Posted on by rjonakait

Where Are the Conservatives Who Cared About Free Speech?

Acquaintances of mine railed against President Biden’s attempts to get social media to take down posts of misinformation and disinformation. They maintained that this was government coercion, in effect, telling citizens what could be published. Free speech was under a dangerous assault, they said. Where are these conservatives now when free speech is being assaulted regularly on many, many fronts?

Examples are legion. The administration has been trying to dictate to universities the viewpoints faculty hires should have and what they should teach. They want them disciplined for disapproved teachings. Law firms have been punished because of the people whom lawyers have represented. Negative comments about Charlie Kirk are apparently not allowed. Speaking in favor of diversity can lead to the end of a government career or the withdrawal of a research grant. Lawful residents are locked up–even deported–for their views. The government seeks to punish congressional representatives for repeating a basic legal principle. And this is only a fraction of the actions that have subverted free speech. But my supposed free speech-loving companions remain silent. I expect that their silence will continue even in the face of a memo to all federal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies dropped by Attorney General Pam Bondi on December 4, 2025, which came to light weeks later.

In the memo Bondi says she is outlining federal law enforcement priorities to support President Trump’s call to root out domestic terrorism. The AG maintains that “many of these domestic terrorists and domestic terrorist organizations are united by an anti-fascist platform. . . . This ideology that paints legitimate government authority and traditional conservative viewpoints as ‘fascist’ connects a recent string of political violence.” (If the left is using the “fascist” label, it is only following the right. In 2023, Time wrote, “Among Trump and his allies, the ‘fascist’ label has been growing in popularity.”)

Bondi’s claim is, putting it charitably, weakly sourced. For example, a claim that “anti-fascists violently rioted on UC Berkeley’s campus in 2017” [emphasis added] footnotes a 2019 news report headlined “Scattered Violence Erupts at Large, Left-Wing Berkley (sic) Rally.” Besides getting the date wrong, she equates “scattered violence” at a large rally with terrorism. Trump and his appointee maintain that lefties are the problem for mass, terroristic violence in this country even though study after study, including one posted on the FBI website (but now archived) have concluded that disproportionately right wingers have been the cause of such violence in this century.

Bondi continues, “Particularly dangerous are those acts committed by violent extremist groups that threaten both citizens’ safety and our country’s ability to self-govern. These domestic terrorists use violence or the threat of violence to advance political and social agendas, including opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States  Government; hostility toward traditional views on family, religion, and morality; and an elevation of violence to achieve policy outcomes, such as political assassinations. [Federal law enforcement] shall prioritize the investigation of such conduct.” Law enforcement, Bondi said, should identify not only those who participate in such events but also “those who organize or financially sponsor those participants.”

There are some–shall we say–definitional problems. Define, e.g., “radical gender ideology.” What is an “extreme” view of mass migration? Does a traditional view on family oppose divorce? Why is anti-Christianity included but not antisemitism? If I don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah, am I anti-Christian? If I think CEOs get paid too much, am I anti-capitalist? I can argue that traditional moral values both favor and oppose the death penalty. Can it be both? A traditional view of religion is that churches are greedy. May I hold that opinion and start an anti-clerical movement? The January 6 protestors tried to prevent the legal transfer of power through violence. Wasn’t that anti-Americanism deserving prioritization?

She seems to have overlooked a salient fact: “Political and social agendas” and “views,” whether extreme or not, are expressions protected under the First Amendment. Yet this concern got a mere footnote in the memo: “The United States Government does not investigate, collect, or maintain information on U.S. persons solely for the purpose of monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment. No investigation may be opened based solely on activities protected by the First Amendment or the lawful exercise of rights secured by the Constitution.” Notice, however, the qualifier “solely,” which eviscerates the apparent qualifications of the footnote. No government official will claim an investigation or collection of information is based “solely” on monitoring constitutionally protected activities. Some other justification will always be conjured up. Thus, the First Amendment will be trampled.

