, clearly you are taking too many things too seriously and literally. The majority of the time you have shown a poor understanding of how things work in the courts or how the law really works. You do take the law as literally as possible, and that has been shown to you and many like you that it is not always the best way to interpret the law or how it should be enforced. You succumb to easily to paranoid ideas about political agendas or conspiracy theories that reinforce that paranoia.
“When you cry wolf repeatedly – no one beleives you.”
That’s what trump has been doing all this time in regards to the election. Yet…you believe him. All of his allegations about the election have turned out to be false, repeatedly. Why should he be believed?
Why do you presume you are allowed to decide what is the most effective solution for everyone ?
Why do you presume that such a thing even exists ?
Or that there is a single criteria that all of us agree to for measuring what is best for ourselves ?
Go to a grocery store, or the makeup counter in department store or pharmacy.
You have myriads of choices.
One size does not fit all. We are not the same.
We do not eat the same breakfast, drink the same coffee, wear the same lipstick.
We almost never seek “the most effective solution for everyone”
“That is not always the most effective solution because as we both know the constitution’s limitations are geared towards government, not the private sphere. As you note censorship by the private sector is common in both the left and the right.”
Private censorship is NOT common. It is merely permissible.
It is actually UNCOMMON as private censorship alienates customers.
No Svelaz there has been no one actually refuting any arguments I have made.
Most of you do not even directly address them.
You toss out insults, or similar nonsense.
But you do not make actual arguments.
When JS Mill wrote that those who censor others do not know their own arguments – he was refering to YOU.
AS we have found before – You do not even know the facts or history of what YOU are arguing.
Myself and a few others here are providing you with a free quality education to make up for the horribly inadequate one you received.
You do not seem to grasp that little of the nonsense you think you have discovered is new.
Most of your positions were debated often two centuries or more ago – and you long ago lost.
Today you revive this nonsense – ignorant of past history. You are blissfully ignorant that both logic, history and real world experience have proven this nonsense false over and over again.
So I guess you get to force all of us to RELEARN the vile consequences of your idiocy.
You do not have to listen to me. You do not have to listen to anyone.
But you have available to you if you bother to look for it more than enough information to grasp that you will fail.
Regardless, you are NOT free to impose your will on others by force.
“LOL! John, clearly you are taking too many things too seriously and literally.”
When you talk about the use of force you should EXPECT to be taken LITTERALLY,
Law is not creative writing. This is not a creative writing blog. If you do not mean what you say – what value are your comments ?
“The majority of the time you have shown a poor understanding of how things work in the courts or how the law really works.”
I would suggest you think about that a bit.
Svelaz you are neither familiar with how the courts work, or how the law works or how they should work – which is different.
We have had a couple of thousand years to develop law and learn what does and does not work.
Unfortunately so many like you and worse some with actual power are ignorant of all that history and experience and keep trying to make square pegs fit in round holes.
“You do take the law as literally as possible,”
Of course – Law is about the use of FORCE.
But for FORCE no one would care about law. When the law says you may not murder – that is not figurative, or intended to be creative.
When you violate the law – you will come into conflict with men with guns.
Again Law is FORCE. When you are in court – the court does not seek to figuratively decide your guilt of innocence.
Absolutely everything is LITERAL.
“and that has been shown to you and many like you that it is not always the best way to interpret the law or how it should be enforced.”
But you have NOT shown that.
You have not even made an argument to that effect.
Honestly your critical thinking skills are extremely disappointing.
You never think your own claims through.
Do you really want the meaning of the law determined subjectively by each person, police officer or judge ?
The law must be as literal as we can make it because all deviation From narrow and literal is steps towards chaos, anarchy and leads to totalitarianism.
“You succumb to easily to paranoid ideas about political agendas or conspiracy theories that reinforce that paranoia.”
Which Ideas would these be ?
I correct my errors when I am wrong – I have seen no correction or apology from the left for their myriads of errors.
And what is it that I have been wrong about ?
