I’m tempted to modify this message, just a bit, by suggesting that this is always the choice:
We’re getting strong reminders, lately, that a free society with mutual respect for rights is vulnerable to those who have no such respect and don’t much like freedom. Among the most-stark examples I’ve seen is this incident, in which pro-Hamas Columbia activists encircle and bodily remove a student who objected to their destroying a campus building:
Two observations are glaring, here. The first is that the activists are behaving as if they are a police force authorized to determine who has a right to stand where and take organized action to control the situation. The second is that they completely dehumanize their target. He’s just an obstacle to remove, not a human being.
In her post, Marina Medvin implies an expectation that he’ll have some compensation for this violation of his rights, which is appropriate, but a problem remains. That approach to justice merely allows these activists — who will not likely be found, identified, or prosecuted, especially in New York City — to offload the consequences for their actions onto somebody else.
A similar reminder comes with the increasingly frequent road blockages, with activists disrupting the lives of perhaps thousands of motorists by clogging major thoroughfares. In both cases, the victims are reluctant to cross lines of civility and law, and indeed, there’s good reason for that. For years, now, the message has been clearly conveyed across the West that our governments afford special privileges to left-wing activists. The overriding standard for the law is not what a person does, but why the person claims to do it and who the person is. Obviously, the kangaroo-court prosecutions of Donald Trump lead the field of examples.
This has to change. The young man pictured above rightly notes that the activists are assaulting him, and he may, with some effort, be compensated by the university, but the damage done to all of our freedom is not recompensed as long as the incentives remain for activists to increase the pressure. They’re doing the same thing to our rights that they did to the young man: actively and deliberately eliminating them from the scene.
At a minimum, it should be unambiguously permissible for victims to remove the masks of their assailants so they can be identified. The law should also include a presumption that any harm occurring in such situations, no matter to whom, is squarely the responsibility of those who give themselves the authority to bodily remove people.
The tyrannical activists are deliberately playing at the edge of assault and others’ right to self-defense. We must mount a civilizational defense, and for that purpose citizens must know that their government supports them, not the people who wish to dehumanize them.
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 3.
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We’re in heavy times, these days, what with our system of government collapsing around us, so sometimes we need a change of soundtrack or cinematic distraction. Finding new entertainment, however, has become more-difficult, too. Very little music feels fresh, and movies are terrible.
On those rare occasions that I’ve thought to watch a new movie, I’m almost always disappointed to the extent of vowing not to make the attempt again. Lately, it’s seemed like the once-great hope for streaming television shows was passing, as the early entries used up all the available innovations.
The weird mix of ideological preaching and the shift of standards such that things once unmentionable are exaggerated and things once exaggerated are unmentionable keeps movies from feeling new and compelling.
So, I’ve turned to artificial intelligence to help me dig into the past for things I might not yet have discovered, and it’s proving fruitful. Start with a prompt with a “top 10” feel — such as “a list of the quintessential movies/albums from each decade” — and then tweak it to your tastes and mood. Other adjectives can generate interesting responses, too, like “underappreciated” or “a movie/album for each decade that almost made it, but never quite broke through.”
Basically, imagine a conversation you might have had with your friends late on a Friday night while hanging around before social media (if you can remember back then) and ask your favorite AI. One advantage is that the tastes of your friend group probably overlapped too much for genuine discoveries. Another advantage is that streaming services make it possible to try out the recommendations for no or little additional cost beyond your existing services.
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The recent spate of campus demonstrations supporting the anti-Semitic terrorist group Hamas returned attention to something I’m not aware of having seen since the Occupy Wall Street days: the activist “mic check.”
Among Leftist organizers, this practice is offered as a humanistic means of amplifying a speaker’s voice without equipment. The person who has the floor for attention says “mic check,” which signals to those who can hear him or her that they are supposed to repeat everything the speaker says. They do this (the rationale goes) so everybody in the crowd can hear what is being said.
Of course, increasing its effective volume is not all repeating something somebody says word-for-word accomplishes. It also generates a sense of agreement. If you doubt this proposition, imagine yourself in a “mic check” situation when the speaker says something you find utterly abhorrent. Do you repeat it simply so those farther away than you can hear what’s being said?
We interpret the world through our experience of it, and people don’t simply repeat what others say. During a Q&A session at an event, for example, the person with the microphone will attribute statements he or she is repeating for the benefit of the rest of the audience: “This person is saying…” In conversation, if you wanted to clarify a statement, you might do the same, or you might speak with an implied question mark: “This is what that means?” To do otherwise, implies agreement: “Yes, this is what that means.”
