We have been discussing the alarming shift in higher education in favor of censorship and speech regulations. These voices have been amplified on media platforms like MSNBC which has championed efforts to censor people and groups on social media and other forums. The most recent example is the interview of University of Michigan Law Professor and MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade by Rachel Maddow. In the interview, McQuade explains how the First Amendment is the “Achilles Heel” of the United States and why the public needs to embrace greater limitations on free speech.
Professor McQuade has published a book entitled Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America. Despite my strong disagreements with her views on free speech, I am sure that it will be an important contribution to this debate. My forthcoming book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in the Age of Rage, takes a diametrically opposed view on the meaning and history of free speech in America.
In the interview, McQuade recognizes the importance of free speech while emphasizing its dangers.
“Actually, Rachel, I think we’re more susceptible to it than other countries, and that’s because some of our greatest strengths can also be our Achilles Heel. So, for example, our deep commitment to free speech in our First Amendment. It is a cherished right. It’s an important right in democracy, and nobody wants to get rid of it, but it makes us vulnerable to claims [that] anything we want to do related to speech is censorship.”
Well, the question is what “we want to do related to speech.” If it involves blacklisting, throttling, deplatforming, and bans, it most certainly does raise questions of censorship. Free speech is now portrayed as an existential threat to the country as opposed to the very thing that defines us as a free people.
McQuade captures the theoretical divide over free speech, though she is clearly voicing a view that is increasingly popular among law professors. She advances views of free speech that I have discussed in prior academic writings and the new book as “functionalist.” These views allow for greater trade offs between free speech and overriding social or political priorities.
For some of us, free speech is a human right. In that sense, I am undeniably a free speech dinosaur who believes that the solution for bad speech is better speech. Rather than continue down the slippery slope of censorship under the guise of disinformation, we can allow citizens to reach their own conclusions in an open and robust debate.
The alternative is often to use transparently biased judgments over what is “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation” (MDM). The government has used this rationale to coordinate censorship in what it has called the “MDM space.”
For example, within DHS, Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, extended her agency’s mandate over critical infrastructure to include “our cognitive infrastructure.” The resulting censorship efforts included combating “malinformation” – described as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” I testified earlier on this effort.
McQuade’s book will certainly add to the scholarship in this area. However, her view is painfully familiar for many of us in academia.
Intel after 911 gave us a new dhs – by chertoff an Isreali – we had a law our govt could not do propaganda against us – we also had laws against subliminal messages. This turned over – in like 08 – had it not we wouldnt be having this debate. The levers of free speech were compromised in 08 – when the dhs board recommended to nix our long standing laws against propaganda against us. And it happened. We the people slept while the levers of our govt were cooped. We know our inaniebly rights. So is our Maga gunna be on the ballot or not? Baby dna?
“[F]or many of us in academia” scares me, Jonathon. I can only speak for myself, but I strongly believe that “in academia” people live sheltered, over-protected lives, protected by “tenure” from the often frightening realities of the off-campus world. Professor McQuade is saying (to me, at least): “Your ‘cherished right’ to free speech is valid only so far as you do not challenge what I have to say. If you benightedly oppose me, I must then step in to stifle your voice, for your own protection and for the protection of ‘our Democracy.'” As a self-identified academic, Jonathon, you may be eager to debate whether McQuade’s assertion that free speech is “an existential threat to the country” that requires suppression is true or not, but to a person who is not an academic, like me, it is as obvious (and painful) as a head-butt to the bridge of the nose that McQuade is all-in for censorship and using government authority to shout down dissenters. I do not need a debate to figure that out.
Ms. McQuade obtusely de-legitimizes academia. “Overriding social or political priorities” is the giveaway. Contained within this statement is the smug assumption that all questions have been asked AND ANSWERED. No further discussion is required and any additional discussion is harmful because it could break the seal of her closed system. The purpose of academia is to continually ask questions when all questions seem to have been asked.
