Monthly Archives: February 2017

Sociologist: ‘Capitalism 2.0’ about to slay liberalism’s sacred cow – WND.com

Posted: February 7, 2017 at 10:10 pm

A sociologist in the United Kingdom is citing advances in technology that enablepeople to fulfill their potentialin contrast to a metaphysical assumption shared by liberals, that humans are equal.

Steve Fuller, who holds the Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology at the University of Warwick, explained in the business review section of a blog for the London School of Economics that under capitalism,people have been free to exchange goods and services, which he calledan inalienable right.

There were dangers, he noted, from exploitation, and Marxists say the asymmetrical power relations in the marketplace run roughshod over human rights.

Now comes transhumanism, he wrote, challengingboth capitalism and socialism, which had created a sense of humanism with the balance of a right to work and participate in the marketplace, yet a right not to be controlled by another.

Transhumanism is the idea that humans can evolve to physical and mental capacities beyond those that exist now, especially by means of science and technology.

Investigate the growing trend of blending human and machine, called transhumanism, at the WND Superstore.

Computers now mediate both work and non-work aspects of life, and the markers that oncedivided themhave become smaller and smaller, Fuller said.

An obvious case in point is the idea of working from home. People who operate this way typically shift back and forth between performing work and non-work activities on screen in an open-ended and relatively unstructured day. Meanwhile, all the data registered in these activities are gathered by information providers (e.g. Google, Facebook, Amazon), who then analyze and consolidate them for resale to private and public sector clients, he wrote.

Is this exploitation? The answer is not so clear. The information providers offer a platform that is free at the point of use, enabling users to produce and consume data indefinitely. Of course, such platforms are the source of both intense frustration and endless satisfaction for users, but the phenomenology of these experiences is not necessarily what one might expect of people in a state of exploitation.

On the contrary, there is reason to think that people increasingly locate meaning in their lives in some cyber-projection (avatar) of themselves, notwithstanding the third-party ownership of the platform hosting the cyber-projection, he said.

Ones personhood, he wrote, strongly implicates transhumanism, which can involve a person changing genetically or prosthetically.

On the other hand, in the case of transfer, the person might do more than simply bequeath various assets to already existing individuals and institutions say, in a will which comes into force upon ones death. Rather, the person might in his or her own lifetime invest energy and income in support of virtual agents, second lives. with the effect of turning ones physical self into a platform for launching the more meaningful cyber-selves.

The result, Capitalism 2.0, he called it, is morphological freedom.

It is the freedom not only to do what you want but also to be what you want. It is worth observing that this sense of freedom violates a key metaphysical assumption shared by liberals and socialists, namely, that humans are rough natural equals, not in the sense that everyone is naturally the same but that everyone has roughly the same mix of assets and liabilities, which in turn justifies a harmonious division of labor in society.

The violation of this assumption implies that whatever problems of social justice relating to material inequality have emerged over the history of capitalism are potentially amplified by transhumanism, as the prospect of morphological freedom explodes stopgap liberal intuitions about the natural equality of humans, he said.

WND has reported about opposition to the general transhumanism movement, most recently by the Family Research Council.

FRCwas objecting to a plan last year by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under Barack Obamato have taxpayers fund the mixing of human stem cells with animal embryos to create chimeras, creatures that have part animal and part human elements, in pursuit of better lives.

WND has previously reported on such goals. In one case, a U.S. biotech company was given permission to obtain 20 brain-dead patients to test if parts of their central nervous systems could be regenerated.

The company, Bioquark Inc., plans to use a soup of stem cells and peptides on the brains of the patients over a six-week period to see if it can jump-start their functions.

Philadelphia-based Bioquark asks on its website: What if your body came with a restart button?

WND also reported last winter on the growing promise of anti-aging or gene therapy science, a technology known as CRISPR/Cas9. It purports to deliver immortality to human beings and has attracted support from some of the worlds richest men, including Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal; Ray Kurzwell of Google; Oracle founder Larry Ellison; venture capitalist Paul Glenn; and Russian multi-millionaire Omitry Itskov.

Carl Gallups, a Christian pastor, radio host and author of several books, including Be Thou Prepared and Final Warning, said there are moral and ethical dilemmas.

What entity or governmental power will make the decisions concerning who gets their death reversed and who must die? Gallups asked at the time.

Investigate the growing trend of blending human and machine, called transhumanism, at the WND Superstore.

