Liberty University’s "Culture of Fear"

Evangelical Christians - and far right Catholics - talk about "Christian love" and a supposedly loving god, yet the entire premise of their faith construct is one based on fear: fear of eternal damnation and fear of ostracism if one does not conform to medieval dogma.  Knowledge, science and freedom of thought are evil and to be rejected.  And as for loving others, it's the opposite of what one sees in reality where hatred of others is the most defining attribute of "conservative Christians."  In Virginia, two of the leading purveyors of this toxic form of Christianity are CBN/Regent University based in Virginia Beach and Liberty University in Lynchburg. Of the two, perhaps the more toxic and bigger blight on Virginia is Liberty where the reality is the opposite of what the name suggests.  As a lengthy piece in the Washington Post lays out, a climate of fear and censorship reigns under the rule of Jerry Falwell, Jr., a Trump supporter embroiled with his own possible dirty linen involving a young pool boy. Read the entire piece.  Here are highlights which suggest Liberty is the last place one should consider sending their child:

In my first week as editor in chief of the Champion, Liberty University’s student-run weekly, our faculty adviser, Deborah Huff, ordered me to apologize. I’d noticed that our evangelical school’s police department didn’t publish its daily crime log online, as many other private university forces do, so I searched elsewhere for crime information I might use in an article. I called the Virginia Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators to find out what the law required Liberty to disclose. But the public affairs worker there told the Liberty University Police Department, which complained to Huff. She called to upbraid me: Apparently, I had endangered our newspaper’s relationship with the LUPD. Huff and Chief Richard Hinkley convened a meeting inside a police department conference room, and Huff sat next to me while I proffered the forced apology to Hinkley — for asking questions. Huff, too, was contrite, assuring the police chief that it wouldn’t happen again, because she’d keep a better eye on me.

This wasn’t exactly a rude awakening. I’d spent the previous three years watching the university administration, led by President Jerry Falwell Jr. (who took a very micromanaging interest), meddle in our coverage, revise controversial op-eds and protect its image by stripping damning facts from our stories. Still, I stuck around. I thought that if I wrote with discretion and kept my head down, I could one day win enough trust from the university to protect the integrity of our journalism.

Instead, when my team took over that fall of 2017, we encountered an “oversight” system — read: a censorship regime — that required us to send every story to Falwell’s assistant for review. Any administrator or professor who appeared in an article had editing authority over any part of the article; they added and deleted whatever they wanted. Falwell called our newsroom on multiple occasions to direct our coverage personally.

Eventually I quit, and the School of Communication decided not to replace me, turning the paper into a faculty-run, student-written organ and seizing complete control of its content. Student journalists must now sign a nondisclosure agreement that forbids them from talking publicly about “editorial or managerial direction, oversight decisions or information designated as privileged or confidential.” The form also states that the students understand they are “privileged” to receive “thoughts, opinions, and other statements” from university administrators.

It was one example of an infrastructure of thought-control that Falwell and his lieutenants have introduced into every aspect of Liberty University life. Faculty, staff and students on the Lynchburg, Va., campus have learned that it’s a sin to challenge the sacrosanct status of the school or its leaders, who mete out punishments for dissenting opinions (from stripping people of their positions to banning them from the school). This “culture of fear,” as it was described by several of the dozen Liberty denizens who talked to me for this story — most of them anonymously, to protect their jobs or their standing — worsened during my four years on campus because of the 2016 presidential election.

[T]he school’s methods became even more aggressive after Falwell endorsed Donald Trump early that year, according to multiple current and former faculty members. “The closer you get to the president’s office,” says former history professor Brian Melton, discussing a chilling effect on campus, “the worse it becomes.” Falwell’s staff now operates masterfully to squash challenges to his views and his rise in national political influence.

The dissent that did exist — from off-message campus speakers, insufficiently sycophantic board members, student activists and our newspaper staff — was ruthlessly neutralized. Liberty, founded on principles of fundamental Christianity, is now a place that has zero tolerance for new questions and ideas. Those who harbor them must remain silent, or leave.

One cause of perpetual insecurity at Liberty is the school’s militant refusal to award tenure to any faculty member (outside the law school, which must offer it for accreditation). Instructors are instead hired on year-to-year contracts; during the spring semester, they find out whether they will be coming back the next fall.

The result is constant, erratic faculty turnover. One recently fired teacher describes the spring as a cycle of stressed-out, fearful professors wandering into each other’s offices to ask if they had their contracts renewed yet. “If you’re a conservative Christian in the academic world, the chances of you getting a job are nil in many areas,” says Melton, who worked at Liberty as an associate professor for 15 years before resigning because of what he described as the school’s surveillance and fear tactics. “The administration knows that, and . . . they wield that very effectively, keeping people quiet.”

Late-notice faculty removals have also become more commonplace, according to Melton, stemming in part from Falwell’s stated desire to tame the teaching corps. . . . This June, a dozen faculty members at Liberty’s School of Divinity were notified that their contracts would not be renewed. By that late in the year, it is too late to find another job in higher education for the fall.

For former faculty members, Liberty’s culture of fear can live on. The school often requires terminated professors to sign a nondisclosure agreement if they want their severance packages, several told me — a practice that is extremely uncommon in higher education, according to Robert Bezemek, a California lawyer who represents labor unions at universities. (As Melton puts it, “They force this NDA on you by leveraging the ability to feed your family against you.”) Even former teachers who hadn’t signed NDAs told me they feared that talking to me on the record would somehow get them blacklisted from jobs elsewhere or imperil their friends who still work at Liberty.

Another onetime instructor declined to use his university-issued laptop because he thought Liberty had equipped it with spyware.

