Conservative intolerance toward inconvenient free speech

I've mentioned here several times that before the 2016 election I tried to engaged with seven big conservative politics websites. All seven wound up blocking me, two of which did not allow me to make even one unblocked comment. I did that to try to open communications with conservatives, Trump supporters and Republicans generally. From what I can tell, the effort appeared to be about 98% failure.

Given how dire and fragile our political and social situation is, making another attempt to reach conservatives makes sense, even if the effort is doomed to fail. What I am finding is that at least some big conservative politics sites are now more explicitly intolerant of non-conservative commentary, even if it is respectful and fact-based. 

Here's an example. The is a big conservative politics site (subreddit) at reddit called r/Conservative. The site shows it has 898,000 members and about 3,500 online at the moment. I checked its commenting rules. Here are the relevant ones, copied verbatim:

We have seven rules here - and they're easy to follow so let's review:

1 - Be civil, follow any flair guidelines.

This one is pretty easy... try and be nice to people. If you're getting some of that famous Liberal snark just message the moderators and let them know what's going on so we can help. And if a post says, "Conservatives Only" and you're not a Conservative don't comment there (your comment won't be visible anyway unless you have flair). if you want flair click here to learn about it.

It's not civil to say someone has a "punchable face" or we need to have another civil war. So don't be that person because we will find you and take action for it.

From the flair rules page:

To display your User Flair, you must also have the “☑️ Show my flair on this subreddit” box checked on the sidebar.

The only thing having User Flair does is grant you the ability to comment in posts marked with the submission flair "Flaired Users Only". All the other posts not flaired as such are open for you to comment in.

This is designed so that a couple posts per day are almost guaranteed to have conversation which is not hijacked by leftists and other non-conservatives.

Who Gets Flair?

Only mods can assign User Flair, and User Flair is only for conservatives. Once you have a solid history of comments in /r/Conservative, and have been commenting in the subreddit for at least two weeks, that is the right time to request flair via the link at the bottom of this page.

Please understand that this is for conservatives. We do our best to vet you based on your post history on reddit. You will need some post history to qualify - ideally within the subreddit itself. If you do not have a conservative leaning post history you will likely be asked to re-apply when you do.

You may choose your own flair but mods reserve the ability to reject the text. The flair must be conservative or at least generally right wing in nature. As our mission statement is to provide a place for conservatives to speak to other conservatives - we do not grant flair to those who are not at least reasonably close to that world view.

We do give variants on some of the above: "Libertarian Conservative" and "Moderate Conservative" are acceptable, for example.

We're looking for people who have been commenting for at least two weeks with verified history here in our subreddit. Ideally, we want you to average a couple comments per week, as well. If this is your first comment in /r/conservative, you have not met the minimum requirements to get flair.

7 - Do not violate the Mission Statement

We have a mission statement and we take it very seriously. This is what guides our subreddit and determines who and what belongs here:

We provide a place on Reddit for conservatives, both fiscal and social, to read and discuss political and cultural issues from a distinctly conservative point of view.

For our purpose behind the mission statement, please read Why We Have a Mission Statement.

Our Mission Statement

We provide a place on Reddit for conservatives, both fiscal and social, to read and discuss political and cultural issues from a distinctly conservative point of view.

Why Does /r/Conservative Have Its Mission Statement

The mission statement of this sub exists solely due to the hordes of leftists trying to silence this sub. If they could engage in civil discussion without resorting to personal attacks, dogpile downvotes, and endless parroting of hackneyed talking points, then we wouldn't need to ban them.

In fact, conservative ideas thrive when contrasted with the vapid superficiality, pseudo intellectualism, and creepy totalitarianism of leftism.

-/u/philosoguido - Moderator January 21, 2018

 

So, there you have it. A conservative politics site with almost 900K members that explicitly says liberals (i) want to shut r/Conservative conversation down, by making personal attacks, dogpiling downvotes[1] and whatever other bad things all liberals always do (ii) don't engage in civil discussion, (iii) are vapid and superficial, and (iv) make only hackneyed talking points. Liberals and presumably moderates need to be banned for these horrors.

