When did the left turn against free speech?

One of the commenters declares that my "assertion that 'the best test of the truth is its ability to get accepted in the marketplace of ideas' was probably the most offensive part of her argument." When questioned about whether I really said that, he comes back with:

She cited a Justice whose name I haven't retained, as in: "As Justice X says, ..." followed by the verbatim passage I quoted.

She cited a Justice whose name I haven't retained.... Oh, for the love of God, why doesn't every educated person in America know the name of the Supreme Court Justice who said that... or at the very least know that it's embarrassing not to know? As if I'd thrown out some abstruse legalistic peculiarity!

And that was part of an argument by the commenter — echoing Bob Wright — that free speech is too dangerous because it might be false and it might inspire bad people to act out in terrible ways.

Remember when lefties were all about free speech? When did that change? Why did that change? Perhaps the answer is: Free speech was only ever a means to an end. When they got their free speech, made their arguments, and failed to win over the American people, and when in fact the speech from their opponents seemed too successful, they switched to the repression of speech, because the end was never freedom.

I demonstrate ladylikeness with a Badger hat and Green Bay Packers cheese.

"Last but not least, I'd like to thank Droopy (Robert Wright) for bringing us bloggingheads so we can actually see who we've been reading."

"It does tell us something to be able to see these awful people. Except for, of course, Mickey Kaus, there's no one I could see being a friend of mine, offline, and - after seeing them here - would ever want to read again. Bloggingheads is providing a valuable service in that way."

Hey! What about me?!!

And now for some great Bloggingheads.

It's the masters: Bob and Mickey! New year predictions from Mickey Kaus about the revival of death panels and the coming "huge debate about income inequality"...

Mickey Kaus hates the Dream Act.

Did affirmative action hurt Barack Obama?

And if so, is it because he "wasn't prepared for all the racism he faces now" or because he "wasn't prepared for the lack of racial bias"?

"Obama wants to take our penises."

One of many out of context quotes — 2 of which are from me — in this montage of sexy highlights from the last 5 years of Bloggingheads:



ADDED: Here's the context of my reference to "masturbating boys":

What's this election about?

An amazing number of words are spoken in this 9 seconds — mostly by Bob Wright — but it's Mickey Kaus who's answering the question:

A legal discussion declines to "I'll see you in court!"

Keep going. It's Bob Wright and Mickey Kaus in the big 5th anniversary edition of Bloggingheads, which began with just Bob and Mickey. Great election week topics:

How Bob was won over by the Stewart/Colbert rally
Why Mickey is rooting for a Republican rout
Are Tea Partiers right about creeping socialism?
Is Obama’s biggest problem Obama?

ADDED: I love the Tom Toles caricatures. Funny that Bob and Mickey — men who don't look at all alike — both end up with pinched-together temples and eyes and exaggerated mouths. Their heads are both super-wide at the mouth level to accommodate their giant mouths. Both have tiny eyes. The main distinctions are: eyebrows (tiny and giant), eyes (bagged and tiny), and lips (frowny and smirky).

"[C]ovetousness, schadenfreude, anxiety, dread, and on and on."

"It’s the frequent fruitlessness of such feelings that the Buddha is said to have pondered after he unplugged from the social grid of his day — that is, the people he lived around — and wandered off to reckon with the human predicament. Maybe his time off the grid gave him enough critical distance from these emotions to discover his formula for liberation from them. In any event, it’s because the underlying emotions haven’t changed, and because the grid conveys and elicits them with such power, that his formula holds appeal for many people even, and perhaps especially, today."

Robert Wright, writing in the NYT, on a theme that has been big in the NYT: how technology is hurting our brains.

What will Mickey Kaus do now?

"I'm going to blog and then do something else on top of that and I don't know what the something else is going to be and I don't know where my blog will be."

“Shirley Sherrod, who didn’t know who Andrew Breitbart was 72 hours ago, now knows him well enough to say that he wants to put all blacks back into slavery."

"If I were David Axelrod, I’d be calling this woman and beg her to stop talking. And, yes, she does owe Andrew an apology."

Apologies, apologies, apologies. I'm more on the side of standing by what you have done (unless you actually believe you were wrong). Defend yourself!

