Tag: Free speech

Taipei Times Uncensored

I wrote and posted at the Taipei Times for almost 20 years. When I wrote a comment in the Taipei Times criticizing China for lying about the Wuhan Virus, and then lying about lying about the virus, and when I criticized Tedros for being the lapdog of the Chinese Communist Party for his heaping of oodles of praise on China for its “handling” of the virus, and the WHO’s official policies which inevitably suppressed the initial dangers of the virus in order to mollify Communist China for fear it would cut off the WHO’s access to facts on the ground, I was kicked off Facebook, though my post was published on the Taipei Times website without any issue. Facebook has been censoring comments critical of Communist China and/or Tedros and/or the WHO. As a consequence, I am unable to post at the Taipei Times or comment on any of the articles published there. I wrote to the editor to ask that the Taipei Times provide other access to posting, but thus far no changes have been made. After almost 3 months of being banned, I have decided to post my comments on the Taipei Times here under the title “Taipei Times Uncensored” instead of at the Taipei Times website because in order to comment or post there, you must have a Facebook account, and only a Facebook account. This in effect allows Facebook, which has previously had a pro-Communist Party approach, to censor the posting and comments at the Taipei Times, one of the world’s only pro-Taiwan news organizations. That is a tragic turn of events.

In the Taipei Times on June 6th on Page 8, an editorial was published entitled “States Risk Public’s Violent Anger”, written by Nigel Li, a student at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. The first major mistake in the premise of the article is somehow conflating what is happening in the United States with either the Hong Kong protests, or with action taken by any number of totalitarian states against violent protests. There can be no comparison between the democratic system of government and justice in the United States and those dictatorships, where democracy and justice are unknown. Because the United States has one of the most objective legal systems in the world, and a strong constitution protecting freedom and justice, especially under the First Amendment and the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, there is no need for violence except to wreak havoc or cause chaos, which is the objective of anarchy and revolution, two features of the current socialist/communist wing of the Democratic Party, pushing the Democratic Party run districts so far to the left it has become frightening. Thus every opportunity to cause chaos has been fully supported and in fact instigated by the Democratic Party, including the current riots regarding the death of George Floyd in police custody, which have been taken over by the extreme left.

Anyone familiar with the political climate in the US should by now understand the fear of the Democratic Party that the Wuhan Virus will be mostly resolved in the next few months, that the economy may come roaring back, and that these juggernauts will make it impossible to defeat the incumbent president, Donald Trump. Thus, racial chaos and anarchy is helpful the Democrats believe, to their cause. However, the Democrats are completely tone deaf because they still do not understand the extraordinarily high percentage of Americans who support the protests and yet loathe the riots, and can understand the difference. The calls by the Democrats to “defund the police” is simply another leftist wet dream to leave the state undefended in the face of the anarchy and socialist/communist revolution currently being instigated. Left up to the Democrats, any conservative who doesn’t use the latest leftist approved language should be arrested, but those who loot, steal, sell drugs, commit assault, murder or commit other felonies should not even be arrested, hence “defund the police”. But there are very few in the US who want to go down that road, and the cacophony in the media, which is overwhelmingly in opposition to the President, makes it seem the country is united in opposition to the president and hostile to the police. The left made the same mistake in 2016 and were shocked they lost the election. They are in for another rude awakening.

Secondly, “journalists” (in quotes here because almost all of the liberal press have been reduced to propaganda writers for the Democratic Party, not journalists) should not conflate protests and violence in the United States with those things in totalitarian countries, like Communist China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and other dictatorships or with the life in Taiwan during the KMT rule, when it inevitably tried to deliver Taiwan into Communist China’s orbit permanently. There is a system of law and justice in the US which has been a model for the developed world for more than 200 years. Protests and even riots against the totalitarian rule of the KMT were justified. If anything, the socialist/communist wing of the Democratic Party is far more like China, the old Soviet Union, Cuba or Venezuela than like the US or Taiwan.