I will keep civilly commenting at r/Conservative based on facts and logic until they ban me. I imagine it won't take long. My first comment there is here. It is the beginning of my latest little experiment in how mainstream conservatism deals with inconvenient free speech.

Questions: 

1. Are sites like r/Conservative unable to deal with civil, but inconvenient facts and logic, or am I just another one of those uncivilized, superficial, vapid, brainwashed liberal blowhards who makes only hackneyed talking points and is rude to conservatives? (I suspect most conservative really do see me as rude, uncivil, ignorant and stupid-brainwashed)

2. Are sites like r/Conservative echo chambers or places for unfettered, honest discussion?

Footnote: 

1. The dogpiling of downvotes might have been what flagged me to the two conservative sites that would not let me post even one comment under my Germaine II Disqus account. People on the other Disqus sites constantly downvoted most of my comments, So by the time I got to the last two sites on my list, I was already persona non grata by virtue of a having buttload of downvotes. 

FWIW, I dislike downvoting and rarely do it. I dislike it here. 

From the fascism and crackpot files: GOP-style election integrity, etc.

Let the brainwashed cool off first, then maybe they can vote

Newsweek writes: 

If red states and blue states were to "divorce" each other, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called it possible that people who move from a Democratic state to a Republican state would be barred from voting for a temporary "cooling off" period.

California's seen an influx in people moving out of the state and many have opted to go to Texas and Florida, where residents can get more bang for their buck. However, some, including Greene, have complained that those who are leaving California are bringing their political beliefs with them and potentially shifting the political landscape.

On Wednesday, the Georgia congresswoman posted on Twitter that "brainwashed people" who move from California and New York need a "cooling-off period." Her comment was in response to a Twitter user who wrote he supports discriminating against Democratic transplants, including restricting their ability to vote for a period of time. He also wrote that they should have to "pay a tax for their sins." 

"After Democrat voters and big donors ruin a state like California, you would think it wise to stop them from doing it to another great state like Florida," Greene tweeted.

What can one say in the face of Marjorie's style of . . . . "excellence"? At least she is honest about her fascism and hate. One can only wonder about how many other Republicans, elites and rank and file, see the Democrats as brainwashed and their right to vote as optional. 40%? 70%? Who knows?

Ex-president accuses the House 1/6 investigation committee of bad intent 

Axios writes in an article, Trump accuses Jan. 6 panel of "seeking evidence of criminal activity":

Former President Trump's legal team on Wednesday accused the House committee investigating the Capitol riot of seeking to uncover evidence that would support a criminal referral against him.

The select committee is acting as “an inquisitorial tribunal seeking evidence of criminal activity,” Trump lawyer Jesse R. Binnall wrote in the brief, adding that such action is “outside of any of Congress’s legislative powers.”

“The Washington Post has confirmed what was already apparent — the Committee is indeed seeking any excuse to refer a political rival for criminal charges, and they are using this investigation to do so," Binnall added.

By gosh, maybe Trump has a point. The House committee just might be seeking evidence of criminal activity related to his 1/6 coup attempt. But, he's really got nothing to worry about. Neither Biden nor Attorney General Garland have any interest in vindicating the rule of law against Republican politicians or elites for their crimes, corruption, insurrection, treason, shootings or anything else. They will blow off any House criminal referral just like Trump blew off concerns about ethics, rationality, truth and the rule of law during his time in office.

Two historians got their shorts in a twist -- we need to be like Antifa

The courier journal, a Kentucky newspaper writes in an opinion piece, 
Two Kentucky historians agree the GOP is steering the US straight toward authoritarianism:

Two Kentucky historians agree it’s past time for Democrats to start warning voters — loudly, clearly and unceasingly — where Donald Trump and his truest true believers in the GOP are steering the country: Straight toward white supremacy and authoritarianism.

“This is real, this is serious and it’s frightening,” said Brian Clardy, a Murray State University history professor. “We must build a democratic resistance that amounts to a counter-fascist coup — In short, we must all become ‘antifa,’ or antifascists,” said John Hennen, a Morehead State University history professor emeritus.

Clardy said Trump largely won on a white backlash triggered by Barack Obama’s election. Clardy was in the crowd when our first African American president was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2009. 

“While we’re celebrating here in Washington, folks back home are seething,” he said to a woman standing near him. He meant white folks.