There is no evidence of Liberty firing a faculty member explicitly for his or her political beliefs, but everyone I spoke to believed that the school could easily manufacture some other pretense. “There is zero trust between the administration and faculty,” Melton says. FIRE, a nonprofit that fights for free speech on campus, put Liberty on its 2019 list of the 10 worst colleges for freedom of speech.

Things aren’t much better for the 15,000 students on campus. In 2009, Liberty withdrew funding and recognition for its College Democrats chapter because, as Mark Hine, the senior vice president of student affairs, put it, the national party defends abortion, opposed the Defense of Marriage Act, supported “the ‘LGBT’ agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.”

Student leaders have consistently helped administrators enforce the culture. After the Charlottesville rally in August 2017, members of Liberty’s Student Government Association drafted a statement expressing solidarity with Heather Heyer, the protester murdered by a neo-Nazi, and all people demonstrating against white nationalism. Then-SGA President Caleb Johnson refused to release the message and send it to university administrators for fear of what Falwell might think. . . . “There’s 100 percent an atmosphere of fear at Liberty,” says Caleb Fitzpatrick, who was then the student government’s speaker of the House and helped draft the statement. “There was a need to avoid being seen as a liberal or progressive, or even being different.”

Guests at the school who deviate from the prescribed philosophy can be targeted, too. . . . . The end finally came for the Champion when a left-leaning faith group, the Red Letter Christians, organized a “Lynchburg Revival” in April 2018 to protest Falwell’s support of Trump and what the group called “toxic evangelicalism.” Two days beforehand, Liberty’s police department notified RLC leader Shane Claiborne that he would be arrested if he set foot on campus.

I graduated last year. Since then, I’ve tried to put Liberty — and the stress and self-doubt that officials there saddled me with — behind me.

Trump Regime Is Targeting Anti-Trump Facebook Users

Slowly but steadily the Trump/Pence regime is edging towards authoritarian policies.  Now, with a swing vote on the Supreme Court who views presidential powers akin to those of a monarch, the pace may accelerate.  The narcissistic Trump cannot tolerate criticism and increasingly, in a style like that of Putin and other dictators, wants to stifle opposition and resistance to his toxic regime.  One of the first ways to do this is to silence dissidents or, better yet, find a means to prosecute them.  Freedom of speech quickly goes down the toilet and only officially approved propaganda is free from risk of government interference.  Opposition political organizing likewise is stifled,  These are things Trump and his sinister Vice President favor.  Thankfully, the ACLU is defending Facebook users being targeted by Der Trumpenführer's Department of Justice.  Fortune looks at the ominous efforts to shut down opposition. Here are excerpts:

The Justice Department is trying to force Facebook to disclose information about thousands of people who “liked” a page opposing president Donald Trump.

The DoJ wants to access all the information from the profiles of three activists connected to the “DisruptJ20” protests on the day of Trump’s January inauguration. The protests turned violent in part and, with a couple hundred people having been charged over the Washington, D.C. riots, the authorities are going after online information relating to DisruptJ20.

One of the three being targeted by the DoJ, Emmelia Talarico, was an administrator and moderator for the DisruptJ20 Facebook page, since renamed “Resist This.” According to a legal filing by the D.C. branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the information being sought about that page would include personal details of thousands of other Facebook users who interacted with it.

The page was “liked” by an estimated 6,000 people before Feb. 9, when the DoJ secretly hit Facebook with search warrants. Although the page was public, the department is also after details of those who said they might attend events organized through the page, or who merely reacted to content shared from the page.

The ACLU is representing Talarico and the other two activists, Lacy MacAuley and Legba Carrefour, in the case. It argues that the DoJ is after too much information about the three — their entire Facebook activities covering a 90-day period — and is trying to share this information too widely within the government.

“The primary purpose of the Fourth Amendment was to prevent this type of exploratory rummaging through a person’s private information,” said ACLU lawyer Scott Michelman. “Moreover, when law enforcement officers can comb through records concerning political organizing in opposition to the very administration for which those officers work, the result is the chilling of First Amendment-protected political activity.”

Last month, the website-hosting provider Dreamhost revealed that the DoJ was seeking information regarding the DisruptJ20.org website, which ran off its servers. Following considerable pushback, the DoJ dropped its attempt to extract information about more than a million people who visited the site, but it did succeed in getting a judge to order Dreamhost to hand over other site data.

However, the court also ordered strict oversight for how the Justice Department could comb through the data it received, and forbade it from sharing the information with other government agencies. The ACLU is after something similar in the DisruptJ20 Facebook case.

And if you’re wondering whether Facebook pushed back against the DoJ, it did, at least as far as challenging the gag order that went along with the February warrants. The department dropped that element of the case earlier this month, allowing Facebook to tell Talarico, Carrefour and MacAuley that they were being targeted.

Be very afraid. 

When Does “Morality and Decency Kick In” for Trump Voters?

This post follows up on the theme of my post yesterday entitled The Trump Voter Paradox. If one listens to the bloviating of many, if not the majority, on the political right, the talk ad nausea about "Christian values" and "family values" as they support a Republican Party war long formulated by the likes of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell against families, the sick, the poor, and sexual and racial minorities.  Now, Der Trumpenführer is taking the bigotry and hatred to new heights both through his manufactured hysteria about minority NFL players exercising their constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression to his, in my view, deliberate delay in expediting life saving aid to Puerto Rico. And despite all of this, his supporters - like true modern Day Pharisees - cheer him on. People are literally dying, yet Trump supporters are still whining about standing for the national anthem.  For the record, I support the players' refusal to stand.  Anyone not afford the Constitution's promise of equal protection under the law (which includes the LGBT community) has every reason to protest.  A piece in Salon looks at what I believe to be the moral bankruptcy and blatant racism of Trump supporters.  Here are excerpts:

On Monday, head coach of the San Antonio Spurs Gregg Popovich articulated his support of the ongoing national-anthem protests taking place across the sports world. In declaring his support of any players who should decide to participate, he — as he has before — drew a sharp line under the racial issues surrounding the remarks by Trump and the way people of color are treated in this country.

