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Snippets

Charlie Kirk said, “George Floyd was a scumbag. Does that mean he deserved to die? No, of course not.” Replace “George Floyd” with “Charlie Kirk.” What would the outcry be?

Pete Hegseth wants “warriors” in this man’s army. Apparently, according to Hegseth, warriors don’t have beards. I watch Sunday football, and many of the players have quite luxurious facial growths. Apparently, at least according to Hegseth, I was wrong if I thought of them as manly men. They have beards. They are wusses. A tradition in the NHL is for players not to shave as long as they are in the playoffs. Once again, they are pansies, not warriors. Hegseth wants lethality in our armed forces. Nothing produced more deaths in our history than the Civil War. After hearing Hegseth, I don’t know how the North won with the bearded Ulysses S. Grant in charge. I thought he was a warrior, but apparently just another wuss. Maybe his side won because the Confederates had bearded Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Those two must have been really big pansies if they lost to Grant. Certainly, the fairy Custer, with his hair, could not be in Hegseth’s army. And in World War II, Bill Mauldin’s Willie and Joe, who were on the front lines for the entire war, were never clean shaven. If they were still around, they might like to know that they are not wanted in Hegseth’s army. So they can just go home.

In the wake of Kirk’s death, I ask, not for the first time, What is a Christian?

Perhaps if General Grant and General Eisenhower had spent less time on military strategy, tactics, and logistics and more on pullups, pushups, and sit-ups, the Civil War and World War II would have ended sooner. I wondered, too, if the generals who were flown from all four corners of the world to Virginia (at enormous expense, one might add) might have had better things to do than to sit in a lecture on sartorial issues and calisthenics.

At my new residence I am about to start a six-week course on the musical theater. The first week, we will study the seminal Oklahoma! When I watched a video of it, I realized that I knew most of the music, but I have no idea how. I have never seen a live production of the musical and only clips of the movie. When I was a boy, our family did not have a record player much less a hi-fi. We did have a radio, but I don’t believe I ever heard show tunes out of it. Still, I know much of the score. How do we learn the stuff we do?

Pete Hegseth seems not to want women in the armed forces. He certainly does not want transgender men. I wonder what his reaction would be to what Tony Horwitz relates in his Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (1998). As a result of an automobile accident in 1911, a union Civil War hero was discovered to be a woman. She was then sent to an insane asylum and forced to wear skirts, in which she was clumsy. She died as the result of a hip injury after a fall. Horwitz reports that at least 400 women disguised as men fought in the Civil War.

When I was eight or nine, the news was filled with UFO sightings. I wanted to spot one and spent much time in the backyard gazing upward. I was getting discouraged when one day as I looked over the Schneidermann house I saw what appeared to be a rotating, silvery disk. It came closer and hovered almost silently about fifty feet off the ground at the back of our property. A hatch slid open, and a creature came down on a beam of light. It got to the grass just outside the kohlrabi patch, but I could not discern any features. It was fully covered in hair. I could not tell if there was a head, or arms, or feet because of all the hair. But there was what appeared to be a hypodermic needle coming out of where the head might have been. Father must have seen the lights because he was standing just behind me. With my voice that had not broken, I asked, “What is that?” “My last-born son,” he intoned, “that is definitely a furry with the syringe on the top.”

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Three Modern Free Speech Issues

I was asked by a leader of a current events discussion group to comment on some present free speech issues. I briefly commented on several.

1 . The first is the issue of self-censorship by media and other entities because of a concern about retributive governmental actions. Jimmy Kimmel is a prime example. Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Kimmel made comments on his late-night show, which were not disrespectful of TurningPointUSA leader, but included some misinformation regarding the political affiliation of the killer. Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed Chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), responded by saying: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies [Kimmel’s employers] can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Kimmel was promptly suspended by ABC, a subsidiary of Disney. It was certainly reasonable for Disney to think it was being threatened by the Chair of the FCC. Over-the-air networks like ABC require licenses from the FCC. Moreover, two companies owning affiliates that air ABC programs were negotiating a merger that needed to be approved by the FCC. They could see the FCC Chair’s statement as a threat to that approval.