Hennen said Trumpism has deep roots. “The eruption of violent white nationalist authoritarianism in our country is the shocking manifestation of less noisy currents of fascist politics which have evolved for decades.”

At least, I'm not alone in seeing Republican Party fascism as a dire, imminent threat to democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. More people are slowly waking up. Whether the awakening is too little and/or too late is hard to tell. Elections in 2022 and 2024 ought to shed some light on the state of what's left of American democracy, elections, the rule of law, civil liberties and social cohesion.

I wondered how much ill-will and anger Obama's election created in the GOP. I suspected it was a lot. Apparently at least some others see it about that way too. The night Obama was elected in 2008 and walked out on the stage in Chicago, all I could think was 'don't shoot him', 'don't shoot him', 'don't shoot him.' 

Toothless federal government ethics

The New York Times writes:

As House ethics investigators were examining four cases this fall detailing a sweeping array of improper financial conduct by lawmakers, they ran into an obstacle: Two of the lawmakers under scrutiny refused to meet with them or provide documents.

The investigators were not too surprised. Over the past decade, fewer and fewer House members have been willing to cooperate with congressional investigations, a development that ethics experts warn could reduce accountability for misdeeds and erode trust in the institution of Congress.

Omar Ashmawy, the staff director of the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent entity that reviews allegations against House members and refers misconduct cases to the House Ethics Committee, acknowledged the growing resistance to his office’s work, but said he was undeterred: “It has never prevented us from being able to gather the facts and determine what happened and whether or not the subject was culpable.”

Still, the trend is unmistakable.

In 2009 and 2010 — the first Congress scrutinized by the Office of Congressional Ethics, which was created in 2008 — three lawmakers refused to cooperate with the office’s 68 investigations, a noncooperation rate of just 4 percent.

This year, six out of 14 House lawmakers under investigation have refused to participate — a rate of 43 percent, the highest on record.  

There is no requirement that lawmakers cooperate with the Office of Congressional Ethics, but legislators who do so often are able to resolve what had appeared to be violations of ethics rules.

The fact that many will no longer even meet with ethics investigators reflects a troubling trend in American politics in which improper behavior is no longer a political liability, ethics experts say.

Maybe ethics investigators can gather facts to determine what happened as is claimed, or maybe they can't. How can they know what is being withheld from them? Given the open hostility of both Democrats and Republicans to ethical concerns, it seems reasonable to think that Congress is becoming increasingly corrupt and autocratic. 

One outside ethics expert commented: “What people used to think was a career-ending mistake has been proven to not be a career-ending mistake. Many people have noticed a shift in ethical norms. It used to be the case that when a member violated the ethics rules, if not a fine, there would be a fairly stiff political price to pay. I worry that has gone away.”

Indeed, concern for ethics has gone away. That, along with unwarranted opacity, is one of the key hallmarks of a corrupt government.

Should we require an intelligence test to vote?

 There are multiple links on Google search (or whatever your search engine is) that asks the question: Should passing an intelligence or IQ test be required to vote? 

Ideally not. But when the truly ignorant, bigoted, and ill-informed can vote, what does that say about our ability to vote wisely?

Consider: The senior, who is barely able to still contemplate the world around him or her, being coerced by their kids to vote a certain way. 

Consider: A uneducated poor rural family, who have limited access to the internet or news other than Fox.

Consider: A tribe that gets told how to vote by their local leader, or an urban slum resident who lacks a highschool education but is "taught" how to vote by his or her local activist.

Consider: The bigot, who has made no bones about his or her feelings about those different from themselves.

I have read opinions both in favor of and against this idea. Because ONCE you start down this slippery slope, who ELSE will be denied a vote? Already moves are under way to make voting harder for minorities or those without "proper" IDs. 

Now imagine asking people to be informed or intelligent to vote. BUT AGAIN, why not? We need to know how to drive to get a driver's license, right? Yeah but, we can also be as dumb as doorknobs to have kids and no one can say different. Same, apparently, for voting.

SO the question remains: Should we require that voters at least have some level of knowledge, learning, and intelligence to vote?

Random stuff from the internet

There is just so much going on. 

