Law

Worthwhile Reading & Viewing

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From 2018:  The Psychology of Progressive Hostility

Democrats: The Party of Performance Art

The identity cult

One root of cancel culture can be found in how we teach history

Benefits of the decline in higher education enrollments

Title VIII damage remedies as a driver of Wokeness

An experienced battalion commander talks about the 5%, the 15%, and the 80%

Understanding hypersonic missile systems

Stalin scholar Stephen Kotkin on Putin, Russia, and the West

An argument that we will not see a new Age of Empires

Thoughts from China on Ukraine

The winner on Ukraine?…Not Russia, not America, but China

Getting a sense of the Russian soul

Putin’s Russia versus Pushkin’s Russia

Update: Two interesting interviews with Putin, by a political scientist and an art historian.

 

American Gulag and Stasi, Inc

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Today marks the one-year anniversary of the protest at the Capitol, in Washington, DC. A good many of those who attended felt they had a perfect right to walk into the Capitol Building, which is after all, the structure that we pay for and support our so-called political representatives with our votes. So why didn’t we have the right to walk into it, especially when allowed by the Capitol Police gatekeepers? There certainly were enough loud progressive protesters at the Kavanaugh hearings, setting the example for conservatives to follow an established principle. Or so they thought … mistakenly, as it has turned out. A number of questions about that event still remain. 

(Historically, well-wishers thronged the White House, upon the election of Andrew Jackson, and pretty much destroyed carpets and upholsteries, with the passage of their dirty boots and subsequent rowdy and presumably drunken celebration of a man of the people, a genuine frontiersman, to the highest office in the land. Again – the halls of government are rightfully, our halls – not the exclusive property of temporary lords and ladies. Or so we had assumed. But Jackson was a Democrat, of course, so all was forgiven.)

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Seth Barrett Tillman: “Some Uncomfortable Thoughts About the Smollett Prosecution”

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Dave Chapelle knows it. See . I know it. And you know it too. There was no hate crime; it was a hoax. And there have been many hoaxes in recent history. It is a long, long list. Smollett’s actions have (inadvertently) exposed the race hoax industry, and its regular accessories across the U.S. news-media-&-entertainment-industry complex. The media will purport to believe anything. The beast has to be fed—copy has to be sold—clicks have to be inflated—even if the ultimate result is racial violence grounded in a hoax.
 
But we should still take a good, hard look at the Smollett prosecution…

Read the whole thing.

Social Media and Section 230

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A couple of useful links for those following these issues:

From Eugene Volokh, a detailed legal analysis of the proper interpretation of Section 230.  Haven’t read it yet, but I plan to soon.

Vivek Ramaswamy, in the WSJ, offers a favorable view of Trump’s lawsuit against search and social media companies.  Excerpts and commentary at Stuart Schneiderman’s blog.

There are few if any issues more important than the problem of oligopolistic control over information flow.