Matt Taibbi has bad news for Americans who still care about Free Speech and the open exchange of opinions.
When Columbia law professor Timothy Wu was appointed by Joe Biden to the National Economic Council a few weeks back, the press hailed it as great news for progressives. The author of The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age is known as a staunch advocate of antitrust enforcement, and Biden’s choice of him, along with the appointment of Lina Khan to the Federal Trade Commission, was widely seen as a signal that the new administration was assembling what Wired called an “antitrust all-star team.”
“Big Tech critic Tim Wu joins Biden administration to work on competition policy,” boomed CNBC, while Marketwatch added, “Anti-Big Tech crusader reportedly poised to join Biden White House.” Chicago law professor Eric Posner’s piece for Project Syndicate was titled “Antitrust is Back in America.” Posner noted Wu’s appointment comes as Senator Amy Klobuchar has introduced regulatory legislation that ostensibly targets companies like Facebook and Google, which a House committee last year concluded have accrued “monopoly power.”
Wu’s appointment may presage tougher enforcement of tech firms. However, he has other passions that got less ink. Specifically, Wu — who introduced the concept of “net neutrality” and once explained it to Stephen Colbert on a roller coaster — is among the intellectual leaders of a growing movement in Democratic circles to scale back the First Amendment. He wrote an influential September, 2017 article called “Is the First Amendment Obsolete?” that argues traditional speech freedoms need to be rethought in the Internet/Trump era. …
Listening to Wu… is confusing. He calls himself a “devotee” of the great Louis Brandeis, speaking with reverence about his ideas and those of other famed judicial speech champions like Learned Hand and Oliver Wendell Holmes. In the Aspen speech above, he went so far as to say about First Amendment protections that “these old opinions are so great, it’s like watching The Godfather, you can’t imagine anything could be better.”
If you hear a “but…” coming in his rhetoric, you guessed right. He does imagine something better. The Cliff’s Notes version of Wu’s thesis:
— The framers wrote the Bill of Rights in an atmosphere where speech was expensive and rare. The Internet made speech cheap, and human attention rare. Speech-hostile societies like Russia and China have already shown how to capitalize on this “cheap speech” era, eschewing censorship and bans in favor of “flooding” the Internet with pro-government propaganda.
— As a result, those who place faith in the First Amendment to solve speech dilemmas should “admit defeat” and imagine new solutions for repelling foreign propaganda, fake news, and other problems. “In some cases,” Wu writes, “this could mean that the First Amendment must broaden its own reach to encompass new techniques of speech control.” What might that look like? He writes, without irony: “I think the elected branches should be allowed, within reasonable limits, to try returning the country to the kind of media environment that prevailed in the 1950s.”
— More ominously, Wu suggests that in modern times, the government may be more of a bystander to a problem in which private platforms play the largest roles. Therefore, a potential solution (emphasis mine) “boils down to asking whether these platforms should adopt (or be forced to adopt) norms and policies traditionally associated with twentieth-century journalism.”
That last line is what should make speech advocates worry.
The kind of media environment favored by Wu (and other radical leftists) “that prevailed in the 1950s” is a regulated monopoly of three network sources all in complete agreement on the Overton Window, the range of acceptable political discourse, i.e. No Rush Limbaugh, no Fox News, no right-wing blogs.
Back in 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Princeton ’17, in This Side of Paradise described “The Yale Thing” this way:
——————————–
“I want to go to Princeton,” said Amory. “I don’t know why, but I think of all Harvard men as sissies, like I used to be, and all Yale men as wearing big blue sweaters and smoking pipes.”
Monsignor chuckled.
“I’m one, you know.”
“Oh, you’re different.” I think of Princeton as being lazy and good-looking and aristocratic,” you know, like a spring day. Harvard seems sort of indoors”
“And Yale is November, crisp and energetic,” finished Monsignor.
“That’s it.”
They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.
——————————–
The Yale man in fiction was typically portrayed as an All-American, square-shooting man-of-action, along the lines of Frank Merriwell, Dink Stover, Flash Gordon, and even Bruce Wayne.
