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Posted by Micah Witherspoon on 10/16/2012 at 2:54 PM
Last month when Gov. Mitt Romney released his 2011 tax returns, thoughts were it would stymie the whimpering from the left, although many within the mainstream media still say Romney is not paying his “fair share”. According to the records Romney earned 13.7 million in revenue, paying a total of 1.9 million in taxes, coming out to 14.1%.
It is true that this tax rate is much lower than most Americans pay although the capital gains tax rate is treated much differently, and rightly should because it is different from your regular income tax. A capital gains tax is a tax on an individual’s investments from the stock market with money that has already been taxed, not only at the corporate level but at the private income level as well.
To make it simple lets say you took $100 and invested in a company such as Apple. After one year your investment has gone up to $1000 where you will be taxed near 15%, paying the government $150 in taxes. So why is this far you may ask?
A citizen such as Gov. Romney, who no longer has a paid income, has already been taxed what he is investing into the Stock Market, only to be taxed again yearly on his earnings at a rate near 15%. Of course President Obama and the left do not agree this is fair, and believe Americans such as Romney should be taxed at a much higher rate so that he may have more of Mr. Romney’s money to “redistribute” throughout society.
The problem with raising the capital gains tax rate is that by increasing it to a rate near 30% like done during the Carter years, investments into companies will not come in at the same rate because investors will be deterred by having to be taxed nearly twice the amount that the rate currently stands. This in turn means less money going into business owners’ pockets, resulting into the inability to expand their workforce, which also slows job growth around the country.
Just by looking at The Heritage Foundation graph (in link below) from when the capital gains tax was raised and when it was lowered, we can clearly see that more revenue was made by the government when the rate was low, and less when the rate was elevated. This tax rate must stay in place so that we ensure not only small business job growth thought America, but the private sector in a whole as well.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/romney-in-florida/2012/09/20/e030ee0c-0317-11e2-91e7-2962c74e7738_gallery.html
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/06/the-laffer-curve-past-present-and-future
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Posted by Micah Witherspoon on 10/11/2012 at 12:30 PM
Atlas Shrugged which remains one of the top selling novels of all-time by author and philosopher Ayn Rand, hits the big screen once again this Friday. The second part of director John Puntch’s trilogy series, will be opening at the most opportune time with the Presidential election only four weeks away.
For readers of the book and followers of Rand, the movie is a celebration and achievement of Rand’s life long work to promote capitalism and the philosophical view of objectivism. The film also allows those who are not familiar to the Rand brand a warning of what can happen to a society when government becomes too large.
In Atlas Shrugged Part II, which stars an all new cast, main character Dagny Taggart played by Samantha Mathis, picks up where she left off in Part I as the poster girl for capitalism with her position over operations at one of the country’s last large private sector companies in Taggort Transcontinental.
Her friend Henry Rearden, played by Jason Beghe, is also one of the last remaining names in free enterprise that the government has yet to get its hands on in Reardon Steal. The plot thickens when Reardon goes against the government’s laws for illegal trading of goods due to the “fair share” law, while at the same time the country hits its physical and economical breaking point with unemployment reaching 24%.
The heroin Dagny, who has made it her life’s work not only stand up to big government but to find a new source of energy, seeing that gas prices has sky rocketed to over $40 per gallon, believes she has found a device that could be the source to the world’s energy crisis. Though she must find it’s inventor to fix the motor before the country hits its breaking point, while the world waits and asks itself, “Who is John Gault?”
Atlas Shrugged Part II premieres October 12th and can be seen in most major cites across the country. To view the trailer as well as show times and locations just go to: http://www.atlasshruggedmovie.com/atlas-shrugged-part-2
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Posted by Micah Witherspoon on 10/09/2012 at 8:15 AM
With the election only 4 weeks away, a Pennsylvania judge put the widely controversial Voter ID law to a standstill for the next six months, allowing voters throughout the state to cast a ballot without any form of picture identification.
Although, this is just one of many examples throughout the country where the issue of Voter ID has become a heated debate in whether to enact new legislation to prevent voter fraud, or uphold existing laws on the claim that Republicans are trying to suppress the Democratic vote.
