Freedom of Speech

 The first amendment.  

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There are many today complaining that Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites banning President Trump from participation have violated his free speech rights. They also raise issues regarding the social media network Parler being removed by Amazon Web Services as a violation of their free speech rights. I think they misunderstand the nature of their free speech rights. I would suggest they read about Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. I suggest the following book.  “The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind- and Changed the History of Free Speech in America.” The author is Thomas Healy.  

The First Amendment limits the power of Congress to make laws that abridge the freedom of speech. It does not limit the ability of private companies like Facebook or Twitter to limit the nature of speech allowed to be posted on their respective sites. I learned  that lesson a couple of weeks ago when Facebook determined that a comment I made violated their “community standards”.  I had, in a moment of intense stupidity, decided to argue with a Trump supporter who claimed Melania Trump had more class than any other First Lady in history. I went to Google images and selected an image of the First Lady when she had posed as a nude model. Facebook was swift to point out the error of my way and blocked the comment. I did not protest that my free speech rights had been violated. I understood that I had agreed to limits when I decided to join their social media platform and I had violated the limits I had agreed to follow. I would propose when President Trump was banned from those social media platforms he had done the same. 

I will close by saying in 1919 when Justice Holmes wrote his dissent free speech rights were seen in an entirely different light.  Here is a brief quote from the book that may shed light on some of those limits at that time.

“So when the Court heard arguments in the anarchists’ case, few people expected Holmes to side with the defendants. But something had changed. Instead of voting with the majority, Holmes said the convictions should be reversed. The defendants had no intent to undermine the fight against Germany, he explained. They were merely upset with President Wilson’s decision to intervene in the Russian Revolution. Besides, he argued, their speech was protected by the First Amendment. This last point was no small matter. In spite of its seemingly clear command—“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech”—the First Amendment at that time was still largely an unfulfilled promise. The Supreme Court itself had never ruled in favor of a free speech claim, and lower courts had approved all manner of speech restrictions, including the censorship of books and films, the prohibition of street corner speeches, and assorted bans on labor protests, profanity, and commercial advertising. Even criticism of government officials could be punished, the courts had ruled, if it threatened public order and morality. But now, with the country gripped by fear of the communist threat, Holmes was proposing something radical: an expansive interpretation of the First Amendment that would protect all but the most immediately dangerous speech.”

Truth

 I wondered from time to time what the value of a college education was. You spend four years learning things you are not sure you will ever use. It is especially true when you get a liberal arts degree like I did. I got my degree before the Trivial Pursuit game was invented. Prior to the popularity of trivia nights at bars. It’s hard to object to two things you enjoy- drinking beer and answering trivia questions. The older I get and the more popular social media gets the more value I find in my education. I watch other folks post things and wonder if they are true. They often sound good and reinforce something I want to be true. I do my best to stop myself from simply reposting and sharing it. I want what I share to be true. We have with computers and google the knowledge of the world at our fingertips. Too often too many of us just skip the fact check part and post what we want to be true. A part of this process that is missed by many is consideration of the source that provided the original information and the quality of the sources being used to verify its accuracy. You may see the same lies repeated on multiple sources. It is a big part of the problem with those folks who distrust what they call main stream media. They go to far right or far left wing sources and get caught in an echo chamber. You may not like the New York Times or the Washington Post but the lengths they go to in order to provide accurate information are generally reassuring. When they are wrong, and that does happen, they print a retraction and provide updated accurate information. So, please take some time, think, evaluate and seek truth. 

Georgia on my mind

 Today the good citizens of Georgia cast their ballots in the United States Senate runoff election. I have a somewhat unique view on voting in Georgia. Carol and I lived there for a time. We were registered voters and voted in elections. When you vote in person you must present valid photo identification and sign a request for a ballot. You are give a card about the size of a credit card to insert in the voting machine. It has a touch pad. You go through and touch the screen to indicate your choice in each race. When you are done you press to indicate you have completed voting. The machine then prints out a paper ballot that you review to insure your vote was properly marked. You walk the ballot over to another machine and insert it into the slot. It is processed into the ballot box. You have finished you civic duty. If you requested an absentee ballot you can sign a form swearing it was not returned and cast a provisional ballot. There has been plenty of allegations of voter fraud regarding the presidential election in Georgia. I will address a couple of those allegations. 

First, that ballots in Fulton County were scanned multiple times. If you recall because of the narrow margin of victory a hand recount was required by Georgia law. If ballots were scanned multiple times during the initial count it would show up in the hand recount when the ballots were not run through a machine. The fact is the vote total did not change significantly. So that allegation is bullshit. 

