HR 569

Below is the front cover and editorial for Issue #31 (2016), which I decided to publish in an effort, likely futile, to somehow help convince Tricia Somers that the assaults on free speech are far more from the left, than from the right.  Seated on the Democrat donkey is the one of the bill's Sponsors,  Rep. Donald S. Beyer, Jr. [D-VA-8].  On the left is Ibrahim Hooper, Communications Director, CAIR, then on the right is Nihad Awad, Exec Director, CAIR and Roula Allouch, National Board Chair, CAIR.

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..Editorial

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Political correctness dead-bolts the mind and rigs an alarm system that demonizes any challenge to orthodoxy…  [It] divides society into an oppressor class and a victim class, and elevates group rights over individual rights. In this view, individuals have only the distinction of drops of water in a clear pond… Politically correct superstition is now dominant, a veritable jihad of junkthought, and increasingly deployed by government.

—Lloyd Billingsley

Absolut Conformity 
From The Age of Reason to The Age of Multiculti
Assaults on Freedom of Expression

Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.  

—Omar Ahad, co-founder of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

 

Without freedom of speech and expression, art and poetry inevitably become safe and innocuous… for the pillars of society.  As PC continues its conquest of the American mind, art and poetry continue on their way to becoming mere state-friendly ornamentation.  Poet laureates ineluctably illustrate the point.

     America seems to have become the last bastion of freedom of speech in the West.  Canada and the EU possess so-called hate-speech laws, whereas the US does not yet possess such laws, though it is clearly heading in that direction, as noted by Robert Spencer:  “We already have hate crimes in the United States.  […] The difference between a crime and a hate crime.  Well, it is speech.  And so we already have hate speech in the United States.”  

     The front cover of this issue of The AD was created as a result of HR 569, a bill that seeks to be the first hate-speech or anti-blasphemy law in America.  It clearly contravenes the First Amendment.  Over 82 Democrat congressmen are co-sponsors of it.  Only Democrats have signed on to it.  That alone ought to make a freedom-loving individual turn against the Democrat Party. A PC-groupthinker, however, would likely proclaim all Republicans racists and islamophobes, since not one Republican has yet been willing to co-sponsor the bill, which in itself is surprising considering the mass of Islamic Muslim Brotherhood money and influence pouring into both sides of the aisle.  

   Pope Francis would have people believe that an 11th Commandment exists:  Thou shalt not criticize religion! But religion tends to be anti-reason, anti-fact, and, in some cases like Islam, outright anti-freedom of speech and expression. How can a thinking individual not protest against attempts like HR 569 to limit the basic human right of freedom of speech and expression? Shamefully, President Obama and Hillary have been on the wrong side of this issue, as manifested by their collusion with the UN and its Resolution 16/18 (the Istanbul Process).  Shamefully, Trump has also been on the wrong side of this issue. Recall that he’d blamed Pamela Geller for the jihad attack on her free speech Muhammad cartoon event in Garland, TX.  Well, he’s gotten a taste of his own medicine: the media has largely blamed his speech for violence at his rallies. Thankfully, HR 569 is likely not going to be adopted. 

On another freedom note, bravo to artist Milo Moiré (see photo on p.4), who protested alone the day after the mass sex assaults in Köln at Domplatte square in Deutschland.  She stood naked, holding a sign for 20 minutes in 39 degree weather:  „Respektiert uns! Wir sind kein Freiwild, selbst wenn wir nackt sind!“ [Respect us!  We are not free game, even when we stand naked!]  Sadly, her protest will likely not convince the New Year’s Eve rapists—most, if not all, of whom were Muslim—to stop raping.  Multiculti feminists of the far left seem aberrently silent on Islam and its culture of rape.  They did not even come out from their comfy dwellings to back Milo.    