Much of the debate started in early 2011 when Texas along with South Carolina, Mississippi, and others passed their own forms of Voter ID laws, only later to be shot down by the Department of Justice on the grounds that the law would suppress the poor, elderly, and minority voters of the state.
However leaders such as Alan Wilson, Attorney General for the state of South Carolina, do not believe this ruling by the DOJ holds consistent to the 2008 Supreme Court ruling which upheld a similar Voter ID law in Indiana. In Wilson’s Complainant for Declaratory Judgment the defense states:
“Like the Indiana law, South Carolina's photo identification law only places upon the voter an affirmative responsibility to obtain an approved photo identification card and to bring it to the polls, unless one of the exemptions in Section 5 of Act R54 applies, in which case even that minimal burden is excused.”
Along with the fact that South Carolina’s law mirrors that of Indiana’s which remains legal, Wilson also sent a letter to the United States Attorney’s Office citing a study done by the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles, which discovered that 953 dead people had voted in the previous election cycle.
Furthermore, the study also found that 4,965 voters had applied for ID’s in other states, which does not automatically make this voter fraud unless these people had voted in both states.
Still, proponents of the left argue that those who either forget their ID or do not have one will be denied the right to vote, despite the fact that voters would be able to cast a provisional ballot on election day by signing an affidavit stating they are the person on the ballot sheet.
South Carolina is one of the last states to hear on its appeal from the Supreme Court which in all likelihood will not come until after the Nov. 6th election.
http://www.scag.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/2012-02-07-Complaint-Voter-ID.pdf
http://www.scag.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Voter-ID-Letter-to-US-Attorney-Bill-Nettles-01.19.12.pdf
http://www.ncsl.org/legislatures-elections/elections/voter-id.aspx#sc
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Posted by Micah Witherspoon on 09/27/2012 at 1:22 PM
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2008 Americans elected a man they knew only little about. We knew he was a vibrant and intelligent young man who had just recently been elected to the U.S Senate. We knew he was born in Hawaii and earned degrees from prestigious Ivy League schools, such as Columbia and Harvard. However we did not know what Obama’s vision of “change” really was for America and its people.
Now as we come upon the fall of 2012 we can start to see Obama’s ultimate vision for America starting to play out, as well as understanding what the “Dreams from his Father” really are for America.
In the new groundbreaking film 2016: Obama’s America, Dinesh D’Souza shows us that the direction Barack Obama wants for our country is the same as his late father, Barack Obama Sr had dreamed of. From researching our president’s own past through his own memoir, Dreams From My Father, we first learn of Obama’s strong love and pride he had towards his father, even though they had hardly known one another.
Barack Obama Sr., a senior government economist of Kenya, was a passionate anti-colonialist and felt that the great powers of the world such as the United States and Great Britain were the reason 3rd world countries such as Kenya, were being oppressed. He felt capitalism was an evil, and that government should hold the power over the people, rather than the power being within the people.
With Obama’s father dying in Kenya when Barack was only 22, it was then the younger Obama realized to earn his fathers south after love he would have to finish his work. So by playing his cards right and coming off as a very charming candidate, Barack Obama worked his way from a community organizer, state senator, U.S Senator, and ultimately into the oval office, where he currently campaigns for a second term.
We can see Obama’s anti-colonist vision through polices he has already implemented in less than 4 years on the job. The 5 trillion dollars added to the national debt has made the U.S dollar weaker, as well as the impending cuts to defense, known as sequestration, will cut the defense budget by 1 trillion dollars over the next 10 years.
This not only makes our military weaker but mainly gives other countries time to catch up and strengthen their own defenses, eventually no longer making the United States the world’s super power.
Knowing this our country has one of the most important decisions it has ever had to make, re-elect President Obama who believes in the redistribution of wealth at home and aboard, or a candidate such as Gov. Romney who wants to see our country as something more than just average, but rather the exceptional one envisioned by our founding fathers.
So which America shall it be in 2016, the one that has stood above the rest for hundreds of years, defending liberty and democracy at home and abroad, or one that is just another name on the map?
To see the trailer to 2016: Obama’s America, please click below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfLsSg9wZlE&feature=player_embedded#!