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Bomb-shelter builder stays busy as customers prep for ‘Trumpocalypse’ – Duluth News Tribune

Posted: at 10:07 pm

He offers visitors a tour of a 600-square-foot model under construction for a Saudi customer.

Right now, it's just a steel shell, he said, but when the work is done, it will be a luxurious underground bunker with a master bedroom, four bunk beds, a composting toilet, a living room with satellite television capability, filtered air and water and a storage closet with room for months of food.

Lynch explains that orders for his most expensive shelters, which can cost as much as several million dollars, have increased since the November election.

"It definitely has picked up a little as Donald Trump emerged as president," said Lynch, general manager of Rising S Co. on the outskirts of the rural city of Murchison. Lynch said some customers even half-jokingly say they're trying to protect themselves from a "Trumpocalypse" or "Trumpnado."

"There's some people who maybe even voted for Donald Trump and may be worried some of the riots are going to get out of hand and there's going to be social or civil unrest," he said.

"Then you've got people who didn't vote for him and are thinking that now that he's president maybe he's going to start a war. There's definitely been some renewed interest from people since the election."

Doomsday prepping the act of stockpiling food and other essentials in a reinforced, often-underground shelter used to be mostly associated with Libertarian-leaning Americans who feared their own government would turn on them.

But now that Trump has taken office, some centrists and left-leaning folks also are building bomb shelters under their homes and businesses, apparently fearing either civil strife or war with an external enemy.

Sales of Rising S's most luxurious shelters have jumped 700 percent in recent months, he said. Lynch didn't provide specific data on how many units he typically sells, but he said Rising S Co. recorded about $14 million in sales during the past year.

Although Lynch credits Trump's surprising rise to power for the latest sales spike, he said a similar jump in sales occurred eight years ago when President Obama took office.

He has been building shelters for 13 years.

"When a Republican is president, the left wants to buy a bunker," he said. "It's the opposite when a Democrat is president."

The phrase "#Trumpocalypse" has taken on a life of its own on social media such as Twitter.

And a quick search online shows many other examples of people taking advantage of Trump's knack for controversy to sell their fare.

For example, in Pearsall, south of San Antonio, a Craigslist seller named Dan was offering used buses for $3,000 to $5,000, and explaining on his advertisement that "They make good Trump Bunkers and Bomb Shelters."

"You Know Who's Finger will be on the Button," the ad continues. "Make America Great Again. Buy a Bus. All are welcome. Pro Donald. Pro Hilary. (sic) Can we all be friends again?"

America has a long history of building bomb shelters, going back to the days of the Cold War with the Soviet Union shortly after World War II.

In the 1950s and 1960s, thousands of home owners built underground escape rooms something that was encouraged by President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat who presided over the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that nearly brought the U.S. and Russia to nuclear blows.

America's bunker mentality is the stuff of movies and historical lore. The desire for blast-proof walls, filtrated air and water, and composting toilets is deeply embedded in the national psyche.

And, although it's an issue that typically only comes up during a leadership change, domestic strife or a global crisis, the desire to be safe from harm to have a place where loved ones can hunker down indefinitely seems to always burn in the nation's collective belly.

It's a different story with storm shelters, similar structures that can be built either underground or as a "safe room" within a home. Storm shelters tend to grow in popularity after a major disaster such as the tornado in 1997 that killed 27 people in the Central Texas city of Jarrell, or the one two years later that killed 36 people in the Oklahoma City area.

According to the Lubbock, Texas-based National Storm Shelter Association, which applies its official seal to shelters that meet high construction and design standards, "sales are half what they were three years ago," executive director Ernst Kiesling said.

After a major incident such as a tornado or hurricane, Federal Emergency Management Agency money can sometimes be made available to offset some of the cost of shelter construction, depending upon how states and cities use the federal funds.

But the demand for shelters usually only lasts about as long as the cleanup, Kiesling said.

"After an incident, there will be an upsurge among the public, but it will subside rather quickly," he said.

Storm shelters can be underground, or they can be built at ground level in a home. They can be made of steel, fiberglass or other materials.

Although they typically don't have the long-term accommodations for people to live in indefinitely, like a bomb shelter, storm shelters can also provide residents with a "safe room" to escape dangers such as gunfire or a home intruder.

But usually it's concern about enemies of the state whether foreign or domestic that motivates someone to install a bunker in their home or business.