Yet on another freedom note, the following exchange (see video here: https://youtu.be/QFM6kLiUO14) between a young preacher named Joshua and an unnamed black cop took place in front of the University of Texas at Austin. It serves as an excellent example of the perhaps widespread, pitiful ignorance of the police with regards First Amendment citizen rights. It illustrates the gulf between de jura and de facto rights.  In essence, sure you have the right, but sure a cop will arrest you anyhow, put you in jail, and collect time and a half pay to watch you in court.  Yeah, that happened to me a decade ago in Concord, home of Thoreau and Emerson.  Hmm.

Intern: Um, does freedom of speech protect offensive speech?

Officer: Does freedom of speech do what?

Intern: Uh, protect offensive speech?

Officer: It doesn’t matter, freedom of speech. Someone was offended, that’s against the law. I- I don’t wanna argue with you—it’s against the law…

Intern: I’m sorry, can you say that again, it’s against the law to offend somebody?

Officer: Yes.  

    Finally, imagine being brought to court and fined for writing this—or anything else for that matter—on Facebook:  “…The ideology of Islam is every bit as loathsome, nauseating, oppressive and dehumanizing as Nazism. The massive immigration of Islamists into Denmark is the most devastating event Danish society has suffered in recent historical times.”  Flemming Nielsen was fined 1600 kroner for those words. Blasphemy is a crime in Denmark, even if the blasphemy is entirely factual and reasonable. Those depicted on the front cover of The AD want it to be a crime in America too. The Ages of Reason and Enlightenment are ever yielding to the Age of Multiculti.

I keep hearing about a supposed “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, or statements such as, “This isn’t free speech, it’s hate speech,” or “When does free speech stop and hate speech begin?” But there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment. Hateful ideas (whatever exactly that might mean) are just as protected under the First Amendment as other ideas. One is as free to condemn Islam — or Muslims, or Jews, or blacks, or whites, or illegal aliens, or native-born citizens — as one is to condemn capitalism or Socialism or Democrats or Republicans.  To be sure, there are some kinds of speech that are unprotected by the First Amendment. But those narrow exceptions have nothing to do with “hate speech” in any conventionally used sense of the term. For instance, there is an exception for “fighting words” — face-to-face personal insults addressed to a specific person, of the sort that are likely to start an immediate fight. But this exception isn’t limited to racial or religious insults, nor does it cover all racially or religiously offensive statements.

                    —Eugene Volokh, Constitutional scholar

 

Maren Ueland and Louisa Vesterager Jespersen

The following poem was rejected by The Humanist magazine because it did not meet editor-in-chief Jennifer Barda's "editorial needs."  How odd for a purported human rights advocate!   Where to send such a poem?  Well, I published it in the current issue of The American Dissident, #37.  So, that's where.

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A Post-Mortem Poem 

For Maren Ueland and Louisa Vesterager Jespersen

Their naivete is nothing less than breathtaking.

               —Bruce Bawer

The silence of the journalists astounds

—the free press is a bullshit slogan,

bellowed by enchained ideologues,

blind to the horrors hollered into their ears…

While hunting again in vain for news on the story,

not an iota to be found in the New York Times 

or Washington Post or Boston Globe or or or,

just the echo of Khashoggi ad nauseam and of course

more Hogg news—the high school kid

with the loudmouth soon to be at Harvard.

And this morning, I read another account of the horror, but

only in the alt-press, while the Times published Jen Gunter’s

dopey vagina crap:  “One year ago I wrote about my vagina 

and men’s opinions of it.  Things have not improved.”  Wow.

Offended I am… by the hypocrites and fluff writers of the press!

Offended I am… by the purposeful cecity of poets and artists!

Offended I am… by the CAIR muslims infiltrating in sheep’s clothing!

Offended I am… by the money that easily turns eyes so goddamn blind!

“You need to see that woman lying on her stomach,” wrote

an unmoderated voice, “after having been gang raped, 

not moving or speaking presumably too terrified and emotionally 

ruined to even whimper and then crying out in pure agony 

as they rip her throat out with a knife.”

But I have not yet watched; I’m not ready to have that in my skull.

“You need to see them turn her over on her back and put a foot 

on her head to keep her still as they saw her head off while 

her hand weakly tries to grasp for help…”

The journalists have not yet watched either, but they’re journalists!

