Quotulatiousness

September 10, 2024

Chilling effect (with a British accent) – “No one is now sure what they are allowed to say”

Filed under: Britain, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Spaceman Spiff makes a bid to star in one of Gauleiter Keir Stürmer’s big show trials, coming far too soon to a town hall near you:

In Britain many of us now walk on eggshells.

The country and its systems are broken. Free speech is being outlawed. Many are frightened to say anything, although it doesn’t stop them noticing and thinking.

Recent emphasis on invented categories of offence — misinformation, disinformation and now malinformation — mean almost anything can come under the purview of the State and its informers, from ill-timed comments to jokes and humorous observations.

Famously, memes based on simple observation are admissible in Britain’s world-famous show trials, including this one no doubt:1

It is difficult to know what people are thinking when they endorse the importation of people who want to kill them for their lifestyle choices.

Everything must be monitored because less and less can be tolerated by those in positions of authority. Their narratives are failing, and they are panicking. They are getting desperate.

Noticing is verboten

Many of the topics that trigger the strongest response by the British Government are simply unpopular policies that normal people can no longer ignore.

More accurately, policies that directly affect growing numbers of law-abiding taxpayers who did not vote for them.

Do not discuss immigration

Mass immigration is the supreme example. Britain’s cities are being flooded with “asylum seekers”, most of whom are economic migrants with no right to settle in the country.

Many are alien peoples from distinct cultures with no connection to Europe and a poor track record of assimilation.

They are aided by an army of well-funded human rights lawyers who distort laws designed to help the genuinely dispossessed, which most immigrants are not.

Thanks to our generosity many privileges are extended to foreigners that are unavailable to natives such as free housing and financial help on the understanding these are used sparingly and temporarily to aid the desperate.

These myriad of kindnesses did not emerge to serve those who want the benefits of first-world living while dodging the corresponding costs; the development of high-trust social structures, the communal spirit that transcends tribalism, and the selflessness it all requires. These are rare phenomenon much of the world cannot produce or maintain, and they are being squandered in Western nations by the selfish obsessed with demonstrating their own virtue.

No serious discussion of immigration is tolerated at any level in Britain. However, this does not stop the erosion of goodwill upon which most of their schemes depend. The generosity they abuse is a limited resource and the magnanimity upon which it depends is evaporating quickly.

    1. Many are being jailed in Britain for posting memes and related social media content. The judges often go to some lengths to confirm it is not the content of the material they are questioning as they are perfectly legal, but the perceived intent behind the posting itself.

    This unprecedented legal descent into clairvoyance, hate speech and arrogance is relatively new. It will not age well and tells us more about the decline in competency in the judiciary than anything else. Standards are clearly not what they once were.

    To put this kind of absurd reasoning on display in irremovable public court records speaks to the level of delusion and arrogance we are now dealing with in Britain. Our social betters are truly lost in a world of their own.

QotD: Contempt of court

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

It’s a funny thing — or not — but due to the sad state of prison security in this country, a judge can essentially threaten a person with rape and severe beatings. How about that? One more reason to live clean and avoid making waves.

Steve H., “Was I Wrong About Cooper? Don’t Think So”, Hog On Ice, 2005-07-06.

September 9, 2024

Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act

Filed under: Cancon, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the National Post, Barbara Kay explains why the Trudeau government will probably be urgently trying to get Bill C-63 through into law when Parliament resumes sitting later this month:

The sands of time were already running low for Justin Trudeau’s government. Jagmeet Singh’s just-announced withdrawal from their mutually supportive contract has widened the waist of the hourglass. Parliament resumes sitting on Sept. 16, and the Liberals will urgently seek to pass Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, now in its second reading.

If passed in its present incarnation, this deeply flawed bill will drastically curtail freedom of speech in Canada (which, to be fair, is not an outlier on digital crackdowns in the West. Switzerland, of all places, just passed similar legislation).

We already have hate-crime laws in the Criminal Code that address advocacy for genocide, incitement of hatred and the wilful promotion of hatred. Apart from its laudatory intentions in removing online content that sexually victimizes children, Bill C-63 seeks to curb all online hate speech through unnecessary, inadvisable and draconian measures inappropriate to a democracy.

The law would create a new transgression: an “offence motivated by hated” which would raise the maximum penalty for advocacy of genocide from five years to life imprisonment. What kind of mindset considers the mere expression of hateful ideas as equivalent in moral depravity to rape and murder? Such instincts call to my mind the clever aperçu by anti-Marxist pundit David Horowitz that “Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out”.