Second, signatures did not match on requests for absentee ballots and when the ballots were returned the signatures did not match the voter registration form. There are a few problems with this. A signature check was done before the ballot was sent out. Another signature comparison was done when the ballot was returned in the privacy envelope. After that comparison the ballot is separated from the envelope to insure the privacy of the vote. A sample comparison was done in one county which revealed that 99.99% of the signatures compared were valid. In cases where there was a question the voter was contacted to determine if they were the person who voted. There was no indication of fraud in that substantial but limited sampling. Once the ballots are separated from the envelopes there is no way to reunite them to determine how the individual voted. The relief requested would require invalidation of thousands of votes. It appears that very few, if any, votes were illegitimately cast. 

Finally, Georgia has a Republican Governor and a Republican Secretary of State. If the vote was in any way questionable the would be pressing for a solution. It is also interesting that the down ballot races are being accepted as valid. Votes for representatives in Congress, state and local offices are considered valid but votes for President are not. Another indication that the allegations raised are bullshit is they are only concerned with the cotton candy haired, orange skinned, spoiled man child in the White House who cannot accept the fact he lost. 

It’s Not What You See in Person

 We recently had a snow and ice storm here in West Central Illinois. Yesterday we drove from Astoria to Rushville on U.S. 24.  I stopped a couple of times near the Sugar Creek bottom to take some pictures. The sad thing for me is that no matter how hard I try the pictures fail to capture the true beauty of the scene. The light isn’t right. The depth is gone. The human eye has a wider field of vision than a camera lens can capture. Our vision is stereoscopic while the camera is not. So, I offer you my pictures since I have no other way to bring the scene to you. 

Lily and Rose

 There is one constant in life. The love of your dog. If you treat them well they repay your affection many times over. I think the magic happens when they stop being your dog and you become their people. 

Winter in Illinois

 January 2021 started off with freezing rain. News Year’s Day ended with a dusting of snow. Nature is beautiful and brutal. Unforgiving. Lovely.

2021

 It’s a new year and perhaps time to get back to the blog. I’m not sure I have much to say but I’m going to try to make entries as often as possible. Will that be daily, weekly, monthly- honestly I don’t know. 

Today I want to talk about those folks who support and follow President Trump. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time attempting to figure out why they continue to believe in him. It would be easy to say that they are stupid. Perhaps gullible. Delusional also comes to mind. I still have folks on my Facebook feed who are avid perhaps even rabid supporters of him. You will note I did not call them Facebook “friends”. They are folks I know. People I worked with in the past. I’m fascinated by their willingness to believe any number of outrageous charges made about President-elect Biden. He is on one hand too senile and out of touch to be President. They, at the same time, are willing to believe he orchestrated a nationwide election fraud involving local and state governments, the mass media and foreign governments. While doing this they are willing to accept as fact anything Donald Trump says no matter how much evidence to the contrary that is presented. So what is going on? 

I think maybe the answer is desperation. They see the world they knew changing in ways they cannot accept. They have watched as the factory jobs they had or their parents had being moved out of the country. The social order that made life make sense has, in their view, crumbled. Life was simple. There were boys and girls. Boys were supposed to like girls and girls were supposed to like boys. Now it’s okay for boys to marry boys and girls to marry girls. We have an alphabet soup of sexual and gender identity. LGBTQ and several more letters. I can’t keep up either. I gave up trying to figure it out. If you and another person are both beyond the age of consent my position is simply do whatever it is that makes you happy as long as no one gets hurt unless that’s what they enjoy. I know there are folks out there who turn to some religious text that tells them that some forms of sexual conduct are unacceptable. They believe allowing those behaviors taints our nation and brings a supreme being’s wrath down upon us. They see the “American dream” slipping away from them. Home ownership, a new car, a college education all out of reach. They work hard, follow the rules, pay their taxes and see their lifestyle slipping away as they sink closer and closer to poverty. They see their friends and neighbors start go fund me pages for healthcare, car repairs or whatever other troubles befall them. Nothing they do seems to change the trajectory of their lives. 

So Donald sees their desperation and tells them what they want to hear. I know how the system works. I’ve made billions of dollars. I can fix this. I can bring your jobs back. I can appoint judges who will return us to the days when marriage was between one man and one woman. I will punish China for taking your jobs. I will punish illegal immigrants for taking your jobs. I’ll cut your taxes so your money isn’t going to people who don’t want to work. I’ll make our military strong so other countries will bow to our might. When those things don’t happen he tells them it isn’t his fault. The “swamp” doesn’t want to lose power. The media is not telling the truth.  Any politician who doesn’t stand with me is fighting against you and what you and I are trying to accomplish. The don’t want to make America great again. 

So here is my warning. Don’t worry about Donald Trump. He is a clown. A snake oil salesman. Keep an eye on the folks who see what he is doing and have a more subtle touch. Working in prison gives you a unique perspective on manipulators. The best advice is to listen to what they say but more importantly watch what they do. Someone smarter and more evil than Donald Trump is waiting for their opportunity.