The effect is more powerful while in the midst of a crowd. All of you, together, are affirming (at least in part) the speaker’s content, and since you can’t know the extent of each person’s agreement, the aggregate seems greater.
So, when activists request “mic check” treatment, they’re using psychological manipulation to pull the crowd under their own wills. Even if you maintain your autonomy and don’t necessarily agree with everything being said, having to repeat it as it’s spoken makes it more difficult to consider each statement critically. At the very least, the thinking gap between each statement is taken from the audience, as the speaker makes a statement, pauses only for the repeat, and then speaks again.
Conceptually, the notion that this is somehow humanizing illustrates the radical inversion of the truth and radicals’ understanding of other people. In their own parlance, they might say something like, “We’re using our own human voices to raise each other up, rather than accepting the hierarchical construct of a speaker imposing his statements on passive listeners because he has the power of a microphone. Without all of us, the speaker cannot be heard!”
But that isn’t how the social interaction is structured. It’s positioned as a “mic check,” which means that members of the audience are dehumanized; they become the speaker’s instrument.
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 40 and Photoshop AI.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Pawtucket employee gets the red R
- Providence students on a union string
- Amo’s vote for illegal alien voting
- CRMC and prosecutorial government
- Bad times, disapproving, but still voting Biden
- Diossa enjoys the perks of office
- Big money to promote racial division in state government
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 40 and Photoshop AI.
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I do think he should have followed the line about his family correcting his joke with “thanks grandma,” but who am I to kvetch?
The problem at the heart of well-meaning progressive policies is that they tend to ignore second-order effects. They want outcome X, so they push policy U and ignore that side-effects V and W also happen, and consequences Y and Z might not prove desirable. Housing mandates, for example, require on their face that we cede the principle that government can mandate housing design from the top down and forbid Americans from cooperating to design neighborhoods that are structurally to their liking. Structurally, mind you; I’m not talking about the people who might buy the available houses.
That’s my concern with this idea:
The solution isn’t mandates; it’s opportunity. Freedom is a great leveling force, and it was working in America until progressives got impatient and gave a power that is obviously intended to prove insufficient until it is absolutely total.
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Listening to Tim Ferris interview China policy expert Matt Pottinger left me with the impression the United States desperately needs to find a path back to a sense of national unity. Two of Pottinger’s suggestions are particularly relevant:
- The Chinese government is using (or at least was using, before Congress passed related legislation) TikTok to sow division among Americans.
- International actors, whether governments, companies, or other organizations, can have incentive to side with dictatorial regimes like the Chinese Communist Party because, even if nothing else, they provide stability of policy against which to react.
We could argue about whether the second point is short sighted. Tyrannical regimes tend to be predictable only until they’re not. Their guiding lights can be inhuman, so their incentives can surprise even corrupt non-tyrants. Still, the point is well taken: A representative democracy that might change its leadership structure every two or four years can swing in ways a lifelong dictatorship probably won’t.
Two factors mitigate against this problem, and both have been eroding in the United States. One is a commitment to a shared core of cultural principles, and the other is a tight limit on government power. If the world knows, for example, that the vast majority of Americans will insist on economic freedom and global free markets, international actors can consider those principles consistent and act accordingly. Alternately, if those actors can count on Americans and their non-governmental organizations to act in their own interests under a government that has limited ability to dictate terms, then that state of affairs is predictable regardless of election results.
The problem, in this context, is not that the United States is politically dynamic, but that we’ve allowed our periodic elections to become too important. If we want to decide every major issue through government, and at the highest levels, then frequent changes are a liability. The alternative is freedom in a system designed to encourage maximal cooperation, which is what we once had. In that case, human nature, itself, provides the stability.
This morning, on Memorial Day, I reflected on a question somebody recently asked me online: if I’ve ever served in the military. I answered that I never could, for physical reasons, that I would not serve under the current regime (including the Deep State bureaucracy), but that I’ll fight to defend the country from its enemies should the need arise.
How might that position relate to Memorial Day? Did those who’ve given their lives do so in vain? Or am I speaking against my own call for unity? I wish I could answer these questions easily. It seems to me we’ve betrayed those men and women, but then, I can’t speak for them, and their opinions would probably vary, in any event.