“Obviously, race is the elephant in the room, and we all understand that. Unless it is talked about constantly, it's not going to get better. . . . 'Oh, that again. They pulled the race card again. Why do we have to talk about that?' Well, because it's uncomfortable,” he said "They have our full support and no matter what they might want to do or not do is important to them, respected by us," Popovich said in support of protesters. "And there’s no recrimination no matter what might take place, unless it’s ridiculous egregious."

Popovich also commented on the response by the president more specifically and asked when Trump supporters would wake up. “I wonder what the people think about who voted for him, where their line is, how much they can take, where does the morality and decency kick in?”

Popovich is not the only one to take aim at Trump's remarks; in fact, the floodgates have opened for pro sports teams to take a stand (or knee) against him. Tony Dungy, former NFL player and coach, commented on the protests on "The Today Show" Sunday, specifically about the backlash and the shift in the tides.

“Up until yesterday, the players would want people to know, this was not about the flag, this was not about patriotism. In their opinion, it was about social change,” Dungy said. “But yesterday this was a group of our family got attacked and called names and said they were unpatriotic and should be fired for, what we feel, is demonstrating our first amendment right. We’re gonna [ . . . ] band together as a family and they reacted."

Sportscaster Dale Hansen used his position as a Vietnam Veteran to defend the protests, in opposition to those against the protests who claim that the action is disrespectful to veterans.“The young, black athletes are not disrespecting America or the military by taking a knee during the anthem,” Hanson said. “They are respecting the best thing about America. It’s a dog whistle to the racists among us to say otherwise." He condemned those who don’t believe in white privilege as well. “They, and all of us, should protest how black Americans are treated in this country. And if you don’t think white privilege is a fact, you don’t understand America.”

Perhaps the most scathing rebuke was from former tight end Shannon Sharpe on Undisputed, where he commented on the solidarity of the NFL and the hypocrisy of the people in power in the league. “This wasn’t a protest. This was unity. So, what are we showing solidarity against?” He continued. “We’re showing solidarity because President Trump challenged the very men. Wealthy, wealthy men, billionaires, and he told them, what you should do if someone protests, you should fire them. They don’t like being told what to do.”

 These self-styled "godly Christians" care more about a piece of cloth than travesties done to living, breathing  - at least until they are gunned down by police - individuals.  Indeed, these people are the antithesis of Christ's message.

How to Build an Autocracy in America

As each day passes and we seem more autocratic behavior coming from the current occupant of the White House, I continue to be stunned and terrified by the number of people who show no concern or alarm over what is happening.  First the Muslim ban, now a likely license to discriminate law that will give special rights and preferences to Christian extremists - and the Republican Party just shrugs and allows the Frankenstein monster to careen down the road towards a death of American democracy.  I feel as if I am reliving the history of earl 1930's Germany or an episode of the Twilight Zone, except it is really happening.  Conservative David Frum has a very lengthy piece in The Atlantic that paints a picture of where America may find itself under an defacto autocracy, and not a benevolent one.  Here are excerpts, but read the entire piece:

IT’s 2021, and president donald trump will shortly be sworn in for his second term. The 45th president has visibly aged over the past four years. He rests heavily on his daughter Ivanka’s arm during his infrequent public appearances.

Fortunately for him, he did not need to campaign hard for reelection. His has been a popular presidency: Big tax cuts, big spending, and big deficits have worked their familiar expansive magic. Wages have grown strongly in the Trump years, especially for men without a college degree, even if rising inflation is beginning to bite into the gains. The president’s supporters credit his restrictive immigration policies and his TrumpWorks infrastructure program.

The president’s critics, meanwhile, have found little hearing for their protests and complaints. A Senate investigation of Russian hacking during the 2016 presidential campaign sputtered into inconclusive partisan wrangling. Concerns about Trump’s purported conflicts of interest excited debate in Washington but never drew much attention from the wider American public.

Allegations of fraud and self-dealing in the TrumpWorks program, and elsewhere, have likewise been shrugged off. The president regularly tweets out news of factory openings and big hiring announcements. . . 

The business community learned its lesson early. “You work for me, you don’t criticize me,” the president was reported to have told one major federal contractor, after knocking billions off his company’s stock-market valuation with an angry tweet. Wise business leaders take care to credit Trump’s personal leadership for any good news, and to avoid saying anything that might displease the president or his family.

The media have grown noticeably more friendly to Trump as well. The proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner was delayed for more than a year, during which Time Warner’s CNN unit worked ever harder to meet Trump’s definition of fairness. Under the agreement that settled the Department of Justice’s antitrust complaint against Amazon, the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has divested himself of The Washington Post. The paper’s new owner—an investor group based in Slovakia—has closed the printed edition and refocused the paper on municipal politics and lifestyle coverage.

Meanwhile, social media circulate ever-wilder rumors. Some people believe them; others don’t. It’s hard work to ascertain what is true.

Nobody’s repealed the First Amendment, of course, and Americans remain as free to speak their minds as ever—provided they can stomach seeing their timelines fill up with obscene abuse and angry threats from the pro-Trump troll armies that police Facebook and Twitter. Rather than deal with digital thugs, young people increasingly drift to less political media like Snapchat and Instagram.

Trump-critical media do continue to find elite audiences. Their investigations still win Pulitzer Prizes; their reporters accept invitations to anxious conferences about corruption, digital-journalism standards, the end of nato, and the rise of populist authoritarianism.