More idiotic left wing attacks on free speech.
https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/29/if-memes-are-illegal-all-speech-will-become-illegal/
O T (Tulsi Gabbard)
It is reported that Tulsi Gabbard has been chosen as the keynote speaker at a fundraiser at Mar-A-Lago on 3/7/24, the same night as the President’s State of the Union address.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4481796-gabbard-to-headline-fundraiser-at-trumps-mar-a-lago-resort/
This is a bit of evidence that D T is leaning toward Gabbard to be his VP nominee, which would show good judgment in my opinion (if anyone were asking).
Trump has alot of good choices. Gabbard might be the best alternative to Halley.
A woman, a racial minority, a religious minority, a military officer, who has seen combat, and she has some appeal to independents and democrats.
Can she deliver Hawaii?
I’m just thinking that delivering Electoral Votes, is one of the consideration.
Gifford has a lot of pluses. I dont know what her farthest left positions are. I also don’t know if she has the stomach for the fight.
I would also like someone that has a much better understanding of the DC swamp system. Trumps first term was sabotaged from within. Led by Chris Christy.
Edwardmahl,
The question we have to ask is not only who Trump’s VP pick is, but of the possibility of that person’s run as the Presidential candidate after his term is over.
Gabbard has a lot going for her.
As I have stated on the good professor’s blog in the past, when she was running in 2020, I donated to her campaign twice. Would of a third time if she had not dropped out. Note, her campaign lasted a lot longer than Harrris’s campaign.
O T (J6 political prisoners)
Per Glenn Greenbaum on Substack, a 3 judge panel of the DC Circuit, composed of Democratic appointees, held on Friday that the statute used by the DOJ to charge J6 protesters with felonies does not apply to non-violent protestors.
The statute reads in relevant part:
18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2).
Whoever corruptly—
(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or
(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
Apparently, the panel held that the counting of electoral votes does not constitute an “official proceeding” within the meaning of the statute.
It appears that the same issue has been submitted to the Supreme Court for decision. In light of this ruling, it is likely that the S. Ct. will agree.
This means that the vast majority of the protestors sentenced to long prison terms by the DOJ and DC Circuit will be going home sooner than expected.
Correction: Greenwald, not Greenbaum
They should have a wrongful imprisonment claim.
The 18 US 1512 claim was rejected by a DC judge LONG ago. It does not apply to J6 and it can not overcome the first amendment.
DOJ appealed to a 3r judge pannel that wrote 3 separate oppinions but DOJ was able to claim it had a 2:1 decision – which is why this is before SCOTUS. SCOTUS took the case – that means there is near certainly 4 votes already to overturn.
This was always just more left wing nut lawfare and abuse of the law.
The judges and prosecutors who pushed this – should be in jail.
It is absolutely immoral to warp the law to imprison people you disagree with politically for something you know or should know is not a crime.
Why havent Fani’s text messages been subpoenaed?
At this point, I would like someone on the left to provide me with evidence they are not a censoring, tyrannical regime. The links from the MSM or The Intercept or The Guardian aren’t going to cut it. Show me real world examples that prove the modern left are not irretrievably insane. Not one poster here of that inclination has managed that.
You had better believe we will fight for this, and the trolls should see pretty clearly they are barking up the wrong tree here if they have two brain cells to rub together. More importantly, understand that we are the constituency too, and we vote for *everything*. Your narrative is a waste of breath, dollars, ink, and pixels.
Free speech of individuals is a laudable value. But Free speech for fictitious persons ie corporations is bunk.
Citizens United needs to be gutted and so does a lot of the other jurisprudence that allows for mass media to lord it over regular people. A small example of this, not the predominant issue but a big money one, and an interesting example is the gutting of obscenity law. The porn industry is just decadent bourgeous waste of time energy and creates slothfulness and vapidity in the youth. It’s a psyop on the working class. It primarily benefits big purveyors of porn, the biggest being GOOGLE of course. And apple. The First Amendment is mostly a tool for the billionaires to wield power over government and suppress the workers. We have tools too though. We can smash them with antitrust and RICO. Strip, confiscate assets, smash their monopolistic structures, fight the demonic lordships like Fink, Soros, Zuck, and their ilk.
