Americans are not especially fond of the woke

The New Neo Posted on by

Here are the results of a poll taken last October:

Among the general population, a full 80 percent believe that “political correctness is a problem in our country.” Even young people are uncomfortable with it, including 74 percent ages 24 to 29, and 79 percent under age 24. On this particular issue, the woke are in a clear minority across all ages.

Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness—and it turns out race isn’t, either.

Whites are ever so slightly less likely than average to believe that political correctness is a problem in the country: 79 percent of them share this sentiment. Instead, it is Asians (82 percent), Hispanics (87 percent), and American Indians (88 percent) who are most likely to oppose political correctness.

No surprise that Asians would be most upset, but the scores for Hispanics and American Indians (hey, shouldn’t that be “native Americans” to be PC?) are somewhat surprising. Makes me wonder how the phrase “is a problem” was interpreted by many of the respondents. Is it possible that some people interpreted a “yes” to the question as meaning there isn’t enough political correctness?

More:

The one part of the standard narrative that the data partially affirm is that African Americans are most likely to support political correctness. But the difference between them and other groups is much smaller than generally supposed: Three quarters of African Americans oppose political correctness. This means that they are only four percentage points less likely than whites, and only five percentage points less likely than the average, to believe that political correctness is a problem.

If age and race do not predict support for political correctness, what does? Income and education.

While 83 percent of respondents who make less than $50,000 dislike political correctness, just 70 percent of those who make more than $100,000 are skeptical about it. And while 87 percent who have never attended college think that political correctness has grown to be a problem, only 66 percent of those with a postgraduate degree share that sentiment.

Political tribe—as defined by the authors—is an even better predictor of views on political correctness. Among devoted conservatives, 97 percent believe that political correctness is a problem. Among traditional liberals, 61 percent do. Progressive activists are the only group that strongly backs political correctness: Only 30 percent see it as a problem.

No surprise there. Self-titled “progressive activists” are the main proponents—and enforcers—of wokeness.

Going to the report itself—all 160 pages of it, which I certainly haven’t read—I note the following: “82 percent of Americans agree that hate speech is a problem.”

So almost everyone says that political correctness is a problem, and the same number of people say that hate speech is a problem.

Houston, we’ve got a problem. That does not compute.

My guess is that people are defining the terms in wildly different ways. To me, “hate speech” means “laws against hate speech,” a European and Canadian notion that I’m strongly against. But to most respondents, it may just mean “people hating each other.”

The relevant questions appear on page 132 of the report, and they are simple: Agree or disagree with “Political correctness is a problem in our country” and “Hate speech is a problem in our country.”

I really detest the way polls are worded. You might wonder why I report on polls at all. Despite their myriad flaws, I still think they have something to tell us, although perhaps the main thing they tell us is how flawed polls are.

This is interesting:

The vast majority of Americans want to feel free to speak their mind, but they also recognize that there should be limits on speech that is dangerous or hateful. Levels of conviction on both of these subjects are relatively similar among the liberal segments and the Politically Disengaged. However, among Moderates, Traditional Conservatives, and especially among Devoted Conservatives, there is a stronger recognition of the need to preserve free speech than of the need to protect against hate speech.

On each issue, there is a wide gap between the majority of Americans and the views of either the Devoted Conservatives or Progressive Activists. Devoted Conservatives value freedom above other concerns, and are almost three times as likely to disagree strongly with the need to protect people from dangerous and hateful speech than Americans on average (34 versus 13 percent). Progressive Activists, on the other hand, worry that free speech is often a cover for offensive and dangerous speech, and 36 percent of them strongly disagree with the claim that political correctness has gone too far, compared to an average of 7 percent of Americans generally who strongly disagree with that claim

So is the vast middle apathetic about the issue? Uncertain what the terms mean? Sort of interested in liberty and sort of interested in curbing speech that disturbs them—in other words, muddled about the competing approaches and how intrinsically opposed they are to each other?

Offspring and politics: go figure

The New Neo Posted on by

It struck me today, for no reason at all, that the only two presidents we’ve ever had who’ve been divorced are two of the most conservative presidents politically.