And the journalists have decided to erase the event, for it might

soil and tarnish the “religion of peace,” to quote dear ex-leader.

For those innocent and fragile young women, butchered by Islamists,

we must watch, all of us must watch, we must witness the last breath

and not let it be hidden from the public eye by the overseers of society.

And so, I watch; and so, I watch, and so, will you watch?  Will college students 

like Hogg watch?  Will the politicians like Obama watch? Will the professors watch?

Will the journalists finally watch?  And if not, then they are not really journalists, 

but rather lowly propagandists pushing Pravda platitudes.

The silence of the journalists astounds

—the free press is a bullshit slogan

                                 bellowed by enchained ideologues

                                                               blind to the horrors hollered into their ears…

………………………………………………….

NB:  Humans devoid of compassion, devoid of soul, do exist.  They are here:  

www.bestgore.com/beheading/24-year-old-danish-female-backpacker-morocco-final-trek-beheading/.   

Donald S. Beyer

This is the front cover and editorial for issue #31 of The American Dissident

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Absolut Conformity 

From The Age of Reason to The Age of Multiculti

Assaults on Freedom of Expression

Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.  

—Omar Ahad, co-founder of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

 

Without freedom of speech and expression, art and poetry inevitably become safe and innocuous… for the pillars of society.  As PC continues its conquest of the American mind, art and poetry continue on their way to becoming mere state-friendly ornamentation.  Poet laureates ineluctably illustrate the point.

     America seems to have become the last bastion of freedom of speech in the West.  Canada and the EU possess so-called hate-speech laws, whereas the US does not yet possess such laws, though it is clearly heading in that direction, as noted by Robert Spencer:  “We already have hate crimes in the United States.  […] The difference between a crime and a hate crime.  Well, it is speech.  And so we already have hate speech in the United States.”  

     The front cover of this issue of The AD was created as a result of HR 569, a bill that seeks to be the first hate-speech or anti-blasphemy law in America.  It clearly contravenes the First Amendment.  Over 82 Democrat congressmen are co-sponsors of it.  Only Democrats have signed on to it.  That alone ought to make a freedom-loving individual turn against the Democrat Party. A PC-groupthinker, however, would likely proclaim all Republicans racists and islamophobes, since not one Republican has yet been willing to co-sponsor the bill, which in itself is surprising considering the mass of Islamic Muslim Brotherhood money and influence pouring into both sides of the aisle.  

   Pope Francis would have people believe that an 11th Commandment exists:  Thou shalt not criticize religion! But religion tends to be anti-reason, anti-fact, and, in some cases like Islam, outright anti-freedom of speech and expression. How can a thinking individual not protest against attempts like HR 569 to limit the basic human right of freedom of speech and expression? Shamefully, President Obama and Hillary have been on the wrong side of this issue, as manifested by their collusion with the UN and its Resolution 16/18 (the Istanbul Process).  Shamefully, Trump has also been on the wrong side of this issue. Recall that he’d blamed Pamela Geller for the jihad attack on her free speech Muhammad cartoon event in Garland, TX.  Well, he’s gotten a taste of his own medicine: the media has largely blamed his speech for violence at his rallies. Thankfully, HR 569 is likely not going to be adopted. 

     On another freedom note, bravo to artist Milo Moiré (see photo on p.4), who protested alone the day after the mass sex assaults in Köln at Domplatte square in Deutschland.  She stood naked, holding a sign for 20 minutes in 39 degree weather:  „Respektiert uns! Wir sind kein Freiwild, selbst wenn wir nackt sind!“ [Respect us!  We are not free game, even when we stand naked!]  Sadly, her protest will likely not convince the New Year’s Eve rapists—most, if not all, of whom were Muslim—to stop raping.  Multiculti feminists of the far left seem aberrently silent on Islam and its culture of rape.  They did not even come out from their comfy dwellings to back Milo.    