Works Cited
- Obama, B. (2004). Dreams from my father: A story of race and inheritance. New York: Three Rivers Press.
http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/budget-appropriations/240843-parties-look-to-make-1-trillion-in-sequestration-cuts-a-campaign-issue
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/anti-obama-film-becomes-top-10-movie-in-america-1-conservative-political-documentary-of-all-time/
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Posted by Jay Cost on 09/26/2012 at 7:17 AM
I am not in favor of partisan weighing, per se, although some polls like the Rasmussen poll do it in a sensible and nuanced way. So, I think the pollsters are offering a false choice between weighing versus non-weighing.
Furthermore, a lack of weighing creates its own problems, which many pollsters often fail to acknowledge. Specifically, many polls have, in my judgment, overestimated the Democrats' standing right now. I base this conclusion not on a secret, black box statistical methodology or some crystal ball, but rather on a read of American electoral history going back to 1972. If I am right, then some of the polls are giving a false sense of the true state of the race, and will likely correct themselves at some point or another.
One important “tell” in my opinion, is this president’s continued weak position with independent voters, who remain the true swing vote.
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An anti-Islam film that sparked violent protests in many countries had "nothing to do with" a deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi earlier this month, Libya's president told NBC News.
In an exclusive interview with NBC News' Ann Curry, President Mohamed Magarief discounted claims that the attack was in response to a movie produced in California and available on YouTube. He noted that the assault happened on Sept. 11 and that the video had been available for months before that.
"Reaction should have been, if it was genuine, should have been six months earlier. So it was postponed until the 11th of September," he said. "They chose this date, 11th of September to carry a certain message."
Magarief said there were no protesters at the site before the attack, which he noted came in two assaults, first with rocket-propelled grenades on the consulate, then with mortars at a safe house.
The attack took the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens, as well as information management officer Sean Smith and security personnel Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.
Magarief told Curry that based on the accuracy of the assault, he believes the attackers must have had training and experience using the weapons.
"It's a pre-planned act of terrorism," he said, adding that the anti-Islam film had "nothing to do with this attack."
Magarief said that while Libyans appeared to be behind the attack that "these Libyans do not represent the Libyan people or Libyan population in any sense of the word."
Hilary Stevens, sister of Christopher Stevens, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya who died Tuesday during an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. In an interview with Rock Center Anchor Brian Williams, Stevens reflects on her brother's legacy and work.
He added: "We consider the United States as a friend, not only a friend, a strong friend, who stood with us in our moment of need."
More than 40 people have been questioned in connection with the incident, the Libyan leader told Curry.
He described Stevens as a "humble and very unique human being" and a "great friend of Libya."
Thousands of Libyans stormed the headquarters of an Islamist militia group in Benghazi Friday night in a deadly exchange. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.
The Obama administration initially maintained that the attacks were directly linked to protests over the film. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sept. 16, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said: “What happened in Benghazi was in fact initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, prompted by the video.”
However, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney last week said it was "self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack."
Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, President Barack Obama said: “There are no words that excuse the killing of innocent” people.
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With just over a week to go before he faces President Obama in their first debate, Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney lowered expectations a hair, noting it is his first time in a presidential debate and his opponent is an “eloquent, gifted speaker.”
“The president is obviously a very eloquent, gifted speaker — he’ll do just fine,” Romney told Fox News in an interview from Dayton, Ohio. “I’ve, you know, I’ve never been in a presidential debate like this and it will be a new experience.”
Romney said the American people will make “their assessment as to who’s the better speaker,” but he believes that regardless they’ll be drawn to his plan for the nation.
“People will make a choice,” Romney said. “I think I have, if you will, the facts on my side. I think the American people will be drawn more to the vision I have for the future of the country, but time will tell.”
The first of three presidential debates is Oct. 3 at the University of Denver.
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Public criticism of Mitt Romney’s race for the White House has risen sharply, with six in 10 Americans expressing a negative opinion of how he’s handling his campaign and a majority responding unfavorably to his comments on people who don’t pay income taxes.
Sixty-one percent in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll hold an unfavorable view of how Romney’s handling his presidential campaign, up by 12 percentage points since mid-July. Far fewer, 35 percent, rate Romney’s performance positively, essentially unchanged.
See PDF with full results, charts and tables here.