Though seemingly unrelated to free speech, these (not so) veiled threats have a direct impact on free speech. Sometimes even without a threat free speech is affected because of potential government action. We saw this dynamic in action with the $16 million settlement by Paramount Global (owner of CBS) of the Trump lawsuits against CBS. At the time of the settlement with Trump, Paramount had an $8 billion merger on the table that required government approval. What does this have to do with free speech, one might ask. Answer: Media companies (no company) should not be required to cave to the petulant posturing of a president in order to secure government approval for their business. And yet, Paramount Global felt, no doubt, that it had no choice but to cave to the political caprices of the president.

Perhaps there has always been a concern that free speech would result in government retribution. But it is more concerning now. First, the open vindictiveness of president Trump has changed things. In addition, the playing field has changed dramatically because the Supreme Court is consciously allowing the president more power that increases the possibility and feasibility of presidential retribution. Here’s how: Agencies like the FCC or the Federal Trade Commission or the Securities and Exchange Commission were meant to be independent of the president. Ninety years ago, the Supreme Court held that commissioners on such agencies could not be removed at the whim of the president, but only “for cause.” The Supreme Court has not officially overruled that precedent, but it effectively has done so. The Supreme Court has now allowed Trump to “temporarily” remove commissioners while litigation goes on about whether the removals have been lawful. It is expected that the 1930s precedent will be formally overruled this year. In other words, the previously independent agencies will no longer be independent but must answer directly to the president. Thus, companies who need agency approval for something will naturally be concerned that they will be punished for actions that displease Trump. This is affecting free speech in ways it was not before.

An aside: Might conservatives have a point in the Jimmy Kimmel affair? Four over-the-air late- night hosts use the public airwaves: Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Myers, and Jimmy Kimmel. All can be characterized as anti-Trump. What if all were the comedy equivalent of Fox News? How would liberals react?

2. The second is another, non-Kimmel free-speech issue occurring in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

A recent newspaper article states that over 145 people have been fired or disciplined by their employers for comments about Charlie Kirk. These data are from public records, but there may be many more that haven’t been reported. Often the comments have been innocuous. For example, an employee of a public university commented on her private Facebook page, “If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can’t be friends.” She also said that she believed in the Resurrection and was praying for his soul. She was fired for these comments.

All the firings of employees for their comments while not on the job raise free speech issues, but not all raise First Amendment issues.  The First Amendment applies only when the government does something that limits speech. Thus, it comes into play when a public employer disciplines public employees for their speech. However, there are few legal restraints on private employers who often can fire for any reason.

But something new is also operating in this arena. Online armies are scanning for social media comments to get people fired. Those who have made comments critical of Kirk are often doxed and flooded with ugly and threatening messages scaring them and others into silence. The online scrollers want to punish and prevent speech they don’t like.

While the private firings and the doxxing may not raise First Amendment concerns, they do raise important free speech concerns. We need more discussion of how free workers should be to express their views while not on the job, and, further, how to prevent some of the terrible excesses of social media and the internet.

3. The new Pentagon leadership says it will require credentialed journalists at the military headquarters to sign a pledge to refrain from reporting information that has not been authorized for release — including unclassified information. Reporters, in effect, can publish only press releases. Journalists who don’t abide by the policy risk losing credentials that provide access to the Pentagon.

I asked a friend who had been a media attorney whether he knew of similar past directives. He says this appears to be unprecedented.

He did point out that this administration (and others) have cut off reporters who published stuff the president didn’t like. (Witness the AP and the “Gulf of America” controversy). But these restrictions on free speech were relatively mild. They only limited the access of individual reporters. They were not a blanket restriction on what can be reported.

The Hegseth directive for the first time tries to make those covering the Pentagon into something like state media. You may publish only what the government authorizes. We have not had this Pravda-like restriction before. If it stands up in court, it would be a titanic and dangerous change in how the government, the press, and the people interact with each other.

Posted on by rjonakait

Don’t Let Them Shut Your Mouth

Responses to mass shootings have been predictable. Calls for better gun control go out, and conservatives respond: How dare you! You are terrible and callous for trying to make political points in this time of grief.