You make these stupid arguments – you constantly seem to think that just saying something makes it true.
While I am neither paranoid nor pushing “conspiracy theories” – neither of those claims is the same as FALSE.
Paranoia is an emotional state – it does not speak to the truth of what is feared.
Certainly we all wish the germans had been far more paranoid about Hitler.
Real conspiracies actually occur – often quite openly. A conspiracy is little more than a negative denotation to an agreement by more than one person.
Calling something a “conspiracy theory” – does not address whether it is true or not.
This election as an example WAS the most lawless in my lifetime – probably in the countries history.
That has been known to be true from before election day.
“That’s what trump has been doing all this time in regards to the election. Yet…you believe him. All of his allegations about the election have turned out to be false, repeatedly. Why should he be believed?”
You keep spewing this nonsense blind to FACTS.
I have provided long lists of FACTS that have been established in actual inquiries – real investigations, and audits and testimony in courts.
While this is NOT about Trump – making it about Trump is a huge mistake for YOU.
The more you rant about Trump’s lies – the worse you look as more and more the truth favors Trump.
The list of things YOU have been wrong about and Trump has been right about is enormous.
What matters most is that YOU, the left, democrats have been wrong – again and again.
But when YOU make it about Trump – all that does is make Trump RIGHT over and over.
Look arround – Biden has been a disaster – BY YOUR MEASURES.
There have been more kids in cages, more rapes, more murders of immigrants.
World leaders are insulting Biden and his representatives with impunity.
Putin. Xi and Iran are walking all over the Biden administration.
You promised the impossible regarding Covid – and FAILED.
YOU are threatening more draconian measures – yet it is self evident to most everyone – they have not worked.
Issue after issue – you have been WRONG about. Little ones, big ones.
Pick an issue any issue – Hunter Biden ? Immigration ? Covid ? The mid east ? US respect in the world ?
Anything ? You, the left, democrats have been WRONG almost every-time you speak.
There is no “paranoia” – you openly conspire to do stupid things that predictably do not work.
“Nobody is required to tolerate speech that is offensive or false.”
False. You are free to restrict speech within your own actual domain – your home.
You are not free to silence others – because you find them offensive or wrong.
You need not listen but you are required to tolerate their right to speak.
“Free speech is not about the right to be heard either.”
Correct, but you can not learn anything if you do not listen.
And AGAIN as Mill noted – you know little of your own argument if you know nothing of the counter arguments of others.
“You don’t have a right to an audience.”
To the extent others wish to listen – you actually do.
You are very poor in your understanding of rights.
Rights are fundimentally negative. You confuse negative and positive.
The above is a perfect example – there is not a right to an audience – correct. But there is a right to NOT be deprived of an audience.
I am not entitled to have others listen.
But I am entitled to have anyone who wishes to listen be able to.
“All you have is the right to express it and be free from punishment or censorship from government entities. On private platforms or private businesses you have no such rights. You can certainly be censored, punished, fired, even fined.”
You are correct that the constitution defines our rights with respect to government.
You are deluded into beleiving that is all there is.
First there is absolutely no right to private fines.
As to private censorship – absent govenrment involvement it is legal – constitutional. That does not make it moral.
Employers and many businesses have some right to censor – specifically because they are not your whole life and they are not about speech.
Employment is about producing value for your employer in return for the value you receive in return – it is a purely voluntary relationship.
Actual censorship does not exist – unless your employer promised something and reneged. Regardless, you are free to leave and take your bullhorn elsewhere.
SM atleast initially promised free or nearly free speech – they have reneged.
We have decalred bait and switch as fraud in the context of commerce – that applies here too.
regardless, rights in the context of free exchange are negotiated – so long as force is not involved.
What is negotiated is not unilaterally modifiable. What is negotiated is enforceable by government.
John Say,
“You are not free to silence others – because you find them offensive or wrong.