Barack Obama’s ratings for handling his campaign are substantially better, 54-43 percent, favorable-unfavorable. And while ratings of Romney’s campaign have grown more negative, favorable ratings of Obama’s campaign efforts have gained 8 points since July.
These ratings follow controversy last week about Romney’s remark at a Florida fundraiser that 47 percent of Americans don’t pay income taxes, see themselves as “victims” and lack personal responsibility. Fifty-four percent in this survey, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, see his “recent comments about people who don’t pay income taxes” negatively; 32 percent respond favorably, with the rest unsure.
There’s also an intensity problem for Romney: Americans disproportionately see his handling of his campaign “strongly” unfavorably rather than strongly favorably, 36 percent vs. 10 percent; it’s a similar split on his comment on those who don’t pay taxes. Strong sentiment on Obama’s campaign, by contrast, is evenly balanced.
As damaging as Romney’s remark may have been, it appears not to be solely responsible for Romney’s weak grade on handling his campaign, since ratings of his campaign performance overall are 7 points more negative than are responses to that comment. Indeed, even among those who see the “47 percent” remark favorably, nearly three in 10 also respond negatively to Romney’s handling of his campaign overall.
In a sign of particular trouble for Romney, negative views of his campaign have grown by 18 points since midsummer among independents, who often are swing voters. In July, 46 percent of independents rated Romney’s handling of his campaign negatively; it’s 64 percent today. Romney’s positive score among independents, at 32 percent, far trails Obama’s, 50 percent.
Even among Republicans, more than one in four rates Romney’s efforts negatively – 27 percent. While essentially unchanged since July, that’s substantially more than the share of Democrats who respond negatively to Obama’s work on his campaign, 11 percent.
As well as among independents, negative views of Romney’s handling of his campaign have grown especially sharply among adults under age 40 – up by 23 points since July, to 69 percent negative – and among women, with negative responses up by 18 points. And there’s a large gap among income groups: a 16-point rise in negative ratings of Romney’s campaign among people with household incomes less than $100,000 a year, vs. essentially no change among those with incomes of $100,000 or more.
Less than well-off adults also are more critical of Romney’s “47 percent” comment, responding negatively rather than positively by 57-28 percent. Those with incomes of $100,000 or more, by contrast, divide evenly – they’re 18 points more supportive of the remark.
Obama, for his part, gets especially positive grades for handling his campaign, 60 percent, from people with household incomes of $50,000 or less; that falls to less than half of those who are better off financially. Still his rating is 17 points better than Romney’s even in the $50,000-$100,000 range; only among $100,000-plus earners does Romney’s campaign rival Obama’s.
Among other groups, Obama’s campaign efforts are rated positively by majorities of women, adults younger than 40, moderates (as well as liberals) and (especially) nonwhites; those compare with even splits among men and among people 40 and older. Among whites, Obama’s 45-51 percent rating, favorable-unfavorable, is not positive – but beats Romney’s 39-56 percent.
While these results are among all adults, they’re essentially identical among those who report being registered to vote: Negative on Romney’s campaign by 61-36 percent; negative on his tax comment by 54-33 percent; and positive on Obama’s campaign efforts by 53-45 percent.
METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cell phone Sept. 19-23, 2012, among a random national sample of 1,012 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 4 points, including design effect. The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., with sampling, data collection and tabulation by SSRS/Social Science Research Solutions of Media, Pa.
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The universal response in the United States to the uproar over the anti-Muslim video is that the Muslim world will just have to get used to freedom of expression. President Obama said so himself in a speech at the United Nations today, which included both a strong defense of the First Amendment and (“in the alternative,” as lawyers say) and a plea that the United States is helpless anyway when it comes to controlling information. In a world linked by YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, countless videos attacking people’s religions, produced by provocateurs, rabble-rousers, and lunatics, will spread to every corner of the world, as fast as the Internet can blast them, and beyond the power of governments to stop them. Muslims need to grow a thick skin, the thinking goes, as believers in the West have done over the centuries. Perhaps they will even learn what it means to live in a free society, and adopt something like the First Amendment in their own countries.
But there is another possible response. This is that Americans need to learn that the rest of the world—and not just Muslims—see no sense in the First Amendment. Even other Western nations take a more circumspect position on freedom of expression than we do, realizing that often free speech must yield to other values and the need for order. Our own history suggests that they might have a point.
