British universities have become too politically correct and are stifling free speech by banning anything that causes the least offence to anyone, academics argue
By Javier Espinoza, Education Editor; and Gordon Rayner
10:56PM GMT 18 Dec 2015
British universities have become too politically correct and are stifling free speech by banning anything that causes the least offence to anyone, a group of leading academics warns on Saturday.
A whole generation of students is being denied the “intellectual challenge of debating conflicting views” because self-censorship is turning campuses into over-sanitised “safe spaces”, they say.
Their intervention comes as an Oxford college considers removing a historic statue of Cecil Rhodes, one of its alumni and benefactors, because he is regarded as the founding father of apartheid in South Africa.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
TWEET THIS
the European Commission is preparing a frontal attack on the hyperlink
each web link would become a legal landmine
Another storm appears to be brewing in Europe that will impact the ability of many U.S. businesses to freely operate there. According to a leaked draft European Commission Communication, “the Commission will examine whether action is needed on the definition of the rights of ‘communication to the public’ and of ‘making available’,”–direct references to EU case law governing hyperlinks. According to European Parliament member Julia Reda, this means that “ the European Commission is preparing a frontal attack on the hyperlink , the basic building block of the Internet as we know it.”
Indoctrinated: Some can recall a time when our campuses of higher education were zones where free speech thrived. That was another era, though. Today’s students want speech restricted. How did it come to this?
The results of a poll that should be shocking, but sadly aren’t, show that 51% of students favor their “college or university having speech codes to regulate speech for students and faculty.”
Oddly, 95% say that “the issue of free speech” is important at their college or university, while 73% believe that the First Amendment is “an important amendment that still needs to be followed and respected in today’s society.” Only 21% told the Buckley Free Speech Survey that it is “outdated” and “can no longer be applied in today’s society and should be changed.”
Maybe these findings are not so odd, after all. In today’s America, “free speech” and “First Amendment rights” tend not to include any expression that doesn’t conform to left-wing ideology.
Seven years ago, almost two entire college generations in the past, the Acton Institute observed, “Students at colleges and universities who articulate conservative and traditional views are at particular risk of bullying and indoctrination by campus administrators and faculty who are zealous ideologues.”
Read More At Investor’s Business Daily: https://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/102715-777695-politically-correct-conditioning-starts-when-kids-are-young.htm#ixzz3psV4RWsp
By Stephen Dinan – The Washington Times – Updated: 5:56 p.m. on Tuesday, October 27, 2015
House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz began the impeachment process against IRS Commissioner John Koskinen Tuesday, accusing him of misleading the public and destroying documents that were being sought under a congressional subpoena.
It’s the latest move in the battle over tea party targeting at the tax agency, and comes less than a week after the Justice Department issued a report finding no criminal behavior in the IRS’s decision to subject conservative groups to intrusive scrutiny.
An instructive example out of Kenya (and a few from our own backyard).
Elizabeth Nolan Brown|Oct. 20, 2015 8:00 am
One of the most baffling things about the newfangled “liberal” push for laws against so-called hate speech is their inability to imagine these bans backfiring. In their zeal to punish those who spread sexist, racist, transphobic, or otherwise out-of-fashion speech, they seem to forget that history has a bad track record of using censorship to suppress religious, social, sexual, and political minorities. And that’s exactly what’s been happening in Kenya, according to Nairobi-based newspaper The Star.
“There is growing evidence that the government is using prosecution for hate speech as a tool to silence its opposition critics,” writes John Onyando. “The norm is incendiary speech by pro-government politicians and online activists going unchecked while law enforcement agencies enthusiastically pounce on the mildest expressions by critics.”
The agency tasked with prosecuting hate speech in Kenya is called the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC); it was formed in 2008 to address ethnic conflicts in the nation. Onyando asserts that NCIC has ignored the bulk of complaints it has received and acts “more like an arm of the ruling coalition” than an independent agency, honing in only on those who speak out against the Jubilee Alliance, a coalition established in 2013 to support the candidacy of current President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto.
A Washington, D.C., appeals court is set to hear arguments later this year on new net neutrality rules, which critics say could lead to government regulators censoring websites such as the Drudge Report and Fox News.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will hear oral arguments against the Federal Communications Commission’s rules on Dec. 4. A panoply of amicus briefs filed with the court last week offer a preview of the arguments.