You need not listen but you are required to tolerate their right to speak. ”
You are not required to tolerate their right to speak. If that were the case you would be required to tolerate CRT’s arguments would you not? State legislatures would not be able to ban it’s teaching because we are required to tolerate it as you say. Nothing forces you to tolerate anything.
““Free speech is not about the right to be heard either.”
Correct, but you can not learn anything if you do not listen.”
You’re also not required to learn anything as many trump supporters chose to.
““You don’t have a right to an audience.”
To the extent others wish to listen – you actually do.”
That is not the point. Trump is arguing that point that he is being denied his audience because he is banned from Facebook and twitter. For trump in this case he doesn’t have the right to the audience Facebook and twitter provide. He can and has tried to speak to his audience by creating his own platform which failed within one month. He is seeking to force a private organization to carry his message to the bigger audience that they cater to. He has no constitutional right to that entitlement he believes he has.
“Employment is about producing value for your employer in return for the value you receive in return – it is a purely voluntary relationship.
Actual censorship does not exist – unless your employer promised something and reneged. Regardless, you are free to leave and take your bullhorn elsewhere.”
In right to work states. that is not the case. An employer can fire you for any reason and they can choose to fire you for stating an offensive view or make a statement that is not in line with what the company believes.
“SM atleast initially promised free or nearly free speech – they have reneged.
We have decalred bait and switch as fraud in the context of commerce – that applies here too. ”
They never reneged on their promise, that is a false claim. Every TOS included a statement that the SM platform reserves the right to make any changes at any time and that those changes can be either accepted or refused by the person wanting to use the platform. The “original” agreement no longer exists the second people agree to the new agreement offered. They CAN make unilateral changes as long as the opportunity to accept or reject the new agreement is presented. TOS or agreements have explicit language giving these companies wide latitude in making the changes you claim they cannot make. People have for years agreed stupidly to these terms by never reading the whole agreement.
Your constant claims that such agreements are not enforceable are not based on legal reality. Even trump can’t seek to have a florida court review his case because the agreement he signed states that all litigation be done in california courts. and it IS legally binding.
“You are not required to tolerate their right to speak.”
But you are.
“If that were the case you would be required to tolerate CRT’s arguments would you not?”
Yup, no one has sought to stop you from arguing CRT.
“State legislatures would not be able to ban it’s teaching because we are required to tolerate it as you say.”
You constantly use words in bizarre ways and constantly blur government and private.
Government does NOT have the right to free speech – Government is not a person.
There is no right to teach political viewpoints in schools.
We do not as an example teach creationism.
You, Teachers. school boards, community organizers are free to advocate for whatever they wish.
Flat earth, CRT, creationism. Pedophilia.
But you are not free to do so using GOVERNMENT – FORCE.
You constantly get confused about the limits on government and the lack of limits on individuals.
If you wish to start a private school that pushes CRT – go for it.
I do not care what you sell to people – so long as they are “free to choose”.
This is of course why government should not be in education at all.
But if you insist then government schools are limited to teaching the 3R’s.
No one is stopping you from trying to sell CRT.
They are Stopping you from trying to use government to sell it.
Which you may not do.
“You’re also not required to learn anything as many trump supporters chose to.”
You are not – but the vast ignorance of reality lies primarily on the left.
Pick something – anything, that you think Trump supporters are ill informed about ?
It should not surprise that people who have to deal with the real world have more of a grasp of how it works than those who do not.
Here is Thomas Frank – about as much of a lefty as you can get,
The big things wrong with his editorial is that it is too small. He thinks a single error is undermining our confidence in science and institutions.
That is not the problem. The Problem is the broad skill ignorance and hubris of over educated elites who are clueless about the real world, and yet have power.
Science has always been about discovery not authority.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/01/wuhan-coronavirus-lab-leak-covid-virus-origins-china
What frank misses is that we are not seeing our institutions being undermined.
But the religion that the left has forced into them failing.
“Trump is arguing that point that he is being denied his audience because he is banned from Facebook and twitter. For trump in this case he doesn’t have the right to the audience Facebook and twitter provide.”
