Coyote Blog

For a few halcyon days after the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk, Trump and Republicans were actually getting a bit of sympathy and probably had an opening to reframe some of the political discourse.  But in true Trumpian style, the Administration has gone to 11 in their over-reaction to some Lefties being, let's say, less than sad at Kirk's death.  I get it that Trump and his followers are (probably rightly) grouchy about some of the BS prosecutions of Trump and his supporters over the last 8 years, not to mention the mostly fabricated Russia collusion impeachment.  But Trump seems to have found his moment for vengeance and anyone who calls for him to turn the other cheek on some of this stuff gets labelled a cuck.

Here is what I have catalogued so far:

• AG Pam Bondi fans the flames of public confusion by reinforcing the myth that there is somehow a First Amendment exception for hate speech
• After years of defending cake-bakers who get prosecuted for not making a cake for a gay wedding, Republicans are getting their revenge by threatening prosecution of (and getting fired) an Office Depot employee (also here)  who wouldn't print some Charlie Kirk memorial material
• Sec. of State Marco Rubio announced that they were revoking Visas of immigrants who said bad things about Charlie Kirk
• Under pressure from the FTC (really outright threats), ABC has suspended Jimmy Kimmel for what were admittedly incorrect and inflammatory statements about Kirk's killer.  ABC probably was on a path to axing Kimmel over ratings anyway, but the FTC pressure is absolutely unethical
• Trump is ready to name Antifa a terrorist organization.  I can't stand the Antifa thugs but this is a really slippery slope where it is easy to start naming opposition groups as terrorists.  Besides, is Antifa even an organization, or a label that people adopt?
• Unrelated to Kirk, Trump also launched another large and looney defamation suit.  Note that in my view this was not written to win, but to force a settlement.  Being sued personally by the man who is also your chief regulator is a brutal position to be in, just ask CBS who had to knuckle under previously.
• I am almost sure there was something else, but it is late.  I will update when I remember.

I will say again what I have said before -- Republicans are acting like they will be in power forever -- but they won't.  Remember Coyote's Law.  At some point their political opposition will be in power and all these precedents will come back to bite them.  Particularly in this case because almost every one of these is an authoritarian power that Republicans fought under Democratic administrations.  As mentioned before, Republican's defended cake bakers (and pharmacists and many others) against laws mandating they provide services against their conscience.  Republicans have fought against laws based on making hate speech illegal, laws that are dragging the Brits down the toilet as we speak.  It was Republicans who fought to get rid of equal time in broadcasting and stopped the FTC from bludgeoning Conservative talk radio hosts.  Republicans have fought for years against having their mainstream groups labelled as white supremacist terrorists by the SPLC (I believe the SPLC so designated Charlie Kirk's organization).   Not sure if they have had same issues with Visas, but they sure as hell will as Democrats will find a way to evict Conservative immigrants in retribution (looking at you Elon).

Some follow-up thoughts on this post about the murder of Charlie Kirk.

• Pam Bondi has proven herself unqualified to be America's lead attorney.  First she talks about a hate speech exception to the First Amendments which does not exist.  Then she threatens to prosecute service providers who refuse service to someone she disagrees with.  I understand that there is an enormous gulf between laymen's understanding of the First Amendment and settled law (and her boss is one of the worst offenders, at least in his understanding of libel law), but there is no excuse for the US Attorney General to be reinforcing public myths and misunderstandings on this critical topic.  It is particularly incredible to see a Republican AG take these positions, as Republicans have for years fought Progressive attempts to make hate speech illegal and have defended any number of service providers (eg bakers who won't make a cake for gay weddings) who have refused service over matters of conscience.  I will give her credit though for rallying even Progressive MSNBC to attack the notion of a hate speech exemption.
• I have been critical of Republicans for going overboard on cancellation demands (eg so-and-so should be fired) over reactions to the Charlie Kirk shooting.  But I have to give them kudos for almost as one coming down on their own party and hammering Pam Bondi's ignorance.  I had thought that Republicans seemed ready to eat whatever dog food the Trump Administration served, but it is good to know there is something they will send back to the kitchen.
• For all the over-the-top invective I have seen this week, most people (whether they admit it or not) assume there will be no rioting this weekend as Republicans tend not to riot, loot stores, and burn buildings when they are upset.  To some extent I think January 6 was notable because it was such an exception to this.  I live in Phoenix where the Charlie Kirk funeral is this weekend and -- unlike in some past national explosions on the Left -- no one is boarding up the stores in Scottsdale this week (after the 2020 riots caused millions of dollars of damage in Scottsdale Fashion Square, we had prophylactic boarding up several other times after, including around the 2020 election when store owners feared a violent response on the Left if Trump were to win).  It should go without saying, but violence is not speech and is not First Amendment protected.  Maybe we can get Pam Bondi to say that violence is protected by the First Ammendment to get Progressives to finally accept that it is not.
• With all the words spilled this week over this terrible event, I still think what the Utah governor said was the best:  "We need to learn to disagree better."  Which actually is an initiative he has been pursuing for several years.  I have not looked at his program, but I always have some skepticism on such efforts.  Like tax harmonization which always turns out to have all taxes set to match the highest one, calls for cooperation across political divides often boil down to giving more power to the state on the issues the Right wants and giving more power to the state on issues the Left wants.
• The last time there was some violence against Conservative speakers on campus, many universities responded by instituting onerous security rules and fees on Conservative groups trying to bring their speakers to campus.  I hope universities don't go down this road, but it would be typical of them.  Universities have trained their students and faculty for decades that Conservatives are beyond the pale and thus should not be engaged as doing so would legitimize them.  It's like a 19th century English Duke being encouraged to sit down and share a meal with his long-time butler -- it just is not going to happen.
• My wife really likes the Left-Right-Center podcast / radio show.  I confess I have not listened to it as I don't listen to radio and have mostly eschewed non-history podcasts.  I feel like the information rate in audio is too low for my patience level (I listen to audio books at least at 1.5x and don't even get me started on how much I hate voicemail).  But I do think given how on-point the show's concept is to what I think we need more of, I will have to give a listen.  I have always loved Bryan Caplan's Ideological Turning Test concept and try to force myself through the exercise when I get overly angry about some issue.