In its February vote on net neutrality, the Federal Communications Commission stated that broadband providers do not have a right to free speech. “Broadband providers are conduits, not speakers … the rules we adopt today are tailored to the important government interest in maintaining an open Internet as a platform for expression,” the majority held in its 3-2 vote.
The rules, which went into effect in June, require that broadband providers — such as Verizon or Comcast — offer access to all legal online content. It did not place such a requirement on “edge providers,” such as Netflix and Google. The FCC defines edge providers as “any individual or entity that provides any content, application, or service over the Internet, and any individual or entity that provides a device used for accessing any content, application, or service over the Internet.”
This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal on July 14, 2015.
With nationwide same-sex marriage now in its pocket, the gay-rights movement is turning quickly to the next item on its agenda: outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation. That is where many libertarians who strongly supported same-sex marriage step back for a more measured approach. It is one thing to prevent government officials from discriminating against same-sex couples — that is what equal protection is all about — quite another to force private individuals and organizations into associations they find offensive.
The law here is unsettled, especially as the constitutional right to the free exercise of religion is pitted against various statutory rights to be free from discrimination. The Supreme Court muddied those waters in its same-sex marriage decision last month. Writing for the majority in Obergefell v. Hodges, Justice Anthony Kennedy merely mentioned in passing that religious adherents would continue to be free to “advocate” and “teach” their beliefs. Conspicuously absent, as dissenting justices noted, was any mention of the “exercise” of those beliefs.
Meanwhile, conflicts are increasing as the LGBT community presses its agenda. As Americans prepared to celebrate the Fourth of July, Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian ordered bakery owners Aaron andMelissa Klein to pay a lesbian couple $135,000 for “emotional damages” because the Kleins, citing their religious beliefs, had declined to bake a cake for the couple’s wedding.
The week before, Cynthia and Robert Gifford, a Christian couple in upstate New York who own a small farm open to the public for seasonal activities, filed an appeal with the state Supreme Court. They were fined $13,000 last year by the New York State Division of Human Rights for declining to host a same-sex wedding. The Giffords were also ordered to implement “antidiscrimination training and procedures” for their staff — re-education, in effect.
How did we get to this point? Freedom of association — the simple idea that people are free to associate, or not, as they wish — certainly isn’t what it once was.
“When cake bakers and others are fined for adhering to their beliefs about same-sex marriage, a new kind of discrimination is upon us.”
We’ve never had that freedom in its purest form, but the main restraints were once limited and reasonable. Under common law, if you held a monopoly or were a common carrier like a stage line or railroad, you had to serve all comers. If you represented your business, an inn for instance, as “open to the public,” you had to honor that, though you didn’t have to serve unruly customers and could negotiate what services you offered.
These rules left ample room for freedom of association more broadly, albeit with serious exceptions like Jim Crow, the deplorable state-sanctioned discrimination enforced by the heavy hand of government.
Forced association of the kind at issue with the Kleins and Giffords is a product mainly of the civil-rights movement of the 1960s. Believing, probably correctly, that the only way to break institutional racism in the South was to prohibit public and private discrimination, Congress passed civil-rights laws that forbid discrimination in wide areas of life on several grounds — such as race, religion, sex or national origin. States have also passed such laws, including those that in many jurisdictions now prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
But uncertainty arose concerning the relation between those laws, plus others, and religious liberty. Could a state withhold unemployment benefits from a Native American who used peyote — an illegal drug — for religious purposes? Hoping to resolve such questions, a nearly unanimous Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993. Twenty-two states have since passed similar laws, but the issue remains vexed. Witness the Supreme Court’s decision a year ago upholding Hobby Lobby’s challenge to ObamaCare’s contraceptive mandate, and the uproar over Indiana’s religious freedom restoration act a few months ago.
The question at hand, then, is whether and how modern antidiscrimination laws limit the constitutional and statutory right to the free exercise of religion. Even after Obergefell, there are clear cases — on statutory, to say nothing of constitutional grounds — in which religious liberty will trump antidiscrimination claims. Clergy opposed to same-sex marriage surely will not be forced to perform or open their facilities to such ceremonies, although some in the LGBT movement are already pressing for churches to lose their tax-exempt status if they do not.