Another red flag: The law would give new powers to the federal cabinet to pass regulations that have the same force as legislation passed by Parliament, and that could, say, shut down a website. Unlike legislation, regulations created by cabinet do not require debate, votes or approval of Parliament. They can be decided in secrecy and come into force without public consultation or debate.

Yet another is the restoration of the “communication of hate speech” offence to the Canadian Human Rights Act, a provision similar to the one repealed in 2012. Frivolous or malicious complaints could be made against persons or organizations, granting complainants significant potential for financial reward at no personal cost, win or lose. Moreover, under this law, a complainant’s sense of injury from published words would trump a defence of objective truth. This is an open invitation for myriad social malcontents and grievance-mongers to swarm the system, with no regard for the inevitable harm done to those who they target.

September 3, 2024

Second Amendment case involving switchblades in Massachusetts

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

J.D. Tuccille summarizes a (surprising) court decision in Massachusetts which struck down a state law banning switchblade knives:

“IMGA0174_tijuana” by gregor_y is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution undisputedly protects the individual right to own and carry firearms for self-defense, sport, and other uses. But the amendment actually says nothing about guns; it refers to “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms”, of which firearms are just one example of what dictionaries define as “a means (such as a weapon) of offense or defense”. In Massachusetts, last week, that resulted in a decision by the state’s highest court striking down a law against switchblade knives.

Protected by the Second Amendment

“We conclude switchblades are not ‘dangerous and unusual’ weapons falling outside the protection of the Second Amendment,” wrote Justice Serge Georges Jr. for the court in an opinion in Commonwealth v. Canjura that drew heavily on two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases: Bruen (2022) and Heller (2008). The decision found the state’s ban on switchblade knives unconstitutional and dismissed charges against the defendant.

The case involved a 2020 dispute between David E. Canjura and his girlfriend, during which Boston police officers found a switchblade knife on Canjura while searching him. As is often noted, “everything is illegal in Massachusetts” and “a switch knife, or any knife having an automatic spring release device” is only one of a long list of weapons proscribed under state law. Canjura was accordingly charged.

Such absolute prohibitions on arms aren’t permitted in the wake of the Heller decision, so Canjura and his public defender, Kaitlyn Gerber, challenged the ban on switchblades, citing the federal decisions. They also relied on Jorge Ramirez v. Commonwealth (2018) in which the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturned a similar prohibition on stun guns on Second Amendment grounds.

“We now conclude that stun guns are ‘arms’ within the protection of the Second Amendment. Therefore, under the Second Amendment, the possession of stun guns may be regulated, but not absolutely banned,” the court found in that case.

Canjura required similar analysis based on the same earlier decisions, this time with Ramirez in the mix.

The Second Amendment Protects All “Bearable Arms”

Citing Heller, Justice Georges pointed out, “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding”. Importantly, though, knives and other bladed weapons have a long history, extending back well before the birth of the country.

“A review of the history of the American colonies reveals that knives were ubiquitous among colonists, who used them to defend their lives, obtain or produce food, and fashion articles from raw materials,” commented Georges. Folding knives, in particular, grew in popularity to the point they became “almost universal”. The court saw no significant difference between the many types of folding knives used over the centuries and spring-assisted varieties developed somewhat more recently, finding “the most apt historical analogue of a modern-day switchblade is the folding pocketknife”.

QotD: The Libertarian Party clown car

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

Why are libertarians like this? I see no reason why people who value liberty in the social and economic sphere must also be weirdos who probably eat the silica packet in a beef jerky pouch because it says “DO NOT EAT” and they don’t like being bossed around. I have some sympathy for libertarian positions: I’m socially more liberal than basically every Republican, and I like markets more than most Democrats. But I also know a fully stuffed clown car when I see one, and the Libertarian Party is very much that. And lest you think that this week’s convention was a rare foray into Crazytown, here are some events that establish the Libertarian Party as a tenth-generation Crazytown family whose antecedents are featured on the city crest.

Jeff Maurer, “Why Can’t the Libertarian Party Be Normal?”, I Might Be Wrong, 2024-05-28.

September 2, 2024

There’s no limit to how progressive politicians want to control your life

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the National Post a couple of days ago, Carson Jerema provided many examples of how the Canadian federal government — despite failing and fumbling so many of its existing responsibilities — still wants to increase control over the daily lives of Canadians:

After a decade or so, progressives are on the defensive in Canada and elsewhere because regular people, as in those who are not activist weirdos, are tired of the agenda to control every aspect of our lives. Point this out to a progressive, and they will deny that anyone’s life is being interfered with and claim only some far-right monster would think otherwise. They can’t believe there are people out there who share a different view. They don’t understand how this could be.