    Yet on another freedom note, the following exchange (see video here: https://youtu.be/QFM6kLiUO14) between a young preacher named Joshua and an unnamed black cop took place in front of the University of Texas at Austin. It serves as an excellent example of the perhaps widespread, pitiful ignorance of the police with regards First Amendment citizen rights. It illustrates the gulf between de jura and de facto rights.  In essence, sure you have the right, but sure a cop will arrest you anyhow, put you in jail, and collect time and a half pay to watch you in court.  Yeah, that happened to me a decade ago in Concord, home of Thoreau and Emerson.  Hmm.

Intern: Um, does freedom of speech protect offensive speech?

Officer: Does freedom of speech do what?

Intern: Uh, protect offensive speech?

Officer: It doesn’t matter, freedom of speech. Someone was offended, that’s against the law. I- I don’t wanna argue with you—it’s against the law…

Intern: I’m sorry, can you say that again, it’s against the law to offend somebody?

Officer: Yes.  

    Finally, imagine being brought to court and fined for writing this—or anything else for that matter—on Facebook:  “…The ideology of Islam is every bit as loathsome, nauseating, oppressive and dehumanizing as Nazism. The massive immigration of Islamists into Denmark is the most devastating event Danish society has suffered in recent historical times.”  Flemming Nielsen was fined 1600 kroner for those words. Blasphemy is a crime in Denmark, even if the blasphemy is entirely factual and reasonable. Those depicted on the front cover of The AD want it to be a crime in America too. The Ages of Reason and Enlightenment are ever yielding to the Age of Multiculti.

National Coalition Against Censorship

Ideologues Make Shallow Free-Speech Advocates—An Unwanted Addendum to the National Coalition Against Censorship’s “The State of the First Amendment:  2017’s Top Free Speech Offenders and Defenders”

It’s a sign [i.e., whenever she’s told her stance on Islam is “offensive”] that someone is trying to deprive me of my right to free speech and impose censorship on me. It’s a sign that they’ve given up their own right to freedom of expression because of a wish for comfort and a fear of being called racist. They’ve given up the common fight and gone over to the side of the Islamists. But the right to free speech is the most precious right, the foundation for all other freedoms.  Blasphemy is a celebration of free speech. It’s a raw form of free speech, yes, but it shows that any ideas and values can be challenged.

—Inna Shevchenko, Femen’s leader

Perhaps the prime threat to free speech is the egregious ideological bias of so-called free-speech organizations like the ACLU, PEN, and NCAC.  Free speech should not be left-wing, nor should it be right-wing.  In 2015, Global Free Press published my essay critical of the National Coalition Against Censorship: “’15 Threats to Free Speech 2015’:  An Egregious and Purposeful Omission.”  I then sent it to the NCAC, which did not respond.  In 2009, I sketched a cartoon, “Clique Crippled,” which featured, amongst others, Joan Bertin, now retired executive director of NCAC.  I sent it to her, and she did not respond.  I’d also written other essays critical of the apathetic apathy of purported free-speech advocates (see “Organizations et al Contacted Regarding Sturgis Library’s Removal of My Civil Rights,” “A PC-Peculiarity,” “The Banned Books Week Farce,” and “Review of a Review of Worst Instincts:  Cowardice, Conformity, and the ACLU”).  And now, as I check my files, I notice still other material regarding NCAC, including a cartoon featuring its former Communications Director Peter Hart, “NCAC:  Ideologically Blinded,” which I just posted (with three emails) on The American Dissident blog site and is crucial because it highlights the prime concern regarding NCAC’s end of the year annual list of foes and friends of free speech.  