The public-accommodation cases are closer calls. Because they represent their businesses as open to the public, the Kleins and Giffords shouldn’t be able to deny entrance and normal service to gay customers — and neither has done so. If a same-sex couple had walked into that bakery hand-in-hand and ordered bagels, they would have been served without objection. But it is a step further — and an important one — to force religious business owners to participate in a same-sex wedding, to force them to engage in the creative act of planning the event, baking a special-order cake for it, photographing it, and so on.
No one enjoys the sting of discrimination or rejection. But neither does anyone like to be forced into uncomfortable situations, especially those that offend deeply held religious beliefs. In the end, who here is forcing whom? A society that cannot tolerate differing views — and respect the live-and-let-live principle — will not long be free.
Posted by Alexander Hendrie on Thursday, July 30th, 2015, 7:15 AM
New documentation released by the House Oversight Committee this week again raises questions on how Lois Lerner’s hard drive was physically damaged and whether there was some kind of deliberate act to destroy data on it.
The House Oversight Committee report cites an officially transcribed interview with John Minsek, senior investigative analyst with the IRS Criminal Investigations (CI) unit. Minsek examined the Lerner hard drive in 2011. In the transcribed interview, he notes Lerner’s hard drive contained “well-defined scoring creating a concentric circle in the proximity of the center of the disk.” The Oversight Committee report states:
“Using the CI unit’s digital forensic facilities, Minsek opened the hard drive and conducted additional tests. Once he opened the hard drive, Minsek noticed “well-defined scoring creating a concentric circle in the proximity of the center of the disk.”
So how did the scoring get there?
Last month, testimony from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) revealed that Lois Lerner’s hard drive had “scoring on the top platter of the drive.” The testimony also noted that the IRS technician that inspected the hard drive believed that additional steps could have been taken to recover data, although this did not occur and the hard drive was later destroyed by an industrial strength AMERI-SHRED AMS-750 HD shredder.
Given these facts, it is logical to question how the “scoring” occurred and whether there was foul play involved. Here it what is known thus far:
According to TIGTA testimony submitted to the Oversight Committee on June 25, 2014, Lerner’s laptop stopped communicating with the IRS server on Saturday June 11, 2011, between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
According to the same testimony,the laptop was likely physically located in Lerner’s office the moment it stopped communicating with the server:
“Based on consistent network reporting for more than a week, the laptop computer was likely located in Ms. Lerner’s office.”
On Monday June 13, 2011, Lerner reported the laptop inoperable.
Lerner’s laptop was initially serviced by an IRS IT staff technician and a Hewlett-Packard contractor. Of note, the HP contractor thought the hard drive crashed due to a physical impact. According to the TIGTA testimony:
“When asked about the possible cause of the hard drive failure, the HP technician opined that heat-related failures are not seen often, and based on the information provided to him, the hard drive more than likely crashed due to an impact of some sort. However, because the HP technician did not examine the hard drive as part of his work on the laptop, it could not be determined why it crashed.”
Ridgewood NJ, Rep Scott Garrett finds him self in the cross hairs of a over hyped media attack based on unsubstantiated rumor and innuendo.
We have seen this one to many times were the main stream media template trumps the facts and continues to report a false story because it better fits their news template .
The anti Garret charge has once again been led by weak inside the beltway GOP members and the Bergen Record . Who’s publisher Stephen Borg, came to Ridgewood for a “civility forum ” in February and told the crowd , ” the whole problem is that since people have found their voice through social media they have come to so many different opinions civil discourse has fallen .Things were so much better when North Jersey Media had a monopoly on public discussion and could always dictate terms . Borg implied that elites like himself we the only ones qualified to make those decisions. Borg pointed out how this blog and its anonymous posters are the greatest enemy to not only American Democracy but to the dominance of North Jersey Media Group. While I was rather flattered that the Publisher and President, North Jersey Media Group thought this blog shook the very foundations of civil discourse and was viewed as the barbarians at the gate , I would suggest the far larger problem might be the totally bias, and slip shot reporting of his Media Empire. Borg set the tone for the evening which came down silencing critics and reasserting true elitist “we know better than you ” , so time to be quite .”
The whole thing started when Garrett refused to pay his NRCC dues because of a feud with Speaker Bohner, but has been morphed into according to unsubstantiated sources Garrett didn’t support the NRCC because “it actively recruited gay candidates and supported homosexuals in primaries,” .
