Starmer Resigns as British Prime Minister: A Post-Mortem

Two years after winning in a landslide, with his Labour group being given its largest majority in Parliament in decades, PM Starmer found himself polling as the least favored PM on record and was forced by the political reality of his political group to resign. Why? I contend that the actual reason, behind and obfuscated by the headlines, is rather basic, or fundamental.

The full essay is at "Starmer Resigns as British Prime Minister."

Passive Aggression on Campus: Redefining Hate-Speech

Besides using social pressure and anger to purge words that a student or faculty member deems unacceptable, the word police have found that they can get objectionable opinions criminalized. This runs 180 degrees from the sort of openness to different, even objectionable ideas that makes a college campus thrive with an academic rather than passive-aggressive atmosphere. Sometimes, getting the law to go against a pollical opinion that a fallible person deems to be intolerable can show just how dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary the criminalizing of ideas can be. Here I have in mind the case of Marianne Hirsh, a genocide scholar at Columbia University. It is a sign of going too far that political corrective would be weaponized with criminal punishments that such a scholar, whose parents had died in the Nazi Holocaust, would think that she would have to teach at another university to be able to continue teaching material from the notable twentieth-century scholar, Hannah Arendt, who wrote on the banality of evil in that Holocaust (and, were she still alive in the next century, would probably also write of the Gaza Holocaust in such terms). Behind political correctness is the arrogance and related intolerance that stem from the sin of self-idolatry: taking oneself to be omniscient and omnipotent (but not omnibenevolent).

The full essay is at "Passive Aggression on Campus."

The Israeli Military Kills Starving Gazans Seeking Food as Police in Massachusetts Intimidate Human-Rights Protesters

Even as the Israeli military was shooting innocent, starving people waiting for food in Gaza, Massachusetts police were overreacting to a pro-Gaza, pro-human rights protest in Cambridge, where Harvard University has most of its campus. Whereas the Israeli military (intentionally?) did not engage in crowd control around a designated food-distribution site, Cambridge and Harvard police employees overreacted and in so doing, falsely presented the visuals of an emergency and intimidated peaceful protesters. Both the Israeli military and a local and a private police department in Massachusetts can thus be criticized, and the choices of all three were to the advantage of Israel in spite of its ongoing war crime and crime against humanity in regard to the Gaza Holocaust, and to the advantage of the American defense contractors profiting from the U.S. Government sending weapons to Israel.  

The full essay is at "The Israeli Army Kills Starving Gazans."

Insulting Police in Georgia: Totalitarianism Criminalizing Politics

Whereas the Georgia in North America has been a member-state of the U.S. from that union’s beginning, the Georgia in Europe was still not annexed by the E.U. slightly more than 30 years after that Union’s beginning. Whether to join an empire-scale union of states is a political decision, as a union of states is a political animal. When a prospective state government criminalizes political protest and public discourse on that decision, such a government violates the federal requirement that the state governments adhere to democratic principles, which exclude criminalizing the political opposition. The government of Georgia in Europe crossed this line when a politician of the opposition was arrested for insulting the state police.

The full essay is at "Insulting Police in Georgia."

On the Hidden Police Power of Corporate America

After the UnitedHealthcare chief executive “was gunned down by a masked man outside a Manhattan hotel” in New York City, “a days-long manhunt” occurred that “spanned several states.”[1] The fact that only a few days were needed to find the suspect, Luigi Mangione, indicates just how massive and public the manhunt was. For it was not just any murder, as if the murder of a person who is the chief executive of a large corporation were worth so much more than that of the rest of us. I suspect that the influence of the company, and, moreover, corporate America, on local police in any U.S. member state is more than reaches the headlines. The case at hand my even suggest that that influence includes even tacit instructions to treat anti-corporate suspects of murder violently both in retaliation and as a visible reminder to other potential killers that CEOs are off-limits.

The full essay is at "On the Hidden Power of Corporate America."

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1 Jessica Parker and Nadine Yousif, “Luigi Mangione Fingerprints Match Crime-Scene Prints, Police Say,” BBC.com, December 11, 2024.

On Calls for a Genocide of the Jews: Harvard vs. Yale

A university administration can be susceptible to creating an unlevel playing field in the name of truth but with political ideology in the driver’s seat.  Amid controversial political disputes wherein ideology is salient and tempers are flaring, free speech can be arbitrarily and prejudiciously delimited as academic freedom is eclipsed by ideological intolerance. More abstractly put, the ideology of an organization’s dominant coalition can be stultifying. During the fall 2023 semester at Yale, for example, I attended a lecture at which the lecturer, a faculty member, held his own topic hostage by deviating to an unfounded ideological presumption of systemic racism in Hollywood. The leap in his assumption evinced an ideological agenda capable of blocking even his intellectual reasoning, and the resulting irrational intolerance easily impaired the academic freedom of the students to even question the unfounded assumption or ask what had happened to the advertised topic. Whether the label is systemic racism or antisemitism, the highly-charged application thereof into a political dispute can be act as a weapon to weaken or block outright an unliked political position and thus unfairly limit free speech and even academic freedom. I have in mind here calls for a genocide of the Jews as Gaza ceasefire rallies were occurring on college campuses. Which is more fitting: university codes of conduct against hate-speech or the protection of free speech, which is vital to academic freedom and a university’s academic atmosphere? In other words, are such calls more accurately classified as hate-speech or political speech?

