Well, well, well: a series of armed insurrections in US *state* capitols in 2020 *an entirely different year* from a more extreme version of the same tactic in 2021 at the *federal* level. washingtonpost.com/national-secur…
Recap:
*people were murdered, 140 Capitol Police officers assaulted
*members of Congress could easily have been captured
*majority of GOP believes the election was stolen, remain committed to anti-democratic action in the future.
There is a concerted effort to pretend that a violent sacking of the US Capitol to overturn an election, orchestrated by the President, is not really a big deal.
The most dangerous threat to campus speech over the past few years is authoritarian and far right governments shutting down dissent. In Philippines, Duterte has empowered the army to arrest students in one of the few spaces free speech was allowed. nytimes.com/2021/02/14/wor…
While not authoritarian, the French government is pivoting right to pick up votes away from Le Pen supporters. Their strategy for doing so? announce an inquiry into the speech of faculty. So much for academic freedom.
The UK under Boris Johnson has gone down the road of policing campus speech, including fining protests they disagree with. They oppose regulation, except in the marketplace of ideas. theguardian.com/education/2021…
Speech on campus is messy and attacks on free speech are bad. But academics have managed it for hundreds of years with pretty decent outcomes. Having govt police campus speech and protest is a hallmark of authoritarian countries.
BTW, this proposal to give a right to sue protestors and universities for financial liability was adopted first in US universities like WIsconsin, the brainchild of a Arizona libertarian think tank. Is this where the Johnson govt is getting its ideas?
Watching the impeachment trial is very different to following it on twitter. It seems like the Dems wanted to get a specific piece of evidence in, and used the threat of witnesses to do so. But based on twitter you would think they made a massive strategic error.
At this point we know what happened and the outcome of the trial. Prolonging the trial is basically about how much you want put more material in the record and on public view vs. the potential opportunity cost of other policy gains in the Senate.
This line on twitter is "Dems decided to call witnesses, and then decided not to" when I think its more accurate to say they wanted to get a specific piece of evidence in, and they did, and the defense accepted it as accurate.
The story of state legislatures seeking to restrict campus speech - in this case eliminating tenure protections - in the name of free speech (read, they don't like campus politics) is a big, important issue that gets about 1% of the attention of Gina Carano-type stories
At the same time conservative state legislators in Iowa are seeking to remove basic job protections designed to protect academic freedom, they are also seeking to coerce faculty to reveal their political leanings. thegazette.com/subject/news/e…
A big reason I've always had a hard time taking the cancel culture trope too seriously is that many of those who toss it around have generally shown fuck-all interest in state efforts to police speech on campuses, or have actually cheered or personally driven these efforts.
The Biden administration taking on administrative burdens: eliminating work requirements in Medicaid that the Trump administration championed, and which resulted in loss of health insurance for the poor washingtonpost.com/health/biden-e…
.@pamela_herd & I argued that weaponizing the use of burdens was a central strategy of the Trump administration. So just going to start keeping track of ways in which the Biden admin is doing the opposite. washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-c…
Ben Sommers, who has documented the negative effect of work requirements but other burdens like asset tests is joining HHS.
Hard to move forward when much of one political party's worldview is based on groundless conspiracy theories.
Most Republicans believe Trump won the election, and half of Republicans believe that Antifa were responsible for he attack on the Capitol. washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/…
Twice as many Republicans believe the Q-Anon theory that Trump has been battling an imaginary cabal of child traffickers in the Democratic Party than believe that he encouraged his followers to attack the Capitol.
If you believe that "the way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away" it is hard to account for the fact that one American political party is now dominated by conspriacism. nytimes.com/2020/11/30/ups…