Yet somehow all of this earnest effort feels less and less relevant to American politics. President Trump communicates with the people directly via his Twitter account, ushering his supporters toward favorable information at Fox News or Breitbart.

People crack jokes about Trump’s National Security Agency listening in on them. They cannot deeply mean it; after all, there’s no less sexting in America today than four years ago. Still, with all the hacks and leaks happening these days—particularly to the politically outspoken—it’s just common sense to be careful what you say in an email or on the phone. When has politics not been a dirty business? When have the rich and powerful not mostly gotten their way? The smart thing to do is tune out the political yammer, mind your own business, enjoy a relatively prosperous time, and leave the questions to the troublemakers.

Everything imagined above—and everything described below—is possible only if many people other than Donald Trump agree to permit it. It can all be stopped, if individual citizens and public officials make the right choices. The story told here, like that told by Charles Dickens’s Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, is a story not of things that will be, but of things that may be. Other paths remain open. It is up to Americans to decide which one the country will follow.

No society, not even one as rich and fortunate as the United States has been, is guaranteed a successful future. When early Americans wrote things like “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” they did not do so to provide bromides for future bumper stickers. They lived in a world in which authoritarian rule was the norm, in which rulers habitually claimed the powers and assets of the state as their own personal property.

Larry Diamond, a sociologist at Stanford, has described the past decade as a period of “democratic recession.” Worldwide, the number of democratic states has diminished. Within many of the remaining democracies, the quality of governance has deteriorated.

What has happened in Hungary since 2010 offers an example—and a blueprint for would-be strongmen. Hungary is a member state of the European Union and a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights. It has elections and uncensored internet. Yet Hungary is ceasing to be a free country.

The transition has been nonviolent, often not even very dramatic. Opponents of the regime are not murdered or imprisoned, although many are harassed with building inspections and tax audits. If they work for the government, or for a company susceptible to government pressure, they risk their jobs by speaking out. Nonetheless, they are free to emigrate anytime they like. Those with money can even take it with them. Day in and day out, the regime works more through inducements than through intimidation. The courts are packed, and forgiving of the regime’s allies. Friends of the government win state contracts at high prices and borrow on easy terms from the central bank. Those on the inside grow rich by favoritism; those on the outside suffer from the general deterioration of the economy.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s rule over Hungary does depend on elections. These remain open and more or less free—at least in the sense that ballots are counted accurately. Yet they are not quite fair. Electoral rules favor incumbent power-holders in ways both obvious and subtle. Independent media lose advertising under government pressure; government allies own more and more media outlets each year. The government sustains support even in the face of bad news by artfully generating an endless sequence of controversies that leave culturally conservative Hungarians feeling misunderstood and victimized by liberals, foreigners, and Jews.

You could tell a similar story of the slide away from democracy in South Africa under Nelson Mandela’s successors, in Venezuela under the thug-thief Hugo Chávez, or in the Philippines under the murderous Rodrigo Duterte. A comparable transformation has recently begun in Poland, and could come to France should Marine Le Pen, the National Front’s candidate, win the presidency.

[T]he American system is also perforated by vulnerabilities no less dangerous for being so familiar. Supreme among those vulnerabilities is reliance on the personal qualities of the man or woman who wields the awesome powers of the presidency. A British prime minister can lose power in minutes if he or she forfeits the confidence of the majority in Parliament. The president of the United States, on the other hand, is restrained first and foremost by his own ethics and public spirit. What happens if somebody comes to the high office lacking those qualities?

Donald Trump, however, represents something much more radical. A president who plausibly owes his office at least in part to a clandestine intervention by a hostile foreign intelligence service? Who uses the bully pulpit to target individual critics? Who creates blind trusts that are not blind, invites his children to commingle private and public business, and somehow gets the unhappy members of his own political party either to endorse his choices or shrug them off? If this were happening in Honduras, we’d know what to call it. It’s happening here instead, and so we are baffled.

DONALD TRUMP will not set out to build an authoritarian state. His immediate priority seems likely to be to use the presidency to enrich himself. But as he does so, he will need to protect himself from legal risk. Being Trump, he will also inevitably wish to inflict payback on his critics. Construction of an apparatus of impunity and revenge will begin haphazardly and opportunistically. But it will accelerate. It will have to.

If Congress is quiescent, what can Trump do? A better question, perhaps, is what can’t he do?

The First Amendment Will Not Protect the Press from Trump

One of the first things that dictators do is to legitimize the press - before taking control of it. Controlling the press and/or neutralizing it in the eyes of many is key to assuming dictatorial power and controlling the populace.  One need only look at the situation of the press in Putin's Russia or China to see the model that Trump seeks to inflict on America.  When Kellyanne "Goebbels" Conway spoke of "alternate facts" she was speaking of lies.  Anything that undermines "Dear Leader" will be countered with "alternate facts" regardless of their deliberate untruthfulness.  Some Republicans such as Lindsey Graham see the danger ahead.  Most sadly, either are remaining quite and participating in the lies through their silence or, worse, many are joining in with Der Fuhrer and seeking to deceive the American public.  A column in the New York Times looks at the increasing danger.  Here are excerpts:

When President Trump declared on Saturday that reporters are “among the most dishonest human beings on earth,” it was not the first time he had disparaged the press. Nor was it out of character when, later that same day, his press secretary threatened “to hold the press accountable” for reporting truthful information that was unflattering to Mr. Trump. Episodes like these have become all too common in recent weeks. So it’s comforting to know that the Constitution serves as a reliable stronghold against Mr. Trump’s assault on the press.

Except that it doesn’t. The truth is, legal protections for press freedom are far feebler than you may think. Even more worrisome, they have been weakening in recent years.

