HATE SPEECH—AN AMERICAN TRADITION

One of the things I love about America is hate speech. In many countries, engaging in it will land you in prison, a gulag—or worse. But here in the US, you may be socially ostracized, and more recently sentenced to forced unemployment, but we’re still leagues above many of our despotic world neighbors, some of them Western allies.

Defining “hate speech” is the challenge. To the radical Left, it’s anything they disagree with, that doesn’t conform to the ideology and narrative of the day. And because on the far Left it’s subjective, inconsistent and ever-changing, the followers tend to eat their own with regularity; interestingly, the current Israeli crisis has created a rift in the ranks. Things that used to be common ground on the left and the right, such as the values of meritocracy, color-blindness, and objective sexual identity, are now cause for outrage and charges of racism, microaggression, and exclusion—hence, hate speech. Thus, the rationale for defending it—as tomorrow your views can be the new hate speech. And without disagreement and dissent, there is no discussion, and no seeking the truth, which often lurks somewhere in the middle, in that safe zone between Tyranny and Chaos.

The battle to reclaim this right to speak freely, especially for conservatives in the current climate with radical leftist ideology controlling the halls of power, has resulted in a casualty of the war against evil: the ability to call out and effectively fight it. With this spiritual paralysis, we become at best amoral, and at worst immoral. And the confusion surrounding free speech and hate speech dampens our ability to deal appropriately with the ubiquitous pro-Palestine/pro-Hamas public displays of unity. Where does the extent of freedom of speech end? Even Nazis have been permitted to publicly and peacefully march in support of their demonic beliefs. In the past, the bounds of this freedom were well defined, ending where calls for violence began. This no longer seems to apply. Cries of “kill the Jews” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, ” even when accompanied by actual acts of vandalism and assault have been insufficient to move the authorities to aggressive enforcement with imprisonment, deportation, or defunding, except in the most extraordinary circumstances. They’ve been weak, abdicating responsibility to individual agents, such as the now-awakened ex-benefactors of irresponsible universities that play a big role in the problem, instead resorting to appeasement and naively trying to defuse a situation well beyond the point of a diplomatic solution with “both side-ism,” with ludicrous exhortations of faux moral equivalency between the two sides.

If we can’t deal strongly with hate speech in the circumstances described above, it becomes almost impossible when dealing with less clear-cut circumstances. Take the recent TikTok posting of Osama bin Laden’s treatise on the rationale for 9-11 that triggered multiple online demonstrations of approbation by young people. Yes, they’re ignorant and have been programmed like others on the left to only understand the concept of oppressor vs victim, not of right vs wrong. But what’s to be done? The decision by the Chinese owners to remove the treatise in response to the blow-back seems, at first blush, to be reasonable. But is it? We’re not China, and we used to abhor censorship. And if bin Laden’s words hadn’t been publicized, the problem would have remained under the radar. Posting this written excrement didn’t create the issue, only unmasked it, and taking it down doesn’t solve it.

What about the recent kerfuffle regarding Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) response to the post “Jewish communties [sic] have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them”? He replied, “You have said the actual truth.” And the subsequent tweet in the thread declaring, “Everyone is allowed to be proud of their race, except for white people, because we’ve been brainwashed into believing that our history was some how ‘worse’ than other races. This false narrative must die,” followed by Musk’s response of “Yeah, this is super messed up. Time for this nonsense to end and shame ANYONE who perpetuates these lies!” This was roundly censured as antisemitism by the Anti-Defamation League. But is this really hate speech? I’m a Jew by birth but not religious practice and consider antisemitism as abhorrent as any form of racism, yet found myself agreeing with what I believe was the intent of Musk’s words: A large segment of the secular Jewish community, as opposed to the orthodox, or practicing Jewish community, has been a strong supporter of most of the far Left’s progressive policies. So “hate speech” is often a byproduct of a lack of clarity or misunderstanding. (Not surprisingly, a formal statement from the CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino, followed, condemning antisemitism and discrimination.)

The bottom line is that there is no free speech without “hate” speech. But ignoring calls for violence to remain without consequence by people who do not share our American values and will never assimilate, especially those who are here either illegally or legally as non-citizens, is foolish and a sure recipe for societal collapse. I hope we’re smarter than that. There are some encouraging signs—i.e., the 300,000 person-strong march against antisemitism in Washington, DC.

It will be a long, hard journey, but good will win out. And that’s something to be truly grateful for this Thanksgiving.

TOO FEW ADULTS IN THE ROOM

Imagine sending your child to a daycare center where there are fifty unruly kids with one caregiver. A formula for catastrophe, right? That may be a rough analogy for the state of our beleaguered nation.