The modern ascendancy of leftism can **** up anything, even the Yale identity.
On Facebook, some self-appointed younger alumni (nearly all female) and some Albertus grad who merely works at Yale set up and run the “Yale Alumni Group.”
Typically, that group has a rules regime created by sanctimonious left-wing goo-goos.
1. Agree to Abide by the Rules of this Group by Joining it
By joining this group, you agree to abide by its policies below and understand that group Admins and moderators will enforce those policies at their discretion.
This page is heavily monitored. Posts that do not contribute to alumni community-building or are determined to be antagonistic, racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise rude or insulting, will be deleted and the user may be muted, blocked and/or banned from the group immediately without notice.
In other words: Surrender your free speech rights at the door.
2. No Hate Speech, Bullying, Insulting or Rude Language
This page is heavily monitored. Posts that do not contribute to alumni community-building or are determined to be antagonistic, racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise rude or insulting, will be deleted and the user may be muted, blocked and/or banned from the group immediately without notice. …
6. Be Kind and Courteous. Like at Yale.
We’re all in this together to create a welcoming environment. Let’s treat everyone with respect. Healthy debates are natural, but kindness is required. …”
“Be Kind and Courteous. Like at Yale.”? What Yale is that? Not the Yale I was at. The Yale I knew was full of intensely competitive, sharp-tongued young men with a talent for cutting remarks who were not inclined to suffer fools and simps gladly.
Obviously, the more recent Yale has been sensitized and feminized, neutered and house broken, and politically corrected and pansified to a fare-thee-well.
Yalies today clearly do not wear big blue sweaters and smoke pipes, they get tattoos and piercings and emote a lot. They are not a bit reminiscent of November. They are like a sticky, humid day in August in the rainy season in a Third World swamp.
Over the last 48 hours, that Facebook Yale Alumni group featured a thread started by a typical female specimen who wanted advice about how to cope with “bullying and intimidation” when “speaking truth to power” at an upcoming meeting of some unnamed non-profit board.
It seemed obvious to me that anybody who started off telling you they enjoyed some sort of privileged possession of the truth, and who regarded debate and disagreement as “bullying and intimidation” was a deluded and outrageously self-entitled nuisance with a penchant for posing as a victim. I thought all this cowardice about facing oppositional speech and eagerness to play the victim card was decidedly unbecoming in a graduate of Dear Old Yale and consequently a card-carrying member of the national elite, and said as much. I carefully phrased all my observations as blandly and politely as possible (knowing perfectly well that censorship was a hair-trigger away).
A number of other females rushed immediately to her defense, accusing me of “mansplaining,” not entirely inaccurately describing me as “arrogant and insufferable,” and demanding that I check my white male privilege.
I responded with this poster meme:
Within a few minutes, when I went to read the responses, I found that all of my comments had been purged.
Having taken great care to avoid any actual pejoratives or colorful expression, I was much annoyed. I had drink taken as well, and I lost my temper. I sat down and wrote a posting specifically insulting the group’s management characterizing their sexual proclivities and existential status and urging them to commit obscene acts, some actually impossible. I’m afraid my boyhood roots in a mining town in the Hard Coal Region came out under provocation.
Not surprisingly, a minute later, I was no longer a member of the Facebook Yale Alumni Group.
But I’m not done with those wee slinkit cowerin’ beasties. My next step will be to create a Free Speech Yale Alumni Group on Facebook.
“When a Republican is in the White House, the media want to be Woodward and Bernstein. When a Democrat is in the White House, they want to be Monica Lewinsky.”
Ed Driscoll calls it precisely: WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH ANDREW SULLIVAN IS A VOICE OF SANITY.
[The Atlanta massage parlor shootings] story has… been deeply instructive about our national discourse and the state of the American mainstream and elite media. This story’s coverage is proof, it seems to me, that American journalists have officially abandoned the habit of attempting any kind of “objectivity” in reporting these stories. We are now in the enlightened social justice world of “moral clarity” and “narrative-shaping.”