The First Amendment provides only limited protection for the press. Over the centuries, courts have affirmed that it prohibits government censorship and offers some protection against defamation lawsuits. But journalists themselves have few constitutional rights when it comes to matters such as access to government sources and documents, or protection from being hounded by those in power for their news gathering and reporting.

There are some legal protections, but the press also relies on nonlegal safeguards. In the past, these have included the institutional media’s relative financial strength; the good will of the public; a mutually dependent relationship with government officials; the support of sympathetic judges; and political norms and traditions.

[T]he public’s good will, which long sustained the freedom of the press in America, has evaporated. In the 1970s, nearly three-quarters of Americans reported they trusted the news media, and the press was able to translate this support into substantial opportunities for news gathering: People who trusted the media were more likely to bring them leads and to demand that the press be allowed to cover newsworthy events. Today, however, public confidence in the press has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history.

As for the relationship between the press and government officials, that too has changed. Until recently, the press relied on politicians for access to information while politicians relied on the press for access to the public’s ear. This ensured that government officials would never shut out the press entirely. But with the fragmentation of the news industry, this is less true; the established news media can no longer claim to be the primary source of the public’s information.

In addition, the courts cannot be relied on — at least not as they once could be — for forceful protection of press liberties. The Supreme Court has not decided a major press case in more than a decade, in part because it has declined to do so, and in part because media companies, inferring the court’s relative lack of interest, have decided not to waste their resources pressing cases.

As each of these press-freedom pillars weakens, the one remaining pillar must bear more than its share of the weight. It’s the one, however, that President Trump now seems most keen to destroy: tradition.

It is primarily customs and traditions, not laws, that guarantee that members of the White House press corps have access to the workings of the executive branch.

This is why we should be alarmed when Mr. Trump, defying tradition, vilifies media institutions, attacks reporters by name and refuses to take questions from those whose coverage he dislikes. Or when he decides not to let reporters travel with him on his plane, or fails to inform them when he goes out in public. Or when he suggests he might evict the White House press corps from the West Wing and have his administration, rather than the White House Correspondents Association, determine who gets allowed to attend briefings.

We cannot simply sit back and expect that the First Amendment will rush in to preserve the press, and with it our right to know. Like so much of our democracy, the freedom of the press is only as strong as we, the public, demand it to be.

With far too many Americans complacent about protecting their own rights much less freedom of the press, those of us not already brainwashed by Fox News and/or Breitbart need to be very afraid and bestir ourselves to oppose Trump and his attempts to destroy the press with utmost vigor. If the press is muzzled, our right to freedom of speech will be the next target.  

Trump Versus the Constitution and Free Speech

One of Donald Trump's latest Twitter tirades - it is difficult to keep track since there are so many - involves flag burning.  Per Der Fuhrer, " . . . .there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”  I have always found it telling that for the far right - including most evangelical Christians - they find burning an American flag much more distressing than seeing starving children or Muslims being murdered by brutal dictators in the Middle East and elsewhere. It speaks volumes about their moral bankruptcy and the toxicity of their foul version of Christianity.  But back to Der Fuhrer.  Trump's Twitter outburst reveals many things, not the least of which is that the man is clueless on constitutional rights of citizens or the fact that a Supreme Court ruling upheld flag burning as a right of freedom of speech.  The New York Times, with which Trump has love/hate relationship schools Trump on constitutional realities.  Here are excerpts:

When Donald Trump, hand on the Bible on Jan. 20, swears to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, we the people will have good reason to doubt he knows what he’s talking about. Consider what he tweeted out on Tuesday:

“Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”

Here’s where we explain what shouldn’t need explaining. Flag-burning is constitutionally protected speech. The Supreme Court has made this clear, in a ruling joined by Mr. Trump’s favorite justice, Antonin Scalia. It’s popular to want to punish flag-burners — pandering politicians, including Hillary Clinton, have tried. But the First Amendment exists to protect unpopular, even repulsive forms of expression. As the Supreme Court said in a 1990 decision finding a federal law against flag-burning unconstitutional, “Punishing desecration of the flag dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered, and worth revering.” It’s interesting that so many of the people who are eager to punish flag-burners, like Mr. Trump, are at the same time so untroubled by speech that offends minorities, women and other Americans. They rail against any concern about that kind of speech as “political correctness.” But in this country, flag-burning is about as politically incorrect as anything you can do. Where is their courageous defense of speech now? Isn’t Mr. Trump the man who stood up for the freedom to say brutally unpleasant things? Who said, at the Republican convention: “I will present the facts plainly and honestly. We cannot afford to be so politically correct anymore.”

The court, by the way, has also declared that citizenship cannot be stripped away, not by Congress or the president, not in this democracy.

But we don’t have the luxury of merely mocking someone who is now as powerful as Mr. Trump. Before you tune him out, remember what the right-wing propaganda site Breitbart was celebrating on Tuesday — that Mr. Trump’s social-media presence allows him to get his message to millions, bypassing “corporate media.” He has more than 16 million Twitter followers. With Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, he can feed lies and ignorance directly to 36 million people.

He tweets, he posts, he incites. He trolls. He commands a global platform and will soon be America’s commander in chief. But it has to be said, and said again: This is not normal. It demeans the presidency.

 Be very afraid of this man and what his gang of henchmen and Republican sycophants in Congress are poised to do to this country and the rights of citizens.