But progressive governments are trying to control our lives in ways big and small, and in ways that range from subtle to a punch in the face.

In Canada, the federal government’s environmental policies are the most obvious example of this interference. The Liberals have banned plastic straws and plastic bags; even compostable bags are banned in grocery stores because they resemble plastic. Such bans are pointless irritants that make shopping more expensive, and life slightly less enjoyable as paper straws dissolve in one’s drink. People might dismiss these concerns as simply minor inconveniences, but this is how most people experience government policy, by being forced to replace their bag of plastic bags that they were already reusing, with more expensive, less useful options.

Next up, the Liberals are exploring options to bring in environmental regulations for clothing. The cost of clothes has actually gone down in recent years, so leave it to Ottawa to look for ways to bring the cost back up and to limit options.

There is also the plan to essentially force Canadians to purchase electric vehicles, that nobody would otherwise want, through government mandates to phase out the sale of gas-powered cars and trucks.

On a larger scale, the government is attempting to restrict the kind of work people do, specifically work in the oil and gas industry, through steep emissions targets, which will close off lucrative job opportunities in western oilfields. It will also limit the kinds of fuels people will be able to use to heat their homes.

There are also policies that the Canadian government hasn’t implemented, but which green activists have endorsed, such as the banning of gas stoves and the ludicrous suggestion from some academics that “climate lockdowns” be implemented to help cut emissions.

It is possible to be supportive of all these policies, despite their paternalistic and job-killing nature, but pretending that no one is trying to, or that no one wants to, interfere with our liberty is not a credible position to take.

August 31, 2024

Britain’s police double down on “non-crime hate incidents” as a tool of repression

Filed under: Books, Britain, Government, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Andrew Doyle admits he was over-optimistic by predicting that the British police forces’ use of “non-crime hate incidents” — after court judgments and Home Office instructions to stop using them — would not last for much longer. That was in 2022:

“Metropolitan Police London England” by William Mewes is marked with CC0 1.0 .

I have a tendency to be over-optimistic. In my 2022 book The New Puritans, I wrote about “non-crime hate incidents” and how they were still being recorded by police, in spite of the Court of Appeal’s ruling that they were “plainly an interference with freedom of expression” and direct instructions from the Home Office that the police must stop this illiberal and unethical practice. However, I concluded that ultimately “it seems unlikely that ‘non-crime hate incidents’ will last for much longer”.

Of course I was wrong, because I had not counted on just how authoritarian a new Labour government might be. It was bad enough that the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson scotched the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act just one day before parliament went into recess — presumably to avoid having to debate the matter — but now the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has reversed the Conservatives’ pledge to limit the recording of “non-crime”. Labour is bringing back this absurd policy, and has convinced itself that this is somehow a progressive measure.

It should go without saying that the police have no business recording “non-crime”, particularly when such records are based on accusations alone (that is to say, the “perception” of the “victim” is what counts, rather than actual evidence of hatred). The Tory government should have eliminated the entire practice in its entirety, but instead decided that such “incidents” ought to stay on record if there was a “real risk of escalation causing significant harm or a criminal offence”. The science fiction writer Philip K. Dick had a phrase for this: “pre-crime”.

So let’s leave aside the woefully inadequate restrictions put in place by the Tories. Let’s also leave aside the obvious point that hatred, along with all other emotions, will never be eradicated through legislation and that the state is wasting its time trying to alter human nature. Let’s focus instead on why the Labour government is so determined to control the speech and thought of its citizens.

How does it help anyone for the name of the schoolboy who accidentally scuffed a copy of the Koran at a school in Wakefield to be on police records? His “non-crime” was duly recorded after the event, but why? Does the government really suppose that this child is one step away from torching a mosque? Even if he had deliberately scuffed the Koran, what has this to do with the police? I don’t much approve of defacing books, but vandalism of one’s own property is a matter for individual conscience.

Of course, Labour will say that the recent riots have proven the necessity for cracking down on the private thoughts of citizens. In truth, these acts of violence are being exploited to justify further authoritarian policies. We have seen how quick our politicians are to seize upon these moments to advance their own goals. The murder of Sir David Amess had precisely nothing to do with social media, and yet politicians immediately began to argue that his death was evidence of the need to curb free speech online. This was grotesque opportunism from a political class that does not trust the public.

