Utopia, you are standing in it!

I have to say that I’ve been pretty disappointed the past few days with those readers who have said that Nazi and white supremacist speech should be banned, and that the U.S. should enact “hate speech” laws, similar to those in Canada and some European countries, making certain sentiments simply illegal to express in public. Likewise with symbols like Nazi flags with swastikas. The reasons offered were that such “hate speech” is likely to cause violence, either now or in the future. These people were, in effect, asking for a reinterpretation of the First Amendment, which allows all public speech save that that constitutes personal harassment in the workplace, is defamatory, or is a direct instigation of violence on the spot: “fighting words”.

How quickly liberals become authoritarians and opponents of free speech when they hear speech that they consider vile!

Well, what happened in Charlottesville was not a violation…

Ken White, who’s identified as “a 1st Amendment litigator and criminal defense attorney at Brown White & Osborn LLP in Los Angeles” writes a lot at the legal website Popehat. One of his pet issues is freedom of speech, and I call your attention to his new piece in the Los Angeles Times, “Actually, hate speech is protected speech.” It’s a good piece and gives the proper legal responses to six comments that are often in the air from the authoritarian wing of our Left. I’ll show White’s responses to three particularly pernicious tropes (indented):

• “Not all speech is protected. There are limits to free speech.”

This slogan is true, but rarely helpful. The Supreme Court has called the few exceptions to the 1st Amendment “well-defined and narrowly limited.” They include obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement, true threats and speech integral to already criminal conduct. First…

Anyone who dares to challenge the politically accepted view on climate change  is told to accept the science.

But  during Question Time last week, Climate Change Minister James Shaw, showed again he is prepared to accept only the science that suits:

. . . Todd Muller: Does he stand by his statement made on 4 March during an interview on Q+A that when it comes to the application of GE technology in New Zealand, he—and I quote—”will be led by the science on it.”?

Hon JAMES SHAW: Yes.

Todd Muller: Does he agree with the former Prime Minister’s chief scientist, Sir Peter Gluckman, who said—and I quote—”I’ll go as far as to say that I cannot see a way that agriculture in New Zealand will be sustainable over the long run in the face of environmental change and consumer preferences without using gene editing.”?

Hon JAMES…

I’m not writing this to gain favour with a certain political tribe, or to provoke people, although I’m sure there will be a range of reactions to this. I’m chiefly trying to make sense of all this craziness that continues in the west particularly on college campuses. This thought initially permeated into my brain while watching a video of the Evergreen College collective breakdown and the witch-hunt of Bret Weinstein (Professor of Evolutional Biology) in 2017. For those of you who haven’t heard about this, I’ve shared a video below to give an example of the type of antics that are occurring regularly on college campuses around the ‘anglosphere’. This episode is much like the psychotic Yale university ‘Halloween costume’ incident. I still find it difficult to understand such behaviour, as well as acknowledging that it’s disturbingly interesting. It also boggles my mind why education facilities and government entities continue…

The Bay of Plenty Times – in an article which revealed how taxpayers are bearing the brunt of Tauranga’s social housing crisis –  brought rental costs into the picture.

Among the data uncovered by the newspaper, three community housing providers have been paid almost $17m towards income-related rent subsidies in the last two financial years . These subsidies are the difference between market rents and the amount paid by a tenant in income-related rent.

Four transitional housing providers which provided warm, dry and safe short-term accommodation received about $2.3m over the same timeframe and $1m was spent on emergency housing special needs grants including motels, $624,000 of this mainly to motels in Tauranga from October 2018 to December 2018.

Given recent commentary about free speech, hate speech etc – this clip seemed rather appropriate

The A.V. Club put up this video last year of Steve Pinker recommending five science/psychology books that he particularly enjoyed or recommends:

One Two Three Infinity. . . Facts and Speculations of Science by George Gamow

The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins

The Big Picture by Sean Carroll

The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World by David Deutsch

How the Mind Works by Pinker Himself

I’ve read all of them save the two by Gamow and Deutsch, and share his enthusiasm for the ones I know. I’ve often given my own recommendations, some of which coincide with Steve’s, and hence needn’t put them here. But readers should feel free to recommend their favorite science books, particularly ones that came out recently.

It has not escaped my attention that my own book escaped Pinker’s attention. But really, it doesn’t belong on a list of books…