As for racial justice in the United States, the Democratic Party was the party I might remind you of slavery in the United States until Republic Party President Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves with his Emancipation Proclamation and the success of the Civil War in America in the 1860’s. Moreover, the Democratic Party was hardly the party of justice for blacks in the US or for civil rights until the 1960s, and then the Democratic party embarked on a process to buy the votes of minorities in the US through welfare and other programs and to basically establish institutions of government that would spend the next 60 years keeping minorities dependent on welfare and similar programs in order to maintain their voting power. This prevails until today, and we are witnessing yet another step in the process of using race as a justification for anarchy.

When the Democratic Party lost to President Trump in 2016, it was shocked and dismayed, and has spent the past 4 years attempting a coup by a thousand cuts, beginning with a impeachment based on phantom charges of so-called Russian Collusion (failed coup), and then coming up with issue after issue as attempts to justify impeaching the President (all failed). The threshold for impeachment was lowered to ridiculous levels in the US by the desperate Democrats, and their willingness to try anything and everything to unseat the President has possibly damaged the US institution of government permanently.

When impeachment failed, the Democrats decided to use the pandemic as a new justification for criticism of the President and for renewed calls for impeachment, despite it being clear China and the World Health Organization at China’s behest misled the world on the origins of the Wuhan Virus. That failed as well. When the pandemic was turning the corner, cases and deaths dropped to far lower levels, and the economy was on the verge of reopening, the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer engaging in brutal force provided yet another opportunity for the Democratic party to interrupt the recovery by encouraging and supporting weeks of chaos and riots, including murder, violence and looting. The Democratic party, always the party that thrives on chaos, dead bodies and the promise of government money, is now calling for “defunding” the police (whatever the hell that is), and basically reducing the US to a nation without the ability to enforce its law. That is of course the end aim of a party wishing to foment a socialists/communist revolution. In order to do that, the police must be neutered.

On the issue of race in the US, I don’t know what “institutional racism” is. Prominent black leaders (including President Obama) and commentators have for years advised the black communities that single father households and persistent crime do far more to keep blacks from breaking out of ghettos and poverty than racism (“More than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled — doubled — since we were children.”). There is no doubt racism exists, and there is no doubt blacks die at higher rates from gun violence. But the overwhelming number of deaths of blacks by gun violence are not at the hands of white police, or even white shooters, but at the hands of other young black men (over 80%, or more). These statistics are hard to dig out, as the prevailing statistical analysis (to support the Democratic Party narrative of institutional racism) is the number of black victims, not the number of black perpetrators. President Obama over his 8 years at President of the US did nothing to address this “black on black” crime, or the single father home in over 50% of black families, and the effect that has on sons and daughters. The welfare system designed by Democrats, that is paying money to families with a single mother with children and no partner, also encouraged these developments in single parent homes. Obama did speak of this problem a few times between 2008 and 2014, but his administration did nothing to address it. “In 1960, the year before Obama was born, 22 percent of black children lived with single parents. In 1968, the number rose to 31.4 percent. By 2006, the 1960 percentage had more than doubled to 56 percent.” [Politifact fact check]. 

What makes the US different from totalitarian nations like China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, N. Korea, Iran and many others is the US has a well-defined system of law and justice in effect and . The police involved in the George Floyd matter have been arrested and will be charged, and tried. They will be permitted to make a defense and a jury will decide their guilt or innocence when all of the facts are known. This does not take place in dictatorships.