August 30, 2024

Two-Tier Keir’s “mask off” moment(s)

Filed under: Britain, Government, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Millennial Woes presents a disturbingly long summary of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s responses to popular non-violent protests:

The situation in Britain now is so perverse that, if you could convey it to people from a century ago, I think they, after getting over the disbelief and astonishment and accepting that this really was true, would assume it could not possibly have come about by chance. Whatever their complaints about the Britain of 1900, they wouldn’t have believed it capable — on its own — of the degeneration we have seen. They would insist that it must have been wickedly subverted, every failsafe removed, and entire systems of governance, culture and morality repurposed, made to achieve the opposite of their purported function.

I hardly need list the symptoms of this, but for the sake of posterity …

  • The control nexus (of which the government is merely one node) ships massive numbers of unassimilable foreigners into the country against the repeatedly expressed wishes of the natives, and in clear violation of their best interests.
  • Natives who complain about this are hounded, doxed, demonised, made unemployable, and often imprisoned.
  • Their children are systematically indoctrinated by fiction media to accept their dispossession. They are encouraged to despise the “bigoted” attitudes of their parents and grandparents, and to loathe their nation’s history. The boys are encouraged to idolise non-native men. The girls are encouraged to race-mix with them.
  • Teachers deliver the same indoctrination in the classroom — in every classroom. You won’t be allowed to become a teacher unless you voice enthusiasm for such things. Alternative views have been eradicated from the classroom and the lecture hall.
  • Natives are systematically disadvantaged in numerous sectors of education and employment.
  • Natives are demonised in fiction and news media while non-natives are made to look wonderful.
  • The mass sexual abuse of native children by non-natives is systematically down-played by news media, who shift discussion to false “equivalents”.
  • Natives’ history is systematically distorted in education and fiction media.
  • The very existence of the natives, as a group, and their ownership of their homeland, are systematically denied by education, fiction media, news media, and phoney “science”.
  • The police do whatever they are told to do, kneeling for the participants in one riot, hunting down the participants in a different riot.
  • Judges pass obviously outrageous prison sentences upon certain people, for blatantly political reasons. These people are denied bail and pressured to plead guilty for fear of sentences even more outrageous. All of this is to send a message to other people: “don’t dare complain or the same will happen to you”.
  • The media rushes to concoct fake narratives about events, to keep the public misinformed.
  • A so-called “charity”, which is heavily linked to the government and the civil service, seeks to indoctrinate the young and ruin the lives of “troublemakers”, and actively aids the government in concocting fake narratives in order to control public thought and direct events.
  • Fake news from such Establishment agents is forgiven, fake news from the Establishment’s enemies is answered with threats of prosecution.
  • The media “memory hole” stories of appalling violence by non-natives, explain away such incidents with talk of mental illness, tell natives “don’t look back in anger”, and at all costs defend the suicidal ideologies that make such incidents possible.
  • The prisons are emptied of rapists, child molesters and murderers so that troublesome natives can be assigned their cells. They are placed alongside non-natives who might well be violent to them, and journalists gloat about it.
  • The slaughtering of three little girls by a non-native is dismissed by the Prime Minister, who says “it doesn’t matter” that the rioting was a response to this outrageous crime, which was enabled by the outrageous government policies that the natives have been complaining about for decades. Their shock, their trauma, their resentment, their dignity, their pain… “doesn’t matter”. This is in stark contrast with how he reacted to Black people rioting several years before.
  • The natives’ freedom of speech is continually undermined, one government after another actively seeking to erode it further.
  • Not one single organisation is fighting for the wellbeing, rights or interests of the natives.
  • Any political party that would do anything about any of this is refused the right to stand in elections, debanked, demonised and, in most cases, destroyed.

Any one of these examples would, in itself, be cause for great alarm. The whole lot together indicate a society that is not just largely, not just fundamentally, but wholly opposed to the continued existence of its native population. To underline: British society is actively perpetrating the destruction of the native British people.

It has been said that the ruthless authoritarian response of the fledgling Starmer government to this summer’s (White) riots is a “mask off” moment for the Labour Party. Others have called it a “mask off” moment for the British Establishment, which transcends the particular party in office. Indeed, things that didn’t happen under the Conservatives have suddenly happened under Labour; things that one would more neatly associate with the former have instead happened under the latter. That can only mean either that the Labour Party has utterly lost its sense of itself, or that the particular party in office simply doesn’t matter, because the Establishment abides.