Part of this debate WHOSE audience are they ?
While Trump had tens of millions of followers – and those followers have the RIGHT to hear Trump if they wish.
Those followers are not Trump’s by Right.
They are also not Facebook’s by right.
The fundimental issue is NOT about Trump – it is about the rights of people to hear what they wish.
Facebook promised that and then reneged.
” He can and has tried to speak to his audience by creating his own platform which failed within one month.”
So ?
That is how free markets work. Republicans have not yet learned how to effectively combat this nonsense. Partly because the right is not REALLY the party of individual liberty, of freedom. They are just less authoritarian than the modern left.
The technological answers lie with P2P and Crypto – distributed systems that can not be controlled.
But these are inimical to Republicans who are still committed to the War on Drugs and similar policies that P2P and Crypto make unwinable.
But they will likely get there.
“He is seeking to force a private organization to carry his message to the bigger audience that they cater to. He has no constitutional right to that entitlement he believes he has.”
Then lets just get rid of the DMCA as a whole – aside from Sect 230 it is stupid.
Regardless, this argument of yours is falling apart. It is increasingly evident that SM is acting in concert with government and democrats.
That is NOT constitutional.
Again I suggest you read mill.
Here is a “translation” into more modern english.
https://heterodoxacademy.org/library/all-minus-one/
I remind you – Mill was english. Not american. The US constitution does not appear in his arguments.
Periodically our discussuion becomes constitutional – but you seem to presume that your broken understanding of the constitution is the extent of everything.
Mill makes the argument for liberty – and especially free speech – without any reference to the first amendment.
In some instances he is talking about government.
But Mill directly confronts your idiotic arguments.
When you censor others – you HARM yourself and everyone else. This is true even when government is not involved.
I mostly like the constitution. I expect govenrment to be constrained by it.
But it is not the word of god written on stone tablets.
You are correct that is sometimes defines our rights regarding govenrment.
It does not speak at all about our rights regarding others.
For that read Mill – or Nozick, or myriads of others. or learn from history.
Absent the DMCA, government meddling and prior promises – SM could censor as they please.
But their ability to do so would not make doing so moral or good or beneficial.
Even left wing nut Thomas Frank noted that SM censorship of dissention regarding the origens of Covid undermined our trust in our institutions and that was BAD.
Just because you can do something does not make it wise.
That is true both of speech and censorship.
Again read Mill “On liberty”
The constitution is not withing a thousand miles, government is only part of his focus.
Yet Mill argues and has persuaded generations that liberty – and particularly free speech is good.
While private entities must have some rules – different ones depending on their role. Censorship – especially within their role remains bad.
It is one thing for a company that makes widgets to ban politics while on the job.
it is another to ban discussions about widgets.
Should a widget maker silence line workers so that they can not note that all widgets are being made defective ?
Allowable private censorship can still often harm the censor and everyone else.
I love it when lefties bring up Alex Jones. While Jones is bat$hit crazy – he has been right more often than YOU or the talking heads of the left.
Wise people learn that when they are nearly always wrong – maybe the problem is with their values and principles.
Those on the left can;’t seem to figure that out.
There are no ideas that whose expression is harmful to society.
Even if there were there is no person or persons capable of accurately judging that.
SM censored claims that the virus might have originated in the labs for over a year.
That censorship was wrong.
While it probably did not harm society much.
It dramatically undermined the credibility of those who censoered it or called it crazy.
It is not the expression of ideas that is dangerous.
It is the suppression that is dangerous.
“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
I have no problem with promoting suicide for any reason.
It is your life. you get to choose. If you want to listen to someone who advocates suicide – that is your business.
The less competent are always a special case for everything – which is why you can not push them into sex changes or idiotic theories about racism.
You seem to confuse allowing speech with conduct.
You are free to say – “he should be dead” – you are not free to kill him.
You are or should be free to discuss pedophila. You are not free to practice it.