By the way many in the GOP do not support the NRCC including this blog because despite a landslide win the GOP has failed to deliver on a single issue and has instead conspired to help the “Obama agenda”.
The Jersey media has run with this tripe of coarse without any effort to substantiate facts .The GOP elites in DC have been joined by the usual suspects like “Blue Jersey ” who have hired a “rent-a-mob to protest at Garrets office in Glen Rock today at 1230 at 266 Harristown Rd.
There have been at lest 20 hit pieces to date citing these unsubstantiated comments reporting them as fact , like the Mike Brown ,hands up fake controversy the facts will eventually get in the way of this witch hunt , but until then expect to hear more garbage from New Jersey media sources and more blame falling on the “mean and uncooperative anonymous bloggers” while the media has a free had to quote anonymous sources .
Jennings Column: Few Republicans Publicly Criticizing Garrett for Gay Remarks
The openly gay chair of the Passaic Republicans is putting pressure on other party leaders to denounce Rep. Scott Garrett’s alleged objections to gay candidates. John Traier said he initially gave Garrett the benefit of the doubt, but Garrett did not return his message: (Jennings/The New Jersey Herald)
JULY 26, 2015, 11:16 PM LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, JULY 26, 2015, 11:20 PM
BY HERB JACKSON
RECORD COLUMNIST |
THE RECORD
Rep. Scott Garrett’s decision to stop supporting a key Republican campaign fund did more than raise questions about his attitudes toward gay people — it highlighted an often-obscured reality about the political machinery that ties congressional power to cash.
Party leaders — for both Democrats and Republicans — know that certain committee assignments give members of Congress access to lucrative streams of contributions from industries that those committees oversee.
(CNSNews.com) – “In America we cannot have a group say, if you don’t agree with me, I will silence you and make sure you cannot operate,” Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) said on Tuesday in reference to preserving religious liberty for faith-based groups in light of the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize homosexual marriage.
“In a private institution, if you remove tax-exempt status and you remove the opportunity to have student loans and you remove the Pell grants, you’ve shut down that institution and it was a volitional act to say: you disagree with me, I will close you down,” Lankford said.
“That is something we’ve got to be able to guard against, to say, can people have religious belief?” said the senator. “That affects how they hire and what they do.”
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained documents from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that confirm that the IRS used donor lists to tax-exempt organizations to target those donors for audits. The documents also show IRS officials specifically highlighted how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may come under “high scrutiny” from the IRS. The IRS produced the records in a Freedom of Information lawsuit seeking documents about selection of individuals for audit-based application information on donor lists submitted by Tea Party and other 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organizations (Judicial Watch v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:15-cv-00220)).
A letter dated September 28, 2010, then-Democrat Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) informs then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman: “ I request that you and your agency survey major 501(c)(4), (c)(5) and (c)(6) organizations …” In reply, in a letter dated February 17, 2011, Shulman writes: “In the work plan of the Exempt Organizations Division, we announced that beginning in FY2011, we are increasing our focus on section 501(c)(4), (5) and (6) organizations.”
In 2010, after receiving Baucus’s letter, the IRS considered the issue of auditing donors to 501(c)(4) organizations, alleging that a 35 percent gift tax would be due on donations in excess of $13,000. The documents show that the IRS wanted to cross-check donor lists from 501(c)(4) organizations against gift tax filings and commence audits against taxpayers based on this information.
A gift tax on contributions to 501(c)(4)’s was considered by most to be a dead letter since the IRS had never enforced the rule after the Supreme Court ruled that such taxes violated the First Amendment. The documents show that the IRS had not enforced the gift tax since 1982.
But then, in February 2011, at least five donors of an unnamed organization were audited.
The documents show that Crossroads GPS, associated with Republican Karl Rove, was specifically referenced by IRS officials in the context of applying the gift tax. Seemingly in response to the Crossroads focus, on April 20, IRS attorney Lorraine Gardner emails a 501(c)(4) donor list to former Branch Chief in the IRS’ Office of the Chief Counsel James Hogan. Later, this information is apparently shared with IRS Estate Gift and Policy Manager Lisa Piehl while Gardner seeks “information about any of the donors.”
