The Irony Board: Free Speech, McConnell Style

In this week's Wondering on Wednesday, we looked at a couple of news organizations - the Wall Street Journal and the NY Times - which have taken some heat recently for how they manage their Op-Ed pages, and how speech is being constrained. There were also some comments from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on our rights.

Shortly after completing that post, I stumbled on this opinion by Senator Mitch McConnell in the NY Post. Let's take a look at the piece, titled 'The lawless left's attack on America's bedrock beliefs.'

Since the spring, our nation has engaged in important conversations about racial justice in policing. Most people understand that continuing our nation’s tremendous progress toward justice does not mean battling against US principles or history. Progress means fulfilling our values, not attacking them.

And yet a group of radicals has latched onto this moment to say we should repudiate our country itself. Mobs have dragged statues of Washington, Jefferson and Grant through the dirt. And in parallel, inside many elite institutions, self-styled intellectuals say we should similarly discard the basic principles they fought for.

I followed the link above, which took me to another NY Post article; would you be surprised that it contains no mention of radicals, leftists, country, America, US, repudiate, values, founders, or principles? I was.

McConnell goes on to say

One of the key pillars of our nation is the rule of law. In a civilized society, the same laws need to apply to everyone. The times our nation has fallen short on this score, particularly for all the years when black Americans were completely denied the equal protections of law, it has been to our great shame.

This has been central to the cause of civil rights. There’s a reason the Fourteenth Amendment insists on “the equal protection of the laws.” And yet in recent months, local leaders have violated this basic tenet. As riots rocked major cities, we saw politicians decline to act. They seemed to fear far-left critique more than looting and chaos. And we saw the uneven application of other rules, like when mayors cheered on mass demonstrations but continued to prohibit religious gatherings.

Again, another link to another NY Post article, with no evidence that any politicians were 'fear(ing) far-left critique' in any way, shape or form. And, of course, mass demonstrations  - even armed ones - were fine when the goal was the 'right' one. You know, good speech.

That is the rule of law in jeopardy. Of course, that last example is also a First Amendment issue. And the freedom of expression itself is another principle that’s come under threat.

As I said a few weeks back, this goes deeper than just constitutional law. America has always prized the spirit of the First Amendment. We citizens must want to protect an open, civil discourse; a true marketplace of ideas. But lately, the political left has embraced something totally different.

Today’s far left is not interested in winning debates with better arguments. It prefers to shut down debate altogether. It doesn’t try to win the contest, it just harangues the referees to stop the game.

Oh, the irony.  Folks, this is Mitch McConnell talking!

The same Mitch McConnell who refused to allow anyone the opportunity to "win a debate with better arguments." The same Mitch McConnell who "prefers to shut down debate altogether." The same Mitch McConnell who "doesn't try to win the contest." He did that, of course, when he refused to allow consideration of Merrick Garland's Supreme Court nomination.

He denied every person who voted for Barack Obama the opportunity to have their voices heard, in favor of allowing other people in the future an opportunity to have their voices heard. He denied people their representation.

Not only that, but McConnell also refused everyone who didn't vote for Barack Obama the right to have their voices heard, to have their elected officials go on record, to have them do their jobs.

And yes, this is the same Mitch McConnell, who proclaimed,

One of my proudest moments was when I looked Barack Obama in the eye and I said, 'Mr. President, you will not fill the Supreme Court vacancy.'

Yep - one of the proudest moments of the Senate Majority Leader was denying people their rights. But now, he's concerned about our rights?

Here's more.

If leftists don’t like an op-ed, they want it unpublished. If they don’t like a tweet, they want to track down the author and get him fired. If they don’t like a tenured professor, they throw around Orwellian accusations that his or her ideas make them feel unsafe.

This hostile culture is getting results. According to one brand-new survey, it is only far-left Americans who do not feel compelled to self-censor their views because of a hostile climate. Everyone but the far left feels the threat. And 50 percent of self-identified strong liberals say that simply contributing to the GOP presidential candidate ought to be a fireable offense for a business leader.

One "brand-new survey" without referencing the organization who led or commissioned the survey, no definitions (what is a "far-left American" and what is the "far-right American" equivalent?), nothing on how or when the survey was conducted - for all we know, the survey is completely fake.

McConnell continued, writing

We recently saw The New York Times apologize for publishing a straightforward policy argument from a US senator. Since, an editorial staffer resigned from the paper because even center-left opinions were not liberal enough and led to her constant harassment. You see, the safe spaces only ever go in one direction.

On elite campuses, such as Princeton, we see faculty turning against their tenured colleagues, and even administrators weighing in, to chastise people with unpopular views.

Citation? References? Facts? Who knows? I guess I should give him credit for actually naming one of the Ivies.  Pompeo only generically referred to "our institutes of higher education" in his comments. 

We see online platforms such as Facebook threatening to ban political advertising altogether, chilling our democracy.

Even at a time when there is significant appetite in Congress to take a second look at the legal protections afforded to these supposedly neutral platforms, they still contemplate giving an angry minority of agitators a veto over Americans’ speech.

Proof that people who hate political ads on Facebook are "an angry minority" and not a disgusted majority? Survey data? Bueller? Anyone?

McConnell, again.

The author Salman Rushdie, who was himself threatened with death for controversial speech, once said this: “Two things form the bedrock of any open society: freedom of expression and the rule of law. If you don’t have those things, you don’t have a free country.”

Rushdie recently signed an open letter with other intellectuals, many liberals, sounding the alarm on this cultural poison.

“Editors are fired,” they wrote, “books are withdrawn...journalists are barred from writing on certain topics...professors are investigated... steadily narrow[ing] the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.”

You can guess what happened next. The grievance-industrial complex came after the letter ­itself. The authors were accused of advancing bigotry. And the cycle of nonsense started all over again.

The United States of America needs free speech. We need free expression. And all of us, from all perspectives, need the courage to speak up and defend it.

Mitch McConnell

I'll remind you of another thing about Mitch McConnell, so aggrieved by the suppression of free speech that he sees in the country right now.  In February, he admitted that there were 395 House bills sitting in the Senate that would not get passed, or even considered. I'm not sure how many there are now. Isn't that yet another stifling of speech being perpetrated upon our duly elected Representatives?  Or doesn't that count?

And I'll throw in another one - McConnell has repeatedly said that the Senate won't take up legislation unless he knows the president will sign it. So much for the co-equal branches of government, right? So much for "open, civil discourse."

What, or who, is he afraid of? His re-election chances? His wife's boss? The American people? Free speech itself?