The full essay is at "Genocide of the Jews."

The U.S. Supreme Court: Free Speech Trumps Public Accommodations Law

I contend as a matter of reasoned opinion rather than infallible fact that the Free Speech protection in the U.S. Constitution applies to not only human beings, rather than to non-human legal “persons” (e.g., corporations), but also to speech where the purpose is speech rather than something else. I have written elsewhere on the mistake in treating corporations as if they were human beings, so I treat only the second claim here. I reference the first claim only as context for my broader claim that the U.S. Supreme Court has tended to over-extend applications of the free-speech clause not only beyond its original intent, but also common sense. The latter violation is particularly astonishing. 

The full essay is at "Free Speech and Public-Accommodations Law"

Starbucks: A Racist Company Against Racism

In June, 2023, Starbucks had to face a unanimous jury decision in favor of a regional manager whom Starbucks' upper management had fired because she had resisted the company's racist policy of punishing innocent Caucasian managers for good public relations, which the CEO felt was needed and appropriate after a store manager had legitimately called the police on two Black people in a Starbucks restaurant who presumed the right not only to sit in a restaurant without ordering anything (before Starbucks allowed this),  but also to ignore the authority of the store's manager. Starbucks cowered to the unjust negative publicity, and thus showed a lack of leadership, and went on to act unethically in wanting to show the world that the company can go after Caucasian employees. This racism is ironic, for several years earlier, Starbucks' CEO had ordered employees at the store level to discuss racism with customers. Interestingly, the anti-racist ideology being preached was partial, and thus contained a blind spot wherein racism such as the company's upper management would exhibit is acceptable. 

The full essay is at "Starbucks"

See also: Bucking Starbucks’ Star

Airing Ideas at Universities: Beyond the Book-Burning Hype

In May 1933, some Germans in Nazi Germany burnt books authored by Jews so as to sever Jewish influence. So when some students at Georgia Southern University gathered around a grill to burn copies of a novel by a Cuban, the obvious comparison was made by some. I submit that the comparison being made is not so obvious or straightforward. Moreover, the comparison sullies the ideal of universities being impartial to the ideas aired even as opinions.

The full essay is at "Book Burning at a Georgian University."

The Post

In Spielberg’s The Post (2017), the fateful decision to publish portions of the Pentagon Papers centers on Katharine Graham’s being willing to rebuff her newspaper’s lawyers, who represent the company’s financial interests, in favor of Ben Bradlee’s argument that free speech of the press as a check on government in a viable democracy—the company’s mission—is of overriding importance. As important as this critical decision was historically, I submit that the film allots too much attention to the decision and even the relationship between Graham and Bradlee at the expense of other deserving matters.

The full essay is at "The Post."

Free Speech in the E.U.: Criminalizing Denials of Genocides

While the world continued to look on—like an impotent rich man who cannot afford Viagra—as a genocide was taking place in Syria (i.e., the systemic killing of a group—in this case, of pro-democracy demonstrators), France’s state senate approved a bill on January 23, 2012 criminalizing the denial of officially recognized genocides, which according to the state includes the Nazi Holocaust and the Turkish killing of Armenians beginning in 1915. In the twenty-first century, fining people and putting them in prison for not wanting to remember things so horrible evinces the same kind of nationalist thinking that had led the twentieth to be the bloodiest century. In contradistinction to that decadent century, turning a new leaf following the Arab spring in the twenty-first is a far better strategy.

The full essay is at "Free Speech Compromised in the E.U."

On the Place of Religion in Business: Refusing to Serve Gays

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in December 2017 in a case on whether a baker in Colorado had been justified in refusing to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple. He claimed that his Christian faith forbid him from making wedding cakes for gay couples. “I follow Jesus Christ,” he declared when interviewed at his store. The Gospels are silent on the issue of homosexuality—it being said to be a sin only in the Old Testament—so the inference that following Jesus requires opposition to gay marriage (not to mention that homosexuality is an important issue in following Jesus) can be questioned. If the inference is tenuous, then it is the baker’s ideological stance that was actually at issue before the court. More broadly, is religion vulnerable to acting as a subterfuge, or cover, for what are really personal prejudices?

In terms of constitutional law, the baker contended that the First Amendment, “whose guarantees of free speech and religious exercise supersede any state law, exempts him from [Colorado’s] antidiscrimination act,” which has covered sexual orientation since 2007.[1] The question, I submit, is whether free speech and religious exercise are salient in a business context. 

The full essay is at "Refusing to Serve Gays."

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[1] Jess Bravin, “Supreme Court Set to Hear Gay-Rights Case,” The Wall Street Journal, December 4, 2017.