Satan returns for Christmas to the capitol building

In the Illinois capitol building, The Satanic Temple out up its annual Christmas display with its God Baphomet shown as a baby in a basket. Baphomet is the goat headed thing with a human body and hoofs. Grumpy Catholics were there protesting its presence. 

Catholics protesting the baby Baphomet

Ban blasphemy, gol' darn it!

Insulting the president during a Christmas good will phone call

In Oregon, a man who joined a public phone call with Biden closed by insulting the president. The man, southern Oregon parent, 35-year-old Jared Schmeck, ended his initially polite conversation with, “Merry Christmas and let’s go, Brandon.” The schmuck Schmeck lied when denied he was a Trump supporter and complained that he was being attacked online, commenting "now I am being attacked for utilizing my freedom of speech." After the call, he wore a MAGA hat to an interview with the toxic traitor Steve Bannon. CNN comments: "Aww, poor "victim" Schmeck. Apparently, he thinks he should be able to tell Biden to basically go f**k himself while on a family friendly holiday call, but no one should be able to take issue with his actions."

One has just gotta love that freedom of speech thingie. And liars with their lies.

Democrats really did steal the election!

In a novel rationale to explain why Trump lost the 2020 election, the always delightfully crackpot Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), adduced a novel explanation grounded in evil, underhanded deeds. Here's what the Dems did to win, and (microaggression alert) this isn't for the faint of heart: They went out and legally convinced some voters to vote for Biden. The horror . . . the horror . . . . how could they sink so low? 

The Independent comments on this catastrophe: 

Kentucky senator Rand Paul was mocked on social media after he accused Democrats of “stealing elections” legally by convincing potential voters to support them.

Sharing an article from The American Conservative on how “Mark Zuckerberg’s millions and the Centre for Technology and Civic Life turned Wisconsin blue in 2020,” Mr Paul wrote: “How to steal an election.”

He then cited a paragraph from the report that suggested that Democrats planned to seed “an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results”.

My God (Baphomet), what is this country coming to?

I don't know what I am talking about, but it is

my right to talk, blah, blah, blah! 

Yup, the Republican leadership still blithers about the election

Making elections have integrity again

Reuters reports that the new laws in Georgia are being used to purge Black Democrats from county election boards. Reuters writes:

Now a faction of three white Republicans controlled the board – thanks to a bill passed by the Republican-led Georgia legislature earlier this year. The Spalding board’s new chairman has endorsed former president Donald Trump’s false stolen-election claims on social media.

The panel in Spalding, a rural patch south of Atlanta, is one of six county boards that Republicans have quietly reorganized in recent months through similar county-specific state legislation. The changes expanded the party’s power over choosing members of local election boards ahead of the crucial midterm Congressional elections in November 2022. 

"What we want to make sure is that we have election integrity,” said Butch Miller, the No. 2 Republican in the Georgia Senate, a leading advocate for Senate Bill 202 and a sponsor of the bill to reconstitute the Lincoln County election board.

In five of the Georgia counties that restructured election boards - Troup, Morgan, Pickens, Stephens and Lincoln - the legislature shifted the power to appoint some or all election board members to local county commissions, all of which are currently controlled by Republicans.

By golly, we're gonna get so much election integrity in 2022 and 2024 that it will slop over the top of the bottle and spill over into the swamp in Washington. That will cause all the swamp creatures to prodigiously reproduce. No wait. That's not right. The swamp creatures will go away. That's it -- they'll go away.

Republicans didn't even need the 1/6 insurrection

Republicans in congress were ready to commit the coup without street violence

The (medium credibility) Baily Beast writes:

A former Trump White House official says he and right-wing provocateur Steve Bannon were actually behind the last-ditch coordinated effort by rogue Republicans in Congress to halt certification of the 2020 election results and keep President Donald Trump in power earlier this year, in a plan dubbed the “Green Bay Sweep.”

In his recently published memoir, Peter Navarro, then-President Donald Trump’s trade adviser, details how he stayed in close contact with Bannon as they put the Green Bay Sweep in motion with help from members of Congress loyal to the cause.

But in an interview last week with The Daily Beast, Navarro shed additional light on his role in the operation and their coordination with politicians like Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX).