Peter Westwick teaches a class on the atomic age at the University of Southern California and he sometimes shows his students a photo that he took just a few years ago of a commercial building in Los Angeles called Atlas Survival Shelters. The otherwise-nondescript metal building features an outside display of a bright yellow bomb shelter the size of fuel truck.

The photo illustrates how little has changed about Americans' concern for the long-term security of their republic since the 1950s, he said.

"I sometimes use a picture I took of a shelter manufacturer here in LA, just off the 5 freeway, to show these fears haven't gone away," Westwick said in an email. "But they have changed, to a broader doomsday/survivalism instead of just nuclear fear."

Of the current interest in shelters, Westwick said, "I think you could indeed say that the losing side in an election often takes a catastrophic view of the outcome. You might consider the migration to the Idaho, Montana, Wyoming region by conservative or Libertarian adherents following Obama's election.

"There's an issue here with whether the survivalists fear an external enemy (e.g. the Soviet Union, albeit aided by Communists in American society) or an internal one (e.g. the Idaho survivalists apparently fearing their own government and fellow citizens).

"The current fears seem to be more of Trump provoking an external enemy, whether another state or stateless terrorists," he said.

Often, customers who buy bomb shelters are wealthy.

Steve Huffman, founder of the Reddit social news aggregate site, acknowledged in a recent New Yorker story that he is obsessed with surviving a catastrophe.

In that same article, many other wealthy elite from New York, San Francisco and other tony places say they're stocking up on gas masks, motorcycles (more nimble and fuel-efficient than cars during a crisis) and other essentials to escape from the expected confusion and panic that likely would envelope and overtake those who had failed to prepare.

But bomb shelters don't have to break the bank.

Some manufacturers offer closet-size underground bunkers for as little as $5,000.

At Rising S Co., Lynch said he and his roughly 40 employees can't sell anything that cheap. They use the finest, Alabama-made steel and an air purification system with a patent pending on its design and materials like that come at a cost.

Rising S Co.'s shelters also feature a water purification system that can be designed to pull water from an underground well, a municipal water system or a storage tank.

But Lynch said he can set up customers with an entry-level shelter approximately 4 feet by 6 feet for roughly $10,000.

In fact, he has one of those basic models under construction right now in his warehouse off Texas 31 in Murchison, right alongside the underground virtual palace his crew is building for that wealthy Saudi customer.

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Rainbow Serpent turns 20: a weekend of boundless hedonism – Mixmag

Posted: at 10:06 pm

Driving into Australias Rainbow Serpent festival we get the feeling were entering another world before weve even witnessed any of the boundless hedonism, wild costumes, art and heavy-hitting bass that are about to become our life for the next five days (if youre in it for the long haul, Mixmag did four).

Dust shrouds the car as we cut our way up a rocky dirt track towards the entrance as dry wheat-coloured hills dotted with gum trees and boulders create a stark landscape against the clear blue sky of summer in the Victorian bush. A single love heart dangles across the road shortly after tickets have been checked and wristbands placed marking the shift into the unknown for newcomers and a very special place for thousands who return each year.

Rainbow Serpent, or Rainbow, is the centerpiece of Australias bush doof scene (a term used locally to describe parties that shun the mainstream and happen deep in the natural environment away from capital cities), but the transformative festival has evolved to become much more since its early raving roots in the late 1990s. Theres still plenty of psy-trance, but these days youll find a very healthy dose of techno, progressive, melodic and feel-good house, disco, funk, breaks, minimal and more. All of this alongside traditional Aboriginal ceremonies, panel talks and guest speakers, workshops, performers and endless food stalls.

2017 marked the 20th anniversary of Rainbows first incarnation in a field near the town of Trentham, Victoria, in 1998. Now, more than 15,000 people from all over the world converge on sprawling farmland outside the tiny town of Lexton, about 150 kilometres northwest of Melbourne, at the end of January each year.

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Food by the Book: Philosophy, love, steak – Muskogee Daily Phoenix

Posted: at 10:05 pm

Imagine a budding philosophy professor on a tenure track at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell coming across a library built at West Wind, the private estate of American philosopher and Harvard professor William Hocking.

It's a library that had not been touched since Hocking's death in 1966; a library full of first editions of American thinkers such as Thoreau, Emerson, James, Royse, and of the European philosophers Descartes, Hobbes, and Locke; a library of precious books mildewing in the cold New England winters and the heat of summer.