It goes without saying the fake “LEFT” are just tools of the billionaires at this juncture. I reject calling them communists all the time. But this is a point of ideological distinction not worth explaining to people. Just see the enemy: as a group, whatever the few exceptions, billionaires. And their mercenaries, their lackeys, their armies of bureaucrats, their university brainwashers, the tv propagandists, all these are enemies, but they serve at the pleasure of the international capitalist billionaire class.
We need to organize pitchfork brigades and reconquer the USA from the plutocracy. It will be tough but if our people and nation are to survive, it’s either them or us.
Saloth Sar
Corporations are not fictitious persons. Corporations are groups of people.
People do not lose their rights when they act in groups.
Does Greenpeace have free speech rights ? The ACLU ? The DNC ?
These are all corporations.
They re all people acting together for a common purpose.
And they all have free speech rights.
M<cDonalds is no different than Greenpeace. It is still people acting together .
The left made a huge deal of the corporate personhood issue in CU – but that was pure legal nonsense.
The courts have recognized corportate personhood as a convienient fiction to simplify court cases that could otherwise potentially have millions of shareholders.
There was never the slightest chance SCOTUS was going to buy into the corporations are not persons argument.
It would require throwing out 200+ years of law – even more than that counting common law.
It is stupid.
Ranting about corporations not being persons is a clear sign of inability to think critically.
If corportations are not groups of people acting for a common purpose – what are they Rocks ?
How many people in your feeble brain does it take acting together for them to lose their rights ?
Do married couples lose their rights – that is two people acting together ?
Do business partneships surrender their rights ? that is 2 or more people acting together ?
Can govenrment step in and say – anything that is more than one person acting jointly is fake and we are just going to confiscate it
After all there are no rights here.
Where that falls apart is that the principle has been largely asymmetric in application. Officers and stakeholders in corporations have historically been allowed the benefits of individual liberties without incurring the accountability for actions that an individual would be subject to. That is not an advantage imo; ithas been, and is, a serious problem. I personally wish that the initial decision to recognize corporations as persons under the law had never been taken. I think that the benefits of legal simplification have been significantly outweighed by the costs and societal distortions introduced. However, I stop short of advocating any short-term abandonment of the principle, solely because it is so intertwined in the fabric of commerce that I cannot imagine a way to quickly reverse it that would not result in decades of pure havoc before any ultimate benefits are realized. Not to mention that the ensuing chaos would doubtless trigger an political and electoral revolt that would result in reinstatement of that principle, with even greater resulting chaos. If the Federal autocracy in the nation ever is successfully overturned, it might be time to revisit this.
bourgeous
If corporations are not people, how is it that everyone knows Bill Gates, Henry Ford, Sam Altman, Steve Jobs, William Durant, William Boeing, Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon, Elon Musk, and the millions of “people” who work at their “peopled” corporations?
You’re one of those psychotic communist ideologues who proposes that “climate change” is World War III because yesterday’s sunny and clear conditions became rain today.
Corporations are people who function in groups but are nonetheless people.
The only thing you mentioned that is irrefutably unconstitutional are “antitrust” laws.
I notice that you deliberately and willfully provide no citation of the Constitution for any power to engender and impose “antitrust” laws.
Article 1, Section 8, gives Congress no power to regulate anything but money, commerce, and land and naval Forces.
Succeeding to the point of monopoly is not unconstitutional.
The constitutional antidote to a monopoly is the right to compete and the freedom of competition.
Deliberate collusion to set prices and control markets is a crime, not antitrust.
Being a communist who is attempting to impose the “dictatorship of the proletariat” on free Americans, you disparage freedom, free enterprise, and free markets.