The current version of Coyote's Law is something like this:

Don't give the government a power that you would not like your worst political enemy to wield

The reason for this should be obvious -- unless you intend to be the last one in power, ie your goal is to initiate a totalitarian coup with yourself left in charge -- then in the normal course of the political cycle in democratic countries, your group will eventually be out of power and your hated political enemies ensconced in your place. From today's example below, it appears that this is NOT obvious to many politicians.

A decade ago I wrote this about hate speech restrictions:

So you think that "hate speech" or speech that makes someone uncomfortable or mocks someone or criticizes some particular group should not be protected under the First Amendment.  For those on the Left (who seem to disproportionately hold this opinion), I ask you to define anti-hate-speech laws in a way that you will be entirely comfortable if, say, President Lindsey Graham (God forbid) were to inherit the power to enforce them.

A President Graham might consider speech mocking Christianity or Jesus to be hate speech.  And if mocking Christianity is hate speech, wouldn't support for gay marriage or abortion be as well?  What about mocking the military, or police -- isn't that hate speech?

If you ban some speech but not other speech, someone has to be in charge of what is in the "ban" category.  When most people advocate for such a ban, they presume that "their guys" are going to be in charge of enforcing it, but outside of places like Detroit and Baltimore, sustained one-party rule in this country just does not happen.  That is why most calls for speech restriction are so short-sighted -- they assume that people of a like mind will always be in charge of wielding these restrictions, and that is a terribly historical assumption.

The recent chaotic transition to the Trump Administration would, in a rational world, give a lot of opposing politicians second thoughts about setting precedents and creating powers that were then ready for Trump to wield and expand. Heck el gato malo discussed this very topic in the context of a future Trump Presidency back in 2023.

Robby Soave of Reason brings us a great example today, Senator Amy Klobuchar's attempt in 2021 to give the Department of Health and Human Services the power to regulate speech that touched on health:

By the summer of 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic had entered a new phase.... [and] The frustration from the public health establishment was palpable, and top policymakers within the Biden administration blamed vaccine hesitant individuals for exacerbating the pandemic. In July, President Joe Biden said, "the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated." Among government health advisors, a consensus quickly formed that the main culprit was medical misinformation on social media.

Biden asserted that Facebook had blood on its hands and implied that regulation would follow if moderation did not improve...

The anti-misinformation efforts were not just talk: They had a legislative component as well. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.) was particularly animated on this issue. On July 22, 2021, she introduced the Health Misinformation Act, which would have granted broad new powers to the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). These powers would have included the ability of the secretary to reduce online platforms' protection from liability under Section 230, the federal law that immunizes websites from liability for users' speech. In effect, Klobuchar's bill would have established that the federal government could use a public health emergency as a pretext to erode vital free speech protections at the whims of HHS.

It is clear whose speech Klobuchar was interested in censoring: The press release accompanying her bill explicitly mentions the so-called disinformation dozen. Klobuchar and her fellow Democrats sought to empower the HHS secretary to censor COVID-19-related speech with which they disagreed.

Needless to say, the Health Misinformation Act never became law, which might be a relief to Klobuchar at present. That's because the secretary of HHS is now Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the very social media users accused of being a misinformation super-spreader. If her bill had been enacted, it would have eventually empowered Kennedy—someone who has been accused by Democrats and the mainstream media of encouraging vaccine hesitancy by promoting the idea that vaccines are dangerous—to make determinations about what counts as misinformation online.

It would be hilarious to ask Ms., Klobuchar if she intended to reintroduce her legislation in this session.