And then I started thinking about Ronald Reagan’s children. He had two sets, one grouping with first wife Jane Wyman and another with second and more long-term wife Nancy Davis. Curiously, though (at least to my way of thinking) the children he had and/or adopted with Wyman were Republicans (see this and this), and the ones he had with Nancy were and still are liberals (see this and this).

And this was despite the fact that during his first marriage Reagan was a liberal himself, and during his second marriage a conservative. One would think the political affiliations of the children would have followed more closely the trajectory of Reagan’s change, but it’s exactly the opposite. It was the younger ones who rebelled.

Perhaps that’s a generational thing; they were both born in the 50s and came of age during the 60s, that time of turmoil and rebellious youth. Ron’s (the youngest of all the children, born in 1958) Wiki page says:

Ron Reagan undertook a different philosophical and political path from his father at an early age. At 12, he told his parents that he would not be going to church anymore because he was an atheist…

Reagan became more politically active after his father left the White House in 1989. In contrast to his father, the younger Reagan’s views were unabashedly liberal. In a 2009 Vanity Fair interview, Ron said that he did not speak out politically during his father’s term because the press “never cared about my opinions as such, only as they related to him”, adding that he did not want to create the impression that he and his father were on bad terms because of political differences.

One would think that if anyone could have conveyed the rationale for becoming a conservative and rejecting liberalism, it would have been Ronald Reagan. But it doesn’t quite work that way, does it?

As for Trump’s children, there are a lot of them. It’s my impression that they are all very supportive of his presidency, and that the sons in particular share his political orientation. His daughter Ivanka has been rumored to be more liberal, and I think the rumors are probably correct, but my hunch is that she falls into the “moderate” camp:

[Ivanka] Trump advocates for women and Israel. At the 2016 Republican National Convention, Trump said of her political views: “Like many of my fellow millennials, I do not consider myself categorically Republican or Democrat.”

I bought slacks made out of recycled bottles

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t realize it when I bought some new slacks at Target, but the label says the fabric is made of recycled bottles, to the tune of 60%.

I bought the pants because they fit (not always an easy thing to find) and are very comfortable. Part of what seems to lead to that comfort is the material, which is smooth and soft but resilient. I had no idea it had anything to do with recycled bottles, but if they’ve figured out a way to do that, then great.

They certainly weren’t expensive, either.

And lo and behold, here’s how it’s done:

Unifi, based in Greensboro, North Carolina, produces 300 million pounds of polyester and nylon yarn annually.

“As a manufacturer, we asked ourselves what we could do to be more innovative and a socially responsible company,” said Hertwig.

Repreve was the answer. It’s the firm’s flagship fiber brand made from recycled materials…

The company collects clear plastic bottles from processors around the country who first shred them into plastic flakes.

“We purchase these plastic flakes and convert them into small pellets,” said Hertwig. The pellets are then melted, extruded and spun into polyester yarn.

Repreve makes three types of recycled yarn: 100% from used plastic bottles, a hybrid of plastic bottles and fiber waste, and a hybrid of plastic bottles and used fabric…

“If it’s made from PET, we can recycle it,” said Hertwig. “This is all about educating consumers that high-quality products can be made from recycled waste.”

That article was from three years ago, but I hadn’t heard of the process till today. I’m not sure that my new slacks were made from fiber manufactured by Repreve, but it’s obviously some similar process, and I would indeed call it a “high-quality product.”

I didn’t buy it because of the recycling, I bought it because I liked the pants and the fabric. Recycling’s just the icing on the cake, but if more of this sort of thing can be done, then bravo.

A great deal of recycling is presently so messed up that a lot of what people think is being recycled actually ends up in landfills. Plus, most of the plastic waste causing problems is generated by the third world, not the US. But still, if there’s a way to make use of some portion of what’s recycled and to actually make the process cost-effective—and create a good product into the bargain—I’m all for it.

[NOTE: And here are the pants. I’m almost positive those are the ones, although the website doesn’t tout the recycled angle. They’re pretty basic, but the great thing about them is the fit and the comfort.]

On the Betsy Ross flag and Nike

The New Neo Posted on by

A good take on the topic is this National Review article by Jonah Goldberg, from which I’ll quote liberally:

Nike was all set to release a line of sneakers for the Fourth of July featuring the original Betsy Ross American flag with 13 stars in a circle.