You are a direct and mortal enemy of the American thesis of freedom and self-reliance, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, actual Americans, and America.
The tricky point of fighting misinformation is who gets to decide what is and isn’t misinformation. Or what is “fact” as opposed to “opinion”.
It is not tricky at all – you many not censor speech. PERIOD. There no problem.
As an individual you are free to decide on your own what is true or false, fact or oppinion.
What you are not free to do is decide for others.
Why Does the Left Try To Stifle Free Speech?
For the same reason that cults try to isolate its members, and keep them in an echo chamber. Not all Democrats are cult members. Some are cynical power-seekers. Some vote Democrat because their parents and grandparents were democrats. Others are Democrats because to not be a Democrat, is less secure jobwise, as I believe that often occurs in the fields of education, journalism, acting, the arts, and almost any field where you have to rely on someone else, or a committee, to hire you, or promote you. Be a Republican professor, and you will never be dean, or head of the department. Or, be a Republican actress, and lose your job or just not be hired for a new role. The Democrat Party, itself, did not start out as a cult. That aspect developed over time.
But that being said, many Democrats are out-and-out cult members. And for those Democrats, they do truly believe what the party tells them to believe, no matter how preposterous. Those Democrats truly believe Rachel Maddow. They believe RussiaGate. They believe in castrating children and performing double-mastectomies on young girls. They believe that Trump is Satan, or Hitler. These excerpts may help:
I joined this Minneapolis-based group, called The Organization (The O) believing I was to contribute to their stated goal of social justice, a value instilled in me by my family. However, what I actually did revolved around, first, being a factory machinist tending numerical control lathes and, then, grunt work in the group’s wholegrain bakery (we did at least make good bread) and, finally, writing business computer programs. The fact that these tasks seemed oddly disconnected from any strategy for social change did not escape my notice.
[Dude escapes cult]
By then, I had learned about the brainwashing of prisoners of war and others in Mao’s China and North Korea in the 1950s; I had read the psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton’s Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (1961) and the psychologist Margaret Singer’s Cults in Our Midst (1996). Singer described six conditions of cultic control among which were control of the environment; a system of rewards and punishments; creating a sense of powerlessness, fear and dependency; and reforming the follower’s behaviour and attitudes, all within a closed system of logic. Lifton emphasised that thought reform took place when human communication was controlled.
The fiction starts slowly, of course, with mere propaganda intended for the public and the wider world. Scientology, for instance, hawks its ‘pathway to greater freedom’ and broadcasts its agenda for a drug-free world. The fabulous theology of Scientology – where alien beings hurled out of a volcano inhabit our bodies – was an inner ideology reserved for senior, well-indoctrinated members; it was released to the wider public only through a leak.
After propaganda comes indoctrination, the state where the totalist system consolidates control, via what Arendt calls ‘the power to drop iron curtains to prevent anyone’s disturbing, by the slightest reality, the gruesome quiet of an entirely imaginary world’.
After the iron curtain of the total ideology has dropped, no questions or doubts are allowed. Should you voice your concerns, a network of monitors will turn you in for reeducation. Should that reeducation fail, as happened with me, then you are cut from the group, never to speak with your former compatriots again.
‘After a while, things that seemed preposterous seem normal’
https://aeon.co/essays/how-cult-leaders-brainwash-followers-for-total-control
=============
I might also recommend:
https://philarchive.org/archive/NGUECA
Wanton evisceration of all our country represents. When and how will it be contained?
I used to have a great deal of respect for Prof. Turley, but in the last couple of years he has not been able to restrain his right wing extremist tendencies and that is a shame. He has gone from a respected and outspoken advocate of free speech to being nothing but an extremist partisan hack on almost every issue he makes comment on. The idea that it isn’t transparent that the right wing majority on the SCOTUS is taking up Trump’s utterly outrageous claim that there should be absolute immunity for Presidents of the United States is a gray area in which there are issues is absurd. To make that claim is to lose all credibility. The most fundamental point in the Constitution is that no citizen is above the law and it isn’t even a little bit difficult to discern when the President is engaging in a criminal act vs when he is acting lawfully as President. Shame on you Professor. I think it’s time you retire because you’re making a fool of yourself.
