The Dangers of Free Speech

Education is a self-organizing system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon.--Sugata Mitr 

Mom spent yesterday in Ohio with oil and gas wild men.
Chris has been playing tennis again.
I went to a writing meeting and it was worthwhile. Panara has very small sandwiches, though. Arby's wins.

Michigan State University has announced a $2.4 million retirement deal for former MSU president Lou Anna Simon, who was forced out of office last year after MSU’s crippling sexual assault scandal. Simon stands charged with two felonies and is accused of lying to law enforcement officials about what she knew regarding the abuse of more than 150 women over nearly three decades. In addition to its three-year pay-out to Simon, the university will provide a generous benefits package, including medical and dental coverage, the title of “president emeritus,” continued access to football and basketball tickets and a commissioned portrait that will be displayed at the university (so long as she is not convicted).
Preemptive rehab? What's next? Jerry Sundusky gets tenure?


A new candidate has come out of nowhere to surge in the polls in the Democratic primary, and she’s only six years old. Susie Peters of Minneapolis, Minnesota, was on a local news segment where children gave their opinions on world problems, and she asked, “Why can’t we just give everyone everything they want for free?” The message quickly went viral and really resonated with Democratic voters, propelling Susie from unknown to third in most polls, ahead of Bernie Sanders and just behind Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden.--Babylon Bee



One of the casualties of the Democrat debate was Obama. His center-left policies were pilloried as old world and incomplete by the far Left majority. A legacy slipping away so soon.

Germany’s economy shrank in the second quarter and China reported a raft of weak data, sharpening fears over how far the spillover from the global trade dispute is damaging the prospects for growth.(wsj)

• The statists at the OECD put together a ranking asserting that poverty is a bigger problem in the United States than in Greece, Portugal, or Turkey.

The U.S. is now exporting crude oil to a record number of 31 countries, according to newly released data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. U.S. oil exports are going all over the world, ranging from oil-rich United Arab Emirates to Australia, reaching 2.9 million barrels a day from essentially 0 in 2015 before Congress lifted a 40-year-old ban on exporting crude oil.

There is a fondness for the pre-technology days. We were so much human then, right? But one of the best things that ever happened to African-Americans was the mechanization of agriculture that destroyed many of their jobs. 

Is it possible to have unlimited access to limited products and services? 

As health care costs continue to rise, practitioners in India are working to lower prices -- and bring their innovations closer to American shores. Health City Cayman Islands is a new frontier for India’s largest for-profit hospital chain. Focused on efficient health care delivery, its services are now drawing Americans to the Cayman Islands.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed  the Social Security Act into law on August 14, 1935.

                   The Dangers of Free Speech

Most infringements of liberty have some good intention. People are not capable to make good decisions, people don't understand the science, the species is inherently malicious and we must be protected from each other. Even slavery has an upside; at least you weren't executed.

Free speech has recently become one of our dispensable freedoms. Faculty leaders of the University of California consider these statements racist microagressions: “America is a melting pot”; “America is the land of opportunity”; “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough”; and “There is only one race, the human race.” The latter statement is seen as denying the individual as a racial/cultural being. Then there’s “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.” That’s “racist” speech because it gives the impression that “people of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race.” Other seemingly innocuous statements deemed unacceptable are: “When I look at you, I don’t see color,” or “Affirmative action is racist.” Perhaps worst of all is, “Where are you from, or where were you born?”

Princeton University professor Carolyn Rouse, who is chairperson of the department of Anthropology, called free speech a political illusion, a baseless ruse to enable people to “say whatever they want, in any context, with no social, economic, legal or political repercussions.” As an example, she says that a climate change skeptic has no right to make “claims about climate change, as if all the science discovered over the last X-number of centuries were irrelevant.”

There are simply too many opinions out there and a lot of them are either wrong or malicious. Why should we tolerate error and malice? Elites just know better. They know more and they see deeper. And they are better motivated. No less a revolutionary luminary than President John Adams wrote and signed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.
We clearly must escape our liberty obsession.