According to reports, Kaepernick took offense because a handful of extremist groups like to brandish the original American flag to make some sort of point about something no one should care about. (I gather it has something to do with how this was “their” country before the federal government was formed. Or maybe, like many gibbons, they just like the sparkly stars and bright colors.)

The thing is, most Americans — and when I say most, I mean, like, nearly all of them — had no idea white supremacists were doing this. In countless news stories, reporters contacted experts who either didn’t know about it or were only vaguely aware that this is one of the things these groups like to wear as capes during dress-up time…

…[I]t’s true that if you search through enough old photos of Klan rallies and neo-Nazi pageants, you can spot a Betsy Ross flag from time to time.

Do you know what else you can probably spot if you look long and hard enough? Nike sneakers. Does that make Nikes symbols of white supremacy?

Of course not…

Nike followed the advice of a man whose business model is to stir grievance and controversy for its own sake. Suddenly, millions of people who once thought the Betsy Ross flag was just an admirable bit of Americana now associate it with hate groups. Worse, other entirely decent and patriotic Americans will now likely start brandishing the flag to offend people who, until recently, had no idea some hate groups adopted the flag in the first place.

The ranks of the perpetually offended will misread this trolling-to-own-the-libs effort as an endorsement of hate speech, and the culture war will have yet another idiotic fight on its hands, and a symbol of the country’s founding that should be a uniting image for all Americans will now be reduced to a weapon in that war.

The left sees that as a feature, not a bug.

This sort of thing has been going on for a long time, step by step by step. There are many who toil in the fields of taking completely innocuous and even laudable portions of American history and making them seem something vile and repulsive, and this is just one tiny chapter—maybe one tiny paragraph, or one tiny sentence—in that lengthy process.

What is a somewhat recent development is the willing acquiescence and cooperation of mainstream (or formerly mainstream) corporate entities such as Nike. I think, actually, it’s a business decision by Nike. They have decided they’ll gain more business by going along with Kaepernik than they would gain by opposing him, and so they are all in.

[NOTE: See also this.]

On the fine art of describing something before it occurs

The New Neo Posted on by

According to the MSM and pundits on the left, Trump’s 4th of July Mall appearance and speech was going to be a partisan usurping of a national holiday.

It wasn’t. It was this:

…[A] soaring presidential address — a celebration of the greatness of our country. “As we gather this evening, in the joy of freedom, we remember that we all share a truly extraordinary heritage,” Trump said. “Together, we are part of one of the greatest stories ever told — the story of America.”

He went on tell that story — from our struggle for independence, the fight to abolish slavery and secure women’s suffrage and civil rights. He called out the many great Americans who “defined our national character” from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and Jackie Robinson. He celebrated our inventors and explorers — from Lewis and Clark to Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright brothers, Amelia Earhart and the Apollo 11 astronauts.

One would think that Trump’s critics might have made sure they had advance copies before making such assertions. But apparently not. So why did they make them, and risk looking like fools themselves?

I submit the following modest speculations, which are neither mutually exclusive nor completely exhaustive:

(1) In their hubris, they think they actually know exactly what he will do, despite having been surprised by him many times.

(2) They need to fill up air time with something to feed their readers/viewers, and trashing Trump is always good for ratings or traffic.

(3) They are used to making errors which are then forgotten and/or excused and/or rationalized, and it’s on to the next criticism.

(4) They know that most of their readers/viewers were not going to watch the actual festivities or hear or read the actual speech anyway, so they can say what they want about it in order to feed the “evil Trump” narrative and for the most part they can get away with it.

That WaPo article I linked in the first paragraph, and quoted in the third, is from Marc Thiessen. If you read the comments (I read only the first bunch) you’ll see evidence for the fact that those who made the Trump predictions have nothing to fear from their audience in terms of criticism. Here are just a few of the comments:

“Here’s Marc, again, trying to agitate and stir up foment with hyperbole and utter nonsense. I never read his crap, preferring just to come in here and rattle his cage.”

“I didn’t read that drivel either.”