Cry Babies Trump and Pence Can Dish It Out But Can't Take It

Donald Trump has a well documented history of saying whatever he wants, often in the most vulgar of ways.  For eight years Trump felt free to say any and all kinds of lies about Barack Obama. Meanwhile, Mike Pence has waged a decades long war against those who do not accept his hate and fear and fairy tale based religious beliefs. Now, they want everyone to give them respect and deference.  They can dish it out and mistreat others, but as demonstrated last night and today, they sure can't take it when other Americans exercise their right of freedom of speech and call out Pence for the nasty bigot that he is.  Neither Trump nor Pence has even been sworn into office yet and already the cry baby temper tantrums and conniption fits are on display.   What prompted Trump and Pence's rage is that the cast of the hit Broadway show, Hamilton, addressed Pence's documented bigotry and homophobia.  Many in the audience booed Pence and made their contempt for the man known.  Here's what the cast said:

“We, sir, we are the diverse America, who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights,” . . . “But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us,” Dixon [who plays Aaron Burr] added, while gesturing to the musical’s diverse cast and to the audience. 

Trump - and Pence - needs to get his head out of his narcissistic and ego mad ass and understand that for as long as he is in office many of us will never respect him and will speak out loudly voicing our displeasure with him as a man and condemning his policies when they are deemed misguided.  If he can't take the heat and criticism of the presidency, he needs to resign now and do all of us and the world a favor.  Ditto for Mr. Pence.

A piece in the Washington Post reminds of Pence's horrible treatment of LGBT Americans.  Here are article highlights:

Although the Broadway cast’s message was directed broadly at what would be an administration under Trump’s presidency, Pence himself has a political track record that has been excoriated by the LGBT community. Last year, as governor of Indiana, Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act after the federal courts ruled that same-sex marriage bans in states were unconstitutional. Under the new state law, Indiana business owners could cite their religious beliefs if they didn’t want to participate in same-sex weddings. Opponents said it amounted to allowing discrimination based on sexual orientation. A week later, after facing boycotts and widespread condemnation from rights groups, Pence signed an amendment clarifying that the law could not be used to discriminate against the LGBT community.

He has a “0%” rating from the Human Rights Campaign, a nonprofit group that calls Pence “notoriously anti-LGBTQ” when he was chosen to be Trump’s running mate. Republican Chrys Kefalas outlined Pence’s anti-LGBT record in a guest column for The Washington Post:

During his public career, Pence has been an outspoken opponent of equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens. In Congress, he opposed efforts to encourage foreign governments to decriminalize homosexuality and sought to block the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. As a governor, he stood against not only marriage equality, but civil unions as well. He also opposed a law prohibiting discrimination against LGBT people in the workplace and signed one opening the door to wide-ranging discrimination against these residents of his own state under the guise of religious liberty.

None of this was lost on the audience, who greeted Pence’s arrival to his prime orchestra seat with a mix of cheers and boos, according to the AP.

Are First Amendment Rights Now At Risk?

Throughout his campaign Donald Trump attacked the media - usually for reporting the truth about him.  Moreover, he made pronouncements about changing the libel laws to stifle critics.  On the freedom of religion front, he has pledged to sign federal legislation granting special rights to Christian extremists who would be permitted to discriminate at will and trample on the religious freedom rights of others.  Some are saying that they hope Trump's calm appearance on 60 Minutes last night shows that he is "making a pivot" toward normal, acceptable behavior.  But how does one trust a man who flip flops constantly and seems to say whatever he sees as expedient at any moment in time.  And then there is the reality of the extremists being give positions in Trump's transition team and thereafter in his administration. Don't actions speak louder than words?  A column in the Washington Post stresses the need for vigilance and opposition to whatever erosion of civil rights may be in the offing.  Here are highlights:

What really makes America great?

It’s the meaning of 45 words found in the Bill of Rights. Here they are, the entire 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.”

Everything we have — everything that makes us unlike any other nation — flows from those words and the protections they offer for free expression.

Donald Trump’s presidency is very likely to threaten those First Amendment rights.

If they are damaged or removed, we’ll be like a lot of unenviable places.

“Freedom of speech is a rare thing, after all. It’s one of the big differences between the United States and a place like Cuba,” wrote John Daniel Davidson last March in the Federalist. “Cuba has no freedom of the press — or rule of law. Libel is whatever the regime says it is.”

These are rights that allow us to march in the streets, to worship freely, to publish tough stories about the government.

Trump has made it clear that he has no intention of protecting or defending those rights. He has said repeatedly that he wants to change the laws that allow the press to publish news — however imperfectly — without fear of punishment.

He has called journalists “scum” and encouraged his followers to abuse and hate them. He would like to see his political opponent locked up.

Nothing but campaign rhetoric? Clean slate time? No way. . . . . It’s already happening. Trump barred reporters from his first official act as president-elect — his visit to the White House. Then, in a tweet, he blamed the media for “inciting” street protests, when there was no evidence of that.

Meanwhile, Corey Lewandowski, who carried out Trump’s press blacklist and reportedly roughed up a female reporter, was preparing for a possible role in the Trump administration. And Steve Bannon, chairman of the alt-right Breitbart News, was named chief strategist on Sunday.

“We’re facing a moment that threatens equal protection, due process, free expression, democracy — not just press freedom,” wrote Brian Beutler in the New Republic. “It’s not a drill.”

Americans should be confronted, he said, with whether they “really want a state-controlled Ministry of Information under the thinly veiled guise of a Pravda-like press.”

Indeed, in countries where the government controls the press, and which lack other speech protections, journalists are jailed, even killed, as they try to do their work. Citizens are afraid to express their views publicly or to assemble. Until now, the United States has been a beacon for them.

Look the situation in the eye; know how bad it is. That’s the pessimism of the intellect.

As for the optimism-of-the-will part? For journalists, it’s writing and reporting aggressively and fearlessly, and being willing to fight for access. For citizens, it’s being well-informed, including subscribing to newspapers and supporting the best journalism. It’s helping to debunk and call out fake news. It’s donating to, or getting involved with, civil rights and media rights organizations. And it’s backing public officials committed to protecting free expression.

Americans certainly shouldn’t move to Canada, but they should heed the words of the Canadian songwriter Joni Mitchell: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?”