Government is not required to be neutral – it is specifically empowered to secure peoples rights.
That includes protecting the rights of the incompetent and children – despite the fact that it does a horrible job at those.
It is empowered to punish those who initiate force against others – who resort to violence to get their way.
But it is NOT free to supress speach no matter how offensive and no matter whether it advocates conduct that we DO punish.
I would note that sometimes we are wrong about conduct. We punished people for being gay, trans, for much of human history.
We often also punished speech regarding homosexuality.
Without free speech we would likely still be imprisoning people who were gay or trans.
I doubt the world will changes it views on pedophilia – but centuries are long times. Who knows.
But whether we allow pedophilia we should not bar the speech or even advocacy of pedophilia.
But there is a difference between allowing advocacy and turning our schools into forums for all causes.
Much of what the left seeks to push into schools is NOT the domain of schools – certainly not public schools.
Where there is real choice – where there is a free market – provides – such as schools can offer consumers such as parents their specific flavor and parents can choose what they want. I have no problem with a parent choosing to send their child ro Woke U or Woke PreK.
But government may not impose any ideology beyond that at the core to this country by force.
And even that is subordinate to teaching the fundimentals.
Any school that can not teach students to read, write and basic math – should not have ANYTHING else in its curiculum until it manages those.
“Misinformation regarding vaccines has created the situation we are once against going back into”
Double nope.
People remain free to choose for themselves. All these mandates were wrong and should have been declared unconstitutional long ago.
I would note that nothing that was done in response to covid has ever worked before. All of it was tried in the past – and it failed.
There are a very limited number of things that actually work against highly contageous diseases.
Masks have worked – but not against viruses. Healthcare workers with the best PPE practices and known 97% effective gear – inevitably become infected after a few weeks working on a Covid floor.
The Japanese have been masking forever – it does not stop the flu – why would it stop Covid ?
Danish studies found that religious maskers were 15% less likely to get Covid over a 90 day period. And 5% less likely after a year.
That is not much of an effect. Myriads of studies by the CDC produced even worse results.
Masks are not “ineffective” – frfeligious use in combination with a near total personal quarantine might give you a chance of avoiding covid – especially if we do not do something stupid like “flatten the curve” and allow it to burn out fast.
I would bet that you do not grasp that the Delta variant – more contageous but less dangerous was inevitable – given enough time.
But had we allowed Covid to spread naturally – we would already be past it and there likely would have been no delta variant.
Flattening the curve is ONLY good policy – if the healthcare system has effective treatments AND is in real danger of being overwhelmed.
For the most part neither of those was true.
Look at the data world wide. There is absolutely no policy signature to the Covid data.
Nothing any government in the world has done has actually worked.
Even Japan appears to have merely delayed the inevitable.
“Mask mandates, more business requiring employees to be vaccinated”
Businesses can do as they please – though they should be liable for the choices they make.
I recomend the vaccine to MOST people. Though the younger you are the more the calculus shifts away from vaccination.
For those under 20 C19 is less dangerous by far than the flu. We should not be mandating vaccinating children anywhere ever.
We should not forget though this vaccine is a miracle – one Trump delivered. It is still experimental. It is not rigourously tested.
We do not know the effects a year or more down the road.
I expect that we will find those risks small. I will predict that. But I can not promise that – no one can.
We probably have no right to mandate vaccination – if we KNOW the vaccine is safe long term.
We certainly can not if we do not.
You seem to think it is OK to experiment on 350M people without their consent.
“when it starts to threaten the economy again”
Covid has never threatened the economy.
Idiots in government are solely responsible for that.
“the misinformation will be suppressed most likely by private SM platforms than government.”
They have already done so. And they have uniformly been wrong.
HCQ is not a miracle drug – but it is effective much better than nothing.
Invermectin is not a miracle drug either – but the data suggests it is nearly the best we have.
Remedsivir is proving less effective than hoped, as are monoclonal antibodies.
But Vitamin D analogs are practically miraculous.