This one, after conceding that other previous presidents made speeches on the Fourth: “Truman, Kennedy, Ford, Clinton, Ford, Bush and Reagan were not elected by the Soviet Union or Russia and whatever they did as president was intended to benefit the U.S.A. and not themselves personally or the leader of Russia.”

“Columnist is just a slavish lackey used as click bait.”

Propaganda works—and although you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, if you can fool enough of them enough of the time, you can win.

For the Fourth of July: on liberty

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited version of a previous post.]

statueliberty

The Fourth isn’t just about barbecue, although I defer to no one in my regard for barbecue.

It’s about liberty. As the years go by, I appreciate that fact more and more, and sense that our liberty is more and more threatened from within as well as without—and by “within” I mean not just those among us who would destroy it for others, but something in the human heart and mind that means not everyone cares very much about it until they have lost it.

In fact, there’s something in many human hearts and minds that leads some people not to care about liberty even after they’ve lost it, unless they’re the ones in the Gulag.

For whatever reason, I’ve always been very sensitive to liberty, very touchy about it. For example, even when I was quite young, I would pay extra for a health insurance policy that gave me total freedom to choose my doctor. This may seem like a small thing, and at the time I didn’t connect it with any abstract principle such as “liberty.” But I had a horror of being boxed in by a government or a business or an agency telling what I could or could not do and where I could and could not go.

That’s not to say that I was some trailblazing, independent, courageous spirit, cutting an adventurous swath through the world. I lived a pretty ordinary life, I thought. I had a husband and a child. And even later, when I went through my political change, I had no idea where it would lead, either socially (estrangement from quite a few people, mostly mild but sometimes severe) or in terms of what I do with a great deal of my time (reading about politics/history, and writing this blog).

One doesn’t always have any idea where it will lead when you take a step, and then another step, and then another, and pretty soon you’re somewhere you never, never ever, thought you’d be.

When I was young I used to assume that a lot of people, the majority of people, felt the same way I did. Not just about liberty, but about a lot of things. For example, I thought just about everyone loved poetry—what’s not to like? I was in my thirties before I became aware that love of poetry was a relatively rare thing. Another thing I assumed, when managed care started taking over the health insurance world, was that more people would hate it and complain bitterly about it—and, if they could do it, would pay extra to get away from it. But I was surprised when so many people I knew didn’t seem all that offended by it, and even those who could have paid more in order to have choice often decided against it. They couldn’t be bothered, and were happy to save the money.

Then, when I was going through my slow political change between the fall of 2001 (post-9/11) and 2003, I was living a rather isolated life in a place when I hardly knew anyone, newly separated from a husband I’d been with for 30 years. I was also recovering from a very painful arm injury and surgery. So the change experience was a solitary one, and I didn’t start mentioning it to people until after it was pretty much complete some time in 2003.

I had somehow assumed that other people had been going through something similar to my political journey, although perhaps milder. This now seems to me a rather humorous thought, not to mention profoundly naive (you might even call it stupid), but that’s the way it was for me. I was truly shocked to be on the receiving end of a significant amount of hostility from a lot of people when I mentioned my positions on various issues of the day, and this sometimes involved friends and acquaintances I’d known for decades and with whom I’d never even discussed politics before or had a single disagreement of any substance.

Talk about an eye-opener.

Now I have a different way of looking at all of this. Continue reading →

Happy Birthday: Thomas Sowell turned 89 recently

The New Neo Posted on by

Thomas Sowell is one of my favorite writers and thinkers. I’ve written about him many times before. I recommend reading this tribute to Sowell in honor of his 89th birthday, and I especially agree with this:

Milton Friedman once said, “The word ‘genius’ is thrown around so much that it’s becoming meaningless, but nevertheless I think Tom Sowell is close to being one.”…

…[A]s a writer Thomas Sowell is truly the “Master of Idea Density” – he has the amazing talent of being able to consistently pack more ideas, insight, and wisdom into a single sentence or paragraph than what typically takes an entire essay or book for even the best writer!

I’ve noticed that “idea density” of Sowell’s before.