American Philosophy, A Love Story, by John Kaag, (Farrar, 2016), combines Kaag's own modern existential conflict with his discovery of the story of America's brand of philosophy as seen through the writings of its most influential thinkers from 1825 to 1966.

With his marriage breaking up, Kaag's experience cataloging and storing the 10,000 volumes in Hocking's library helped him work through not only his love of philosophy, but the meaning of love itself and the idea of a life well-lived as examined by the world's most notable philosophers.

Kaag's book is as slow going as his work in Hocking's library was. The reader must digest a compendium of American thinking on idealism, naturalism, rationalism and pragmatism that has made us who we are as a nation. But it is worth every minute of discovery in the library of modern American thought.

Out here, we have our own philosophy when it comes to steak. Serve this Valentine's Day menu prepared with love for your Oklahoma philosopher.

Reach Melony Carey at foodbythebook@gmail.com or (918) 683-3694.

MARINADE FOR GRILLED STEAK

2 garlic cloves, finely minced

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon oregano

1/4 teaspoon cayenne

5 tablespoons soy sauce

4 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup red wine

1 teaspoon black pepper

Daddy Hinkle Dry Quick Marinade

Sprinkle steaks with Daddy Hinkle. In a 2-cup measuring cup, place remaining ingredients. Whisk until emulsified. Place steaks in zip-lock bag and pour marinade over. Seal and place in refrigerator for 6 or more hours. Remove steaks, throw marinade away. Grill over medium coals until desired doneness. Adjust quantity for amount of meat.

BROWN BUTTER MASHED POTATOES

Salt

3 1/2 pounds white or all-purpose potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks

1 stick plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 cup milk

1/4 cup crme fraiche or sour cream

In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook the potatoes over moderate heat until tender, about 25 minutes. Drain well. Return the potatoes to the pot and cook over high heat for 1 minute to dry them out slightly. Pass the potatoes through a ricer and return them to the pot.

In a small saucepan, cook the butter over moderate heat until the milk solids turn dark golden, about 4 minutes. Add all but 2 tablespoons of the brown butter to the potatoes along with the milk and sour cream and stir well. Season with salt and stir over moderate heat until hot. Drizzle the remaining brown butter over the potatoes and serve.

RUSTIC PEAR AND APPLE GALETTE

1 refrigerated pie crust or home made

Streusel:

2/3 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1/2 teaspoonkosher salt

6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cubed

Filling:

2 Granny Smith appleshalved, cored and thinly sliced lengthwise

2 firm Bartlett pearshalved, cored and sliced lengthwise 1/4 inch thick

1/4 cup granulated sugar, plus more for sprinkling

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

1 large egg beaten with 1 teaspoon water

Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 400. Spread the walnuts in a pie plate and bake for about 4 minutes, until lightly browned. Let cool.

In a medium bowl, whisk the flour with the brown sugar and salt. Add the butter and, using your fingers, pinch it into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the walnuts and pinch the streusel into clumps. Refrigerate until chilled, about 15 minutes.

Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. In a large bowl, toss the apples with the pears, 1/4 cup of granulated sugar, the salt and lemon juice. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the dough to a 19-by-13-inch oval. Ease the dough onto the prepared baking sheet. Mound the filling in the center of the oval, leaving a 2-inch border. Sprinkle the streusel evenly over the fruit and fold the edge of the dough up and over the filling.

Brush the crust with the egg wash and sprinkle evenly with granulated sugar. Bake the galette for 45 to 50 minutes, until the fruit is tender and the streusel and crust are golden brown. Let the galette cool. Dust with confectioner's sugar before serving. Adapted from Food and Wine, November 2015.

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Free Speech Isn’t Free – The Atlantic

Posted: at 10:05 pm

Members of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church protest outside a prayer rally in Houston in 2011. (Richard Carson/Reuters)

Millions of Americans support free speech. They firmly believe that we are the only country to have free speech, and that anyone who even questions free speech had damn well better shut the #$%& up.

Case in point: In a recent essay in The Daily Beast, Fordham Law Professor Thane Rosenbaum notes that European countries and Israel outlaw certain kinds of speechNazi symbols, anti-Semitic slurs, and Holocaust denial, and speech that incites hatred on the basis of race, religion, and so forth. The American law of free speech, he argues, assumes that the only function of law is to protect people against physical harm; it tolerates unlimited emotional harm. Rosenbaum cites recent studies (regrettably, without links) that show that "emotional harm is equal in intensity to that experienced by the body, and is even more long-lasting and traumatic." Thus, the victims of hate speech, he argues, suffer as much as or more than victims of hate crime. "Why should speech be exempt from public welfare concerns when its social costs can be even more injurious [than that of physical injury]?"