Emails to and from Lorraine Gardner also suggested bias against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. An IRS official (whose name is redacted) emails Gardner on May 13, 2011, a blog post responding to the IRS targeting of political and other activities of 501(c)(4), (5) and (6) organizations:
WEST DEPTFORD NJ, Town officials have adopted an ordinance that restricts protests in the hometown of New Jersey Senate President Steve “Benito”Sweeney, surprise surprise .A West Deptford committee on Wednesday prohibited picketing within 100 feet of a home and limited protests to 10 people for one hour every two weeks. Violators face fines of up to $2,000 and 90 days in jail. So much for freedom of speech .The police state ruling was voted along party lines with three Democrats pro police state in favor and two Republicans opposed the draconian infringement of rights. Sweeney of coarse a Democrat.
Recent protests by a gun rights group staged in last month outside Sweeney’s home have created acrimony between the town and protesters. Sweeney turned on his lawn sprinklers to disperse protesters. Sweeney has also been getting pressure from a Glassborro Nj group looking to push for his recall .https://www.facebook.com/events/1469404500017150/
Hans von Spakovsky / @HvonSpakovsky / Rachel S. Landsman / July 13, 2015
COMMENTARY BY
Hans von Spakovsky@HvonSpakovsky
Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and government reform—as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and manager of the think tank’s Election Law Reform Initiative.
Rachel S. Landsman
Rachel S. Landsman is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.
Obama’s Department of Justice may have been involved in the IRS scheme to target conservative non-profit organizations, according to newly-released documents obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act.
The documents reveal that Lois Lerner met with attorneys from the Public Integrity Section (including its chief) of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and a representative from the FBI in 2010 to discuss using campaign-finance laws to bring criminal charges against conservative non-profit organizations.
A memo prepared by Siri Buller, a tax law specialist who worked for Lerner, summarizing the meeting talks about the possibility of “a three-way partnership among the DOJ [Department of Justice], the FEC [Federal Election Commission], and the IRS” to “prevent prohibited activity by these [conservative] organizations.” Of course, the problem is that the activities that Lerner thought were “prohibited,” like expressing opinions about Obamacare, were not prohibited.
Emails between Justice Department and IRS employees also expose an attempt by the Justice Department to obtain unredacted versions of the documents IRS employees provided to Congress. One July 2013 email from a Justice Department employee to a lawyer for the IRS (the names have been redacted) says “If any of your clients have documents they are providing to Congress that you can (or would like to) provide to us before their testimony … we would like the unredacted documents.” It goes further, stating “I just know that some employees have assembled their own set [of documents], in which instance it is helpful to obtain them.”
Emails between IRS officials confirm that the IRS transmitted 21 disks containing 1.25 million pages of highly confidential tax information to the FBI. These pages included information from 2007-2010 regarding 113,000 tax returns of non-profit organizations.
The House Committee of Oversight and Government Reform was “astonished to learn…that these 21 disks contained confidential taxpayer information protected by federal law” that could not lawfully be turned over to the FBI without meeting very specific requirements for opening a criminal investigation of a particular taxpayer as outlined in 26 U.S.C. §6103. Those requirements were clearly not met by the FBI.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton notes “[t]hese new documents show that the Obama IRS scandal is also an Obama DOJ and FBI scandal … The FBI and Justice Department worked with Lois Lerner and the IRS to concoct some reason to put President Obama’s opponents in jail before his reelection. And this abuse resulted in the FBI’s illegally obtaining confidential taxpayer information.”
Not only did Lerner have friends in the Justice Department, it also seems she had allies in Wisconsin, where conservative non-profit groups were similarlytargeted in a secret “John Doe” investigation for publicly supporting Gov. Scott Walker’s union reforms.
Recently obtained emails show that Lerner was in contact with Kevin Kennedy, director of the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, who was one of the government officials behind the investigations of conservative organizations in Wisconsin such as the League of American Voters, Wisconsin Family Action, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and several others. Those emails show them “sharing articles on topics including greater donor disclosure,” which, as The Wall Street Journal points out, is significant “because those were the years when the IRS increased in harassment of conservative groups and Wisconsin prosecutors gathered information” that led to the John Doe “Star Chamber.”
Wisconsin Watchdog describes the state’s John Doe procedure as “a grand jury investigation, without a jury.” These investigations allowed law enforcement to conduct abusive, paramilitary-type raids on the leaders of a number of nonprofits and their families, most of which were conducted before dawn.