Despite its 18th-century constitutional provenance, the First Amendment did not play a significant role in U.S. law until the second half of the 20th century. The First Amendment did not protect anarchists, socialists, Communists, pacifists, and various other dissenters when the U.S. government cracked down on them, as it regularly did during times of war and stress.
The First Amendment earned its sacred status only in the 1960s, and then only among liberals and the left, who cheered when the courts ruled that government could not suppress the speech of dissenters, critics, scandalous artistic types, and even pornographers. Conservatives objected that these rulings helped America’s enemies while undermining public order and morality at home, but their complaints fell on deaf ears.
A totem that is sacred to one religion can become an object of devotion in another, even as the two theologies vest it with different meanings. That is what happened with the First Amendment. In the last few decades, conservatives have discovered in its uncompromising text— “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech”—support for their own causes. These include unregulated campaign speech, unregulated commercial speech, and limited government. Most of all, conservatives have invoked the First Amendment to oppose efforts to make everyone, in universities and elsewhere, speak “civilly” about women and minorities. I’m talking of course about the “political correctness” movement beginning in the 1980s, which often merged into attempts to enforce a leftist position on race relations and gender politics.
Meanwhile, some liberals began to have second thoughts. They supported enactment of hate-crime laws that raised criminal penalties for people who commit crimes against minorities because of racist or other invidious motives. They agreed that hate speech directed at women in the workplace could be the basis of sexual harassment claims against employers as well. However, the old First Amendment victories in the Supreme Court continued to play an important role in progressive mythology. For the left, the amendment today is like a dear old uncle who enacted heroic deeds in his youth but on occasion says embarrassing things about taboo subjects in his decline.
We have to remember that our First Amendment values are not universal; they emerged contingently from our own political history, a set of cobbled-together compromises among political and ideological factions responding to localized events. As often happens, what starts out as a grudging political settlement has become, when challenged from abroad, a dogmatic principle to be imposed universally. Suddenly, the disparagement of other people and their beliefs is not an unfortunate fact but a positive good. It contributes to the “marketplace of ideas,” as though we would seriously admit that Nazis or terrorist fanatics might turn out to be right after all. Salman Rushdie recently claimed that bad ideas, “like vampires … die in the sunlight” rather than persist in a glamorized underground existence. But bad ideas never die: They are zombies, not vampires. Bad ideas like fascism, Communism, and white supremacy have roamed the countryside of many an open society.
So symbolic attachment to uneasy, historically contingent compromises, and a half-century of judicial decisions addressing domestic political dissent and countercultural pressures, prevent the U.S. government from restricting the distribution of a video that causes violence abroad and damages America’s reputation. And this is a video that, by the admission of all sides, has no value whatsoever.
Americans have not always been so paralyzed by constitutional symbolism. During the Cold War, the U.S. foreign policy establishment urged civil rights reform in order to counter Soviet propagandists’ gleeful reports that Americans fire-hosed black protesters and state police arrested African diplomats who violated Jim Crow laws. Rather than tell the rest of the world to respect states’ rights—an ideal as sacred in its day as free speech is now—the national government assured foreigners that it sought to correct a serious but deeply entrenched problem. It is useful if discomfiting to consider that many people around the world may see America’s official indifference to Muslim (or any religious) sensibilities as similar to its indifference to racial discrimination before the civil rights era.
The final irony is that while the White House did no more than timidly plead with Google to check if the anti-Muslim video violates its policies (appeasement! shout the critics), Google itself approached the controversy in the spirit of prudence. The company declined to remove the video from YouTube because the video did not attack a group (Muslims) but only attacked a religion (Islam). Yet it also cut off access to the video in countries such as Libya and Egypt where it caused violence or violated domestic law. This may have been a sensible middle ground, or perhaps Google should have done more. What is peculiar it that while reasonable people can disagree about whether a government should be able to curtail speech in order to safeguard its relations with foreign countries, the Google compromise is not one that the U.S. government could have directed. That’s because the First Amendment protects verbal attacks on groups as well as speech that causes violence (except direct incitement: the old cry of “Fire!” in a crowded theater). And so combining the liberal view that government should not interfere with political discourse, and the conservative view that government should not interfere with commerce, we end up with the bizarre principle that U.S. foreign policy interests cannot justify any restrictions on speech whatsoever. Instead, only the profit-maximizing interests of a private American corporation can. Try explaining that to the protesters in Cairo or Islamabad.