I believestronglyin the free-speech system we have. But most of the responses to Rosenbaum leave me uneasy. I think defenders of free speech need to face two facts: First, the American system of free speech is not the only one; most advanced democracies maintain relatively open societies under a different set of rules. Second, our system isn't cost-free. Repressing speech has costs, but so does allowing it. The only mature way to judge the system is to look at both sides of the ledger.

Jonathan Rauch: The Case for Hate Speech

Most journalistic defenses of free speech take the form of "shut up and speak freely." The Beast itself provides Exhibit A: Cultural news editor Michael Moynihan announced that "we're one of the few countries in the Western world that takes freedom of speech seriously," and indignantly defended it against "those who pretend to be worried about trampling innocents in a crowded theater but are more interested in trampling your right to say whatever you damn well please." To Moynihan, Rosenbaum could not possibly be sincere or principled; he is just a would-be tyrant. The arguments about harm were "thin gruel"not even worth answering. Moynihan's response isn't really an argument; it's a defense of privilege, like a Big Tobacco paean to the right to smoke in public.

In contrast to this standard-issue tantrum is a genuinely thoughtful and appropriate response from Jonathan Rauch at The Volokh Conspiracy, now a part of the Washington Post's web empire. Rauch responds that

painful though hate speech may be for individual members of minorities or other targeted groups, its toleration is to their great collective benefit, because in a climate of free intellectual exchange hateful and bigoted ideas are refuted and discredited, not merely suppressed .... That is how we gay folks achieved the stunning gains we've made in America: by arguing toward truth.

I think he's right. But the argument isn't complete without conceding something most speech advocates don't like to admit:

Free speech does do harm.

It does a lot of harm.

And while it may produce social good much of the time, there's no guaranteeno "invisible hand" of the intellectual marketthat ensures that on balance it does more good than harm. As Rauch says, it has produced a good result in the case of the gay-rights movement. But sometimes it doesn't.

Europeans remember a time when free speech didn't produce a happy ending. They don't live in a North Korea-style dystopia. They do "take free speech seriously," and in fact many of them think their system of free speech is freer than ours. Their view of human rights was forged immediately after World War II, and one lesson they took from it was that democratic institutions can be destroyed from within by forces like the Nazis who use mass communication to dehumanize whole races and religions, preparing the population to accept exclusion and even extermination. For that reason, some major human-rights instruments state that "incitement" to racial hatred, and "propaganda for war," not only may but must be forbidden. The same treaties strongly protect freedom of expression and opinion, but they set a boundary at what we call "hate speech."

It's a mistake to think that the U.S. system goes back to the foundation of the republic. At the end of World War II, in fact, our law was about the same as Europe's is today. The Supreme Court in Beauharnais v. Illinois (1952) upheld a state "group libel" law that made it a crime to publish anything that "exposes the citizens of any race, color, creed or religion to contempt, derision, or obloquy." European countries outlawed fascist and neo-Nazi parties; in the 1951 caseDennis v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld a federal statute that in essence outlawed the Communist Party as a "conspiracy" to advocate overthrowing the U.S. government. Justice Robert H. Jackson, who had been the chief U.S. prosecutor of Nazi war criminals, concurred in Dennis, warning that totalitarianism had produced "the intervention between the state and the citizen of permanently organized, well financed, semi-secret and highly disciplined political organizations." A totalitarian party "denies to its own members at the same time the freedom to dissent, to debate, to deviate from the party line, and enforces its authoritarian rule by crude purges, if nothing more violent." Beauharnais, Dennis, and similar cases were criticized at the time, and today they seem grievously wrong. But many thoughtful people supported those results at the time.

U.S. law only began to protect hateful speech during the 1960s. The reason, in retrospect, is clearrepressive Southern state governments were trying to criminalize the civil-rights movement for its advocacy of change. White Southerners claimed (and many really believed) that the teachings of figures like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X were "hate speech" and would produce "race war." By the end of the decade, the Court had held that governments couldn't outlaw speech advocating law violation or even violent revolution. Neither Black Panthers nor the KKK nor Nazi groups could be marked off as beyond the pale purely on the basis of their message.