If speaking for free speech is extreme right wing count me as a member of the extreme right.
Has Obama been arrested for ordering the assasination of Anwar al-Awlaki ?
If not – you have already lost the argument entirely.
Whether you like it or not presidential immunity is extremely real.
Even the DC appeals court found that – multiple different ways.
No court has concluded presidential immunity does not exist.
The DC appeals court concluded that it did, that it applies to Trump, but that using an unspecified balancing of interests test, the acctions being charged in DC are not subject to immunity.
You can like that decision, but you can not get arround the FACT that presidential immunity is real.
Anonymous is trying to persuade J T to fire himself. This is new territory in “cancel culture.” Imagine President Trump’s first news conference after January 20, 2025. “Mr. President. I’m Anonymous, a blog commentator. Don’t you think you should resign since you are making a fool of yourself?”
Because Prof. Turley is an extremist partisan hack on almost every issue that you don’t agree with, you look down on him and wish to silence him. How fascist of you!
OT. The final arguments in the Fani Willis matter were worth following. All of the lawyers on the Trump side were very good and a couple were excellent. By contrast, the lawyer for the DA’s office was difficult to listen to. He is burdened with a nasal tone and, maybe, lateral lisp that is a problem, but then Churchill’s speech anomaly did not deter him. His arguments were not strong and his delivery had a tap tap quality, point, pause, another point etc. At one point he stopped in mid presentation to click away at his laptop. One could joke that he was Googling for his next point, it went on that long. I doubt Fani was happy with him.
One of the lawyers, McDougal?, raised the excellent point that the DA’s office had no business representing Willis or Wade on matters that required that they have their own counsel. The entire office is now in another conflict of interest. What a mess. I have a notion how the judge should rule but havr no idea how he will. One hopes he remembers that other official inquiries are under way and that he should decide wisely.
He will disqualify them. You can’t have proven liars running a prosecution.
Edwardmahl- “You can’t have proven liars running a prosecution.”
+++
I wish you could convince the DOJ of that. Lately it seems like they are using Roland Freisler’s manual to train staff.
I do not know how the judge will rule – but the legal standard is incredibly low – the appearance of impropriety.
That was met when Wade and Willis admitted there was a relationship.
Frankly that is likely to have been met by Wade paying for vacations with Willis even if there was no relationship.
Willis’s “I paid him back in cash” argument frankly does not fly – the burden of proof for cash payments rests with the payor.
Regardless, you can beleive Willis – that does not change that the is a high profile prosecutor in public office, conducting herself in a way that even if it is not corrupt appears corrupt – and that is all the law requires.
I have often questioned why Willis did not have different counsel than that of Fulton County. There interests seem to be separate and required Willis to have her own attorney.
The attorney for the defense that had such a great closing argument yesterday is Harry MacDougald, the attorney for Jeffrey Clark. MacDougald is the person who first spotted the font discrepancies in the George Bush National Guard documents back in 2004. He posted that information and his observations on the conservative site Free Republic, others picked up on it, and Rathergate started rolling downhill (along with Dan Rather’s career).
Cfromthewoods,
Thank you for that. Interesting.
OT
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has no choice but to kick Fulton County DA Fani Willis and her special prosecutor Nathan Wade off the criminal racketeering case they’ve waged against the former president.
Jonathan: MDM is a serious problem. We see that frequently in your columns and when you appear on Fox. Case in point:
Fox News had a headline about Hunter Biden’s testimony before Comer’s Committee: “Hunter Biden faces backlash for claiming his father was not involved in business deals: Perjuring himself”. And that claim was made before Hunter’s testimony was released. I have read that testimony. There is no indication Hunter lied to the Committee. He testified categorically that “The only involvement of my father in anything in my life has been as my father, not as a benefit of my business, not anything”. The MAGA members of the Committee could only scramble because they could offer no evidence to contradict Hunter’s testimony. Otherwise, Comer would now be shouting from the housetops “Hunter lied to this Committee! That’s the first instance of MDM by Fox.