If we could define some (important) shared principles, we could unify around them, but I’m not sure we can. I’m not even confident modern Americans could articulate their own principles outside their immediate political positions. For example, Democrats might insist respecting election results has to be the agreed foundation, but everybody would understand that to be a dig at Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans,” who would be skeptical the principle would hold were the circumstances reversed. Meanwhile, Republicans might put individual freedom on the table as a shared principle, but Democrats would question their positions on a variety of social issues.
Personally, between these two, I think the MAGA Republicans have the better case, but my opinion isn’t very helpful toward the goal of national unity. Indeed, I have to admit that I don’t think national unity is possible on the current field of play. The wary international actors are right to be worried; America’s core principles are up for grabs.
This leaves us no choice but a sort of cultural trench warfare, although not with guns and bombs, but with good will and persuasion. I think each of us must define the core principles that, for us, we should unify around and then win the social debate on their behalf, gathering allies who agree on the narrow point, even if they disagree on various applications. So, the first act is to decide what the narrowest possible core principle is for you, if you could transcend the politics of the day.
In a world where TikTok can be considered a weapon of war, the notion of cultural trench warfare does not seem as much like stolen valor as it may have previously. Wary of the latter, however, as we fight, we should measure our work against the sacrifices of those who gave all, asking if we are vindicating or deprecating their sacrifices.
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 40.
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Many people would likely see it as an obscure topic reported in a minor venue, but Christian Winthrop’s recent article in The Newport Buzz about the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) move against noncompete agreements hits three distinct notes that fire me up.
The first is that it is unambiguous propaganda:
In a landmark decision aimed at fostering competition and protecting workers’ rights, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a final rule banning noncompete agreements nationwide. This ruling, announced today, is poised to unleash a wave of innovation, bolster job mobility, and promote the formation of new businesses across the United States.
The article — or activist press release that Winthrop published as if it were an article — does not substantiate any of these claims or offer any indication of contrary arguments. It simply continues rolling out the one-sided promotion.
The second outrage is the destruction of due process that the article celebrates. The FTC, for those who’ve lost track of government’s moving parts, is not Congress. Its members are not elected. Rather, elected officials have some partial say in their selection, among all the other appointments and policies they must negotiate and balance. That raises the bar for any democratic correction of the FTC so high as to be unreachable.
The article’s attempt to paint a veneer of legitimacy on the process is laughably insulting:
The FTC’s decision comes after a thorough review process, which included a 90-day public comment period during which over 26,000 comments were received, overwhelmingly in support of the ban on noncompetes.
The commission announces a possible change in some place that most Americans wouldn’t know to check and gives those who discover it no more than three months to respond and attempt to organize an opposition. Little wonder comments are “overwhelmingly in support”; the advocates have all the advance warning they want.
Not that this matters. The commission doesn’t have to consider the arguments at all. The letters are merely representation theater, at best helping the bureaucrats to gauge how much opposition they’ll actually face and, maybe, raising a novel point that’s so powerful they’ll turn against the activists they’d intended to serve. In the end, three of five commission members can impose sweeping rules that change existing contract agreements out from under the parties who agreed to them. Three people.
The final irksome note in the article is the blissful ignorance of the people making the decision — and reporting on it. Consider:
FTC Chair Lina M. Khan emphasized the significance of the ruling, stating, “Noncompete clauses keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism, including from the more than 8,500 new startups that would be created a year once noncompetes are banned.”
This is completely inverted. Much of my work, with both start-ups and well-established companies, involves helping different parties work together to innovate. Noncompete clauses are often essential to building the confidence for collaboration. Confidence that proprietary, or even merely innovative, systems will remain confidential and an advantage versus competitors decreases risk and therefore increases the ability to pay higher wages, explore new ideas, and inject the economy with dynamism.
What accounts for those “8,500 new startups” Khan touts? If they materialize, it seems likely she means they’ll be taking the experience for which their employers have been paying and compete against them. This change will decrease the trust by which a dynamic economy thrives.
Even the ruling of itself does immeasurable harm. Simply the knowledge that the United States invests these unaccountable boards with the power to modify contracts on the fly makes business in our country riskier. Add in the fact that our society now lacks the benefit of a skeptical news media (at least when Democrats are in charge), and it’ll soon be a wonder if anybody invests their own resources to innovate, at least in a collaborative way with people outside their families or tribes.
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 40 and Photoshop AI.
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This video of some proverbial “frat bros” mocking some antifa clowns brought to mind Saul Alinsky’s encouragement toward mockery of the opponent:
Preparation for conflicts is crucial, however. The mockery worked because the antifa were outnumbered and in somebody else’s element. Mockery is a group activity. You must have a group.
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