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Via the Standard, a fine idea that I would take more seriously if he had mentioned it before the movie was condemned by the Cairo embassy, blamed for the Benghazi attack by Susan Rice, apologized for by the State Department via TV ads in Pakistan, and then discussed at length by The One himself in his UN speech today. Scrambling to denounce the film the way the administration did made it that much more lucrative a pretext for Islamists to exploit; the U.S. government can’t ban the film, but attack an embassy or two and by golly they’ll fall all over themselves to reassure you that it’s a wicked, awful, evil piece of expression. Matt Welch is one of the many free-speech fans who’s had enough:
Why this video, and not Theo Van Gogh’s Submission, or Lars Vilks’ animation of Mohammed wanting to go to a gay bar, the “Super Best Friends” episode of South Park, or Funny or Die’s “How to Pick a Pocket”? Is it the degree of the insult, the craptasticness of the production values, the size of the release, or the vociferousness of the outrage expressed?
Given the track record of our past two administrations, I think we know the answer to that question, which suggests another thing terrible about this sentence: As Eugene Volokh recently pointed out, “Behavior that gets rewarded, gets repeated.” If all it takes to earn a White House call for global condemnation of a single piece of expression is some violent protests outside a dozen or two diplomatic missions, then the perpetually aggrieved know exactly what to do the next time they pluck out some bit of cultural detritus to be offended by.
It is not any politician’s job, and certainly not any American politician’s job, to instruct the entire world on which films to criticize.
Are we sure about that? Over at Slate, law prof(!) Eric Posner weighs the old liberal cardinal virtue of free speech against the new liberal cardinal virtue of multiculturalism. Guess which is heavier:
But there is another possible response. This is that Americans need to learn that the rest of the world—and not just Muslims—see no sense in the First Amendment. Even other Western nations take a more circumspect position on freedom of expression than we do, realizing that often free speech must yield to other values and the need for order. Our own history suggests that they might have a point…
Meanwhile, some liberals began to have second thoughts. They supported enactment of hate-crime laws that raised criminal penalties for people who commit crimes against minorities because of racist or other invidious motives. They agreed that hate speech directed at women in the workplace could be the basis of sexual harassment claims against employers as well. However, the old First Amendment victories in the Supreme Court continued to play an important role in progressive mythology. For the left, the amendment today is like a dear old uncle who enacted heroic deeds in his youth but on occasion says embarrassing things about taboo subjects in his decline.
We have to remember that our First Amendment values are not universal; they emerged contingently from our own political history, a set of cobbled-together compromises among political and ideological factions responding to localized events. As often happens, what starts out as a grudging political settlement has become, when challenged from abroad, a dogmatic principle to be imposed universally. Suddenly, the disparagement of other people and their beliefs is not an unfortunate fact but a positive good. It contributes to the “marketplace of ideas,” as though we would seriously admit that Nazis or terrorist fanatics might turn out to be right after all. Salman Rushdie recently claimed that bad ideas, “like vampires … die in the sunlight” rather than persist in a glamorized underground existence. But bad ideas never die: They are zombies, not vampires. Bad ideas like fascism, Communism, and white supremacy have roamed the countryside of many an open society.
The positive good isn’t the disparagement of other people’s beliefs, it’s the freedom to “disparage,” a.k.a. criticize, those beliefs without fear of being locked up by the sensitivity police. Savor the irony of this guy hinting that we should go ahead and criminalize some especially dangerous retrograde ideas while he and a few select others on the left are busy reviving the idea of blasphemy laws to appease violent Islamist fanatics. I’m not sure how closely fascist regimes in the Middle East follow left/right debates in America, but if they do, they have every incentive to burn more buildings and kill more ambassadors in the name of avenging insults to the faith. There’s a small but apparently growing movement on one side of the aisle here that’s ready to hear them out and rebalance free-speech principles against, in Posner’s creepy phrase, “the need for order.”
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