The left at this moment does not wish for there to be a trial. They wish for there to be a lynching, and steps in that direction are censorship (e.g. if anyone questions BLM, they are censored), disbanding the police, controlling the populace to conform to the Democratic party’s ideology, changing history and destroying historical icons (e.g. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, Andrew Jackson, and many many others), pulling down statues and monuments, desecrating the US national flag and National Anthem, imposing new language and banning common language (Drew Brees, a celebrated NFL Quarterback spoke about disagreeing with anyone desecrating the flag or the anthem, and he was pounced on by the MSM and the BLM movement, and forced to retract his statement – oddly, his statement is supported by a huge overwhelming majority of Americans). These things are happening now, and have happened before in every instance where socialist/communist revolutions occurred. Those revolutions were accompanied by millions and millions of deaths (in Cambodia over 1.5 million, in Communist China at the hands of Mao between 50-80 million), commonly of professionals, including lawyers, teachers, and others, and murder of capitalism, replaced by state control over every aspect of life. This is what the Democratic Party now seeks, as it is unhappy with a majority of American’s rejecting the Party’s extremist views on most aspects of American life, especially free speech.

The world should be quite worried. If the Democratic party prevails, the US will withdraw as it did under Obama, Taiwan and Israel will be under assault, and Europe will be required to lead the world, and it has demonstrated over and over and over, even today, it does not have the backbone to stand up to Russia, China, Iran, and many other nations determined to resist freedom as a way of life and destroy the West, and lacks the morals or the will or the ability to protect Taiwan or Israel. The world needs the US to be the defender of human rights and freedom, because frankly there is no one else on Earth suited to it or capable of doing it.

When You Can’t Win an Election, Steal It Over Any Number of Dead Bodies…

The Democratic Party understands there is no way to win the election in November, especially not with Biden as the candidate. Four years of impeachment nonsense was intended to create doubt to help the Democratic candidate win. That failed when impeachment turned out to be a lie. Endless investigations turned up nothing. Now it is clear that the Democratic Party was planning its “coup” even before the election by investigating the opposition candidate. That has never happened in the history of the United States. The Party has fallen that far under the leadership of Schiff, Nadler and Pelosi, and their henchmen and henchwomen.

Now, with the election only 5 months away, with the Corona-virus albatross turning the corner, with the universal blame of China resonating around the world, with the WHO demonstrating every day that it is the puppet of the Chinese Communist Party, the support for the President’s course on the pandemic is turning the corner. The economy has a good chance of roaring back to life. Bad news for the Democratic Party. These are two key issues.

Never one to waste publicity of a death, the Democratic Party is now pushing riots around the country over the Floyd arrest and murder (I defy you to find a Democrat who would dare criticize the rioters for wanton rioting as opposed to protesting, as opposed to egging them on in the face of this example of “racism” (never mind the rule of law, which is the whole argument against the treatment of Mr. Floyd by the police in the first place), and ignoring that in our system of law the officers involved with be subjected to justice and the officer involved has already already been arrested for murder*. The riots are good news for the Democratic Party. The party will fan the flames of riots for as long as possible, operatives of the party around the country are likely mobilized to support the riots and its leaders and bail the arrested out and keep the whole “revolution” going until the election, if possible.

However, once the connection is made between the Democratic Party and the chaos, the few who want revolution will be crushed by the many who want their lives normal, want their streets open, want to go back to work and back to school, and they will NOT support the riots. Now the Democrats are encouraging their followers to kill police officers, burn buildings and police stations, go after “white supremacists” which according to the Democratic Party playbook is any white person in the U.S. So far the riots, like in the past, are simply an excuse for mayhem and looting, and grabbing lots of “free stuff”.

The Democratic Party, now the Democratic Socialist Communist Party, has been fomenting revolution since 2016, and almost every single policy it has pushed involves censorship of ideas it doesn’t like, killing any chance for people to excel and better themselves (and choosing instead “leveling the playing field” by cutting the legs off any successful person (except Hollywood moguls who support them)(e.g., California deciding public universities such as UCLA and Berkeley will not accept the SAT and ACT tests as qualifications in favor of something else, more likely to result in fewer highly qualified students and more lower standard students, rendering a degree from those institutions tin degrees instead of platinum degrees.) This is the new America according to the Democratic Party. Keep in mind that for 8 years Obama told the world and the country that America was not exceptional. Now his party is ensuring that it will never be exceptional. I like an exceptional America. We and the world need it to be exceptional.