We’ve still got our precious First Amendment rights. Now it’s time — high time — to protect them from the fire.

We Must Offend Religion More: Tolerance of Ancient Myths is Harmful

If we look at the horrors being done by ISIS in the Middle East, the constant homophobia disseminated from pulpits daily, and even a fair amount of racism in America, there is one common thread: religion and beliefs based on ancient myths and writings of individuals who were totally ignorant about almost every aspect of modern knowledge, both scientific, medical and in the realm of mental health.  Despite the fact that the unknown authors of the Bible and the falsely honored Prophet Mohammed" were utterly ignorant of knowledge that is the base of everyday life and modern technology, their rants and ravings are given undeserved deference - as are those who cling to, if not openly embrace, ignorance.  A lengthy piece in Salon makes the case that we need to offend religion and the religious more if we are to stop the harm that often seems to be the principal fruit of religion.  Here are highlights:

“Yes, it is freedom of speech, but,” said Inna Shevchenko, the 24-year-old leader of the topless, fiercely atheist activist group Femen in France.  On Feb. 14 she was addressing the conference on art, blasphemy and freedom of expression held at the Krudttønden, a café and cultural center in Copenhagen.  She continued.  “Why do we still say ‘but’ when we…”

A sustained barrage of automatic gunfire interrupted her.  She, the Swedish cartoonist with her onstage, Lars Vilks (famous for his 2007 drawings of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked deadly riots in the Islamic world), and much of the audience hurled themselves to the floor before escaping through the building’s rear exit.  The hooded terrorist assailant, a 22-year-old Danish citizen of Arab descent . . . 

The attacker’s primary target was probably Vilks, but he would have rejoiced at the chance to get Shevchenko, too.  After all, Femen has pronounced religion – in particular, Islam — a bane on women’s rights and has carried out a number of widely publicized, bare-breasted protests against it, burning the Salafist flag in front of the Great Mosque in Paris . . .

The morning after the Copenhagen assault I spoke with Shevchenko by Skype.  Still in the Danish capital, she had spent much of the night at the police station, and had slept poorly after returning to her hotel.  Yet she was calm and lucid, determined to continue with Femen’s fight against religion.  This fight had turned extremely personal for her even before Copenhagen: She lost 12 friends in the Charlie Hebdo massacre last month in Paris, where she lives as a political refugee.

If we have free speech only up to where we might hurt someone’s feelings, then it isn’t free.  ‘You have freedom of speech, just don’t offend,’ people tell me.  Those who say this are only trying to shut down our freedoms.  If we cede to this, we play their game.  Now that offends me.”

In the month between the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the attack in Copenhagen, I both read and heard a number of arguments that in essence blame the artists for their own deaths.  Most, in fact, start with “I believe in freedom of speech, but  . . .”

No Western constitution or legal code guarantees citizens the right to go about life free from offense.  Laws provide for freedom of expression (with some restrictions, especially regarding state security, hate crime and incitement to violence), but they cannot forbid potentially offensive expression without destroying the very right they are meant to protect.  

To devout Muslims, the sight of uncovered women and the serving of pork and alcoholic beverages cause offense.  Devout Hindus would certainly find beef offensive.  Devout Catholics could draw up their own list, and Jews, another.  In short, a lot of things might offend a great number of people all over the place.  In a world ever more connected by the Internet . . . . there is no way to guard against offending someone, somewhere.  We should not be obligated to take into account a work’s potential for inciting murderous mass tantrums in faraway lands or slaughter at home when evaluating it for publication.

Steadfast belief in the inerrancy of religious dogma, coupled with (at times fanatically held) convictions that the dogma’s many mandates are meant to apply to all humanity, clash with principles of secular governance and Enlightenment-era precepts that oblige us, at least ideally, to sort out our problems relying on reason, consensus and law.  . . . . We must unabashedly stand by reason, the rule of law, and secularism.

Our enduring deference to all religions, despite their verifiably phony explanations for the origins of the cosmos and our species, to say nothing of their toxic preachments, only furthers their survival.  We need not less but more frank talk about faith.

Concepts of freedom of expression and the laws designed to protect it were born in Europe’s blood-soaked history of interfaith warfare, mostly between Catholics and Protestants.  The (atheistic) French Revolution aimed to “de-Christianize” France in order to smash the (temporal, wealth-based) stranglehold the Catholic Church had on the country.  

The Founding Fathers well knew how the state could use religion against the people; hence, the First Amendment safeguards both freedom of speech and freedom of religion by forbidding Congress to enact laws abridging the exercise of either.  The Abrahamic faiths have never been simply matters of conscience; they have always served as weapons to impose control, especially over women and their bodies, sexual minorities and education.  Weapons need to be kept under lock and key, or better yet, eliminated. 

Attempts to shield religions from censure in the face of overwhelming evidence – President Obama leads the pack of invertebrate Western politicians doing this — amount to nothing more than pandering acceptance of ancient myths, harmful ideas and the increasingly gruesome violence to which they often lead.  Ideologies merit no a priori respect; people do.

[W]e are engaged in a struggle for the soul of our Enlightenment civilization.  Shevchenko said as much.  . . . To continue accepting quisling pseudo-justifications for — or sophistic, à la Reza Aslan, misdiagnoses of — the role of Islam in motivating terrorism throughout the world presages one thing: We will lose.