Here’s the truth: We don’t yet know why this man did these horrible things. It’s probably complicated, or, as my therapist used to say, “multi-determined.” That’s why we have thorough investigations and trials in America. We only have one solid piece of information as to motive, which is the confession by the mass killer to law enforcement: that he was a religious fundamentalist who was determined to live up to chastity and repeatedly failed, as is often the case. Like the 9/11 bombers or the mass murderer at the Pulse nightclub, he took out his angst on the source of what he saw as his temptation, and committed mass murder. This is evil in the classic fundamentalist sense: a perversion of religion and sexual repression into violence.
We should not take the killer’s confession as definitive, of course. But we can probe it — and indeed, his story is backed up by acquaintances and friends and family. The New York Times originally ran one piece reporting this out. The Washington Post also followed up, with one piece citing contemporaneous evidence of the man’s “religious mania” and sexual compulsion. It appears that the man frequented at least two of the spas he attacked. He chose the spas, his ex roommates said, because he thought they were safer than other ways to get easy sex. Just this morning, the NYT ran a second piece which confirms that the killer had indeed been in rehab for sexual impulses, was a religious fanatic, and his next target was going to be “a business tied to the pornography industry.”
We have yet to find any credible evidence of anti-Asian hatred or bigotry in this man’s history. Maybe we will. We can’t rule it out. But we do know that his roommates say they once asked him if he picked the spas for sex because the women were Asian. And they say he denied it, saying he thought those spas were just the safest way to have quick sex. That needs to be checked out more. But the only piece of evidence about possible anti-Asian bias points away, not toward it.
And yet. Well, you know what’s coming. Accompanying one original piece on the known facts, the NYT ran nine — nine! — separate stories about the incident as part of the narrative that this was an anti-Asian hate crime, fueled by white supremacy and/or misogyny. Not to be outdone, the WaPo ran sixteen separate stories on the incident as an anti-Asian white supremacist hate crime. Sixteen! One story for the facts; sixteen stories on how critical race theory would interpret the event regardless of the facts. For good measure, one of their columnists denounced reporting of law enforcement’s version of events in the newspaper, because it distracted attention from the “real” motives. Today, the NYT ran yet another full-on critical theory piece disguised as news on how these murders are proof of structural racism and sexism — because some activists say they are.
serial #137720, 12 ga., 32” Whitworth steel barrels choked modified and full with bright excellent bores, each of the tubes showing a small ding along their top edge about 4” from the muzzles. There is no wall-thickness noted below .030” most .035” or more. This rare Parker A-1 Special remains in very honest, fine as-found condition, being consigned directly from the family of the man who ordered and used the gun on his extensive plantation in Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. Built on a No. 2 frame, the barrel shows perhaps 80% of a dark gray-blue fading original blue, mixing with a mottled pewter patina, showing some light oxidation staining about the surface. The nice engraved rings at the muzzles remain intact and the engraved wedges at the breeches remain crisp, the rib with dual ivory beads and “No. 1 Special Parker Brothers Makers Meriden Conn Whitworth Steel” hand engraved rather than roll-marked as-mentioned in The Parker Story. The frame is now a very pleasing pewter-tone patina with the open intertwining scroll and floral embellishment remaining crisp, the nice fine background punch-dot shading, three beaded ribs at the rear of each fence. The water table still shows the nice fine engine turning which matches the bottom of the barrel flats, fading a bit from the years. The triggers gold plating is fading somewhat but is strong at the roots and the bow of the guard is neatly pierced. The checkered capped pistol grip English walnut buttstock rates very fine with much original varnish, stunning grain figure, the special