I think, in fact, all of these statements are true. It has been a “mask off” moment for the Labour Party, and for Keir Starmer himself, and for the Establishment which enables and directs them. The Labour Party has lost its sense of itself — or, to put it less romantically, has been completely repurposed. And the Establishment does abide; no matter which party is in office, things only ever evolve in one direction. And after all, while Starmer’s behaviour casts a bad light on him, he is only Prime Minister in the first place because the Establishment wanted him, not someone who might have reacted to these riots in a different manner. (Boris Johnson is good at stoking war abroad, but not so willing to stoke it at home.)

But in the end it doesn’t really matter. We don’t need to pin the blame on Starmer, Labour, the British Establishment or Davos; they are all one and the same miasma. Yes, the Conservative Party might have reacted differently to the riots, so to some extent we can blame Labour’s ideology or Starmer’s personality, but the pendulum is kept swinging for a reason. One empty suit is shifted out, another is shifted in. Each one might be enthusiastically on-board with the agenda or compelled to go along with it, this being the only variance. And thus the Establishment abides, always getting what it wants against the wishes of the natives, and always degrading and dispossessing them.

August 29, 2024

How activists used lawfare to force the Boy Scouts to go woke (and then go broke)

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

A guest post from Cole Noble at Postcards From Barsoom discusses how progressive organizations and political activists have managed an immense take-over of the great outdoors, not least of which were the legal and political efforts to force the Boy Scouts of America to accept gay scouts and scout masters:

[…] This entertainment ecosystem, increasingly infested with culture warriors, also started chipping away at the longstanding prestige of organizations like the BSA [Boy Scouts of America]. Depicting someone as a scout became a kind of character development shorthand, signalling them as uncool.

The targeting wasn’t incidental; the existence of the pre-centennial BSA was a serious problem for the ruling class. Their organization’s commitment to values-based conservation served as living proof that going along with society’s adoption of critical theory was completely optional. If the BSA was free to refuse the push, others might start getting ideas.

Lawfare was inevitable.

In 2000, the United States Supreme Court heard Boy Scouts of America v. Dale. In one corner you had James Dale, an avowed gay rights activist, co-president of the Rutgers University Lesbian/Gay Alliance, and outspoken advocate for gay teens having gay role models. In the other, you had the BSA, who didn’t want someone like Dale around its young, impressionable members.

The BSA won, but there was blood in the water. Culture warriors circled back around, this time employing social pressure. They tried to make their demand sound as reasonable as possible: drop the policy against openly gay members. Just one teeny tiny rule. What’s the point anyway? It’s outdated. No real sense keeping it, right?

Smart members of the program clocked this Trojan Horse from miles away. Alas, the organization’s leadership did not. Possessing both the physique and fortitude of rice pudding, they caved, capitulated, and acquiesced some more — agreeing to an ever-escalating series of demands that hollowed out the once-proud group into an empty vessel for The Current Thing(TM).

The Boy Scouts of America is now all-inclusive! Not just to gay scouts and leaders, but girls too. In a show of solidarity with Black Lives Matter after the riots of 2020, a mandatory DEI merit badge has replaced camping as a requirement to attain the once coveted rank of Eagle Scout.

Let’s not forget the Scout Masters now left to deal with teens using the program’s overnight trips as cover for hookups.

Oh, and they went bankrupt.

The organization agreed to a 2.5 billion dollar settlement over tens of thousands of sex abuse cases perpetuated by adult men, against underage boys.

(data compiled from the BSA’s publicly available annual reports)

Rather than bolster ranks, adopting DEI cost the organization more than 1 million members.

The BSA – sorry, Scouting America1 – didn’t publish annual membership reports from 2020 to 2022, I imagine out of embarrassment. During this time, the Mormons, who used Scouting as a youth program for its boys, took their 400,000 members, and their money, and left.

[…]

Scouting was one of, if not the last bastion of quasi-unstructured outdoor activities. While the death of free-range childhood seems to be commonly understood, there is some debate about the precise cause.

Whatever your opinion on the matter, regime journalists shoulder enormous responsibility for eroding societal trust and inspiring mass paranoia through sensational reporting. Former latchkey kids became hysterical helicopter parents, petrified of letting their children out of sight.

Playing outside became a heavily supervised affair, usually relegated to fenced-in backyards with locking gates.

Kids have been robbed of the experiences that could lead them to develop an organic appreciation for outdoor recreation, and groomed into a hypersexualized version of early adulthood. All the while, the institutions which once taught conservation and virtue now serve as apparatuses of critical theory.