You only have to go back 2 generations to see an America populated by a majority of people with far different values and expectations. Sure, those coming here, then as now, were seeking a better life. But central to that life were the country’s values. Those that were already here believed in them. Those that came entered legally, stirred by the promise of individual liberty in their material and spiritual lives. All had an understanding that individual responsibility was inextricably entwined with the gift of citizenship. People came despite the undeniable stain of unrealized promises, manifested as a persistent inequality of race, sex, and ethnicity. They came because they saw that regardless, the opportunity to overcome social ills and succeed was better here than from where they’d fled. They were not slaves like the forced African immigrants before them, but some, as indentured servants, were little more, and people of different ethnicities, Chinese, Irish, and Italian, among others, faced unfair discrimination. Still, they persevered with their dreams and built lives for themselves and assimilated, and defined an American nation under the credo E pluribus unum. Despite a standard of living much lower than today, many viewed the more limited government assistance available as a sign of failure; family, the church, and community were the main sources of support. Families tended to be larger, more connected, at least geographically, and necessarily so. For there was no giant government safety net to catch them. Hard work was lauded, and expected. The crises, when they occurred, came earlier and more frequently due to the absence of advanced technology and the more primitive state of medicine. But the combination of freedom and capitalism, governed more by the marketplace and less by regulations, attracted the best minds and innovators from throughout the world, and led to the most prosperous, and eventually the most egalitarian, place the world had ever seen. Given the flawed nature of human beings as demonstrated by not just American, but world history, the existence of slavery and Jim Crow is perhaps less astonishing than the dramatic progress achieved in equality and justice for all over the past few decades, belatedly fulfilling promises made in the original founding documents. Those that trumpet individual displays of ethnic and racial prejudice as proof of a failed system as a whole not only ignore this progress, but lack supporting evidence, always citing unequal outcomes; and the election of a black president and the over-the-top backlash against even the perception of racist behavior is more than ample evidence of this fallacy.

Therefore, it is ironic that after getting so close to pairing unprecedented economic success and social equality, the values that sustain this have eroded faster than a calving glacier. It is not uncommon to see young and old alike bemoaning the state of our nation, and their own lots, as if their vision reflects reality. They stubbornly ignore the fact that hundreds of thousands of people a year ate attempting to come to this land they so decry as irredeemably oppressive. To achieve this legerdemain, they have to reconstruct the past as the present, and look to the wealthy as an evil end-product that must be punished (always to their benefit). They look away from the unprecedented level of improvement in living standard even at the lowest economic strata and focus only on the widening disparity between the top and bottom. They myopically ignore the benefit of their relative affluence compared with most of the world beyond our shores (which, incidentally, thanks to capitalism has also improved). So many Americans are not only willing to suck from the teat of an outrageously metastasizing, intrusive nanny government, but from fellow citizens—and feel entitled to it, to boot. The change in attitude has been so insidious that they don’t see it, or choose not to. As the end result of failed policies manifests before their eyes, they’re told everything is going swimmingly, and are rewarded for believing with handouts, some redistributed, most manufactured out of thin air and green ink. Here in California, a corrupt governor facing a threat of recall, is disbursing debt-impregnated dollars to 70% of state residents. It would not shock me if people take the bribe and submit.

There remains a large but dwindling contingent that clings not just to their guns and bibles, but to the values that founded the country and made it great; if recent elections are any indicator, they may now be in the minority. And current immigration policies (or lack thereof) encouraging illegal entry without assimilation in concert with decades of Anti-American, white guilt-catalyzed indoctrination in the schools are likely to diminish this voice even more. The so-called leaders now at the helm, will pursue, like unprincipled children, the simplest road to continued power, regardless of the ultimate consequences. The adults in the room seem to be too few and too weak to stop them.

Maybe it’s time to just take my warm milk and go to bed. I hear it’s free.

THE UNITY VERSUS DIVERSITY CONUNDRUM

At the onset of this nation’s founding, more than lip service was payed to the concepts of liberty and e pluribus unum, or “from many, one.” Implicit in the latter was diversity as an input and unity as an output. While we haven’t always lived up to this ideal in practice, it’s still a foundational value worth striving for. It’s important to note that the concept of diversity can be applied to the physical and to the arena of ideas. It can be used for good or for evil purposes, a positive relationship manifesting as tolerance and inclusion and its evil counterpart as prejudice and exclusion. So how does this relate to our present condition?

To be a country, we tacitly and voluntarily agree to live under a single umbrella. This umbrella superficially consists of laws, but more substantially a set of values. Under this umbrella are an unlimited number of smaller umbrellas and, depending on how the “groups” are defined and how granular an analysis you want, an infinite number of yet smaller ones exist beneath, culminating in the individual. At every level, like snowflakes, no two umbrellas are alike. When a group decides to place the value of diversity above unity, it reverses the motto to e unum pluribus, and the nation cannot stand. Such a group cites as its rationale examples of intolerance, even reaching as far back into history as necessary, to bolster the importance of diversity over assimilation. Unfortunately, this principle of “tolerance” has been applied to physical characteristics such as skin color and sexual preferences as opposed to diversity of thought.

There is no question that diversity of thought is a prerequisite for innovation and optimal problem-solving (thinking “outside the box”). Like any positive characteristic, in excess it can cause dissension, resentment, and group dissolution by consent or worse, violence. Diversity of physical characteristics and sexual preference add nothing unless, by their presence, imbue the bearer with a diversity of thought that adds to the discussion. It should be neither selected for nor campaigned against. So differences in people are a necessary prerequisite for moving toward a better state of being as long as they can work together to move forward.

At the level of the biggest umbrella, there is room for disagreement in processes and policies; in fact, it’s a prerequisite to navigate the narrow path between chaos and order. At this level, of the nation, there is little room for differences in fundamental values, the glue that cements the union. The alternative leads to balkanization. This country was founded on the principle of God-given rights and individual liberty, with the government’s existence predicated upon serving these values. Paramount among these rights is freedom of speech. The current election results suggest a minimum of half the country supports these values. Of the other half, I suspect at least 20% do as well. I believe two simple questions can determine the portion of the country that would be more comfortable under a different umbrella, i.e, those that truly desire “fundamental change”:

• Do you believe hate speech is protected speech?
• Do you favor equality of opportunity over equity?

A “no” answer would suggest a fundamental incompatibility with the Founders’ intent, and I and many others I know would resist attempts to change this with our last breath.

E pluribus unum.