Then, on the same day you were on Fox making the claim that “the fact that Joe Biden did not get direct payments is not a defense…money going to family members is viewed by the courts as a benefit to the principal”. So since Smirnov’s claim is completely discredited you think Joe Biden could still be charged with bribery because his son and brother made money from their overseas business ventures–and that Joe Biden “benefited”. In other words, the “sins” of the son and brother should be visited on the father/brother. Let’s unravel your MDM claims.
First, 18USC201 defines the crime of “bribery” as offering to give something of value to a public official to influence that person in their official capacity. Examples are the Menendez case, when Pres. Trump tried to extort Ukrainian Pres. Zelensky or when Jared Kushner was bribed with $2 billion for protecting Crown Prince Salman during all the time Jared worked in the WH. Applying the “bribery” statute to the Biden family doesn’t pass the smell test. No witness that has testified so far before Comer’s Committee has offered any proof that Joe Biden “benefited” from Hunter’s overseas business dealings. In fact, all of Hunter’s business partners testified to the contrary as did Hunter in his testimony.
So there is no evidence Joe Biden “benefited”–directly or indirectly from what his family was engaged in overseas. That dog won’t hunt anymore! Where does that leave you? Pushing MDM in your columns and on Fox!
Hunter said on his laptop that he gave “all his money” to his father. Further, there is evidence of joint bank accounts between Joe and other family members. Finally, you forget the $40000 check written to Joe from James, written the same day James got a larger check (x 10) from a foreign source.
Mahl, show us an established source to support your claims.
Money to his father. https://www.skynews.com.au/world-news/united-states/emails-obtained-by-the-new-york-post-show-joe-bidens-expenses-paid-for-by-son-hunter/news-story/047b5cab5becea44d0e1c2da2fb4a579 (“Texts from Hunter were also found on the laptop, including a chain to his daughter Naomi where he lamented having to “pay for everything”. “I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years,” he said. “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop (Joe), I won’t make you give me half your salary.”)
Joint bank accounts. Headline: “Joe Biden could become embroiled in the FBI’s probe into Hunter’s finances, experts say: Emails reveal they SHARED bank accounts, paid each other’s bills and the president may have even have funded his son’s 2018 drug and prostitution binge” Daily Mail, October 12, 2021
The $40,000 check. Headline: “James Biden Wrote Brother Joe $40,000 Check Immediately after Receiving Chinese Cash, Bank Records Show” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/james-biden-wrote-brother-joe-40000-check-immediately-after-receiving-chinese-cash-bank-records-show/ar-AA1jdAs
edwardmahl: Yeah, what is the source for your claim that Hunter was sending all his money to dad? It is Sky News, AU, a media network founded by Rupert Murdock, that specializes in sensationalist claims not backed up with serious factual analysis. It’s very much like the NY Post, also owned by Murdock. It’s all MDM you get from them. And what about the $40,000 from brother James to Joe? That was repayment for a loan–not a “gift” or “bride” so Joe would take some official action to benefit his brother and son. And it’s immaterial where James got the money to repay the loan if there was no quid pro quo.
Now don’t take my word for it. Have your read the entire transcript of Hunter’s deposition before Comer’s Committee? Hunter discusses his frequent e-mail exchanges with his daughter Naomi. He says those exchanges were made when he was high on cocaine and alcohol and now regrets saying those things about his dad–which were untrue.
If you continue to believe everything you read in Sky News, hear on Fox News or read in one of Prof. Turley’s columns you have given up on the critical side of your brain. Taking quotes out of context then distorting them to serve a political agenda is what Murdock’s media empire is all about. Murdock had to pay Dominion over $750 million for lying about the 2020 election. Think about that. If Murdock was lying then what makes you think he is telling the truth now? That’s your problem. You have fallen so far down the rabbit hole of MDM you don’t know how to dig your way out!
So, did Hunter perjure himself? It is possible he did or possible he didn’t. In other words, it’s a matter of opinion, not something that some authority can assess and determine to be false.
I have no idea what you think the standard for Perjury is – but a jury can look at Hunter’s testimony and that of others and decide they beleive the others and do not beleive Hunter and convict him of perjury.
That is unlikely to happen in DC, but it is commonplace elsewhere.
DM – still off your rocker.
Smirnov has been indicted that is not the same as discredited.
Did Hunter roll on Joe ? Nope, no one expected that.
Hunter confirmed many things Such as that Joe was at meany meetings with Oligarchs and Burisma executives.
There was some weirdness – because apparently in Biden world – having spaghetti and a drink is not dinner.
There are numerous points of agreement between Hunters testimony and others, and there are also points of disagreemnt – some small
Hunter Claims Archer Devon payed for Hunter’s porche. Archer claims Russian Oligarchs did.
Hunters testimoney would have been enought o get Democrats to impeach Trump twice over – Hunter confirmed that the Biden family was in bed with Russian Oligarchs and Chinese spies.
We have had hundreds of thousands of man hours of investigation attempting to put Trump int he room with actual russians or demonstrate Russian money going to the Trump family – we have that in spades with the Biden’s.
Hunter did not roll on his father. But he did not make eitgher himself or his father look good.
“But it would seem that if despotism were to be established amongst the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them. I do not question, that in an age of instruction and equality like our own, sovereigns might more easily succeed in collecting all political power into their own hands, and might interfere more habitually and decidedly within the circle of private interests, than any sovereign of antiquity could ever do….The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives….Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing….After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a net-work of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described, might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom; and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.”
Alexis D’Tocqueville
Florida’s Measel Outbreak
Fox News Fuzzy On ‘Misinformation’
Amid ongoing measles outbreaks at Florida schools, the state’s Department of Health released an updated statement on Wednesday, which was provided to Fox News Digital.
There have been a total of nine confirmed measles cases as of Tuesday in Broward County, with seven of them reported at Manatee Bay Elementary in Weston, according to local reports.
Last week, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo issued a letter to parents urging them to make their own decisions about whether to send their children to school.
https://www.foxnews.com/health/measles-outbreaks-florida-department-health-speaks-against-false-information
………………………………………….
KEY PASSAGE ABOVE:
“Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo issued a letter to parents urging them to make their own decisions”.
***
This letter by Florida’s Surgeon General is based on misinformation. And though Fox News declines to point that out directly, the next paragraph contradicts:
“Typical guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is for unvaccinated children who have not had the measles to stay home for up to 21 days in the event of a potential exposure at school”.
***
See that? Unvaccinated children should wait 21 days! That’s different from ‘parent discretion’. ..Considerably different..!!
This contradiction became the subject of numerous reports in mainstream media portraying Florida’s Surgeon General as a quack bowing to vaccine misinformation.
Interestingly this article continues to see-saw back and forth between the letter Florida’s Surgeon General put out and proper Federal guidance. Savvy readers can clearly see the contradictions. But Fox News cannot bring itself to name Florida’s Surgeon General as the source of misinformation.
Furthermore, the Surgeon General’s letter actually minimizes the threat of a massive measles outbreak by noting ‘high immunity levels’ in affected communities. Those ‘high immunity levels’ are vaccinated children! But again, Fox News fails to call that out.
Yet the headline of this story reads: “Amid Measles Outbreaks, Florida Department of Health Speaks Out Against ‘False Information'”. Which seems to imply that Florida’s Surgeon General is trying to ‘correct’ misinformation. Fox, however, just won’t tell us who’s misinforming who.
My conservative parents, who are doctors in Florida, think Ladapo is a quack for this.
Except they blame this situation on the fact that the state made a “DEI Hire” rather than placing the blame on, you know, the person who hired him.
They are infuriating.
You have a very weird idea of what contradict and misinformation mean.
The FL SG did not give precisely the same guidance as CDC – so what ? It is not like CDC has such a great track record.
Nor is there a contradiction merely because two sources provide slightly different guidance.
The fact that the FL SG did not parrot the CDC does not mean that he is providing misinformation.
If you are told by one source to take Tylenol for a headache and another to take aspirin – did they contradict ?
Did they misinform you ?
Is either answer objectively right or objectively wrong ?
telling someone to eat dirt for their headache might be misinforming them.
You left wing nuts are under the false impression that perfect answers are knowable,
and that you can impose them by force.
If you had any intelligence you would cease using words like misinformation – because you clearly do not know what you are talking about.
You would also stop trying to score political points over everything.
“Interestingly this article continues to see-saw back and forth between the letter Florida’s Surgeon General put out and proper Federal guidance. Savvy readers can clearly see the contradictions. But Fox News cannot bring itself to name Florida’s Surgeon General as the source of misinformation.”
From what you wrote, it’s not clear whether you’re blaming the Florida Surgeon General or Fox for the alleged contradictions. If you’re saying that Fox News is garbage, then I agree. If you’re attacking the Florida Surgeon General, I’d suggest that you shouldl find a better source of information that Fox “News.”
Since the information provided suggests that the measels outbreak might be localized, it’s possible that the Florida Surgeon General has different advice for those in the outbreak area and people located elsewhere, and Fox “News” is just too stupid or lazy to get the story correct.
For the record, I have over 210,000 upvotes on my comments at Fox “News,” ALL of which were obtained before GARBAGE Fox shadow-banned me as a Trump supporter. I believe NOTHING that Fox “News” says without obtaining at least one other source to corroborate the information.
Anonymous, I clearly noted that Fox is fuzzy about who is misinforming who. And Fox is part of the problem.
After Covid you really want to try to claim that anything anyone says is authoratative ?
Your idea of misinformation is anything that deviates from the pronouncements of your political leaders.
It has nothing to do with facts or truth.
In the real world each of us must decide for ourselves what is true and what is not, and we must individually live with the benefits or harms of those choices. You can pretend that you can delegate that to others – but in truth – you can not.
Blindly listening to someone else is a choice to – and you, not they will still reap the rewards of suffer the consequences.
Let me see if I get this straight. In order to make our greatest strength stronger we must eliminate our greatest strength. Seems like a can’t miss plan to me.
The question is, who gets to say what speech should be prohibited? If you are a private entity like The New York Times you should have the say about what you will or will not print. The line is crossed once the government tells you what you can say or print. The only remedy that the government has for those who say things that the government doesn’t want said is eventual incarceration based upon a certain number of offenses. Of course, some pigs will be more free to speak than others. Which pig will you be? The brave one or the one who lives in constant fear of retribution? A final point. All of the esteemed people who are calling for the limitation of speech will be voting for Joe Biden in November.
I think one divide on free speech is between the technocrats, particularly those that either do, can, or want to influence policy and the ordinary citizen. This divide is particularly exacerbated by complexities of modern life. These complexities include the problems of addressing pandemics such as COVID-19, anthropogenic environmental effects, AI, and the others. The technocrats may consider their opinions based on perhaps specialized knowledge superior to that of the opinions formed by ordinary citizens. If that is the case, then right approach, in my mind, is for the technocrats to engage in a campaign of persuasion rather than a campaign of suppression.
I am not sure what a Technocrat is.
One of the domains I like in is computer software.
We have our own tiffs now and then as idiotic woke nonsense tries to shape software development.
But as a rule software development is close to a meritocracy.
There are some on the left inside the world of software – but there are a disproportionately large number of libertarians.
The smartest people I know are smart enough to know they can not run the world or other peoples lives.