    1. They changed their name in May of 2024, after 114 of being the Boy Scouts. Since they’re no long the Boy Scouts, this is at least honest.

Cole’s own Substack is Quandary Magazine, which you should check out if you’re generally interested in the great outdoors.

Pavel Durov’s arrest isn’t for a clear crime, it’s for allowing everyone access to encrypted communications services

Filed under: France, Government, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

J.D. Tuccille explains the real reason the French government arrested Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram:

It’s appropriate that, days after the French government arrested Pavel Durov, CEO of the encrypted messaging app Telegram, for failing to monitor and restrict communications as demanded by officials in Paris, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that his company, which owns Facebook, was subjected to censorship pressures by U.S. officials. Durov’s arrest, then, stands as less of a one-off than as part of a concerted effort by governments, including those of nominally free countries, to control speech.

“Telegram chief executive Pavel Durov is expected to appear in court Sunday after being arrested by French police at an airport near Paris for alleged offences related to his popular messaging app,” reported France24.

A separate story noted claims by Paris prosecutors that he was detained for “running an online platform that allows illicit transactions, child pornography, drug trafficking and fraud, as well as the refusal to communicate information to authorities, money laundering and providing cryptographic services to criminals”.

Freedom for Everybody or for Nobody

Durov’s alleged crime is offering encrypted communications services to everybody, including those who engage in illegality or just anger the powers that be. But secure communications are a feature, not a bug, for most people who live in a world in which “global freedom declined for the 18th consecutive year in 2023”, according to Freedom House. Fighting authoritarian regimes requires means of exchanging information that are resistant to penetration by various repressive police agencies.

“Telegram, and other encrypted messaging services, are crucial for those intending to organise protests in countries where there is a severe crackdown on free speech. Myanmar, Belarus and Hong Kong have all seen people relying on the services,” Index on Censorship noted in 2021.

And if bad people occasionally use encrypted apps such as Telegram, they use phones and postal services, too. The qualities that make communications systems useful to those battling authoritarianism are also helpful to those with less benign intentions. There’s no way to offer security to one group without offering it to everybody.

As I commented on a post on MeWe the other day, “Somehow the governments of the west are engaged in a competition to see who can be the most repressive. Canada and New Zealand had the early lead, but Australia, Britain, Germany, and France have all recently moved ahead in the standings. I’m not sure what the prizes might be, but I strongly suspect “a bloody revolution” is one of them (if not all of them).”

August 15, 2024

QotD: The bitter fruit of deinstitutionalization

Filed under: Health, History, Law, Liberty, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

In 1963, JFK signed the Community Mental Health Act. Its order to close the state psychiatric hospitals was followed, and hundreds were shuttered; the community mental health centers that were meant to replace them were never built. With far fewer beds for a growing patient population it should not have surprised anyone that the streets gradually filled with the severely ill. But somehow, we were surprised. The state governments were mostly just grateful to save money that had once gone to mental healthcare. The passage of Medicaid two years later deepened the problem. Medicaid’s funding structure presented states with an opportunity to further offload costs, this time onto the federal government. Unfortunately, the private institutions that filled with Medicaid patients were no better than the state facilities that had been closed; often they were worse. And maintaining access to Medicaid funding for such care, in practice, was more complicated and less certain than staying in a state institution. In 1975, the Supreme Court’s O’Connor v. Donaldson decision established a national standard that the mentally ill could only be involuntarily treated if they represented an immediate threat to themselves or others. This completely removed actual medical necessity from the equation, and the standard directly incentivized hospitals to discharge very ill patients, many of whom leave these useless emergency room visits and immediately abuse drugs, self-harm, commit crimes, attack others, or commit suicide. In 1990 the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act further empowered treatment-resistant patients and created legal incentives that led hospitals to release severely ill people rather than face the burden of litigation. Various state reforms in recent decades have almost uniformly pushed the severely ill out of treatment rather than into it, under the banner of “autonomy”. For sixty years we’ve done everything in our power to make it harder to treat people who badly need care. And here we are.

Freddie deBoer, “We Closed the Institutions That Housed the Severely Mentally Ill and We Made It Dramatically Harder to Compel Them to Receive Care”, Freddie deBoer, 2024-05-14.