I also wrote this about him:

What an incisive mind he had and still has, and what a remarkably clear way of expressing himself. Several of his books are among the best treatments I’ve ever read of the differences between right and left…

For many liberals Sowell has a special clout because he is a black man of great achievement, and having been a liberal himself at one time—in fact, a leftist—he understands full well what motivates liberals and the more benign leftists, and can write of them and about them and to them with empathy.

That doesn’t mean that Sowell ever—ever ever ever—pulled his punches. Oh my, no! A sharp debater and speaker, he can be seen and heard in his prime on a large number of videos on YouTube; take your pick.

I’ve read Sowell’s autobiography, and reading it gave me a sense of the forces that shaped him into the tough and uncompromising thinker he was and is. But some of it is a mystery, as it is with all people. Sowell just seems to have been born with the stubborn strength to go his own way. That way was a different one, as you will see if you read the autobiography. It led him to, among other things, Harvard (undergrad) and U. of Chicago (PhD) degrees as an economist and then a career as renowned professor, and it led him from left to right when the facts (those stubborn things) didn’t fit his ideology.

The current crop of Democrats voice ideas that just a while while ago were kept hidden

The New Neo Posted on by

Dennis Prager does the hard work I don’t want to do—which is to listen to the entirety of the recent Democratic debates, and to point out some of the excesses.

To take one example:

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.: “If billionaires can pay off their yachts, students should be able to pay off their student loans.”

My only response to this statement is to ask, Do most Democrats find that a compelling argument? Do they not realize what a non sequitur it is — and therefore how demagogic?

Billionaires, like non-billionaires, pay off their debts because they do not incur debts they cannot repay, not because they are billionaires. Senator Klobuchar apparently believes that non-billionaires need not pay off their debts. Every Democrat who addressed this issue said American society should repay student debts — which amount to $1.6 trillion. The party of “fairness” thinks it’s fair that every student who repaid his or college debts — and every young American who never went to college — must pay off that debt.

Well, it depends what the meaning of “should” is. All people who take out a loan shouldn’t do it unless they think they will be able to pay it off. So in a sense, students should be able to pay off their loans.

But that’s not what Klobuchar—widely touted as one of the more moderate Democratic candidates in 2020—meant. Let’s take a closer look at what she said:

…[Y]ou have so many people that are having trouble affording college and having trouble affording their premiums.

So I do get concerned about paying for college for rich kids. I do. But I think my plan is a good one. And my plan would be to, first of all, make community college free and make sure that everyone else besides that top percentile gets help with their education.

My own dad and my sister got their first degrees with community college. There’s many paths to success, as well as certifications.

Secondly, I’d used Pell grants. I’d double them from $6,000 to $12,000 a year and expand it to the number of families that get covered, to families that make up to $100,000.

And then the third thing I would do is make it easier for students to pay off their student loans. Because I can tell you this: If billionaires can pay off their yachts, students should be able to pay off their student loans.

So that’s the complete context of the remark. And it makes no more sense in context than it does as an isolated excerpt. It’s actually preposterous for just the reasons Prager says it is: billionaires have a lot of money and families who are not particularly rich don’t. And most students aren’t going to get jobs that make them billionaires, either. So many will have trouble paying off their loans.

If simple economics were to rule, no one would make such loans to students unless there was a lot of evidence that they’d be paid off. But that’s not the way student loans actually work.

Note that Klobuchar leaves out one pesky little detail: how will this be paid for? There are a lot of students in the United States who would like to go to community colleges for free, and to 4-year colleges who will qualify for Pell grants.

Here’s more from Klobuchar on the topic, positioning herself as the moderate—which she actually is, but only compared to some of the other 2020 Democratic candidates—because she’s not advocating free college tuition for all, including free four-year colleges.

Klobuchar also makes it clear that she’d like to offer free college for all, but she’s not a “magic genie.” But I still don’t see the details of how her proposals would be paid for, which puts them in “magic genie” territory in my book. Klobuchar claims that she has found ways to pay for it but as far as I can tell she never specifies those ways.

Let me guess: the same way everything else will be paid for? Taxing those evil wealthy people, and not just those billionares with their yachts? And will those people be able to support all the social welfare the Democrats are promising? And will they decide to stop producing, or reduce their production, or just go elsewhere?

