On the Recent Shootings... (Part Two)

[Part One here]

Continuing with my thoughts related (sometimes tangentially) to the recent shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.

For this installment, I'm going to explore the importance of Free Speech, and how social media giants' de-listing, censoring, blacklisting, and banning of certain kinds of speech may contribute to politically-motivated attacks. Just like the last post, this NOT intended IN ANY WAY to excuse or diminish the heinousness of the attacks; rather, it's an attempt to explain how various environmental factors might lead an individual to believing his/her violent actions are justified.

After the shootings, President Trump gave a speech in which he said (among other things, not all of which I agree with*), "In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart and devours the soul."

He's on the right track here, but he's not taking it far enough. Hateful ideology must be condemned, but it also must be confronted and challenged. However, as we'll see, that doesn't always happen as it should.

A few years ago we covered how so-called "hate speech" is and must be protected under the First Amendment (link goes to the first of a four-part series — I encourage you to read all four, and not just because I wrote them). My beliefs on that have not changed: The best cure — possibly the only cure — for "hate speech" is not censorship; it's more speech.

In other words, the best and only way to end "hate speech", hateful ideology, and bigotry (including white supremacy), is to challenge them in the marketplace of ideas. Call it an "arena of discussion" if you like, in which conflicting viewpoints are tested on their respective merits, and the most reasoned, logical, and fact-based wins. This is how minds are opened and opinions get changed.

But...

What happens if the biggest, most commonly-used platforms for discussion censor and/or limit exposure of "offensive" ideas?

What happens if "violent rhetoric" is banned from the open marketplace of ideas — where it might be challenged and proven wrong — and instead is relegated to a corner of the Internet where someone finds like-minded individuals, similarly banned from the mainstream?

What happens if, instead of encountering level-headed people to refute the violent rhetoric and show the individual how his ideas are incorrect, he finds a niche discussion board filled with people who say, "You're right"...

... and then follow that up with, "You should do something about that."

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and every other major social media site have actively and documentedly been censoring certain kinds of political speech for years. They mostly target inflammatory individuals and groups on the conservative side, but anyone talking about politically-motivated violence (and who isn't Leftist or Islamic) is forced to remove their post. The problem is, that leaves questions unanswered, in a vacuum of information.

As we all know, nature abhors a vacuum. The human mind similarly abhors unanswered questions.

That vacuum will be filled, and the questions will be answered. Where it could have — and should have — been addressed in a public setting by level-headed people with facts, it will instead be fed in private by other hate-filled people with more violent rhetoric.

I don't intend this to be an accusation against social media conglomerates (okay, maybe I do, just a little), and I don't believe they are willfully complicit in the attacks. My intent is merely to point out how censorship — especially of controversial or "offensive" topics — tends to produce the exact opposite of what it tries to limit. Banning hateful speech from a platform is a "NIMBY" (Not In My Back Yard) approach; it's fundamentally no different from posting a "Gun Free Zone" sign to prevent violence, and works about as effectively.

Just as banning guns removes the ability and opportunity for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves and stop crime, banning "hate speech" removes the ability and opportunity for rational people to engage and defeat hateful ideology on its merits. Unless and until the ideology is defeated, it will fester and metastasize, and when paired with the inflammatory political rhetoric I wrote about last post, we will see more attacks like these.

This is why, on questions of "liberty vs. safety", I will always side with liberty. Freedom is not the problem — it's not guns, or social media, or even video games — and so limiting freedom cannot be a valid solution.

The real problem is hateful ideas and beliefs, and the solution is to counter them with truth.

More ideas and speech, not less. Debate and discussion, not censorship.

President Trump said that racism, bigotry, and white supremacy must be condemned. He's half right; it must be condemned, but it also must be challenged and defeated. And that can only happen when and where freedom of speech allows the discussion.

I welcome all readers to share your thoughts in the comments. I'd love to read what you all think.

And as always, stay safe.
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* - He also said, "Mental illness and hatred pulled the trigger, not the gun," which enraged anti-gun Leftists, but he has that exactly right, too. Where he is wrong is in calling for restrictions on video games — which are another form of free speech — and advocating "Universal Background Checks" for firearm purchases, which last I checked, both shooters passed.

On the Recent Shootings... (Part One)

Wow, has it really been over a year since we posted here? I guess it has.... It's amazing how life gets in the way of blogging.