French Police Close in on Paris Terror Suspects

Police officer Ahmed Merabet who was murdered

Hopefully, French police will capture the two suspects in the Charlie Hebdo massacre.  The two are reportedly holed up in a town near Charles DeGaulle airport where they are reported to be holding at least one hostage.  One of the sick ironies of the whole affair is that the police officer shot and killed like a dog was Muslim himself, a fact that those fanning anti-Muslim hate - e.g., French far right politicians - need to not forget.  Just as many Christians do not support the ugly actions of  fundamentalist "Christians," a majority of Muslims do not condone the savagery and hate that are the hallmarks of Islamic fundamentalists.  The Washington Post reports on the current stand off.  Here are excerpts:

French security forces closed in Friday on the brothers suspected in France’s worst terrorist attack in generations, surrounding a commercial building outside Paris where the pair was believed holed up with at least one hostage.

The search narrowed to a printing business in Dammartin-en-Goele, about 25 miles northeast of Paris, where authorities believe the brothers headed in a stolen car. Authorities say the suspects held at least one hostage, but gave no further details.

In scenes reminiscent of recent standoffs — including last month’s hostage-taking at a Sydney cafe — French police put the area under lockdown orders, asking people to stay indoors and turn off their lights as the drama played out on an overcast afternoon.

French media, citing police sources, reported that the brothers appeared ready to make a last stand rather than surrender. It was not immediately clear what weapons they had available, but previous reports said they had Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

They took refuge in the printing business after stealing a car and firing shots, French media reported.
A client at the business said he shook hands with one of the armed fugitives, believing he was a police special forces officer, France Info radio reported.

Fresh details emerged Thursday that one of the brothers had tried to meet with al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen.

U.S. officials said the older of the two, Said Kouachi, is believed to have traveled to Yemen in 2011 in an effort to link up with al-Qaeda’s affiliate there at a time when that group was eclipsing the terror network’s core leadership in Pakistan as the principal threat to the United States.

U.S. officials said Kouachi may have received small-arms training and picked up other skills while in Yemen, but they described the years that followed that 2011 visit as a “kind of hole” in the timeline, with significant gaps in authorities’ understanding of the brothers’ activities and whereabouts.

French officials vowed to bring the men to justice and announced that they had taken nine people into custody in relation to the case. Authorities would not release their names, but French media said that those picked up in the dragnet included a sister of the men as well as her companion and the wife of Said Kouachi. 

“I’m afraid this is going to open a boulevard for the far right,” said Diane Tribout, 28, a public servant who joined a candlelight vigil in the Place de la Republique on Thursday, where crowds chanted, “Charlie isn’t dead!”

“On the streets of Paris, you might not see it as obviously, but I know that in small towns and villages all across France, this tragic event is going to be used to fuel anger and rage,” Tribout said.

Marine Le Pen, the head of the far-right [Neo-Nazi] National Front, which has surged in opinion polls here well before Wednesday’s attack, spoke out Thursday, calling her party the only one that had challenged the notion of “Islamic fundamentalism on our territory.”

Religion's War on Freedom Strike in Paris

Suspected shooter in Paris Massacre

Religion - or in this case, conservative Islam - has added new names to the death toll that goes hand in glove with religion over the centuries.  For centuries, those deemed guilty of blasphemy or who refused to live by certain creeds and beliefs have been murdered by the "true believers" who, due to their own psychological issues, religious brainwashing, and/or ignorance, cannot stand to see anything or anyone challenge or mock their delusional fairy tale like religious myths.   I increasingly view deep religious fundamentalism to be a form of mental illness.  The New York Times has new details on the cowardly mass killing at the offices of French satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, in Paris.  Here are highlights:

The terrorist attack by masked gunmen on the newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, left 12 people dead — including the top editor, prominent cartoonists and police officers — and was among the deadliest in postwar France.

Officials said late Wednesday that the suspects had been identified and that two were brothers. They were identified as Said and Cherif Kouachi, 32 and 34, and Hamyd Mourad, 18. French news reports said the brothers had been born in Paris, raising the prospect that homegrown Muslim extremists were responsible.

Officials and witnesses said at least two gunmen carried out the attack with automatic weapons and an unusual degree of military-style precision. President François Hollande of France called it a display of extraordinary “barbarism” that was “without a doubt” an act of terrorism. 

The Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said witnesses said the attackers had screamed “Allahu akbar!” or “God is great!” during the attack, which the police characterized as a “slaughter.”

Corinne Rey, a cartoonist known as Coco, who was at the newspaper office during the attack, told Le Monde that the attackers spoke fluent French and had said they were part of Al Qaeda.

An amateur video of the assailants’ subsequent gunfight with the police, showed the men shouting, “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad. We have killed Charlie Hebdo!” The video, the source of which could not be verified, also showed the gunmen killing a police officer as he lay wounded on a nearby street.

The victims at Charlie Hebdo included some of the country’s most revered and iconoclastic cartoonists. The weekly’s editorial director, Stéphane Charbonnier, had already been received light police protection after earlier threats, the police and the prosecutor said. An officer assigned to guard the newspaper’s offices and its top editor was among the victims.

Mr. Molins, the prosecutor, said that two men armed with AK-47 rifles and wearing black hoods, had forced their way into the weekly’s offices about 11:30 a.m., firing at people in the lobby, before making their way to the newsroom on the second floor, interrupting a news meeting and firing at the assembled journalists.

The attackers then fled outside, where they clashed three times with the police, shooting one officer as he lay on the ground on a nearby street.

One journalist who was at the weekly during the attack and asked that her name not be used, texted a friend after the shooting: “I’m alive. There is death all around me. Yes, I am there. The jihadists spared me.”

What's frightening is that religious extremists - both Christian and Muslim - want to deprive others of freedom of expression and freedom of religion - and/or freedom from religion.  Their beliefs are so fragile and psychotic that they cannot tolerate anyone who suggests that their beliefs are based on lies or myths.  These religious fundamentals deserve no deference, no respect and their belief systems need to be irradiated.

The publisher of Charlie Hebdo who was murdered in Paris

Four of the murder victims