I’m not really meaning to pick on Klobuchar, who is by no means the worst offender among the Democrats. The point I’m trying to make is that the so-called “moderates” at this point are anything but, and that’s even compared to just one short decade ago.

Remember Joe the Plumber and Obama’s “spread the wealth” remark? In 2008 it was considered by many people to be a somewhat shocking (and revealing) indication of Obama’s socialist propensities, intentions which he had mostly tried to cover up during the campaign. Remarks about “spreading the wealth” were considered something that a candidate couldn’t admit to the American public or that public would reject that candidate.

But now? What Obama said in 2008, and backtracked from, would be considered mainstream now. That’s how quickly things have changed.

[NOTE: Proposals such as Klobuchar’s and the even more extreme suggestions of some other candidates would have the added benefit to the left of shoring up endangered academic institutions that serve as leftist indoctrination camps. The left needs the colleges, and at this point many colleges need the left to bail them out.]

So, who’s the Fascist?

The New Neo Posted on by

Not a Fascist in the economic sense (which isn’t how most people use the word these days, anyway), but in the “willing and eager to use the apparatus of the state to stomp on your liberties” sense.

Why, Frederica Wilson, current Democratic member of the US House of Representatives:

Democratic Florida Rep. Frederica Wilson asserted that people who mock members of Congress online should face prosecution.

“Those people who are online making fun of members of Congress are a disgrace, and there is no need for anyone to think that is unacceptable [sic],” Wilson said during comments made Tuesday outside of the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in Homestead, Florida.

“We’re gonna shut them down and work with whoever it is to shut them down, and they should be prosecuted,” she continued. “You cannot intimidate members of Congress, frighten members of Congress. It is against the law, and it’s a shame in this United States of America.”

There you have it.

By the way, as far as I can see, this is only a news story on the right. When I Google “Frederica Wilson, CNN” (or NY Times, or MSNBC) I get a bunch of old stories about her. And when I Google a direct quote from this recent statement of Wilson’s, I only get news outlets or blogs on the right.

Wilson seems to be calling for some version of the Sedition Act of 1918, not exactly a high point in American history (although I’m pretty certain that her proposed law would not apply to mockery of Trump and/or other Republicans):

It forbade the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt. Those convicted under the act generally received sentences of imprisonment for five to 20 years. The act also allowed the Postmaster General to refuse to deliver mail that met those same standards for punishable speech or opinion. It applied only to times “when the United States is in war.”

But at least that had the excuse of having been enacted during wartime and of applying only to wartime. Actually, it was passed towards the end WWI and ended with that war’s end. Later SCOTUS decisions indicate that a similar law would probably be held unconstitutional.

Oh, and that 1918 bill passed the House almost unanimously, with only one dissenting vote. It passed the Senate, too, but with quite a bit of opposition. The opposition to the 1918 act came almost entirely from Republican senators.

As San Francisco and Seattle go…

The New Neo Posted on by

…so goes Austin, Texas:

The [Austin] city council has voted to rescind prohibitions on camping, sleeping, and panhandling on public sidewalks – but not in front of city hall, of course.

A couple of observations:

(1) I wonder whether most of these rule changes allowing tents and sleeping on sidewalks in cities are passed by city councils and or mayoral orders rather than by citizens’ votes. My guess is that it’s most if not all.

(2) In the comments to the post I linked, some people said that Austin is already overrun with homeless people sleeping outside. So I’m not sure whether this law actually changes anything.

(3) Greg Abbott has tweeted that the state of Texas will override this.

(4) People in the cities involved have gotten used to a level of squalor that even just a few years ago would have been considered intolerable. It’s partly the old boiling frog thing, and it’s partly that they feel helpless to come up with actual solutions and/or unwilling to implement ones that seem too Draconian to liberal sensibilities.

Does anyone doubt for one moment…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that if Obama had done what Trump did in Korea we’d never hear the end of how wonderful it was? Obama might even get his second Peace Prize.

And that’s without even knowing if the results will be something good. The gesture would have been more than enough, had Obama made it.

But not only is the press down on everything Trump does, they also cannot believe that Trump did this. Their predictions were that he’d start a war with North Korea, a really terrifying war. And although it certainly is possible that could happen, so far the visuals have been anything but.

