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Growing Acceptance of Discredited Ideas

There has been an inappropriately relaxed attitude towards the introduction into the common conversation within the United States of discredited and factually incorrect political positions, and, in some instances, concepts once considered reprehensible.


The acceptance of extreme partisanship as a justification for relying on falsehoods and historically vile positions has been facilitated by a deeply partisan media and academic establishment.  The former willingness of responsible civic, media, and cultural leaders to expose and reject ideas that have repeatedly failed is no longer is prevalent.

Consider several major examples.

It has now become common for academics and left-wing electeds to openly engage in what is clearly religious bigotry.  The BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement against Israel, based on patently false premises, combined with the accession to power of noted anti-Semitic figures such as former Democratic National Committee Chair Keith Ellison, (who now serves as Minnesota’s Attorney General) would have been universally condemned in the past. It has now become part of the political landscape, along with the The rest of the 1970s was a generally disappointing time for the Giants, as they finished no higher than buying levitra from canada third place in any season. And if you cialis in the uk like a spot of good food with your literary experience then you might be interested to know that the nearby Tatton Park hosts the North West Food Lovers Festival between October 19 – 21 which dovetails with some of the Chester Literary Festival. One should inquire all his queries relating to the pharmacy and being seen with drugs to treat erectile dysfunction back to Muslim physicians and pharmacists these problems were treated with tested drugs, then John R. soft viagra tabs Ajanta pharmacy developed this medication as a generic drug because of containing same ingredients. fast delivery cialis anti-Catholic statements of leading senators such as Kamala Harris and Diane Feinstein who have strongly implied that adherents to that faith aren’t fit to serve as judges.

Even as socialism claims Venezuela as its latest victim, subscribers to that fatally flawed school of economics have become a rising force within America. The century-long record of financial devastation and societal oppression that inevitably follows its introduction is curiously ignored. Obvious comparisons between North and South Korea, the former East and West Germany, as well as the whole of Eastern Europe and Western Europe, and the failure of the Soviet Empire in its competition with the West apparently have been consigned to be removed from memory.

Consider the lack of realism in the left’s approach to foreign affairs.  For the eight years of the Obama Administration, the U.S. military was slashed, and support for U.S. allies was reduced. Rather than being partners in peace, Russia and China’s response was to use that period to dramatically upgrade their armed forces and engage in hostile actions abroad. Moscow openly violated the long-standing Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty. Despite that result, there has been no move to admit fault and support a more realistic defense strategy, on the part of those who endangered America’s national security. One common myth, in an interesting bid to engage in intellectual obfuscation, has been to cast President Trump as being soft on the Russian threat, despite his advocacy of a much larger Pentagon budget and a bid to weaken Moscow’s ability to earn funds to devote to its military by competing with it more forcefully in the energy market. 

The stunning turnaround in attitudes towards free speech is as worrisome as it is unexpected.  Many media, cultural, and academic sources have been all too eager to justify censorship of conservative ideas and actual physical attacks on those expressing them. Far too many have considered it justifiable to engage in violent actions to keep 
non-Progressive speakers off stage, and to actually assault individuals wearing hats or other paraphernalia expressing support for conservative figures.  Violent tactics by anti-free speech advocates on campuses, and by Antifa on city streets, has become a common practice.

Under the guise of cultural sensitivity, outrageous and yes, evil concepts such as female genital mutilation and forced marriages of child brides have gained common currency. Oddly enough, many of the same sources that accept these acts of oppression against women engage in a shocking acceptance of infanticide, camouflaged as late term abortion, as a so-called nod to women’s rights.

Extreme movements, (and the left of Bernie Sanders, Keith Ellison,  and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes is indeed extremist,) eventually find the concept of individual rights to be burdensome, despite the reality that these rights are the essence of the American Republic.  In its opposition to key portions of the Bill of Rights, its rejection of Constitutional norms, its eagerness to condemn individuals without due process, U.S. Progressives are following a dangerous but time-worn path, one which is slowly and dangerously gaining greater mainstream acceptance.

Illustration: Pixabay

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The New Threat to Free Speech, Part 2

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government takes a two-part look at how the attacks on free speech have changed.

It is ironic that some of the key threats to free speech are now emanating not from an overbearing government, but from some elements of the press itself, particularly social media/internet giants. As the New York Analysis of Policy and Government has previously reported, Kalev Leetaru wrote in Forbes that “Far from democratizing how we access the world’s information, the web has in fact narrowed those information sources…the internet is centralizing information access from a myriad websites and local newspapers and radio/television shows to single behemoth social platforms that wield universal global control over what we consume. Indeed, social media platforms appear to increasingly view themselves no longer as neural publishing platforms but rather as active mediators and curators of what we see.”

The internet research organization Can I Rank found that “Although internet search engines like Google play an increasingly prominent role shaping voter opinions and perception of issues and candidates, their ranking algorithms aren’t designed to provide a fairly balanced or completely honest representation of controversial issues…Among our key findings were that top search results were almost 40% more likely to contain pages with a “Left” or “Far Left” slant than they were pages from the right. Moreover, 16% of political keywords contained no right-leaning pages at all within the first page of results. Our analysis of the algorithmic metrics underpinning those rankings suggests that factors within the Google algorithm itself may make it easier for sites with a left-leaning or centrist viewpoint to rank higher in Google search results compared to sites with a politically conservative viewpoint.” The study found that 16% of political keyword searches yielded no conservative-oriented pages within the initial search results.