So we have this political party that secretly celebrates every corona-virus death because they can use the number against the President under their “absolute liability” theory (although so many deaths are attributable to the mismanagement of the pandemic in New York by the Governor and Mayor of New York), celebrates every time the stock market goes down, celebrates every criticism of the President by an enemy (thus siding with Communist China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and others), celebrates censorship by MSM and social media of all opinions and facts opposed to the Democrats’ ideology, and celebrates the propaganda mills for their extreme leftist ideology established on most college campuses around the nation.

Though I have been a member of the Democratic Party since 1970, I did not vote for a Democratic Candidate in a long while, and it is hard to justify it when the Party was moved so far to the left by Clinton, then Obama and now Obama’s acolytes. The Democratic Party is anti-Asian, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, anti-Caucasian, anti-religion, anti-military, anti-success and, so so sadly, anti-American. I vehemently oppose the Democratic Party revolution. I reject it. I despise it.

Davos Has Become an anti-Capitalism Socialist Club with No Credibility

An Associated Press anonymous anti-capitalism piece which appeared in the Taipei Times and other publications today entitled “Rising inequality eroding trust in capitalism – survey” is nothing more than liberal propaganda masquerading as “scientific” research. What else is new?

“[T]he survey found that rising inequality in many rich countries has contributed to a weakening in trust in capitalism.”  The paradox is not that this is true, the paradox is that socialist mouthpieces, funded by guilty liberal billionaires throwing money at socialism from lofty penthouses and 50,000 square foot mansions, with fame and celebrity and pals in Hollywood and London and Paris people fawn over, access to the mainstream media (a liberal bullhorn around the world), a penchant for slogans, like “populism” and “white supremacy” and other similar epithets creating the impression that capitalism is unfair and “racist” and socialism is the light and the way (most of them cannot define socialism except to say it is not capitalism), but they secretly balk at giving up all of their cash when confronted.

Trouble is, every socialist experiment in human history devolved into dictatorship, cruel, punishing, daunting, crushing dictatorship (Venezuela is a good example, Cuba another, the Soviet Union, “Communist China”, and so on). For proof that articles like this about fantasy research hold any validity we need only read the article straight out of Davos, infected with this socialist disease: ““Fears are stifling hope, and long-held assumptions about hard work leading to upward mobility are now invalid,” [Edelman] said…Corruption, corporate misbehavior and fake news are eroding trust, he said, as are fears over automation in the workplace, a lack of training, immigration and the gig economy…The survey showed that 83 percent of employees globally were concerned about their jobs.”

Is this the comment of a neutral researcher, fixated on the truth, or is it the statement of a committed liberal hell bent on producing the appropriate “scientific” result to produce this socialist trope? This is not objective research. It is a game aimed at a particular result.

The liberal socialist cadre sit in a circle all day long intoning their bullshit and after awhile since they only hear themselves they think it is the truth…it is the beginning of the end for hard-working people to raise themselves up through education, hard work, entrepreneurship, opportunity, and survival. Socialists want the government to take care of everything (basic needs, and not one cent more), so ordinary people only have to listen to the government, obey and bow down, and the socialist cadre can make the rules and enforce them. Like China…or Cuba, or Venezuela, or North Korea…idiots. Morons. I see through the propaganda, like this article and Davos itself. More brainwashing. More propaganda. It is not a meeting, it is a socialist answer in search of a question. 

 

Happy Birthday, America

Happy Independence Day.

Today, July 4th, our great country’s birthday, was in large part created by the words of Thomas Jefferson, who later became 3rd President of the United States. He said “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These words have guided our nation for over 240 years, leading us towards a more perfect democracy and freedom. The U.S. has stood for so long as a beacon of liberty to the world, and woe to those who would deny liberty.

