Category: ideological culture

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

Snail-mail Your Contribution

Visa, Mastercard, David Horowitz, conservatives, censorship

In the dystopian world of the future, all financial transactions will be made by credit card. In this dark world, the people who run credit-card firms must be appeased. If they dislike what you’re doing, they will have the power to prevent you from receiving financial support for your work — however normal and legal that work may be.

And whom will such financial institutions be, in turn, appeasing?

Politicians.

The politicians won’t have to pass a law to get firms to do their bidding. They need merely grumble ominously.

Perhaps the politicians will cooperate with ideological organizations bearing ironically unrevealing names like Media Matters and Southern Poverty Law Center, dedicated to shutting down anybody they disagree with.

Is that future far away? No.

Here is the situation. Since cash and checks are still very legal, if you wish to support the work of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, you can mail a check. But as of this writing,* you can’t send the Center a payment online, because Visa and MasterCard have thwarted the Center’s ability to accept donations that way.

Why?

Because the SPLC has dubbed the Center a “hate group.”

David Horowitz told Breitbart News that regarding “Tech heads” as the main bad guys here is misguided: “They have been threatened by Senator Mark Warner and other Democrats if they don’t censor conservatives.”

When politicians start bullying, we are no longer talking about voluntary market transactions, or voluntarily abstaining from same. We are talking about a terrible future . . . that is already arriving.**

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* After this installment of Common Sense was sent to our webmaster, it was reported on The Daily Wire that “Credit Card Companies Restore Donations To Conservative Group After Backlash” (August 27, 2018).

** And if it takes a protest campaign to reinstate every deplatformed individual or organization, it is obvious that no great victory of principle has been won in the current reversal. In David Horowitz’s words, the battle is “very much far from over.”

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Categories
ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

No. No. No. No.

Chuck Todd, Meet the Press, right wing, left wing, propaganda, myth, bias, MSM

“Look, I think one of the best things going in Donald Trump’s favor — we know this — is the mainstream media,” David Brody, the Christian Broadcasting Network’s White House correspondent, told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd yesterday. 

“I hate to say it. I know I’m sitting on a Meet the Press roundtable, but the truth of the matter is 62 percent think the media is biased,” added Brody. “So, in other words, if you look at the approval ratings of Donald Trump versus the approval rating of the media —” 

“The conservative echo chamber created that environment,” interjected Mr. Todd. “It’s not — no. No. No. No. It has been a tactic and a tool of the Roger Ailes created echo chamber.”

“So, let’s not pretend it’s not anything other than that,” Todd insisted. (So, it IS something other than that?)

“Well, hang on,” Brody responded. “Yes and no. Because remember, the independents are part of Donald Trump’s base. . . . [T]hose Independents also distrust media. This is not just Republicans. It is many Americans across —”

“Oh, no. No. No. I take your point,” Todd again interrupted. “I’m just saying it was a creation — it was a campaign tactic. It’s not based in much fact.”

Hmmm. Todd does not dispute Brody’s assertion that a supermajority of the country sees bias in the Fourth Estate. Nor does he deny that in a battle between Trump and the so-called mainstream media, the approval-rating-challenged president bests the media most days.

Instead, the former Democratic Party campaign staffer-turned-journalist smugly maintains that one cable TV channel, talk radio and a spate of conservative websites have totally invented a fantasy of an anti-conservative bias where absolutely none exists.

Meet the press bias.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture too much government

Townhall: Free-Range Kids vs. Deranged Adults

There is something peculiarly anti-life as well as anti-liberty about today’s attitudes towards children — as you can read at Townhall.com.

But for more background, please consider:

This column will be available on this site on Tuesday. You can also download a PDF of this column to share easily with your friends and frenemies.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture Popular too much government

Who Benefits From Our Fears?

fear, children, dog walking, freedom, security, control

“Think of the children!”