Recently, Breitbart  reported, “Facebook reportedly shut down an internal chat room which evolved into a forum for anonymous Facebook employees to discuss their support of President Donald Trump. The anonymous group reportedly became a key place of discussion for right-leaning Facebook employees, perhaps because they felt that they could express their conservative views more openly in an anonymous forum. It was reported that a poster advertising the group on Facebook’s campus stated, “Trump Supporters Welcome,” a sentiment that is typically out of place in Silicon Valley. Many observers have drawn comparisons between Facebook’s shut down of one of the few conservative leaning groups for employees and the firing of former Google engineer James Damore who was let go from his position at Google for criticizing the company’s PC culture.”

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Of course, part of the challenge is a tactic used by progressive sources that loosely defines “hate speech” as anything they disagree with. When highly partisan left-wing organizations such as the Southern Partisan Law Center get to make defining decisions, the result is not going to be nonpartisan.

The left’s anti-free speech activities are generally portrayed as spontaneous reactions to the outrage of the day. In reality, they are frequently well-financed. Cliff Kincaid  outlines how billionaire George Soros financed a drive to remove one successful conservative commentator, Glenn Beck, from Fox News. Another example comes from Jonathan Tobin, in Commentary magazine .  While demonizing the Koch brothers, who give to conservative causes, Tom Steyer continues to be a major influencer and financial backer of left-wing causes.

National Review has examined the broader picture: “Progressive corporations enforce an ideological monoculture. Dissent and get fired…When government officials target speech because of a speaker’s views, they lose time and again. At the same time, millions of Americans are extraordinarily reluctant to express even the most mainstream of (particularly) social conservative views. They’re convinced that if they do that, they’ll be publicly humiliated, investigated, and perhaps even lose their jobs. They’re convinced that outspoken liberals enjoy greater opportunity in key sectors of the economy, and if conservatives want to thrive, they best keep their opinions to themselves.”

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Quick Analysis

The New Threat to Free Speech

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government takes a two-part look at how the attacks on free speech have changed.

The threat to free speech within the United States is no longer limited to college campuses or a few isolated individuals or organizations.  It is now a multi-faceted campaign at all levels of American civic life, advocated by major political figures and media powerhouses, ardently pushed by massive street protests, and well financed by billionaires.

Ari Lieberman, writing for Frontpage  correctly notes that “The Left’s assault on free speech is an alarming trend that represents a grave danger to democratic values and principles. They employ code words like ‘safe spaces’ and ‘First Amendment opportunism’ to hide behind the fact that they are tearing apart the very fabric of the United States Constitution.”

Many thought that the serious assaults on the First Amendment would cease or at least diminish following the conclusion of the Obama Administration. It is reasonable to speculate that the lack of any judicial punishment in response to the former president’s assaults on the nation’s most fundamental freedom has encouraged anti-free speech partisans.

Patrick Maines, writing in The Hill last year, noted: “No administration in memory has more thoroughly undermined freedom of speech and of the press than that of President Obama. From the White House itself, as well as the independent and executive branch agencies, have come a steady stream of policies, initiatives, and pronunciamentos that have threatened or compromised both of these constitutional rights.”

Examples cited by Maines and others are numerous. The transformation of the IRS into a partisan attack dog against the Tea Party—for which no one has seen the inside of a jail cell– may be the most prominent, but it is just one of many.

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Ignored by much of the media was the outrageous legal attack against a video producer who was falsely blamed for the Benghazi attack, despite the clear knowledge by Obama, Clinton and others that it was totally irrelevant to the premeditated assault.

Amazingly, Senator Charles Schumer, (D-NY) who actually introduced legislation to limit the First Amendment, not only continues in office, but has become the most powerful Democrat in Washington.

Media voices not subservient to the Obama White House had their hands full contending with the Federal Communications Commission’s moves to control the internet, and its attempt to place federal monitors in newsrooms across the nation. As Real Clear Politics reported, “Obama and his senior staff singled out for condemnation Fox News, the lone television network that did not serve up the fawning coverage the president and his team had come to expect.”

Part of the populist response to those outrages was the surprising victory of Donald Trump.  But the anti-free speech crowd, no longer able to access the powers of the federal government to attack free speech, have skillfully adopted alternative tactics, with considerable success. The ACLJ  reports “As a raft of leftist news media outlets, commentators and administrators renounce their support for the First Amendment in order to censor free speech…the escalating war on freedom of speech and the Constitution threatens everyone. Craven assaults on the Constitution and our civil liberties by media and university elites, as well as government bureaucrats, cannot go unanswered. Conservatives, Jewish students, pro-Israel organizations and pro-life supporters face bullying assaults from left-wing elites in the media, on university campuses, or from politically motivated government bureaucrats… it is manifest that the war on free speech has heated up.”

The Report concludes Monday.