There are those among us in the U.S. today who are trying mightily to destroy whatever history the United States has, to rewrite it, pervert it, throw down our heroes and establish a terrible rule of fascism and political correctness that threatens those very words. I reject those who unfairly and errantly view those great leaders, like Thomas Jefferson, who lived hundreds of years ago by the standards we see today, which in very large part arose over the course of two hundred years from the very foundation created by Jefferson, among others, for their right to pursue those liberties in the first place. It is not only ironic, but it is hypocritical in the extreme.

I am certain there are those who will say I must be a racist because I disagree with the Colin Kaepernick narrative of despising his flag and his country, and those of his supporters. I also reject this label, a popular way of using race to taint any argument with which they disagree. I have never been and will never be a racist, and anyone, of any color or creed, or race or religion who know me know that is true. I love my country, the nation to which my ancestors fled in the midst of an earlier genocide against them, and they fled to pursue “Life, Liberty and …Happiness”. They struggled and strove and a few generations later their progeny succeeded in realizing that dream. The hatred we see by some today against tradition and history is a very common theme in fascism, where destroying history is one of the first steps in imposing properspeech, properthink, properact. We are midway through 2019 and I wake up every day and find we seem to be stuck in 1984. (by way of example, I will never purchase another Nike product until the company apologizes to America for refusing to use Betsy Ross’s flag on this very important day in our Nation’s history, because Colin, an idiot, finds it objectionable).

God Bless America, the greatest nation on Earth (despite what the twisted NYTimes thinks).

And God bless Israel and Taiwan, two democracies and free nations that also stand as beacons in their regions of liberty and justice, despite enemies that would destroy them because of those very achievements.

Women’s rights are universal, not political – the left kidnapped the cause, making it exclusive, not “inclusive”

“The march in Washington took on the feel of a political rally when US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and US Representative Nancy Pelosi, both Democrats, urged women to run for office and vote to oppose Trump and the Republicans’ agenda.”  Washington Post, 1/21/18 (Celebrities join march for women’s rights, encourage voting)

I agree with most of the principles of women’s rights, especially equality on all levels. Most people in the U.S. do abide by those principles, even the President.

By turning the women’s movement into a leftist movement of the Democratic Party, it becomes not “inclusive”, but in fact “exclusive”. The idea that emerges is that women who do not support the “Party” (the Democratic Party) are not deserving of the same rights (in fact, the idea floated is that if you support the President, as a woman you definitely do not deserve any rights at all). This is the legacy of President Obama, the Great Divider. He championed the concept of “us or them”, either his disastrous ultra-leftist views or extremism on the right. As it turned out, there were 60 million people who voted otherwise, and an enormous legion of people who eschewed both the left and the right. But women’s rights should not be political.

Women’s rights are universal, not political. Yesterday, in Los Angeles, the marches for women were replete with political speeches against the current administration and any policies the Democratic Party does not support. Those issues have nothing to do with Women’s Rights.

In fact, and most importantly, many of the men who have been caught up in sexual harrassment cases (like Harvey Weinstein, a very high level high roller in the Democratic Party, and also Michael Oreskes, Chief of the news division of National Public Radio (who actually managed NPR’s coverage of the sexual harrassment narrative at NPR in recent months), and other TV and Screen stars) were high level members of, or supporters of the Democratic Party and extreme liberal views, proving that women’s rights transcend party lines. By co-opting the movement, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party has isolated at least half the women in the world. Now how is that “inclusive”?

The “women’s movement” as defined by the Democratic Party, has been designed to include many issues irrelevant to the woman’s movement itself, such as BLM, anti-Trumpism, and illegal immigration. By swelling the ranks with many people with other axes to grind, it makes it appear the movement is bigger than it might be, and also part of the Democratic Party’s platform, but also in doing so it robs the women’s movement of its absolute purity and righteousness, and obscures the universality of women’s rights. Actually, the women’s movement needs to reach all women, not just liberals. Women’s right’s advocates have said that already, only the Democrats, so worried about economic success of the administration, have sought to piggyback on the opportunity of opening Pandora’s box of sexual harassment (and much to its chagrin, many of the casualties have been their very own male “treasures”).