The conservative reaction to Charlie Kirk’s murder has been different: This particular “time of grief” is, apparently, the time to suppress and punish opponents and dissenters. Trump and his allies speak of plans to target liberal groups, monitor speech, and revoke visas. Government officials are considering criminal prosecutions of those who speak out against Kirkian and Trumpian policies. Officials threaten government actions against the media, teachers, school board members, and many others, and in advance of any actions by these people, have begun to shut down critics. Jimmy Kimmel is just the most famous of their targets. Some who want something from the government, such as approval of a merger, preemptively censor. Vigilantes have helped remove people who speak out from private jobs. (Notably, the MAGA folks did not seek the removal of a Fox News host who urged that the mentally ill homeless be given lethal injections. An apology was good enough.)

Not surprisingly, the movement to stifle opponents has been accompanied by misinformation, which in this case means lies or willful ignorance. It has been given as a fact that politically motivated murders primarily come out of leftist ideology. The fact is that study after study has shown that the majority of such killings have been by right-wingers. If we go back to 9/11, Islamic terrorists were responsible for the most political killings, but since then, according to the Cato Institute, the right-wing share of politically motivated terrorist murders have been 63 percent while the left-wing share has been 10 percent. (Cato says that the conservative killers have been “motivated by white supremacy, anti-abortion beliefs, involuntary celibacy [incels], and other right-wing ideologies.” This list should also include anti-LGBTQ ideology.) The Department of Justice had come to a similar conclusion, but you will have trouble finding that study since our government, which proclaims to be “the most transparent ever,” has removed the study from its website.

It does not matter to the President, of course, that we have seen nothing indicating that Kirk’s shooter was influenced by any extreme leftist or even liberal group. Instead, all we know is that Tyler Robinson has said that his motivation was the hate spewed by Kirk.

Until a bullet pierced his neck, Charlie Kirk was not on my radar. I had seen his name and that of his organization, but I knew little besides that. Now I know more, and I am amazed by his sanctification. Charlie Kirk may have been a loving, open-minded person, motivated by a true desire to foster legitimate debate, and he was undoubtedly a charismatic entertainer. Nevertheless, his religious, societal, and political views, which carried undertones, at a minimum of racism, ethnic bias, misogyny, frivolity, and stupidity, furthered hate and closed the minds of others. For example, Kirk said that “Jewish dollars” were funding Marxist ideas in education and policy and contributing to opening the borders.” Kirk said: “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.'” Kirk said: “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.” Kirk said: “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage.” Kirk said about affirmative action and Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson: “Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.” (Snopes.com is the source for these quotations.) This, of course, is only a small sample of Kirk’s tendentious statements.

Charlie Kirk was not a deep thinker, but he did know how to make money. Siri tells me that he was worth $12 million—not bad for a 31-year-old community college dropout. How much did he profit from those rallies and other activities whose stated purpose was merely to advance the political dialog?

Conservatives have said that millions “celebrated” Kirk’s death. I know none of them, and I doubt that number is true. Confirming evidence has not been provided.  An anecdote, even two, is not proof. Many, however, have come forward to criticize Kirk’s “teachings.” I would not be surprised if there have been millions, even tens of millions, of them. I certainly hope so. The attempt to honor Kirk has coincided with efforts to suppress and punish such critics of Kirk–a strange legacy for someone who supposedly stood for free speech and debate. If his ideas were sound, they should be highlighted. If they were sound, they would only benefit from critics. What are the Kirk supporters afraid of?

In these dangerous moments, I am reminded of another time when a supposed political murder was used to justify the suppression and oppression of those designated as enemies. On November 7, 1938, the Polish Jew Herschel Grynszpan shot the Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath. Two days later vom Rath died. Almost immediately, a pogrom against Jews was launched as a response to the murder. That event is now known as Kristallnacht. The murder by one person was used to suppress and oppress tens of thousands of others. Sound familiar?

As in 1938, many are seizing upon the murder by one person of Charlie Kirk to lead to oppression and suppression. Truly patriotic Americans should respond.

Don’t let them shut your mouth.