Islam is once again mysteriously absent, this time from “The State of the First Amendment: 2017’s Top Free Speech Offenders and Defenders.”   As a cartoonist, I have no doubt that drawing a cartoon critical of Islam and Muhammad is by far the most dangerous cartoon I could draw, considering the large mass of Islamic fanatics.  The Charlie Hebdo massacre highlighted that reality in 2015.   Today, the magazine is located in a secret “bunker” because of constant Islamic threats from those Muslims, who hate freedom of expression.  One to two million dollars per year are spent on security and the magazine, not the government, has to pay.  Left-wing Charlie Hebdo journalist, Fabrice Nicolino, noted at the third anniversary of the massacre that “At my house, where I am known, extreme left-wingers will no longer say hello to me, because they are certainly not Charlie.”  As for Pamela Geller, Ayan Hirsi Ali, and perhaps other such individuals have oddly been listed on Southern Poverty Law Center’s website as hate groups for daring to criticize Islam and thus exercise their First Amendment rights.  In America, they must have constant security or will simply be executed by enraged Muslims, one of whom was just sentenced to 28 years in prison.  And how to forget the Muhammad cartoon event Garland, TX near-massacre?  Well, NCAC forgot it immediately after it happened.  

NCAC highlights Colin Kaepernick for “taking a knee to protest racial injustice” and “strengthened every citizen’s right to free expression and peaceful protest.”  NCAC ought to avoid making such naive wishful-thinking generalizations!  Racial injustice?  How odd for the plethora of multimillionaire black privileged ballplayers, not to mention the plethora of blacks who have benefitted from Affirmative Action.  Kaepernick doesn’t need armed guards for protection; Geller and Hirsi Ali do and yet courageously persist in exercising their right to freedom of expression.  Moreover, what does “racial injustice” have to do with CENSORSHIP as in National Coalition Against Censorship?  Also, my purported citizen’s right to “free expression” was certainly not “strengthened” by Kaepernick’s knee activity! 

Why NCAC cannot or will not understand Islam as a real threat to freedom of speech can only be explained by NCAC’s ideological anchor… and perhaps funding.  Why did it not even mention the Islamic terror attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando that took 49 lives… in 2017?  Recall how the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of NCAC’s buddies, proclaimed it to be a right-wing plot, despite Muslim Omar Mateen’s having hollered, “Allahu Akbar,” and called 911 immediately prior to the attack to pledge allegiance not to the KKK, but to ISIS.  The SPLC by demonizing people like Geller and Hirsi Ali as haters because they dare criticize Islam makes itself an enemy of free speech, worthy of NCAC mention as an OFFENDER.  The ACLU, another of NCAC’s buddies, blamed the attack on the Christian Right.  Recall that the nightclub was a homosexual hangout and that Muslims are not exactly fond of  the idea of homosexuality, a freedom-of-expression concept.  And for the mind numb, who still think it was a KKK attack, the Washington Post recently published Under Islam, the Orlando Shooter’s Wife Is also Guilty.  In Europe and Canada today, free speech continues to be severely threatened by Islam and its useful idiot political hacks from Trudeau to Macron and Merkel.  And what about on the southern border, where Mexican latino cartels are killing journalists and what about the MS-13 latino plague already in America?  How might they affect free speech? 

Besides Islam, the ideologically-biased media and the nation’s ideologically-biased colleges and universities ought to have figured on NCAC’s list, yet are conspicuously absent from it.  The media severely affects freedom of expression by choosing which stories to cover and which ones to bury.  Its choices have been increasingly biased and its stories, increasingly slanted.  And for that, We, the People have become increasingly distrustful of it!  “We note that many of the worst offenders this year are associated with the Trump administration,” notes NCAC in full ideological hate-Trump mode.  

“NCAC joined dozens of cultural and civil liberties organizations in protesting the administration’s travel ban," it notes in full pro-Islam mode.  No mention of the Obama administration several years ago when it was working side-by-side with CAIR and the UN to adopt anti-blasphemy Resolution 16/18 (Istanbul Process)!  Partisan-politics should not play a role in free-speech advocation!  

The worst offenders were not associated with Trump but rather with those who hate Trump, including left-wing ANTIFA and BLM, which have successfully shut down free speech via violent protests on college campuses across the country.  NCAC did not even mention the Berkeley Antifa riot!  Rutgers, William & Mary, NYU, Middlebury, and other institutions had right-wing speakers silenced.  At what colleges did the KKK shut down free speech?  The right to protest does not mean the right to shut down the speech of others, whom one does not like.  That is called the heckler’s veto, which is against the law.  NCAC ought to heed the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, yet another of its buddies:  “We urge our readers to identify this pernicious form of censorship, speak out against it, and deny the heckler the power to veto speech. Take a stand for free speech over mob censorship by rejecting the heckler’s veto once and for all” (Zach Greenberg).  NCAC ought to clearly list Antifa and BLM, as well as name their leaders, as Offenders, instead of simply mentioning the former in its introduction:  “Alt-right provocateurs and antifa alike have attempted to silence their detractors with threats of physical violence, and it seems to be working.”  