Hypocrisy has come to reside in the left, to infect it really, and it is very scary and tragic. It is one of the chief reasons I abandoned the Party some years ago, because when I saw the ideological table, I was shocked to find the Obama wing of the Democratic Party sitting right next to the most extreme right wing acolytes, both adamant that their own speech is the only permissible speech, that only their own ideas were worthy of protection, and that everyone and everything else had to be suppressed, stopped, destroyed, even questioning the wisdom of free speech, and seeming to support China’s totalitarian system and Palestinian terrorism.  College campuses have become infected with this rot, and Obama’s political correctness has produced calls for many unconstitutional restrictions on speech. There is a name for that – fascism.

The Press Must Be Free – With Responsibility for Reporting Facts, Unless in Editorials

In an article that ran from AP in the Taipei Times on Jan. 1, 2018 (“Journalists came under further threat from governments last year”), it is reported that the press is under assault around the world. This has been true for a very long time, in particular among the world’s worst despotic governments, Communist China, Russia, Iran, Turkey, and in other Capitals of such ilk. The article goes on to complain about President Trump. Freedom of the press is sacred in America, always has been, always will be. But in the U.S. at present there is war between left leaning and conservative news organizations, and the current government, signified by manipulation of stories on all sides.

For instance, it is naive to believe that a “philanthropist” like George Soros, with billions of dollars at his disposal and a socialist agenda, does not use the press (like Bloomberg, and Project Syndicate (a supposedly charitable foundation which is instead simply a pro-socialism organization dedicated to promoting socialism and mass migration in the US, and in Europe, on the general theory that tens of millions of migrants who are unfamiliar with free capitalistic systems, such as in the US, would support highly leftist views)) to manipulate the news to suit his agenda. I have complained about Soros-promoted articles (under Project Syndicate) on these very pages because of the canard they continuously promote that America is evil and China is blissful. What’s that about? Free speech is free speech. They have the right to write it, we have the right to criticize it.

That said, of course governments cannot arrest journalists for speaking opinions, and those arrests are the hallmark of totalitarian regimes, like in China, Russia, Turkey (not a democracy these days), Iran or many other tyrannies. The free press is the foundation of freedom and holding the government and its parties and their members accountable for their policies and actions. The more vibrant the press is, the less likely a government can violate the law. In the US, the Constitution and its law fully supports the freedom of speech, whether by the press or anyone else.

In a democracy, when journalists have the right to speak their opinions, and when they promote opposition to the government, of course the government can respond with criticism, not arrests. This article reports Trump is sowing distrust in the media for claiming unfair treatment, but when 80% of the media focus only on leftist criticism of the government there is already distrust because it is one-sided.

In the US, the press is wide ranging, very free, and there is no threat of arrest for writing articles. I am truly sick and tired of ultra-left press like CNN, Washington Post, NY Times, Newsweek complaining about the President criticizing them for “fake news”, when 75% of their coverage is aimed at what many people consider matters of their the reporters’ opinion, not fact.

Reporting in the United States has essentially stopped, and it has been replaced by opinion reporting, which means that there is very little reporting the facts that lets the people decide their own opinion and more of reporters reporting their own opinions, as though that is news – it isn’t. Reporters cannot help inserting their opinions in almost every story. My Blog is an opinion blog, it doesn’t pretend to be reporting. CNN cannot say that, yet almost every article is dripping with opinions, almost as though its reporters have not been schooled in the art of objective reporting. There seem to be no ideals except “kill the other side at all costs”.

