The social justice warrior’s gain is the civil libertarian’s loss. The ACLU still engages in the fight for civil liberty, especially in opposition to the post-9/11 security state and as part of the anti-Trump ‘resistance’. But the 21st-century ACLU has chosen its battles with a progressive sensibility that devalues free speech and due process for all. Most notably, it has shied away from confronting campus-censorship crusades and the threat of an ideology that equates allegedly hateful speech with discriminatory action, subordinating the right to speak to the imagined rights of particular listeners to suppress what offends them.
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The Guardian‘s Owen Jones asked the following question on Twitter:
October 4th, 2017 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The #SaveYourUber petition has, as of 10:45 pm in London, attracted 600,000+ names, and one of them is mine. Of course the best way to save Uber is to get rid of Sadiq Khan and make the issue politically radioactive. September 23rd, 2017 | 52 comments - (Comments are closed)
Commenting on the case, Sue Hemming, head of the CPS’s special crime and counterterrorism division, said: ‘People should not assume they can hide on social media when stirring up hatred and violence.’ Evidently, they cannot. But to what end? What is the benefit to society of banning the expression of bad and hateful ideas? Surely we want these ideas out in the open so that we can combat them with better ideas and better arguments. Censorship won’t change anyone’s mind. September 17th, 2017 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)
University is not a training centre to teach young people ‘correct’ ideas – that would be an indoctrination camp, not a university. Richardson understands that academics have a duty to challenge conventional wisdom. You might say that academics have a duty to offend, and to make their students intellectually uncomfortable. It’s only through challenging what we believe that ideas change and knowledge progresses. September 16th, 2017 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Observed in a certain invitation-only chat room a few weeks ago: Person 1: “So who’s going to Pride march tomorrow?” Person 2: “Yeah probably. Good place to pick up chicks LOL” Samizdatista: “Nah.” Person 1: “I though you were some kinda libertarian or something.” Samizdatista: “Or something.” Person 1: “LOL. You don’t like gays?” Samizdatista: “I could not care less who people fuck. None of my business.” Person 1: “Then why not support people’s rights?” Samizdatista: “Being homosexual not illegal in western world, so what rights you talking about?” Person 1: “Right not to be discriminated against by people.” Samizdatista: “I am great supporter right to free association, that’s something worth marching for as various laws deny that right.” Person 1: “So you’re ok with discrimination?” Samizdatista: “By state? Hell no. By private people and companies that don’t take state money? That is what free association means.” Person 1: “How can anyone support discrimination?” Samizdatista: “I fully support your right to /block me, what with me being all in for free association. Please.” Person 1: “Why not go just to show your support?” Samizdatista: “I do not condemn homosexuals for doing what they legally do, because I could not care less who people fuck. I also do not express support for homosexuals for doing what they legally do, because I could not care less who people fuck.” Person 1: “Everyone I know’s going.” Person 2: “Grammar crime detected! Report for re-education!” Person 1: “What?” Person 2: “Hardly anyone I know is going. Target rich environment for babes.” Person 1: “It says a lot about someone if they stay away.” Samizdatista: “In my case it says I could not care less about who other people fuck. With that in mind, if you decide to go fuck yourself, I am totally ok with that too.” Person 2: “This thread will not end well.” September 15th, 2017 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
The author describes his characters as a social justice warrior and a neo-Nazi. His point is that authoritarians end up wanting similar things whatever their excuses.
Both agree that
August 18th, 2017 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
British prime minister Theresa May has boasted that she is ‘working with social-media companies to halt the spread of extremist material and hateful propaganda that is warping young minds’. She also wants corporations to ‘do more’. Indeed, the leaders of the US, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Canada have, along with a host of social-media companies, agreed to measures to censor the web. And German chancellor Angela Merkel is way ahead of the curve. In 2015, Merkel notoriously prevailed upon Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to do his bit and take down posts critical of her controversial immigration policy. Apple’s craven obedience to Beijing’s autocratic demands typifies the general stance of the West. From the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 to Beijing’s abduction of Hong Kong booksellers today, Stalinist repression in China has never really sparked uproar among Western leaders. Yes, British foreign secretary Boris Johnson greeted the 20th anniversary of Chinese rule over Hong Kong with the limp hope that it would ‘make further progress towards a more democratic and accountable system of government’. But Western IT firms and politicians can hardly pose as guardians of internet freedom. August 3rd, 2017 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
British leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn does not like hunting. He is not happy that the owner of the football team he supports is financially involved with a TV channel that shows programmes about hunting.
He did not add that all this was simply his opinion, that there is room for reasoned argument about the ethics of humans killing animals, that any state sanctions against humans killing animals amounted to favouring violence against humans over violence against animals, or that making programmes about a legal activity is a matter of freedom with which the state should not interfere. Instead he added, “there should be no place on television or anywhere else for it.” August 1st, 2017 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Yesterday I said the British police had hit rock bottom and started to drill. Last night they shipped in some dynamite: July 26th, 2017 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
July 25th, 2017 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
As I pointed out two decades ago, the Serious Fraud Office’s primary weapons, common law conspiracy to defraud, and the second limb of false accounting, if construed as the courts appear to understand them and universally applied would make all commerce impossible. It is an early example of the modern trend in antijurisprudence whereby everything is illegal just in case and ‘the proper authorities’ are trusted to pick on Bad People. – Guy Herbert July 5th, 2017 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
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