Those decisions paved the way for triumphs by civil rights, feminist, and gay-rights groups. But let's not pretend that nobody got hurt along the way. The price for our freedoma price in genuine pain and intimidationwas paid by Holocaust survivors in Skokie and by civil-rights and women's-rights advocates subjected to vile abuse in public and private, and by gay men and lesbians who endured decades of deafening homophobic propaganda before the tide of public opinion turned.

Free speech can't be reaffirmed by drowning out its critics. It has to be defended as, in the words of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, "an experiment, as all life is an experiment."

I admire people on both sides who admit that we can't be sure we've drawn the line properly. In Dennis, the case about Communists, Justice Felix Frankfurter voted to uphold the convictions. That vote is a disgrace; but it is slightly mitigated by this sentence in his concurrence: "Suppressing advocates of overthrow inevitably will also silence critics who do not advocate overthrow but fear that their criticism may be so construed .... It is a sobering fact that, in sustaining the convictions before us, we can hardly escape restriction on the interchange of ideas." When Holmes at last decided that subversive speech should be protected, he did so knowing full well that his rule, if adopted, might begin the death agony of democracy. "If in the long run the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to be accepted by the dominant forces of the community," he wrote in his dissent in Gitlow v. New York, "the only meaning of free speech is that they should be given their chance and have their way."

The reason that we allow speech cannot be that it is harmless. It must be that we prefer that people harm each other, and society, through speech than through bullets and bombs. American society is huge, brawling, and deeply divided against itself. Social conflict and change are bruising, ugly things, and in democracies they are carried on with words. That doesn't mean there aren't casualties, and it doesn't mean the right side will always win.

For that reason, questions about the current state of the law shouldn't be met with trolling and condescension. If free speech cannot defend itself in free debate, then it isn't really free speech at all; it's just a fancier version of the right to smoke.

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The Death of Free Speech – Observer

Posted: at 10:05 pm


Observer
The Death of Free Speech
Observer
The home of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960's just succumbed to the latest campus effort to shut down unpopular views. Last week University officials cancelled a speech by conservative performance artist and Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos ...
Berkeley Riots: How Free Speech Debate Launched Violent Campus ShowdownRollingStone.com
Lawmakers Haven't Protected Free Speech On Campus--Here's How They CanForbes
Conspiring to stifle free speech is a crime: Glenn ReynoldsUSA TODAY
The Brown Daily Herald -legal Insurrection (blog) -mySanAntonio.com -CNN
all 182 news articles »

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Free speech should not be zoned – The Denver Post

Posted: at 10:05 pm

We are experiencing a new era in our nation, one characterized by polarity, equally unpopular opinions, and designated free speech zones. A recent poll found 77 percent of Americans perceive the nation as divided, I suspect that number is climbing. Nowhere are the tensions as pointed as on college campuses.

In this time of a great lack of mutual understanding, we can choose our communities, our news, our schools, and all too often we find ourselves living in a bubble of our own creation. While I am an ardent proponent of all the choices a free-market society allows us, we cannot permit our choices to permanently shield us from anything we do not like.

In times like these, I recall my own experiences growing up in an uncertain world. Often, my opinions were unpopular, but it was the resulting debates and friendly challenges that helped me learn, grow, and determine my core values. It is with those counterbalances in mind that I bring Senate Bill 62 to protect Colorado students constitutionally granted First Amendment right to free speech. I want todays youth to find the folks who challenge them and cherish those differences instead of shrinking from them.

Traditionally, universities are bastions of free speech and the open exchange of ideas. College students and faculty across the nation catalyzed countless movements, pushing back against the status quo and demanding change at times when change was unthinkable. Few people voiced their opinions louder than students, championing diversity of thought and wide array of backgrounds, beliefs, and visions for our future. Recently, however universities struggle with thoughtful debate, and instead put forth a litany of criteria for students to exercise their rights to speech, the most egregious of which requires students to limit their opinions to free speech zones. These zones are contrary to the very missions of universities.

Once we limit free speech to a zone, we indicate to our students that free speech does not exist anywhere beyond that zone. Is that the message we want to send to future generations about our nations core values?