Truthfully, I don’t care what their opinion is, I only want the facts, just the facts. People have become so lazy, they want to be told what to think. Editorials are for that, not news articles. And most of the time, Trump’s argument is that reporters, trying to avoid opinionizing, instead report only those facts that support what their opinion would be, essentially showing half the story.

I’ll give you an example. Yesterday, in the Huffington Post, there was an article entitled “Trump Terminated All Members Of HIV/AIDS Council Without Explanation”. The title is designed to heap infamy on the President for supposedly being against the HIV/AIDS Council. But that’s not true. While the bulk of the article is criticism for the firings, in the middle of the article the following sentence is thrown in: “Also of note, during the Obama administration, nearly all of George W. Bush’s appointees were eliminated prior to new appointees being named.” In other words Obama did the same thing, because it is normal for a new President to get rid of the predecessor’s appointees and appoint his/her own members. In fact, the article also states: “One of those members ― Gabriel Maldonado, CEO of the Riverside, Calif.-based LGBT and HIV/AIDS group Truevolution ― told the Washington Blade, however, that “it is common for appointees to be terminated and for folks to kind of want their own people in.” So what’s up with the completely misleading title of the article, and what is Huffington Post trying to pull? This is a very small example of manipulating the media to promote a “fake” critique – you could call this “fake” news. This is basically using freedom of the press to “hide the ball” and sell propaganda for a social agenda, not reporting what happened. I don’t blame Trump for sacking Obama’s appointees. It is totally normal for a President to do. There are plenty of other things to blame him for. But the Huffington Post is guilty of misrepresenting the truth by omission when they know most people read the headline, not the article, especially scrolling through Yahoo News, where the article appeared near the top. It is disingenuous at best, blatant fraud at worst.

I can only name a few reporters out of thousands who have a reputation for being completely honest in their reporting. Truly. That is a very sad fact. I don’t want to know a reporter’s political choices. Objective reporting is a lost art. Reporters should be required to attend the Walter Cronkite School of Objectivity.

NFL Players Kneel for the Anthem – TV Audiences Turn Off the NFL – Free Speech Goes Both Ways

To be sure the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of free speech in its First Amendment allows anyone to criticize the government, but exercising free speech does not mean you are free from that speech having consequences. Of course, the government cannot take action against the speaker or the speech, but some free speech is intended to provoke, and the speaker is not insulated from the lawful reaction to the speech of private citizens and businesses.

In the U.S. right now, it has become popular for some NFL football players to kneel during the National Anthem supposedly to protest police brutality against black communities. It was started by football quarterback Colin Kaepernick. He said “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color”. His very direct purpose was to “disrespect” the country and its flag and anthem because of what he perceived as “injustice”. Others trying to avoid being seen as disrespecting the country, flag, anthem and military servicepeople since his words have tried to spin the protest as not involving disrespect for the country or the flag, but most people are not having that prevarication.

Kaepernick is absolutely entitled to protest. Especially as a spectator. But as a player, as an employee of an NFL football team, there is less flexibility in his choice of when and where to exercise his free speech. Since his protest, and since he decided to leave his team, he has not been rehired. Some say he is not a good enough quarterback to get hired, some say it is in retaliation for his controversial protest. But there were consequences for his exercising his extremely unpopular free speech. Employees represent the companies they work for, even if they earn tens of millions of dollars.

His protest has been taken up by other players. And a huge number of spectators of the NFL have consequently decided to turn off their TVs and not watch football if the players are going to kneel during the National Anthem. Under the Constitution, the players can exercise their free speech in the absence of a direction from their employer, but the spectators also have the right to decide not to watch. The NFL is losing its share of Sunday’s TV audience because so many people are not watching the games anymore. The teams are trying to get the players to protest outside of their games, so as not to project a stand on Kaepernick’s complaint. The teams of course just want to play football (and so do many other players), and virtually all of the audience just want to watch the games without the politics.