Antifa should not be conflated with White Supremacist movements because the former, by far, especially on college campuses, not the latter, is clearly an anti-free speech movement.  Oddly, or perhaps not, editor Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, labels White Supremacist poster hanging or distributing leaflets on campuses as “incidents.”  Well, if anything, they are incidents of freedom of speech!  But that is not what Jaschik means.  And yet clearly hanging a poster is not the same as beating people unconscious to shut them up, as effected by Antifa at Berkeley.  Jaschik concludes his article, “Surge in Campus Propaganda From White Supremacists,” citing Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League:  “White supremacists are targeting college campuses like never before. They see campuses as a fertile recruiting ground, as evident by the unprecedented volume of propagandist activity designed to recruit young people to support their vile ideology.”  And what about Antifa?  In fact, what about the “vile ideology” of anti-free-speech cultural Marxism, entrenched in so many college campuses today?  Silence!  

Jaschik and co-editor Doug Lederman refuse to address my criticisms and have even censored my comments on a number of occasions (see A, B, and C).  In fact, I featured both of them with censorship-approving President Patricia McGuire of Trinity Washington University on the front cover of last issue of The American Dissident.  Perhaps they ought to be highlighted by NCAC as Offenders!  In fact, academe in general ought to have been listed as an Offender because clearly far too many colleges and universities and their Deans of Diversity have been pushing the mantra that hate speech somehow is not free speech.  Why the silence with that regard, NCAC Executive Director Chris Finan?  

NCAC lists the FCC (Ajit Pai) as an “Offender” because of its removal of “net neutrality,” which removed government controls initiated by Obama over the internet, thus somehow “threatening our ability to freely communicate on the internet and potentially restricting what we read, see, watch and write online. […] The FCC has given ISPs the right to control online content and create a tiered internet in which they determine who is and is not heard.”  So, why the egregious silence regarding Twitter, Facebook, and Google, which have likely had far more censorial power as to “who is and is not heard” than Trump and Pai?  Yes, Twitter has gone from bastion of free speech to global censor.  But NCAC chooses not to mention that!  And how about the interesting concept of “shadow banning” actualized by Twitter?  Silence.  And how about James Damore, fired by Google because of his revealing viewpoint diversity memo?  Well, Damore is suing Google now.  And so is Prager University, a conservative nonprofit that makes educational videos (see "Google has an actual secret speech police").  Others have had their accounts deleted by Twitter and YouTube, including Pamela Geller and Milo Yiannopoulos, usually for ideological non-conformity.   Should not NCAC stick up for the free speech rights of those of the supposed alt-right?  Or is a free and open internet meant only for those ideologically conformed to the alt-left?  