July 23, 2024

The next phase of the campaign to replace “Orwellian” with “Trudeaupian”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty, Media, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

On the Fraser Institute blog, Jake Fuss and Alex Whalen outline the Trudeau government’s latest attempt to drive the word “Orwellian” out of common usage by making “Trudeaupian” the more authoritarian descriptor:

A Toronto Sun editorial cartoon by Andy Donato during Pierre Trudeau’s efforts to pass the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. You can certainly see where Justin Trudeau learned his approach to human rights.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 (and it’s been 40 years since the actual year 1984). In the novel, Orwell explains the dangers of totalitarianism by exploring what happens when government exercises extreme levels of control over citizens including censoring and controlling language. While Canada is a relatively free country in 2024, there are aspects of Orwell’s world reflected in government policy today.

The Human Freedom Index, published annually by the Fraser Institute and Cato Institute, defines freedom as a social concept that recognizes the dignity of individuals by the absence of coercive constraint. In a free society, citizens are free to do, say or think almost anything they want, provided it does not infringe on the right of others to do the same.

Canada currently fares relatively well compared to other countries on the Human Freedom Index, placing 13th out of 165 countries. However, our score has dropped six spots on the index since 2008 when Canada recorded its highest ever rank.

This is not surprising given the Trudeau government’s recent efforts to control and manage the free exchange of ideas. The recent Online Streaming Act imposes various content rules on major streaming services such as Netflix, and requirements to extract funds to be redirected toward favoured groups. The Act seemingly seeks to bring the entire Internet under the regulation of a government body.

In another piece of recent legislation, the Online News Act, the government attempted to force certain social media platforms to pay other legacy news outlets for carrying content. In response, the social media platforms chose simply not to allow content from those news providers on their platforms, resulting in a dramatic reduction of Canadians’ access to news.

Now, a new piece of federal legislation — Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act — seeks to control language and grant government power to punish citizens for what the government deems to be unfavourable speech.

The government has sold Bill C-63 as a way to promote the online safety of Canadians, reduce harms, and ensure the operators of social media services are held accountable. In reality, however, the bill is Orwell’s Big Brother concept brought to life, where government controls information and limits free exchange. The legislation seeks to punish citizens not just for what the governments deems as “hate speech” but also grants the state power to bring Canadians before tribunals on suspicion that they might say something hateful in the future. Not surprisingly, many have raised concerns about the constitutionality of the Bill, which will surely be tested in court.

July 17, 2024

QotD: “Orwellian”

Filed under: Books, History, Liberty, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

All writers enjoying respect and popularity in their lifetimes entertain the hope that their work will outlive them. The true mark of a writer’s enduring influence is the adjectification of his (sorry, but it usually is “his”) name. An especially jolly Christmas scene is said to be “Dickensian”. A cryptically written story is “Hemingwayesque”. A corrupted legal process gives rise to a “Kafkaesque” nightmare for the falsely accused. A ruthless politician takes a “Machiavellian” approach to besting his rival.

But the greatest of these is “Orwellian”. This is a modifier that The New York Times has declared “the most widely used adjective derived from the name of a modern writer … It’s more common than ‘Kafkaesque’, ‘Hemingwayesque’ and ‘Dickensian’ put together. It even noses out the rival political reproach ‘Machiavellian’, which had a 500-year head start.”

Orwell changed the way we think about the world. For most of us, the word Orwellian is synonymous with either totalitarianism itself or the mindset that is eager to employ totalitarian methods — notably the bowdlerization or suppression of speech and freedoms — as a hedge against popular challenge to a politically correct vision of society dictated by a small cadre of elites.

Indeed, it was thanks to Orwell’s books — forbidden, acquired by stealth and owned at peril — that many freedom fighters suffering under repressive regimes, found the inspiration to carry on their struggle. In his memoir, Adiós Havana, for example, Cuban dissident Andrew J. Memoir wrote, “Books such as … George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 became clandestine bestsellers, for they depicted in minute detail the communist methodology of taking over a nation. These […] books did more to open the eyes of the blind, including mine, than any other form of expression.”

Barbara Kay, “The way they teach Orwell in Canada is Orwellian”, The Post Millennial, 2019-11-29.

July 10, 2024

The four horsemen of cultural collapse

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Chris Bray provides yet more examples of cultural decay and the collapse of law and order in America’s Trudeaupia, California under the loving care of Justin Trudeau’s spiritual twin, Gavin Newsom:

Today tells you about next year.

In a long history of murder in America, the historian Randolph Roth argued that violence follows other losses of trust and order. The murder rate surges in the face of “four distinct phenomena: political instability; a loss of government legitimacy; a loss of fellow-feeling among members of society caused by racial, religious, or political antagonism; and a loss of faith in the social hierarchy”.