It is possible to promote safety, high standards for education, and free speech rights simultaneously. I understand that maintaining the integrity and sanctity of education and keeping every student safe will always be a chief concern for universities. To that end, my bill allows these institutions the right to reasonable restrictions. Demonstrations which disrupt the primary mission of an undisturbed education or pose a threat to the safety of others may be curtailed when appropriate. Instead of shutting down debate, it is imperative that institutions offer ample alternative channels for communications of the students messages so that views and expressions dissimilar to the universities are given the opportunity free speech deserves.

Elected officials have a duty to citizens, an obligation to ensure that their liberties remain intact. The state legislature has a responsibility to strengthen our constitutional rights whenever possible, regardless of its political expediency. Indeed, how much we value the right to free speech is put to the test when we disagree with the speaker the most. When one of us is denied our First Amendment rights we are all denied, and free expression of all ideas, popular or not, must be safeguarded without interpretation or subjectivity. If we can have this strong dialogue and exchange in the public square, it bodes well for our nations future.

We send our kids to colleges and universities with the hope that they learn to challenge themselves, to grow and develop those skills that will see them through as tomorrows leaders who will continue to champion the core principles of our nation. We have to continue to teach our children that in order to be free, they must also be brave.

Please follow SB 62 as it progresses from the Senate to the House and share your support with your Representatives.

State Sen. Tim Neville is a Republican legislator from Jefferson County, representing Senate District 16.

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Cross returning to veterans memorial park inside ‘free speech zone … – Fox News

Posted: at 10:05 pm

A Minnesota city that drew backlash after pulling a cross from a veterans memorial park has agreed to bring it back as early as Tuesday -- inside a section of the park that supporters have called a "free speech zone."

COFFEE COMPANY TAKES ON STARBUCKS' REFUGEE PLAN, PLEDGES TO HIRE 10,000 VETERANS

The Freedom From Religion Foundation demanded the city of Belle Plaineremove the crosslast month, claiming it violated the separation of church and state. After workers took it down, many supporters of vets responded by setting up their own crosses, and theSecond Brigade Motorcycle Club patrolled the park to watch out for vandalism.

Amid the controversy in that city, the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian nonprofit, proposed setting up a"limited public forum" inside the park, where the original cross could stand,Fox 9 reported. The name "free speech zone" has stuck, even though the park is public.

CEMETERY WITH GRAVES OF VETS AND A PRESIDENT'S GRANDFATHER SEES NEW VANDALISM

The city council narrowly approved the proposal, by a vote of 3-2. Under the plan, city leaders would set up a method of considering each proposed display, giving priority to veterans groups,the StarTribune reported.

"It sets it up so we can have something to memorialize our fallen but it also gives others a chance to memorialize theirs as well," Katie Novotny, a supporter of the cross who lived in Belle Plaine, told the news station. "It doesnt matter if youre Jewish, if youre Muslim, were all Americans fighting this war together."

TheFreedom From Religion Foundation called the idea "constitutionally problematic" in a letter before Monday's vote, Fox 9 added. The group reportedly claimed it would submit a proposal for a memorial of its own in the park.

The newly approved plan "ensures that there is no endorsement of religion by the city whatsoever because the memorials that will be put up represent the citizens that put them up," Doug Wardlow, who represented the Alliance Defending Freedom, responded.

The original memorial showed the silhouette of a soldier holding a gun and kneeling in front of a small cross. It could reappear in the park as early as Tuesday evening, according to Fox 9.

Cheers erupted in City Hall after the council gave the OK.

Belle Plaine is a 45-minute drive southwest of Minneapolis.

Click for more from Fox 9.

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Locals fight free speech restrictions at Denver International Airport – Colorado Springs Independent (blog)

Posted: at 10:05 pm

When President Trump signed "the Muslim ban" into effect on Jan. 27, protests spontaneously erupted at airports across the country. They were the logical venue because the executive order indefinitely bars entry into the U.S. by Syrian refugees, temporarily bars entry by nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries and suspends all refugee applications.

So the chaotic implementation of the possibly unconstitutional policy played out inside airports, where travelers from those countries (including some permanent lawful residents and green card holders) were detained by Customs and Border Patrol agents as volunteer lawyers scrambled to put together habeas corpus petitions on their laptops using public Wi-Fi.

(Parts of the order have since been suspended, pending challenges to the policy as discriminatory on its face.)