On Sunday the Vice-President of the U.S. attended a game, and several players from one team kneeled and others wore shirts that protested. The VP left the game in a protest of his own, saying he would not attend a game where the players disrespected the country, the flag, the anthem and the men and women who fought for freedom, the soldiers and others.

Many have said the players who kneel should be fired. This is a First Amendment legal issue. Companies presumably have power to determine whether their employees can engage in political speech while on duty (for obvious reasons) and even to discipline them if they do something against the team’s policies (a famous baseball player was fired for political speech aligned with President Trump). Now it is becoming a struggle for vast sums of money affecting the teams. A team which pays a player more than $10 million to play football, does not want that player doing anything that takes away hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Players who wish to protest can do so on their own time, the argument goes.

I don’t agree with Kaepernick’s complaint. A man who earned tens of millions of dollars playing American football complaining about a country where he could live such a wonderful like makes it seem he is ungrateful for the opportunities provided. Also, 70% of the football players are people of color, a huge disparity in demographics. I also don’t agree with his assessment of “injustice”. The U.S. is a country of laws, enforced by police in general. While there have been cases of people of color killed by police in the line of duty, there have been lots of cases of white people also killed in the line of duty. It is very hard to convict police officers of murder because most people respect the split second decisions officers must make when faced with aggression, possible weapons and situations requiring orders to perpetrators who may or may not follow the directions of the officer. In almost every case questioned by Kaepernick. the perpetrator refused to follow the officer’s directions, which usually are “Stop. Police. Raise your hands.” In almost every case of protest, a jury has found the police officer innocent, or the Grand Jury has voted not to indict the officers. Due process of law applies in both directions as well, for the individual, and for the officers, who are also entitled to it.

In any event, there are two sides to free speech. The speech, and the consequences. Both are likely within the First Amendment’s parameters. Many Americans just want to watch football, not protests. And the more protests there are, the more people there will be watching baseball or soccer or golf or the news or movies instead. The owner of one team has said that his players will not kneel during games to disrespect the flag or the country. Perhaps there will be some case about this. One ESPN commentator vociferously argued that the NFL audience should turn off the game to protest this team — I think she completely underestimated the sentiments of the people watching football. Those in favor of the protests form a tiny tiny fraction of NFL enthusiasts. She was suspended by ESPN for suggesting the boycott, ironically a violation of ESPN rules. Free speech does have its limitations for employees.

The protests have basically backfired. I don’t believe in this protest against the country or the flag. The complaints by Koepernick have nothing to do with the country or its flag or its national anthem.  If Mr. Koepernick detests the country so much, he is welcome to find another place in the universe where he could earn millions of dollars a year for throwing pigskin around or for which fame anyone would listen to him.

The discussion about the police and alleged brutality has been aired and has been subjected to legal action. During the Obama administration, the government almost always took the side of the individual against law enforcement (and always on the wrong legal side, eventually), creating a huge divisive undercurrent against police. The result of this has been an enormous spike in violent crime, especially in the former President’s own backyard in Chicago, where the crime rate is through the roof, probably because the police modified their procedures to avoid getting caught in the kind of situations with minorities that created the failure to obey and resulted in shootings. The minority neighborhoods have run amok, and gun killings are out of control. It is ironic.

Those protesting have to understand it goes both ways. Free speech is a tough lesson in democracy. While they may have permission from their teams to protest and say the things they believe in, the audience has the right to reject their speech and turn them off. And if the teams suffer financially, they may insist their players follow the rules. If the players do not follow the rules, they can be disciplined by the team and told to stand during the National Anthem or be benched. Free speech can have consequences. Nothing stops those same players from kneeling at every playing of the National Anthem on their own time.

It is time that people who protest on the left take off blinders and begin watching and listening to the other side of things. All I hear from their point of view is that it is the only point of view that is valid. Thinking like that leads nowhere pretty quickly, and is anathema to the Constitution’s notions of free speech. How ironic, and hypocritical.