The egregious lack of neutrality or even semblance thereof characterizes NCAC’s Offenders and Defenders list.  Alt-left good/alt-right bad constitutes the general slant.  Black victimization is highlighted over and again along with the white-supremacy-here-white-supremacy-everywhere mantra from Kaepernick to John Simms (his anti-white supremacy noose exhibit), Sam Durant (his scaffold exhibit noting people of color were hung more), Paul Rucker (his history of racism exhibit), Mark Harris (11 paintings depicting history of racial injustice), Dana Shultz (painting of Emmett Till in his casket), and David Pulphus (cops as pigs painting).  The few other examples were certainly in line with the identity politics of the day, including mention of native establishment poet American Sherman Alexie.  Clearly, identity politics, rife in the ranks of NCAC, determined who would be selected as Defenders and Offenders.  Were there no banned white artists or writers in America in 2017?  In fact, one must wonder if racism and identity politics were the only free speech concerns in 2017.  Why didn’t NCAC at least attempt to be fair and balanced by including just one conservative voice that was censored in 2017.  How about Charles Murray at Middlebury College, my alma mater?  Silence.  Well, how about the censoring of just one liberal voice by leftists?  How about at public Evergreen State College’s “Day of Absence,” requesting whites to leave campus for a day, and where a “deeply progressive” professor, a Bernie Sanders supporter, Bret Weinstein dared protest the event and ended up fully demonized by ideologue students.  His safety could no longer be guaranteed at the college, according to its president!  He no longer teaches there and won a sizable legal settlement from the college!  Silence.  Or how about Evergreen’s censoring criticism of BLM via its Bias Response Team?  Silence.  Or how about liberal professor Michael Rectenwald, who dared challenge NYU’s PC-censorship culture and is now suing.  Silence!  What is wrong with NCAC, which did not even mention these highly public stories.  Instead, it highlights Kaepernick and the private football industry, which can legally censor all it wants.

Aberrantly, NCAC praises Democrat (of course!) Governor John Bel Edwards who vetoed a bill that would have in fact simply echoed the heckler’s veto, which prohibits, as mentioned above, the shutting down of speech via protest, peaceful or other.  It also praises another Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe for vetoing a bill that would have forced schools to inform parents when reading material contained sexual content and, according to NCAC, would have “discouraged educators from choosing important texts because they might cause controversy.”  The “important text” used to illustrate the bill was by (surprise!) black author Toni Morrison, which some people had wrongly attempted to ban.  But what about books that were actually banned, not simply almost banned, or for that matter writers who were permanently banned from their neighborhood libraries… or might that upset the narrative of the American Library Association, another NCAC buddy, that all libraries are freedom-loving?   It is not clear why Edwards and McAuliffe’s vetoes were far more praiseworthy than perhaps thousands of other unmentioned actions.   A third Democrat, black Congressman William Clay, is also praised (for backing black artist Pulphus).  

What should have been included on the NCAC list is the forcing of PC-vocabulary down the throats of citizens and how some of it definitely has the insidious intention of encouraging self-censorship, including terms like islamophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism and on and on.  “He who controls the language controls the masses,” had argued Alinsky.  Perhaps for the sake of truth, NCAC ought to rename itself National Coalition Against White Supremacy (and for that matter the SPLC, Southern Poverty Center Against White Supremacy).  Its fixation on the race issue blinds it to other important, if not more important, issues of censorship, especially festering, as mentioned, in the nation’s colleges and universities. 

“This year, our core values have been attacked by activists across the political spectrum,” notes the NCAC.  Well, I for one do not share its core politically-correct ideological, pro-Islamic, BLM  values.  I for one will NOT self-censor in an effort to gain access.  So, evidently, that must render this essay an “attack.”  Imagine how many thousands of citizens are perhaps censored in any given year and simply ignored by NCAC.  Why doesn’t NCAC mention that and perhaps even add a token to its lists of one of those faceless censored citizens, who cannot, for example, even get his or her story told in the local PC-newspaper, facilitator of community-pillar censors?  

“All citizens must demand that our public officials and institutions support our right to free expression,” states NCAC.  But it does not inform how citizens can make such demands against such brick walls.  How to demand the NEA open its gates to free expression, for example?  How to demand the Library of Congress, state cultural councils, and even local human rights commissions open their gates?  In fact, how to demand a simple response from NCAC itself regarding its apparent ideological rigidity?  Well, I’ve tried and tried and failed and failed.  Finally, in America, likely thousands of local governments are either outwardly against free speech or apathetic to concerns of free speech, despite the First Amendment.  Test those dubious waters of democracy and ineluctably you will discover a world of difference between de facto rights and de jura rights.  NCAC fails to even contemplate this… perhaps because its staff has never contemplated actually testing those waters.  It lists eight defenders and nine offenders in total.  A few I did not mention, nor did I analyze each one in depth, for each one could probably form the basis for separate essays. 

Donald S. Beyer