A-1 checkering remaining crisp, the fleur-de-lis’ at the rear of the cheeks a bit soft. The splinter forend is fully checkered and shows a bit more wear showing some smoothed points, all of the forend metal a deep pewter gray. The pistol grip cap sits on a nice beaded flat brass spacer and has gold inlay at its center lightly engraved around the border with Mr. Crump’s name in an oval “James L Crump/New Orleans”. Close inspection reveals that the stock shows a repair to a break through its left side at wrist, the repair neatly camouflaged beneath the checkering (as a 12 ga. gun, it should not be considered fireable with a repaired break in this area). The length of pull to the period Hawkins 1” recoil pad is 14 1/4” with drops of 1 5/8” and 2 5/8”, showing roughly half an inch of cast-off. The gun locks up solidly with the top lever still just right of center, the barrels tight on-face. The safety is non-automatic and the arm cocks and fires properly however the ejector mechanism has been disabled. An external inspection shows that all of the parts seem to be present. James Lyman Crump was a cotton man for roughly 50 years before moving to develop a farm and spacious Holly Bluff lodge on his 3600 acre tract along the Jourdan River which they would name Holly-Bluff-on-the-Jourdan. He would put some 600 acres into cultivation, breeding a hybrid “Braford” beef cattle, upland rice, Kentucky fescue and Ladino Clover, clearing leveling and draining the land for the purpose. The gardens at Holly Bluff on Bay St. Louis became so luscious and wonderful that they were a must-see for tourists to the area for many years. Crump was a sportsman and owned and used this arm for many years, indeed the muzzleloader sold in our last auction dubbed “Pocahontas” hung over the fireplace in that rustic lodge for many years, these arms consigned directly from a descendant. The A-1 special is arguably Parker’s finest high-grade arm, this example being one of only five listed in the Parker stock books as “Whit1” being an A-1 Special with Whitworth steel barrels, this serial number gun is mentioned in the monumental work The Parker Story on page 362 in the A-1 Special chapter. The Parker Story calls the floral embellishment Texas bluebells, although this example would seem to have some daisies and other flowers thrown in, perhaps very fittingly as the gardens at Holly Bluff was so extensive and beautiful. There were thirteen 12 ga. guns made with 32” barrels, this very rare gun being one of the special “five” with the special engraved barrel marking in the Parker stock books. The authors of The Parker Story quote: “the reason for the use of Whit1 for their quality code and their unusual markings is not certain. It must be that all five of these Whit1 guns were made for something special or unusual.”. Parker Guns, I.D. and Serialization also confirms “Grade 8, A-1 Special, Ejectors, capped pistolgrip, 12 ga. with 32” barrels”. A very lovely and very special Parker double for the advanced Parker collector or the discerning collector of fine double guns. (3K9828-1) C&R (20,000/30,000)
The A1 Special was introduced in 1907, and cost $500 at the time. You could buy a small house in lots of places in America for $500 in 1907. Only 79 examples of this model were ever built.
Parker collectors will be snapping at this one like trout after caddis flies. Personally, I’d consider a 2-frame Parker heavier than I’d like for Upland Hunting. This gun also has a wrist crack and a dent. I prefer a straight stock to a pistol grip. And the elaborate engraving is too florid and Baroque for my taste. I’d be happier with lots of less expensive and scarce English guns.
DEDICATED TO THE GLORY OF GOD AND IN
LOVING MEMORY OF EDWARD McCULLY, PRESIDENT
OF THE CLASS OF 1949, AND JAMES ELLIOT ’49,
LIKEWISE AN OUTSTANDING ATHLETE AND LEADER.
BECAUSE OF THE GREAT COMMISSION, ED AND
JIM, TOGETHER WITH NATHANAEL SAINT EX ’48,
ROGER YOUDERIAN AND PETER FLEMING WENT
TO THE MISSION FIELD WILLING FOR
“ANYTHING–ANYWHERE REGARDLESS OF COST.”
THEY CHOSE THE JUNGLES OF ECUADOR –
INHABITED BY THE AUCA INDIANS. FOR
GENERATIONS ALL STRANGERS WERE KILLED BY
THESE SAVAGE INDIANS. AFTER MANY DAYS OF
PATIENT PREPARATION AND DEVOUT PRAYER,
THE MISSIONARIES MADE THE FIRST FRIENDLY
CONTACT KNOWN TO HISTORY WITH THE AUCAS.
ON JANUARY 8, 1956, THE FIVE MISSIONARIES WERE
BRUTALLY SLAIN – – MARTYRS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.