But then, something happens that forces a person to have these things called "ideas" and "thoughts", many of which are or could be relevant for blogging. Such is the recent mass-killing events in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Other bloggers have posted up their input, and I don't care to rehash their well-reasoned thoughts. Miguel and J.Kb over at Gun Free Zone have made several observations, and they're pretty astute guys.

To sum up: Yes, they were white males (does that even matter to anyone other than professional race-baiters?). Yes, they bought their guns legally, and passed background checks. Yes, they were loners that maybe could have benefited from a social intervention before these events. Yes, they were hate-filled individuals taking out their grievances against an innocent public. No, they were not NRA members, and probably did not vote for Donald Trump. Heck, the El Paso shooter's "manifesto" seems to take Democrats and Republicans both to task equally (and as Miguel points out, he accurately predicted the media's response to his actions).

And it's safe to assume none of the "gun control" proposals we'll see in the upcoming days would have prevented either tragedy.

So instead, in this post and the next (possibly more), I am going to focus on two, very specific, thoughts I've had recently, directly or indirectly related to both events. Some of these are purely mine, and some are born of conversations my lovely wife, Mrs. Archer, and I have had in the aftermath.

For this post, I'm going to discuss the escalating political rhetoric, and some ways that feeds events like these.

It's long been noted that for the Left, political violence is like a knob; at the low end it consists of angry speech, and as it turns "up" progresses to yelling, screaming profanity, protests (and blocking opposing protests), riots, physical violence against individuals (case in point: the assault and beating of Portland independent journalist Andy Ngo), physical violence against opposing groups, and (historically) all the way to genocide of scapegoated populations.

For the Right, political violence is a switch, with just two settings: "Vote" and "Shoot F@#$ing Everybody"*. The Right believes in the "four boxes" — the soapbox, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box — and emphasizes they should be exercised in that order.

For civil society to be maintained, cooler heads must prevail. However, the hotheads (mostly but not entirely from the Left) are actively preventing cooler heads from being heard. That "slow simmer" on the Left's knob could look like some to be a "cold civil war", and while I don't believe either of the recent mass-killers hails from the political Right — at best, they appear to be anarchist or socialist, not really Left, but not Right, either — with all the violent speech flying, it's really no surprise that some individuals feel sufficiently threatened or outraged to take the "cold civil war" and decide it's time to go "hot".

Note that this is NOT IN ANY WAY offered as an attempt to excuse their actions, or the murder of (last I heard) 34 people by two @$$holes with chips on their shoulders. But put in context, it might explain a few things — namely, how one person might feel their actions, no matter how heinous, are justified in their own minds.

Stay safe out there, everybody.

[Edit: Part Two.]
------------ * - I disagree with that label, but I didn't make it up; I'm just borrowing the concept.

Free Speech, Free Association, and the NFL

My thoughts on NFL players' "protest" against the National Anthem

There's a lot of noise coming out about NFL players "protesting" the National Anthem by either "taking a knee" instead of standing, or staying in the locker room instead of being on the field. A lot of great minds have weighed in on this, and even though I'm a bit late to the game (no pun intended), I have a few thoughts to share.

[TL;DR version: Dear NFL players: Nobody is questioning your right to protest. What you do on your own time is your business, but on that field, in that uniform, you are not on your time; you are on ours, and we expect you to conduct yourself accordingly.]

The history on this issue has been documented better elsewhere, but here's a very short version, as understood by yours truly:

• The first "protester" was quarterback Colin Kaepernick, formerly of the San Francisco 49ers and currently a free agent, who remained seated during the National Anthem last year, to protest racial oppression and mistreatment of "people of color" by police.
• Since then, other players have joined in, kneeling "in solidarity".
• This year, President Donald Trump weighed in during a rally in Alabama, saying in part [edited for language], "Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a b***h off the field right now, out, he’s fired. He’s fired!'"
• Currently, whole teams are kneeling or retreating to the locker room during the National Anthem, and the "protest" against racial injustice has become synonymous with anti-Trump rhetoric.

(At this point, I want to offer some serious KUDOS to offensive tackle Alejandro Villanueva, of the Pittsburgh Steelers. A former Army Ranger who served three tours in Afghanistan and was awarded the Bronze Star for valor, Villanueva stood alone with his hand over his heart for the National Anthem; the rest of the team stayed in the locker room.)

More below the fold.