Read that list carefully, because it should sound familiar.

Similarly, the originators of the theory of “broken windows policing” argued that peace and order grow from peace and order; neighborhoods are more likely to be calm when they’re “places where people are confident they can regulate public behavior by informal controls”. Crime follows crime; vandalism, for example, “can occur anywhere once communal barriers — the sense of mutual regard and the obligations of civility — are lowered by actions that seem to signal that ‘no one cares'”. The police commissioner William Bratton famously reduced all categories of crime in New York City subways by assigning officers to arrest turnstile jumpers who entered the system without paying. He sent a signal at the front gates.

“Broken windows” is a much-criticized theory: “He contended that the very notion of ‘disorder’ is subjective and racially fraught”. But the criticisms tend to reduce the complexity of the theory in order to “debunk” it.

Decay communicates. Disorder is a message.

June 30, 2024

California’s politics are so weird that Justin Trudeau is frantically taking notes

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Chris Bray pays attention to California politics … and we should all pray for his long term mental health: that place is insane!

What’s happening in California isn’t politics in any conventional sense. No debate is underway, and no policy choices are being hashed out. We’re in the land beyond. In Our Democracy™, declarations are made, and then they are to be received in a spirit of quiet submission. Your failure to submit is disallowed, and the reason it’s been disallowed is that it’s been disallowed. Were it allowed, it would not be disallowed, but it is, in fact, disallowed, so therefore it is not allowed, you see? All “political” discussion is a circle, eating its own tail. I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain this, but the Sacramento Bee just did it for me. (Paywall-evading version here.)

The Bee is explaining — or “explaining” — what happened on the floor of the state Assembly yesterday, when a Republican was not permitted to argue against a bill, and a Democrat stood up to threaten him for trying. I encourage you to read the whole self-refuting thing. What happened, it turns out, is that the Republican was preventing debate by engaging in debate, which meant that he had to be silenced and threatened so debate could continue, which required that no one express opposing views, which is an act of anti-debate aggression. Debate is agreement, and not agreeing is preventing debate.

The “forced outing” debate was a discussion about AB 1955, which proposes to forbid schools to inform parents of discussions between children and school officials about sexual orientation and sexual behavior. It’s important that parents not be told about sexually themed discussions happening between children and the adults in their schools, because not telling mommy and daddy about sexual discussions is being safe and warm. But watch the casual turn of logic in the last paragraph of this screenshot:

  1. Evan Low said the bill is important because it’s good that parents not be told, and the bill makes sure parents aren’t told.
  2. Sabrina Cervantes said she didn’t have this bill when she was young, which would have forbidden telling, so someone told.
  3. Democrats explained that the bill is not meant to keep secrets from parents.

See, AB 1955 isn’t about keeping secrets from parents — it’s about not allowing schools to tell parents. Not being allowed to tell parents is different than keeping secrets from parents. The story doesn’t go on to explain the distinction between keeping secrets and not telling, but under Jacobin cultural rules, the distinction is that shut up. The distinction is presumptive, and so doesn’t require explanation.

Now, here’s the way the Bee characterizes Assemblyman Bill Essayli’s arguments during the debate that he derailed by not agreeing:

    Essayli has exhibited a consistent pattern of publicly disparaging advocacy groups and fellow lawmakers in an attempt to garner attention for conservative causes. On Thursday, he interrupted colleagues’ testimony and expressed frustration over Wood cutting his microphone and shutting down his comments when they veered away from AB 1955 and toward the issue of forced outing, in general.

His comments about the forced outing bill weren’t about the bill — they were about forced outing. What a bastard! Mister Speaker, he’s not debating the highway funding bill, he’s debating highway funding. Again, why does this distinction make sense? Because shut up. It makes sense declaratively: X is true because they said X.

And Essayli has a “consistent pattern” of saying disparaging things, which the Bee knows through mindreading is a maneuver to “garner attention” rather than an attempt to express his views. He disagreed, which is a very cynical and manipulative thing to do during a debate. He has a pattern of it!

And also Essayli is so rude that he interrupted colleagues when they spoke, and then had the nerve to object when his microphone was turned off. It’s rude to stop someone from speaking, and it’s rude to object to being stopped from speaking. You should never interrupt people, and you should always allow other people to interrupt you. They’re playing partisan Calvinball under the dome, and all moves lose.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress