Free Speech
September 20, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The parody ad for Kamala Harris below is of the it only hurts when I laugh variety. It is a work of satirical art. Kamala Harris Campaign Ad PARODY pic.twitter.com/5lBxvyTZ3o — Mr Reagan 🇺🇸 (@MrReaganUSA) July 26, 2024 In a challenge to the regime of the gruesome Gavin Newsom, Elon Musk proclaims: “The governor of California just made this parody video illegal in violation of the Constitution of the United
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September 17, 2024 — Scott Johnson
I posted this column by Professor Sean McMeekin over the weekend. Now that it has rotated off our home page, I am giving it one more spin in case you missed it. Sean McMeekin is Francis Flournoy Professor of European History at Bard College and the author of essential books including The Red Millionaire: Münzenberg, Moscow’s Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West, 1917-1940 (2004), The Russian Revolution: A New History
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September 12, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Crank pseudo historians must be a dime a dozen. As one such, there’s nothing special about Darryl Cooper. The focus is on Cooper in the episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored posted below. It features Andrew Roberts, Dave Smith, and Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon. It was Dillon’s tweets on X that originally drew my attention to Carlson’s promotion of Cooper and his teaching on World War II. I greatly respect
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September 3, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Nat Hentoff wrote the book Free Speech For Me — But Not For Thee (1992). The situation has deteriorated considerably since then. Here we have the incumbent Vice President of the United States and Democratic presidential nominee advocating for government regulation and censorship of speech on social media (video below in what must be a vintage 2019 clip). Glenn Reynolds collects comments here. This is of course the regime that
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August 27, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Yesterday Mark Zuckerberg wrote a letter to Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. The letter relates to the committee’s investigation of the Biden administration’s war on free speech. This is the most significant language: In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with
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August 24, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The contradictions that undermine civil society seem to have reached a perilous stage in Great Britain. Censorship follows in its wake. Britain’s Spiked observes the phenomenon in this note: “The UK has become a posterboy for the perils of censorship. In the wake of the recent race riots, the British state has set about arresting and jailing not just the rioters, but also those who posted hateful memes or spread
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June 26, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Today the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals decided Cajune v. Independent School District 194. That school district is immediately adjacent to the one where my kids went to school, and plaintiffs were represented by the Upper Midwest Law Center, on whose board I serve and which has often (albeit wrongly) been described as an “arm” of the policy organization that I run. Briefly, plaintiffs claimed that the school district engaged
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June 26, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Today the Supreme Court released its decision in Murthy v. Missouri, the case that challenged the federal government’s massive censorship operation, in which it either colluded with or coerced, depending on your point of view, social media platforms. The decision was anticlimactic. The six-justice majority declined to reach the merits of the case, on the ground that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue. The majority decision was by Justice Barrett,
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June 24, 2024 — John Hinderaker
These are four recent instances of appalling and hateful behavior. Here, an anti-Semitic mob gathers outside a Los Angeles synagogue, harassing Jews who are going to worship. Violence broke out and is captured in other videos: 🚨BREAKING: Protestors call for bloody revolution against Jews (intifada) outside of synagogue in LA. pic.twitter.com/E9nsd13GEF — Today is America (@TodayisAmerica) June 23, 2024 This one is described as an anti-Semitic protest outside a Jewish
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April 1, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Not me: rather, J.K. Rowling, the world’s most popular novelist. I think Rowling started out as a liberal, but she isn’t crazy and she is a feminist. So she is appalled by the “trans” nonsense, and isn’t afraid to say so. Under newly-enacted law in Scotland, where she lives, that could subject her to arrest. I wrote about the insanity now prevailing in Scotland here. JK Rowling has challenged the
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March 26, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Some time ago, a house in my neighborhood started flying a gay/trans flag. In response, I suspect, two nearby houses started flying American flags. But recently, there was a change: the gay/trans flag was replaced by the Scottish flag: If you remember Scotland as a country of highland clans, conservative Presbyterians and fearsome warriors, that may seem strange to you. But actually, it makes perfect sense: Scotland is being transformed
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March 9, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The current issue of the Claremont Review of Books carries the informative review of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk by Helen Andrews. The Andrews review is relatively brief and extremely interesting. I want to single out the penultimate paragraph: Conservatives ought to support Musk because he will need all the help he can get. The deep state has him in its crosshairs and will not stop until he is
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February 6, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Mark Steyn has been trying the defamation case that Michael Mann brought against him in the D.C. Superior Court for the last three weeks–literally trying it, since Mark is pro se. Yet somehow he found time not only for an update on the trial proceedings, but for commentary on my visit to Washington last week and the firebombing of my organization’s offices a few days earlier. He included in his
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January 24, 2024 — John Hinderaker
I wrote here about the fact that the University of North Carolina’s Faculty Council couldn’t bring itself to condemn a speaker at a UNC event who hailed Gaza’s October 7 massacre of Jews as “a beautiful day.” But things at UNC are not all bleak. On Monday, a UNC speaker series hosted Frank Bruni and Bari Weiss, both formerly with the New York Times, for “a discussion of objectivity in
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December 21, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Reflecting the Democrat mania to control free speech, Minnesota Democrats enacted a law conflicting with the proposition that corporations have a constitutional right to speak independently about politics. I learned about the law from the December 18 Wall Street Journal column “Minnesota’s Xenophobic Restrictions on Speech” by Brad Smith and Eric Wang. The “xenophobia” flagged in the Journal headline is entirely pretextual. The subhead homes in on the problem: “[The]
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December 18, 2023 — Steven Hayward
In the ongoing controversy about what to do about campus anti-Semitism, Princeton’s Robert P. George advocates for more robust free speech on campus, while Yoram Hazony, author of (among other books) Conservatism Rediscovered and The Virtue of Nationalism, disagrees sharply with his former Princeton mentor in a Twitter exchange that deserves a wider audience. Here’s Robby’s argument: Over the past two months, the public has learned about some crazy things
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December 15, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Writing about Edward Gibbon’s view of “Mahomet” and “Mahometans” reminded me of Montaigne. I thought it might be worthwhile to repeat my comments on Montaigne and his use of irony in his discussion of Islam. Please forgive the repetition or, if you remember what I had to say: Reader, pass by! The cultural left exerts a tyrannical force policing our speech. To take just one current exposition of the phenomenon,
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