I have daughters. And neighbors, nephews, nieces, cousins, friends with children. And friends who used to be children. But when the command to “think of the children” is screamed out by freaked-out paranoiacs demanding more laws, more punishments, more prison time, more surveillance — and consequently less freedom — I try to think responsibly.

As did one Corey Widen, when she “let her 8-year-old do the most normal, cheerful thing in the world — walk the dog around the block.” Lenore Skenazy tells the tale in Reason. “After the girl returned home, the doorbell rang. It was the police.”

Someone in Widen’s Wilmette, Illinois, community had seen the child and dog walking around “unsupervised” and called 911.

The thing, there was no lack of supervision, here. The child was supervising the dog.

What could be more natural?

The neighbor could have walked outside and smiled at the kid and talked about the dog and, in general, been a good neighbor.

Think of it as a peaceful order of supervision.

Instead: in came the police.

Then, after the police let it go, the Department of Children and Family Services stepped in to “investigate.”

Because nothing says DANGER more than a kid walking a dog.

Skenazy notes that this attitude is commonly justified by crimes against kids. And yet, Ms. Skenazy notes, crime in Wilmette has gone down dramatically over the years. As it has most elsewhere.

The culture has become more paranoid.

Who is served by this?

Authoritarians. Haters of freedom. Demagogues.

Certainly not kids, for kids cloistered from simple responsibilities cannot grow up to take on real responsibilities.

Think of the . . .  future adults.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
education and schooling ideological culture moral hazard responsibility too much government

An Expert Explains Failure

ladder, education, success, poverty, racism, schools, charter

The failures of the public high schools in the District of Columbia go on an on. It is quite a scandal, as I explained this weekend at Townhall.

And yet some “charter schools that serve large populations of children from low-income families,” notes the Washington Post, after providing much detail about the massive failures, “recorded big increases in scores.”

What hint about improving education does that fact give?

Well, Kevin Welner, a professor who heads the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, has an interesting thought: “People want to read into these test scores lessons about what the schools are doing. But these scores, even the growth scores, depend a great deal on students’ opportunities to learn outside of school. If we address the poverty and racism, then we will see these test scores increase.”

Hmmm. Let’s review: (a) the problem is at home and (b) it cannot be overcome by the schools. Moreover, the esteemed professor perceives the cause of these detrimental home environments to be “racism and poverty.” 

Once upon a time, public education was proclaimed to be the great equalizer, allowing the disadvantaged to climb the economic ladder, and, if not wipe out poverty completely, to certainly dramatically reduce it. 

Now, we discover from a certified education expert that we had it backwards.

So maybe it is time to chuck the whole experiment and just try to educate kids.

Not “save” them, or society.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
folly ideological culture too much government

Not So Great . . . Again

pie in the sky, America, great, Cuomo, Trump, government, fantasy, utopia

“We’re not going to make America great again,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo proclaimed at a bill-signing ceremony this week. And then, further poking the president, the governor added, to gasps from the audience: “It was never that great.”

America — for all its faults, failings, and wrongdoings — has been a tremendous force for good, for freedom. At the same time, talking about how great we are really seems . . . what’s the word? Boastful.

“We have not reached greatness,” Cuomo went on to clarify. “We will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged. We will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping against women, 51 percent of our population, is gone and every woman’s full potential is realized and unleashed and every woman is making her full contribution.”

This is pie-in-the-sky stuff. Utopianism. The state government of New York is not going to succeed — or even actually try — to “engage” every citizen “fully.” Neither will the Empire State help “every” female New Yorker to self-actualize . . . while magically wiping out “stereotyping.”

When very real governments fixate on fantasy, they can only fail. Achievable responsibilities — like fixing roads, improving schools, enforcing laws — fall by the wayside. 

Both President Trump and Governor Cuomo would do well to concern themselves with running the government. Leave the greatness to the rest of us.

Oh, and the rest of the story? 

“I’m Andrew Cuomo, and I work for you,” the governor said in a 2010 video announcing his entry into the gubernatorial race. 

“Together,” he went on to declare, “we can make New York great again.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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