From JC Today

In perhaps the clearest sign of the times, the New York Times ran a story (under the section, “critic’s notebook”) headlined, “The Constitution Is Sacred. Is It Also Dangerous? I suppose the answer depends on which government actors the Constitution is currently thwarting. But now we know which side the Times is on.

In the article’s most Orwellian section, believe it or not, the Times described the Constitution as “essentially antidemocratic” and “increasingly dysfunctional:”

In other words, the Constitution is a threat to democracy. According to the Times, anyway.

The extended piece, which at the end of the day amounted to a weak defense of constitutionalism, seemed more to argue for a pure democracy —often called “mob rule”— which the United States most assuredly is not. The narrative, framed by far-left Constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky’s new book, was that Americans’ expectations of pure democracy have been thwarted by the design of “the Constitution itself.”

It seems beyond argument that during the pandemic, the country went off the rails of democracy, and was only rescued by courts’ application of basic Constitutional principles, such as via the series of cases requiring lockdown states to re-open churches for worship.

Which brings us to the inevitable joy the radical left feels about this week’s indictment of Telegram’s founder, Pavel Durov. They are really outing themselves now.

?? Former Clinton Secretary of Labor and Berkeley professor Robert Reich ran an op-ed Friday in, of all places, the UK Guardian headlined, “Elon Musk is getting out of control. Here is how to to rein him in.” Reich’s main idea for ‘reining in’ Twitter’s CEO Musk was by arresting him.

Reich numbered six ways that he suggested leftists and governments could “stop” Elon Musk, since he is a shady “free speech absolutist.” The far-left professor suggested consumers boycott Tesla, that advertisers boycott Twitter, that the military and NASA cancel contracts with SpaceX, and, of course, that lefties vote for Plan B instead of “Musk’s favorite candidate for president.”

But it was Reich’s third suggestion that caught my eye. He encouraged “regulators around the world” to arrest Elon if “he doesn’t stop”:

Presumably, Reich published his op-ed in Great Britain and called for “regulators around the world” to act —rather than regulators in the United States— because the pesky Constitution dangerously shields Musk’s free speech absolutism here at home, as professor Reich knows well.

In fairness, Musk has described himself as a “free speech absolutist.” But you know what? The Constitution is also a free speech absolutist, as we covered in yesterday’s blockbuster C&C post. Presumably, like the New York Times, Robert Reich also finds the Constitution “dangerous.”

It’s worth revisiting one of our recurring pandemic themes. During covid, many folks understandably theorized that a small group of elite globalists were behind mask and vaccine mandates, for social control and worse. Part of the reason people immediately imagined a secret cabal of anti-human depopulators as the cause of mandates was because of what scientists have called humans’ “hyperactive agency detector.”

Maybe. I’m not saying there isn’t a secret cabal of plotting depopulators. But the mandates could never have been pushed down, as anti-democratically as they were, without a substantial portion of the population favoring them.

I will never forget my first conversation with one of Governor DeSantis’ lawyers in May of 2020, after I’d filed my first mask lawsuit. Mind you, this was before DeSantis became the world’s best governor. His lawyer told me that, according to internal polls, fifty-seven percent of registered Republicans favored mask mandates.

So I was on my own. (In DeSantis’ defense, a few months later, the Governor made the fateful and potentially career-ending decision to eschew polls and do the right thing, and the rest, as they say, is history.)

The point is, back when I was fighting mask mandates, I was not just fighting an out-of-control executive branch. I was also fighting, believe it or not, many Republicans. That is one reason a conservative but apolitical small-town lawyer started Coffee & Covid, as part of a larger strategy to win minds as well as cases.

At least Republicans are persuadable.

Likewise, the present battle for free speech and freedom of thought is a battle not so much with the cabal of oligarchs bent on pruning the world’s population down to size, but perhaps it has more to do with an uneducated population which largely agrees that anti-democratic actions are required to save democracy.

I honestly don’t think they even know what they mean when they say, “democracy.” They obviously don’t think “democracy” means freedom in any general sense. As best I can tell, and it is by no means clear, Democrats think “democracy” means the freedom to pursue perverted sexual impulses without criticism. Your guess is as good as mine.

Robert Reich is not any kind of low-information voter. He is an experienced politician and a “professor of public policy” at Berkeley, whatever that title means. But look how Reich frames his unhinged distaste for Elon Musk’s free-speech absolutism:

What, I wonder, does professor Reich believe is the “public interest” that Elon Musk is “utterly disregarding?” Has free speech not, until ten minutes ago, been universally and historically recognized as in the public’s interest? When Reich rails against Elon’s “contempt for the public good,” what public good does the professor have in view? Obviously not freedom of expression, which appears to be the professor’s maniacal monofocus.

By framing his own position as opposing “absolutism,” Reich tries to portray his views as moderate, as common sense, when in fact he proposed a radical expansion of the government’s ability to restrict citizens’ speech. By claiming that Musk is “utterly disregarding” the public interest, professor Reich utterly disregarded any public interest in free speech itself. This is a remarkable omission, given the historic centrality of free speech to uncontroversial and long-standing democratic values.

The battle, therefore, is not any battle with elites like Robert Reich. Liberals have become unmoored from reality, not even realizing the internal contradictions in their own arguments. For example, I suspect Professor Reich would strongly disagree with Florida’s laws limiting children’s ability to attend drag shows and read pro-gay material in preschool.

Therefore, it seems to me, like the battle to persuade people that mask mandates were irrational, the battle for free speech lies in one-on-one conversations with neighbors and fellow citizens, using examples like “book banning” in Florida (which is one I happen to agree with, as it involves children, and does not actually ban any LGBTQ+ books).

Show them the risks of giving the government even more power to regulate speech.

In other words, giving government more power to punish nonconforming speech is probably a very bad idea. As with mask mandates, the elite cabalists cannot succeed when most of us oppose them. The battle will be won locally. Local, local, local!