If “Nixon was the only one who could go to China,” perhaps “Trump is the only one who could go to North Korea.” It makes them livid with anger. Why, or why, couldn’t Obama the Great have done it?

Antifa and anti-masking laws

The New Neo Posted on by

The rise of Antifa and in particular attacks like the recent one on Andy Ngo is an alarming trend that needs to be stopped. It would be good if there was more bipartisan alarm about the phenomenon, but unfortunately there is far too much justification and/or excuse-marking on the part of the left for what are essentially fascist tactics (as long as such tactics are used against someone on the right, of course).

Ngo has this to say to officials in Portland, Oregon, the city where he was attacked:

“How many more people have to be beaten and attacked in the city of Portland before things change?” conservative journalist Andy Ngo told CNN on Tuesday.

“I am by far not the first one. There’s been many other incidents that have happened since 2016 and the policing has remained the same, which is a policy of not engaging with militant protestors.”

I very much doubt that anything will change in Portland regarding police practices, however.

Then there is the possibility of anti-masking laws. One of the many problems with Antifa is that its violent demonstrators usually wear face coverings that make it impossible to identify them from photos or videos. Anti-masking laws have been passed in many US states, and the origins in many cases have to do with combating the KKK.

You can find a list of states that have anti-masking laws here; Oregon does not appear to be one of them. Interestingly enough, New York and Massachusetts do have such laws, as well as California and DC.

Here’s an example of one such statute, the California law:

CALIFORNIA Penal Code Section 182-185
185. Section One Hundred and Eighty-five. It shall be unlawful for any person to wear any mask, false whiskers, or any personal disguise (whether complete or partial) for the purpose of: One–Evading or escaping discovery, recognition, or identification in the commission of any public offense. Two–Concealment, flight, or escape, when charged with, arrested for, or convicted of, any public offense. Any person violating any of the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor.

Courts have had a mixed record on whether anti-masking laws violate free speech rights or the right to associate, the results seeming to depend heavily on how narrowly or broadly such laws are constructed. For example:

These laws have been challenged on the grounds that they violate the guarantees of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution to free speech and free association. Some courts have weighed freedom of speech against the public safety interest, and upheld such laws. For example, the Georgia Supreme Court found the law constitutional on the grounds that the wearing of the mask was an act of intimidation and a threat of violence, which is not protected speech. That law has exceptions for holiday celebrations, theatre performances, and occupational safety; the ruling makes it unclear if someone is violating the law if they wear a mask without the intent to threaten violence. A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a New York law on the ground that wearing a Ku Klux Klan mask did not convey a protected message beyond that conveyed by wearing a hood and robe. Other courts have struck down anti-mask laws. For example, Tennessee and Florida state laws have been invalidated on the grounds that they were unconstitutionally broad. An ordinance in Goshen, Indiana, was struck down based on First Amendment doctrine that specifically protects anonymous speech and anonymous association, especially for unpopular groups like the KKK.

Many European countries have anti-masking laws as well.

Yesterday David French wrote this article in National Review calling for such laws in the face (pun intended) of Antifa. In it, he cites a 2004 Second Circuit ruling in Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan vs. Kerik that upheld New York’s anti-mask law:

Assuming for the discussion that New York’s anti-mask law makes some members of the American Knights less willing to participate in rallies, we nonetheless reject the view that the First Amendment is implicated every time a law makes someone-including a member of a politically unpopular group-less willing to exercise his or her free speech rights. While the First Amendment protects the rights of citizens to express their viewpoints, however unpopular, it does not guarantee ideal conditions for doing so, since the individual’s right to speech must always be balanced against the state’s interest in safety, and its right to regulate conduct that it legitimately considers potentially dangerous.

Such laws cannot be overly broad or they will constitute an infringement on free speech and/or assembly rights and would be likely to be struck down.

And of course, if passed, they must be enforced to have any teeth, and the penalties must be strong enough to act as some sort of deterrent. If the city of Portland is unwilling to stop Antifa demonstrators from beating someone up, I can’t see that authorities will be willing to arrest those same people for merely wearing masks.