Free Speech in the EU: On the Judgement on John Galliano's Anti-Semitism

On March 1, 2011, Sidney Toledano, CEO of the French fashion house Christian Dior, wrote that he was dismissing its chief designer, John Galliano, after the surfacing of a video that showed "his anti-Semitic outbursts at a Paris bar." The word choice of outbursts by The New York Times is interesting, for the actual video shows him in a rather mellow, notably intoxicated, "well you know" mood. The article's writer admits that the designer had used "a slurred voice." Galliano was telling a Jewish couple that they should feel lucky that their ancestors were not killed by the Nazis because so many did not survive. He said ‘‘people like you would be dead,’’ and  ‘‘your mothers, your forefathers’’ could have all be ‘‘gassed.’’ Although applying a rational criterion to a drunk man, I wonder in what sense he meant ‘‘I love Hitler.’’ Considering that Galliano is gay and Hitler sent homosexuals to concentration camps, I suspect that Galliano was lying simply to hurt the couple in what was undoubtedly a back-and-forth in a verbal fight.  Indeed, it takes two to tangle, and the rest of us might do well to recognize the difficulty in interpreting a snipet without having observed the entire contest.

The full essay is at "Free Speech in the E.U."

Making a Joke Out of Liberty: Unmasking a Political Travesty

“Land of the free” is a ubiquitous expression that Americans use to describe the United States. Presumably those states esteem liberty as a political value even though it is oxymoronic for a government to voluntarily limit its own power over the governed. Hence, ratification of the U.S. Constitution was predicated on a Bill of Rights quickly to follow. Declaring governmental power to be limited was not enough. That many States have had “mask laws,” many still on the books as of 2017, testifies as to how invasive government power can be precisely at the expense of personal liberty wherein no one is harmed.

The full essay is at "Making a Joke Out of Liberty."

Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stevens Testifies on Campaign Finance Reform

In his testimony before a U.S. Senate Committee in 2014, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens addressed the need for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving Congress and the States the power to restrict political campaign contributions. After listing leveling the playing field such that rival candidates have equal opportunity to persuade, freeing up elected officials from having to spend so much time raising campaign funds, and distinguishing constituents from non-voters (including unions, corporations, and people of other electoral jurisdictions in the U.S.), he stated his position in particularly clear terms. “Money is not speech,” he declared. “Speech is only one of the activities that are financed by campaign contributions and expenditures. Those financial activities should not receive precisely the same constitutional protection as speech itself.”  In short, even money given directly to a political campaign does not reduce to political speech. Although Citizens United (2010) and McCutcheon (2014) were being much cited at the time as baleful cases sure to transform the American democracy into a plutocracy, or rule by wealth-interests, Stevens went back to a 1976 case as the reason why a constitutional amendment rather a mere statute would be needed to place limitations on monetary contributions to political campaigns. In denying Congress the power to impose limits on campaign contributions, the Court in Buckley v. Valeo issued the infamous equivalence between money and speech. To Stevens, money is speech is the fundamental error promulgated by the Court in Buckley that has led successive majority opinions to eviscerate campaign finance limitations enacted by Congress. I submit that the ex-jurist could have drawn on the Buckley decision for support, thus undermining the resulting legal doctrine as a legal precedent for the Court. 

The entire essay is at "John Paul Stevens: Money Is Not Speech"

Corporate Social Responsibility Countering Rush Limbaugh

On February 29, 2012—Leap Day—Radio political-commentator and entertainer Rush Limbaugh called a female law student at Georgetown a “slut” and “prostitute” simply because she had said that Georgetown’s student health insurance should cover birth-control—a staple for even 98% of sexually-active married and single Catholic women as of 2012. On the following day, Limbaugh went on to offer to pay for aspirin that the women at Georgetown could “put between their knees” in lieu of birth-control. If you are wondering how that even makes sense, I am with you on that one. What strikes me in particular is the extreme to which Limbaugh went in his rhetoric or appeal for a larger audience for his radio show (and attention on himself). That corporate social responsibility would function as the corrective also surprised me, for CSR is typically merely marketing, window-dressing, or for better public relations.

The full essay is at "Corporate Social Responsibility Countering Rush Limbaugh."

On the Politics of Hate Speech: Wilders in the Netherlands

Geert Wilders, head of the Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands, went on trial on October 4, 2010, in the Netherlands on charges of inciting hatred, less than a week after entering parliament as a linchpin in the coalition government. The far right political leader faced five charges of inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims and people of non-Western immigrant origin, particularly Moroccans. “He divides, he creates hate, he creates conflicts between people,” said Mohammed Rabbae of the National Council for Moroccans. Wilders told the court he was being persecuted for “stating my opinion in the context of public debate,” adding: “I can assure you, I will continue proclaiming it.” In an opinion piece in a Dutch daily, he compared Islam to fascism and the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf.”[1] Wilders also made the film “Fitna” in 2008 which portrayed the Koran as inciting violence and mixed images of terrorist attacks with quotations from the Islamic holy book.

The full essay is at "Wilders on Trial."

1. Natalia Dannenberg and Gabriel Borrud, "Racial Hatred," DW., October 4, 2010.