“We spent a lot of time lining up over 100 congressmen, including some senators. It started out perfectly. At 1 p.m., Gosar and Cruz did exactly what was expected of them,” Navarro told The Daily Beast. “It was a perfect plan. And it all predicated on peace and calm on Capitol Hill. We didn’t even need any protestors, because we had over 100 congressmen committed to it.”  

Staffers for Cruz and Gosar did not respond to requests for comment. (Well, duh! What a shocker!)

I'll just assume the medium credibility Daily Beast (DB) isn't just making this stuff up. Some of it is fact checkable. Of course regarding the interview, Navarro can now just deny that he said what the DB says he said. He would do that if he was told to say he didn't say those things because it just looks soooo darn bad for Republicans. Well, probably to at least some Republicans based on their "don't play into their hands" talking point. 

Caveat: This brings up a common problem in modern day politics. Here, we've got the medium credibility news source DB talking about a rabid, no credibility Republican Trump supporter. So, even if Navarro changes his mind and denies all of it, the DB still gets the benefit of the doubt. Why would Navarro makes up lies like that to the DB -- to trap the DB or make it look bad? 

But of course, minds will differ on this. This is why I prefer and usually use high credibility sources over lower or no credibility sources. 

A political propaganda organization vs. press lawsuit

Project Veritas: Toxic conspiracy theories, failed fact checks

MBFC: Low Credibility, questionable source

The radical right political group Project Veritas (PV) is suing the New York Times claiming the newspaper misused information it got from PV in discovery documents in a defamation lawsuit.[1] The judge held in favor of PV and the NYT is appealing. The crux of the dispute seems to be whether the NYT misused information from the original lawsuit as PV claims, or whether the information was obtained by standard independent journalistic investigation as the NYT claims. The NYT Editorial Board writes on the serious danger to the press and free reporting this court decision could have if it is upheld. 

If this winds up in the US Supreme Court, it might be a basis to significantly limit press freedom. This dispute relates to the concept of prior restraint, where governments, politicians and special interests try to prevent a news story from being published. One source defines prior restraint like this: judicial suppression of material that would be published or broadcast, on the grounds that it is libelous or harmful. In US law, the First Amendment severely limits the ability of the government to do this.

The Editorial Board writes:

Half a century ago, the Supreme Court settled the matter of when a court can stop a newspaper from publishing. In 1971, the Nixon administration attempted to block The Times and The Washington Post from publishing classified Defense Department documents detailing the history of the Vietnam War — the so-called Pentagon Papers. Faced with an asserted threat to the nation’s security, the Supreme Court sided with the newspapers. “Without an informed and free press, there cannot be an enlightened people,” Justice Potter Stewart wrote in a concurring opinion.

That sentiment reflects one of the oldest and most enduring principles in our legal system: The government may not tell the press what it can and cannot publish. This principle long predates the Constitution, but so there would be no mistake, the nation’s founders included a safeguard in the Bill of Rights anyway. The First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

This is why virtually every official attempt to bar speech or news reporting in advance, known as a prior restraint, gets struck down. “Any system of prior restraints of expression comes to this court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity,” the Supreme Court said in a 1963 case. Such restraints are “the very prototype of the greatest threat to First Amendment values,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a generation later.

On Friday, however, a New York trial court judge broke from that precedent when he issued an order blocking The Times from publishing or even reporting further on information it had obtained related to Project Veritas, the conservative sting group that traffics in hidden cameras and fake identities to target liberal politicians and interest groups, as well as traditional news outlets.

The group’s lawyers also argue that the memos are protected by attorney-client privilege and that The Times was under an ethical obligation to return them to Project Veritas, rather than publish them. This is not how journalism works. The Times, like any other news organization, makes ethical judgments daily about whether to disclose secret information from governments, corporations and others in the news. But the First Amendment is meant to leave those ethical decisions to journalists, not to courts. The only potential exception is information so sensitive — say, planned troop movements during a war — that its publication could pose a grave threat to American lives or national security.

Project Veritas’s legal memos are not a matter of national security. In fact, but for its ongoing libel suit, the group would have no claim against The Times at all. The memos at issue have nothing to do with that suit and did not come to The Times through the discovery process. Still, Project Veritas is arguing that their publication must be prohibited because the memos contain confidential information that is relevant to the group’s litigation strategy.

It’s an absurd argument and a deeply threatening one to a free press. Consider the consequences: News organizations could be routinely blocked from reporting information about a person or company simply because the subject of that reporting decided the information might one day be used in litigation. More alarming is the prospect that reporters could be barred even from asking questions of sources, lest someone say something that turns out to be privileged. This isn’t a speculative fear; in his earlier order, Justice Wood barred The Times from reporting about anything covered by Project Veritas’s attorney-client privilege. In Friday’s decision, he ordered The Times to destroy any and all copies of the memos that it had obtained, and barred it from reporting on the substance of those memos. The press is free to report on matters of public concern, he wrote, but memos from attorneys to their clients don’t clear that bar.

This is a breathtaking rationale: Justice Wood has taken it upon himself to decide what The Times can and cannot report on. That’s not how the First Amendment is supposed to work.

The order, a highly unusual and astonishingly broad injunction against a news organization, was issued by Justice Charles D. Wood of the State Supreme Court. He wrote that The Times’s decision to publish excerpts from memos written by Project Veritas’s lawyers “cries out for court intervention to protect the integrity of the judicial process.” This ruling follows a similar directive Justice Wood issued last month in response to a story The Times published that quoted from the memos. The Times plans to appeal this latest ruling.

In requesting the order from Justice Wood, Project Veritas’s lawyers acknowledged that prior restraints on publication are rare, but argued that their case fits a narrow exception the law recognizes for documents that may be used in the course of ongoing litigation. This exception recognizes that because parties are forced by the court to disclose materials, courts should have the power to supervise how such forced disclosures are used by the other party. The litigation here is a libel suit Project Veritas filed against The Times in 2020, for its articles on a video the group produced about what it claimed was rampant voter fraud in Minnesota. The video was “probably part of a coordinated disinformation effort,” The Times reported, citing an analysis[2] by researchers at Stanford University and the University of Washington.

Journalism, like democracy, thrives in an environment of transparency and freedom. No court should be able to tell The New York Times or any other news organization — or, for that matter, Project Veritas — how to conduct its reporting. Otherwise, it would provide an incentive for any reporter’s subjects to file frivolous libel suits as a means of controlling news coverage about them. More to the point, it would subvert the values embodied by the First Amendment and hobble the functioning of the free press on which a self-governing republic depends. (emphasis added)

It is not clear to me how likely the court order blocking the NYT is to stand on appeal. If it does stand, it is not clear what the final outcome will be and how much damage to press freedom there might be. That the NYT has raised the profile of this case like this seems to indicate that the paper is really frightened at how this might turn out.

Footnote: 

1. The article that PV originally sued the NYT over appears to have been this one, which reads in part:

A deceptive video released on Sunday by the conservative activist James O’Keefe, which claimed through unidentified sources and with no verifiable evidence that Representative Ilhan Omar’s campaign had collected ballots illegally, was probably part of a coordinated disinformation effort, according to researchers at Stanford University and the University of Washington.

Mr. O’Keefe and his group, Project Veritas, appear to have made an abrupt decision to release the video sooner than planned after The New York Times published a sweeping investigation of President Trump’s taxes, the researchers said. They also noted that the timing and metadata of a Twitter post in which Mr. Trump’s son shared the video suggested that he might have known about it in advance.

2. The analysis the NYT relied on includes this about the 2020 election:

Sept. 29, 2020

Contributors:
Isabella Garcia-Camargo, Alex Stamos and Elena Cryst, Stanford Internet Observatory
Joe Bak-Coleman, Kate Starbird and Joey Schafer University of Washington Center for an Informed Public

On Sunday night, a right-wing activist group, Project Veritas, released a video alleging illegal ballot harvesting in Minnesota. The video made several falsifiable claims that have either been debunked by subsequent reporting or are without any factual support. As the video calls into question the integrity of the election using misleading or inaccurate information, we determined this video to be a form of election disinformation. While we have reported our findings to the relevant online platforms, this video stands as an interesting example of what a domestic, coordinated elite disinformation campaign looks like in the United States. This post will explore the timeline of how the ideas in this video were initially seeded and then aggressively spread.