For example, here was Rush Limbaugh on the radio yesterday:

People have asked me about this woman Sarah Spitz, who's now "apologized," and they want my reaction to it. And this is another thing I'll react to it but I really don't want to. This bores me as well, this whole concept of forcing people to apologize for things they meant to say. Why is she gonna apologize? She meant to say it, she wrote it, stand by it. You want to watch me die, Sarah? Say it! Where are your guts? Well, she's "apologized."...

[It's] the latest trend in apologies, "That's not who I really am." You know, "That's not the person I am." Bull! It is who you are! You are a commie! You are a full-fledged Marxist liberal! You do wish I was dead. It is who you are.

I don't care whether it's Tiger Woods saying, "You know, that's really not who I am." It is. It is who you are! What, did somebody steal your personality for a day and grab hold of your hands and start typing on your keyboard and it wasn't you? "This is not who I am. I want everybody to know, as a publicist I understand and this is not who I am." It is who you are!

Ha. Exactly. I said the same thing about Tiger Woods, by the way, back in February.

A Freudian slip about euthanasia?

Bob Wright, inviting Robert P. George to address the topic of euthanasia, lays out the scenario with respect to seriously persons who "feel that they are so unpleasant... uh... unhappy..."

It's also, I think, a slip to say "euthanasia" instead of "assisted suicide," isn't it? Wright must mean only to refer to people who are choosing to die. Euthanasia goes beyond that, and covers killing individuals whom others find — shall we say? — unpleasant.

"If being woven into a giant global brain means the further intertwining of our fates with the fates of others, maybe there’s something to be said for giant global brains."

"And if people respond wisely to this spiritually challenging predicament, maybe the life of a cell won’t be such a bad life after all."

"So often, powerful forces and powerful interests stand in your way, and the odds seem stacked against you...."

"I want you to know this: I've taken on the powerful forces. And as president, I'll stand up to them. ... It's about our people, our families, and our future — and whether forces standing in your way will keep you from having a better life...."

Just something Al Gore once said, as noted by Mickey Kaus in the year 2000. It came up in conversation this morning as we were talking about — can you guess? — the origin of religion. I was riffing on the idea — based on my memories of "The Evolution of God" — that primitive man perceived the entire environment as imbued with spirit and — this may not be in the book — there had to have be individuals in early human times who saw how to amass power by making it seem as though they could influence or appease whatever spirit or spirits made things — such as weather — happen in the world. This led — can you see how? — to a discussion of Al Gore.

Kausmentum.

Tom Toles talks about cartooning.

With Bob Wright on Blogggingheads.

And he's got a blog now. It's got regular writing along with cartoons, and there are some cool "outtakes" from cartoons, like this one...

... which has such a charmingly recognizable quick sketch of Obama.

"Don't males make a disproportionate number of the sarcastic, douchey comments in the world?"

Oh, I don't know, but I'm doing what I can to balance the proportion.

"The medicalization of kind of what used to be called moral... you know... uh... or immoral... the medicalization of what used to be called immorality is certainly a topic that a lot of people, I'm sure, especially conservatives, have given... have given... devoted some ink to."

Isn't it strange how uncomfortable Bob Wright is talking about the subject of religion and morality? It almost seems that an alarm goes of in his head saying: Don't go there! That's what conservatives talk about! Watch the whole clip. The context is Tiger Woods, and I'm intent on enlarging into a more general critique of addiction therapy as a religion substitute. Does Wright cut off the conversation at the point where he can't see how to avoid sounding like a conservative?



And it's particularly odd since Bob was so intent on characterizing the discussion of Tiger Woods as frivolous. I'll limit myself to one clip, but the idea that we were stooping to talk about this subject came up a few times.

"Ann questions the sincerity of Tiger’s apology/Bob thinks Tiger’s swinging may have hurt his swing/Has this scandal harmed impressionable young fans?/Ann and Bob catch Winter Olympics fever/Amy Bishop and the banality of crazy/Was the Austin kamikaze pilot a terrorist?"

It's the new Bloggingheads! With Bob Wright and me!



ADDED: Here's a missed opportunity:



I shoulda said "Yeah, I've heard about his 'large part.'"