The 64-year-old plaque commemorated five missionaries slain in Ecuador, including three who were alumni of the DuPage County Christian liberal arts college. School officials are looking to replace the plaque, and a task force will review potential new wording, college President Philip Ryken said in the letter.
“The word ‘savage’ is regarded as pejorative and has been used historically to dehumanize and mistreat Indigenous peoples around the world,” he wrote. “Any descriptions on our campus of people or people groups should reflect the full dignity of human beings made in the image of God.”
Concerns about the wording on the plaque have come from about a dozen students and staff since the start of the school year, college spokesman Joseph Moore said.
Before it was taken down Tuesday, the plaque hung in the foyer of the college’s main chapel, where students traditionally gathered three times a week.
“I think inevitably language changes,” Moore said. “The meaning of language and descriptors can change over the decades, and it’s understandable that eventually we would have to examine whether something still honors people appropriately.”
The missionaries were killed in Ecuador in 1956. The plaque was donated by the college’s class of 1949, which included two of those killed.
College students Caitlyn Kasper and Isabella Wallmow applauded the decision to take down the plaque.
“I feel like it could be worded better, or more sensitively,” Kasper, 22, said.
She and Wallmow, 21, said they hoped the change would indicate the college’s willingness to revise and grapple with other past actions.
“Plaques like that have caused pain to people, and are almost a symbol of white superiority in their very presences and in how they make people of color feel unwelcome at Wheaton,” she said.
Today in 54 B.C. was born Publius Ovidius Naso. He ranks, with his contemporaries Virgil and Horace, among the three greatest Latin poets. Ovid was, of the three, the most unruly and irreverent and consequently died in exile on the shores of the Black Sea.
“When asked to name the greatest soldier of the war, Robert E. Lee replied, ‘A man I have never seen, sir. His name is Forrest.’ ”
Nathan Bedford Forrest had 30 horses shot out from under him and, pari passu, personally killed 31 enemy soldiers. At the commencement of the war, Forrest was a self-made millionaire, one of the richest men in Tennessee. He lost everything in defense of his native state.
Not surprisingly, the State of Tennessee used to honor the memory of one of its greatest heroes and defenders with a bust in the state capitol.
Happily there has been a serious response to Forrest’s targeting by left-wing Cancel Culture.
Not even two weeks after the historical commission voted to remove the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the state capitol, state senators are trying to vote to remove all members from the commission.
Senator Joey Hensley, a Hohenwald Republican, sponsored the bill. It would replace all of the members of the 29 person commission with 12 new members.
Currently, 24 of the commissioners are appointed by the governor of the state. Sen. Hensley’s bill would reduce the total number of members to 12. The governor, Lt. Governor and state speaker of the house would each choose four members.
While not specifically mentioning the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest in the meeting, members made references to decisions the historical commission has recently made.
The commission voted to remove Forrest’s bust from the capitol building on March 8.
Forrest is a controversial figure in the state’s history. He was a slave trader, Confederate war general and [a claim Forrest explicitly denied – JDZ] one of the first leaders of the KKK. His image displayed prominently outside both houses of the legislature has been the center of many protests through the years.
“In our culture today it seems there is a desire to cancel history, cancel culture, cancel narratives that are just based on fact. I think that that’s a dangerous precedent,” said Tullahoma republican Senator Janice Bowling.
Sid Vicious plus William Butler Yeats equals Shane MacGowan.
Matthew Hennessey, meanwhile, in the City Journal notes that you couldn’t kill Shane MacGowan with a stick.
They say God takes care of fools and drunks. If so, he’s been working overtime the last few decades taking care of Shane MacGowan. As the frontman and principal songwriter of the Irish rock band the Pogues, MacGowan is as famous for his lyrics and whiskey-timbered voice as for his unlikely longevity, despite a Homeric appetite for intoxicating substances, especially, but not limited to, alcohol. Though he cuts a shambolic figure, MacGowan is still upright at 63, a feat many view as a minor miracle. His rheumy eyes and distinctive throat-clearing cackle suggest not genius, necessarily, but late-stage dipsomania; there is nary a tooth left in his head. God or something like God must be taking care of MacGowan. He’s not been doing the job himself.