Shouldn’t anyone who uses illegal violence or threat of violence be prosecuted? Why “prioritize” those who hold such views and not everyone who uses illegal violence and threats of violence? Surely it is designed to suppress dissent so that those in power can stay in power.

And not for the first time I wonder where the principled conservatives are. Those who complained when the Biden administration tried to get social media companies to remove misinformation should be screaming now. The Trumpian actions impeding free speech are dangerously far-reaching. The Bondi directive is another clear example. And yet, my conservative acquaintances are silent.

Posted on by rjonakait

Red Scare, Deep State (concluded)

          American believers in Soviet-led communism faced a wrenching crisis when Stalin made his pact with Hitler at the beginning of World War II. The American communists were now asked (told?) to abandon their firm anti-fascist faith overnight. Many could or would not do that and left the party. Others altered their faith with tortured rationalizations that took their own psychic toll. Such a crisis of faith should be inevitable when people are truly committed to ideas and principles and find that their leaders precipitately announce new principles or take actions radically at odds with the principles. My devout Catholic friends confronted this personal turmoil with the reports of widespread priest pedophilia and the coverups by the church hierarchy. They had a crisis of faith of what it meant to be a Catholic. They resolved those personal crises in different ways, but all those who truly had faith had a crisis.

          Many American conservatives, however, seem able to bend and break their ideas and principles at will without such any intellectual crises. Many on the right parrot what Trump preaches without hesitation even when Trump radically changes his message. There have been many examples, but we can see it happening with the present pandemic.

At first, Trump dismissed the importance of the coronavirus emergence; that it was like the flu, but not as serious; and he suggested that Democrats were overstating coronavirus concerns in order to undermine him. Now he says, “It’s not the flu. It’s vicious.” He tells us that there are “hard days that lie ahead.” He blatantly alters history and states that early on he knew that it was going to be a devastating pandemic.

Many of the Trump acolytes and apostles have simply followed his path without any apparent qualms. When Trump saw an “overblown” crisis devised somehow to get him, so did right-wingers. Now that Trump sees a crisis so do they, applauding him, as he does himself, for all the actions he has taken to mitigate the Covid-19 harm that a short while ago was downplayed. They tell us time and again how lucky we were that the president imposed a travel ban on China even though this travel ban was late in coming allowing more than 400,000 people from China to come to the US after the outbreak there. By the time of the travel ban, the coronavirus had already arrived in the United States and was spreading without any presidential action to hinder the disease’s onslaught. Even so, these events seem to have caused no re-evaluations by the Trumpistas of their devotion to the president. (Many other examples could be cited during this presidency. For example, I remember when free trade was a core, embedded conservative principle. I have seen little conservative agonizing with Trump’s radical transformation of that article of faith.)

          Reading about the Red Scare in A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Family by David Maraniss reminds me of the present day in another way. At the core of the 1950s hysteria was the belief that communists were in positions of power in the government and media and were secretly operating to undermine this country’s democratic values and the American way of life. This was most famously illustrated by Joe McCarthy’s speech in which he said that he held in his very hand a list of communists in the State Department, but it was also evident in the debates over who “lost” China and in the congressional investigations of Hollywood and the newspapers, which ensnared Elliott Maraniss.

Today we have something similar: the Deep State. The Red Scare, however, was based on the notion of un-Americanness and the general subversion of America. The Deep State has much more of a specific focus—the president. Primarily, the cries of a functioning Deep State are explanations for times when Trump does not get what he wants or when facts, data, or opinions displease or criticize him or sometimes just fail to praise him. The Deep State claims are consistent with a cult of personality most often found in autocratic states, and the cult of personality helps explain why conservatives do not seem anguished when the president shifts courses, re-writes history, and breaks conservative tenets. Those conservatives are not committed to principles but to the man. The notion of a principled conservative may not be a complete oxymoron, but these days one is hard to find.