Amidst this scene were the two plaintiffs in this case: Colorado Springs residents Eric Verlo and Nazli McDonnell. They went to join about a thousand others at Denver International Airport the weekend after Trump issued the ban. According to their civil rights complaint, filed in U.S. District Court on Monday, while other protesters danced, sang and prayed in Jeppesen Terminal near the secure CPB screening area, the plaintiffs"simply stood with placards showing their distaste for the Executive Order and the man who executed it."

Police officers reportedly told the protesters they couldn't be thereand suggested they move off-premise, six miles away to Tower Road (which, if you've ever been to DIA, you may recall is desolate prairie land.) They cited the airport's "Regulation 50" as reason.

Fox31's Emily Allen tweeted this photo of a leaflet notifying protesters of the regulation.

You can watch the interactions below:

Nobody was arrested that day. The next day, Verlo and McDonnell returned to DIA with their signs. Inside the terminal, they were allegedly threatened with arrest which, the complaint alleges, was a form of retaliatory punishment designed to chill future speech. The regulation cited above, they claim, is an unreasonable restriction of their First Amendment rights.

Denver-based attorney David Lane has filed the complaint on behalf of the plaintiffs. In the past, he has also defended professors' right to make distasteful Nazi analogies,agitators' right to say "fuck the police" to the police and activists' right to pass out leaflets on jury nullification in front of the court house.Lane helped organize the new Lawyers Civil Rights Coalition, which intends to doggedly defend Coloradans' civil rights during the Trump era.

The complaint alleges that its the content of speech that's being policed: "Upon information and belief, no individual has been arrested, or threatened with arrest, for wearing a 'Make America Great Again' campaign hat [or] holding a sign welcoming home a member of our military [or] holding a sign and soliciting passengers for a limousine [or] discussing current affairs with another person without a permit within the Jeppesen Terminal at Denver International Airport."

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Freedom Of Speech – Censorship | Laws.com

Posted: at 10:04 pm

What is Freedom of Speech? Freedom of Speech is an unalienable right afforded to every citizen of the United States of America; these rights make mention of the statutes expressed in the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States a statute that provides every American citizen to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. With regard to the provisions set forth within the 1st Amendment to the United States, the Freedom of Speech prohibits the unlawful banning, prohibition, and ceasing of unlawful censorship. 1st Amendment Date Proposed: September, 25th 1789 Date Ratified: December 15th, 1791 Contents of the Amendment: This Amendment affords citizens of the United States with the freedom of religion, the freedom of press, the freedom of speech, and the right of assembly; the freedom of speech is considered to not only be granted by the Federal Government, but also protected by them as well Legislative Classification: Bill of Rights Is the Freedom of Speech a Human Right? The Freedom of Speech is considered to be both a Human Right and Human Liberty; the determination of this relies heavily of the circumstance surrounding then nature, objective, and intent of the speech. In contrast to the precepts inherent in Human Rights, Human Liberties typically maintain a nature of action and event in which personal choice and freedom is implicit. Human Liberties such as the Freedom of Speech - afforded to citizens of the United States are undertaken through agency and autonomy in lieu of circumstance or permissive mandating. Human Liberties are defined as the opportunities, entitlements, and awards granted to the specific citizens of a country or nation that are applicable to social interaction and interpersonal activity taking place within a societal level. Legal and Illegal Freedom of Speech and Expression Although Freedom of Speech is considered to be an inalienable Human Right, with regard to activity or actions that employ the Freedom of Speech and expression for means that contract the legality and legislative statutes mandatory within the United States of America, that Freedom of Speech may be defined as either a human liberty or even a crime. Expression and activities deemed to be damaging, hateful, and prejudicial in their nature including expression and activity serving to denigrate and rob others of their respective pursuit of happiness - are considered to be both an unlawful and illegal act: Freedom of Speech and Prejudice Prejudice can be defined as the discrimination against another group or individual with regard to an individual trait or characteristic believed to be out of the control of the individual who displays it, which may include discrimination and crimes committed out of personal and unfounded bias. Freedom of Speech and Public Policy Although the rights expressed within the United States Constitution allow for every American citizen to the right to freedom of speech, expressed prejudice with regard to the happiness, opportunity, and wellbeing of another individual is both illegal and unlawful this can include biased hiring practices and admission policies. Freedom of Speech and Criminal Activity Hate Crimes, or any form of harm caused due to a latent prejudice or personal bias is considered to be illegal on the grounds that ones freedom of speech results in the dissolution of another individuals pursuit of happiness. Comments

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