The MMR vaccine is actually 77% efdfective at preventing covid – that is not as good as the mRNA vaccines, but it is better than flu vaccines.
And if you say any of that too loud on social media you will get banned.
But that is the actual data from actual studies.
One of the problems with censorship – is that you are often wrong.
Facebook does not have the expertise to make these judgements – but in doing so it DOES take responsibility for them.
Facebook claims to rely on CDC or FDA or NIH or WHO – but each of those has been horribly wrong many many times
Mostly I do not fault them – they are MOSTLY doing the best that they can do.
But lefties have a religious faith in immature science.
There are very very few things that are actually effective against highly contageous viruses.
Rigorous quaranties work – If and only if we can quarantine BEFORE a person becomes contageous.
That seems not to be the case with C19.
Masks are only effective against bacterial infections and less infectuous viruses.
They do not even work against the flu very well.
Lockdowns do not work PERIOD. As hopefully we learned – there is really no such thing as essential work.
Everything is essential. You can not turn off half the economy without consequences worse than the virus.
Further a lockdown will not work unless it is total. Again there is no such thing as an essential worker.
With a virus as contageous as Covid if you allow 3% of people to keep working – you will not stop it.
Wishful thinking is not a cure.
Biden is failing miserably – despite having the vaccine. We have 60% of the country vaccinated and numers are going up again – even in the summer.
But I am not blaming Biden for anything but hypocracy and false promises.
Those he should be impeached for.
Democrats, the left, the media, and you – promised something you could not hope to deliver.
You promised that government was capable of thwarting this.
What does it take for you to realize it is NOT.
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
You have deluded yourself into beliving you have power and control that you do not.
Covid is beyond man’s ability to mitigate.
Man is still very small compared to the universe.
The amount of energy in a single huricane is greater than everything man has ever produced added together.
Maybe Covid will help you grasp that you do not have the power you wish you did.
You can not remake the world as you constantly claim.
Humans have done amazing things.
We are still small and nature does not care.
I find it amazing that some people can not learn anything from the real world.
Look arround. Look at different states and different countries.
Look at those that imposed draconian measures and those that did not.
Can you find any clear patterns ?
There are none. CA reacted draconianly and is doing worse than TX and FL and many other places that responded far less radically.
To the extent there is a pattern blue states have done worse than red – but mostly because northern and/or populous states did worse than southern and or less populous states.
It does not take substantial statistical prowess to note that there is no correlation at all indicating that any government policies had the slightest effect at all.
Accross the world – now just as months ago C19 death and infection rates can be predicted entirely by demographics and latitude.
I would note that this is to be expected of a highly contageous disease.
Mother nature laughs at your impotent efforts to control her.
There are things that could have been done that mostly werent.
We knew from the start that the elderly were extremely vulnerable.
We could have absolutely isolated them from the start.
A few states eventually did that – and it worked well.
But most behaved stupid and actually transfered C19 patients into nursing homes.
The only public policies with a measurable effect were the bad ones – like killing off people in nursing homes.
Of course the grant funds were misused or misappropriated. That is the point of “social justice” studies grants. Race hustlers organize a protest and call for administrators’ resignations. The administrators then bribe the race hustlers to stop. The bribe is disguised as a scholarly grant. But how much money does it take to point at everything and say “That’s Racists!” It is not like they are buying beakers for their lab. The grant is used to pay the race hustlers and to hire more race hustlers.
My neighbors work for the FBI and DHS. Do IGs (inspector generals) police these guys when they exploit their authority under “color of law” against their neighbors (ie: Cointelpro tactics). If the IGs won’t enforce laws, can we go to federal judges for relief?
I have ‘splained countless times. But I shall ‘splain yet again. There are no such things as schools, colleges, or universities anymore. They have all been replaced by Leftist Indoctrination Entities or “LIEs” for short. These institutions exist solely to program impressionable minds with Leftist/Marxist ideology under the guise of “teaching” them certain subjects. Consequently, any genuine thinking or any objections to Leftist/Marxist ideology will be met with derision and severe punishment. I realize that many here are slow learners, being products of such LIEs, but I will be here to patiently ‘splain the reality to anyone capable of reading and understanding it.