In one case, a 16-year-old boy was home alone very early one morning when armed law enforcement officers raided his home as if they were closing in on a dangerous drug cartel or mob operation. Though he was terrified, the officers would not allow him to call his parents.
Several other victims of these nighttime raids came forward, even though they were ordered not to speak about the investigations. The targets of these raids were not criminals—they were Wisconsin conservatives who had supported Act 10, the “Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill,” and whose reputations and livelihoods have been severely damaged as a result of these unwarranted, heavy-handed raids.
In January, a judge blocked subpoenas against the conservative targets of the John Doe investigations. In May, U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Randaordered that the investigations be shut down in their entirety because it was “unlawful” for the state to “target the plaintiffs for engaging in vigorous advocacy.”
These recent revelations suggest that the targeting of conservative non-profit organizations was a scheme that went far beyond the IRS and Lois Lerner alone. It was an effort that involved the coordination of several Obama administration executive agencies and supposedly non-partisan public servants.
With the discovery of the connection to the seemingly-unjustified, retaliatory investigations in Wisconsin, it seems Lerner’s efforts even extended beyond the federal government and into at least one state, threatening conservatives and chilling conservative speech at both the federal and state level.
In America, is it possible to have open, vigorous, no-holds-barred debate?
Is it? Is it really possible?
It’s a shame we have to even ask the question but consider the following:
– If you question the theory of climate change (formerly known as global warming till that was discredited), you’re attacked as neanderthal.
– If you disagree with the Supreme Court’s bare majority (5 to 4) ruling on gay marriage, you’re called a bigot.
– If you argue that separation of church and state was never meant to separate us from church, you’re targeted as a raving evangelical.
– If you defend the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms, you’re a threat to society; among those who “cling to their guns.”
– If you seek to have a reasonable discussion about the waves of illegal immigrants coming across our southern border, you’re termed a racist.
– If you opposed Obamacare, you are have no compassion.
– If you defend capitalism, financial success and property rights, they call you selfish and greedy.
– If you don’t want your kids to be subjected to government-sponsored sex education or a curriculum that reinvents American history, you’re accused of being unenlightened or, worse yet — guilty of parental neglect.
– If you defend states’ rights, you’re divisive. If you’re weary of radical Islamists and you’re wondering when we’ll respond in kind, you’re a war-monger. If you don’t admire European-style socialism, you’re myopic and provincial.
– If you speak up on these or similar matters, you’re likely to be branded mean or jingoistic or imbecilic.
This is what we’re dealing with. This is what “argument” has been reduced to. And it’s juvenile, self-serving, demagogic and ultimately destructive.
As a high school and collegiate debater I learned that there were at least two sides to every issue and that issues can and should be fairly and fully aired based on fact. But today we have a government, a media and a popular culture that engage in name-calling, broad-brushing, stereotyping, band-wagoning, hand-wringing, fear and intimidation. All of these are among the worst types of propaganda.
And, make no mistake about it, the biggest purveyors of these techniques can be found on the left among re-branded “progressives” (aka liberals).
They preach tolerance and understanding but they practice a near maniacal form of intolerance. In the name of compassion, they will swat you down quicker than you can say “Why?” or “Where” or “When?” or “How?”
Those are question they don’t want to deal with — questions they have no intention of answering.
We’ve reached a stage of polarization where people simply do not want to be challenged. Period.
HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas man used social media to promote his gun store, posting politically charged messages that criticized the president and promoted Second Amendment rights.
But after losing ownership of his suburban Houston store in bankruptcy, Jeremy Alcede spent nearly seven weeks in jail for refusing a federal judge’s order to share with the new owner the passwords of the business’ Facebook and Twitter accounts, which the judge had declared property.
“It’s all about silencing my voice,” said Alcede, who was released in May after turning over the information. “… Any 3-year-old can look at this and tell this is my Facebook account and not the company’s.”
Alcede’s ultimately failed stand charts new territory in awarding property in bankruptcy proceedings and points to the growing importance of social media accounts as business assets. Legal experts say it also provides a lesson for all business owners who are active on social media.
“If your business is something you feel very passionately about, it can be hard to separate those things,” said Benjamin Stewart, a Dallas-based bankruptcy lawyer. “The moral for people is you have to keep your personal life separate from your business life.”
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