Freedom of Speech.
Freedom of Thought.
The Constitution does not mandate that any entity enjoy or approve of any particular speech, thought, religion, belief, press, publication, assembly, segregation or any other conceivable, natural and God-given
right, freedom, privilege or immunity per the 9th Amendment, or the inverse thereof, understanding, and not conflating the fact, that property damage and bodily injury are illegal.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“You can’t handle, the truth!”
– Colonel Jessup
_____________
You can’t handle the fact that individuals are provided maximal freedom by the Constitution while government is severely limited and restricted to its sole duty of merely providing security and infrastructure to facilitate the maximal freedom of individuals.
The school would be reluctant to have the case go to a jury in Kern County. It is heavily Hispanic and heavily Conservative. I don’t think they will like hearing ‘woke’ crap has infected their local community college system.
Them necks get reel red out tere in Bikersfield!
You from around these parts, Young?
Sound like it.
Why I’da thunk all Americans (unhyphenated) woulda had it up ta here by now, everwhere!
I’d be willin’ ta bet that ole George Washington and his gang woulda been reel rileyed up about now.
The brain damage caused by wokeness is showing.
It used to be said that patriotism(or prayer) was the last refuge of a scoundrel. Maybe it’s something altogether different now
It was abundantly clear before the election that this was the direction the Biden Administration would go. In fact, I would guess that the majority of Trump supporters were not so much Trump supporters as they were terrified of the alternative. No point in acting scandalized when the predictable happens.
Like all things, without a clear mission, all organizations drift to the left, and keep going into totalitarianism.
Community colleges were chartered to focus on education in trades and serve as a brushup on college level education (since public highschools no longer teach reading, writing and arithmetic).
All programs and profs wasting time on this crap should be downsized. I have no problem with colleges teaching what ever the students want to buy, But community colleges should be strictly limited to their defined charters of the 1960’s
Lets not make the same mistakes those on the left do.
Private educational institutes should be free to teach and operate as they please – just as we are free to choose where and whether to attend.
Conversely government should get completely out of funding private entities.
I have little doubt that if people had to actually pay the real cost of going to Woke U, they would seek out actual value in their education.
I also have no doubt that more and more institutions that delivered real educational value rather than 4 years of political indoctrination would arise.
Government distorts market places. The nonsense we see from the left today would not be possible but for government involvement in so much of the private economy.
And if I am wrong – that’s OK – if what people actually want is this Woke nonsense from K-phd – that’s fine.
That is how actual free markets work. They deliver what people actually value – what they are willing to trade their hard work for.
Rosales & Bond were invited to debate with Garrett & Miller, but refused. Requests were made for information to clear (or prove) misappropriation of funds. Is the tax-paying public (or the tax-paying professors) not allowed to request public information of a state school to make sure spending is appropriate? When requests for information to prove a question is true or false is disallowed, should one just give up? Say, oh well, I tried? I also find it interesting that they have an organization that advocates “freedom of thought”—–But, thought is not allowed to be verbalized? (Sometimes something I am thinking about appears as an advertisement on the pages of my computer.)
Garrett and Miller are going to win this case.
California Dreamers! It’s such a winter day! But we are in the summer. Probably what will be next is a wildfire that burns those schools.
Bakersfield is not in wildfire territory.
Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment), not limited to racism, sexism, ageism, breeds adversity. That said, social justice anywhere is injustice everywhere. Baby Lives Matter #HateLovesAbortion
Lefties thumping the Constitution once again.
Readers of the comments know that I have absolute contempt for Lefties who attack the Constitution.
One of the reasons that I single out EB is because in his search for attention, he gives support to those who undermine the country.
EB is a sad case, more worthy of pity than contempt, but people like him give the authoritarians cover.