Happy Mothers Day

It's a celebration of normality, of hope for the future, of humanity under our Creator--and we need that. So, from the bottom of my heart. ...

Alternatively, Steve Hayward gets the tone of contemporary America about right ...

HAPPY “BIRTHING PERSONS” DAY!

On Free Speech Absolutism

I'd like to recommend to your attention an article by Josh Hammer that, in my view, addresses important issues regarding the common appeal by conservatives to what Hammer refers to as "free speech absolutism." A hint of what he's talking about can be seen from the picture that is at the top of the article. It features Marjorie Taylor Greene wearing a black mask with the red lettering: Free Speech. A lot has been written about MTG and this whole issue, but I find Hammer's article by far the most thoughtful, because it goes beyond the easy issue of liberal hypocrisy.

In particular I draw your attention to the distinction that Hammer makes between "procedure" and "substance", which is the same distinction that Cassander raised in a different context today. To be clear, Hammer believes the action taken against MTG by the Dem House was wrong. His argument is that even if we oppose those actions, we should be cautious of failing to distinguish "liberal procedure"--appeals to Free Speech as a constitutional right (in most instances)--from the "moral limitations of the ... underlying substance" of what is being said.

Here's the link:

The Limits of ‘Free Speech’

But the fact that Marjorie Taylor Greene can so effortlessly retreat to the comparatively safe terrain of "free speech" should concern conservatives.

And here are a few excerpts--but I urge you to read and consider the entire article:

Recovering The Other Half Of The American Founding.

I'd like to recommend two articles that appeared today at American Greatness. The first article is easily summarized--a very short passage will suffice:

Why We Must Unmask

With a perpetual state of emergency for a virus with a 98 percent survival rate, the country is essentially a giant TSA checkpoint.

Over 80 percent of Americans covering their faces when leaving the home is a sign of submission to the one-party oligarchy that has replaced our constitutional republic. Masks are a symbol of fear, and a scared populace is more likely to obey mandates for the sake of safety. Masks are a sign that the American people will comply with a government violation of their personal liberty without proof of any personal or societal benefit. That last sentence is crucial. Throwing the masks away is not just an issue of political liberty, it needs to be done because masks don’t stop an airborne respiratory virus. 

It’s flat-out wrong to agree to Team Apocalypse’s premise that “masks work” or that they are a little thing we can do with no downside. There is no evidence for such assertions. 

The second article is longer and more complex. It identifies an ambiguity inherent in the American founding that has, unfortunately, worked itself out in a onesided way that is demonstrably counter to the outcome the Founding Fathers had envisioned. It also points the way forward--the way that I tried to articulate just the other day. It's the way of theory, in the original Greek sense of "seeing"--seeing the truth that will make us free citizens of a republic, rather than slaves to the ideology of rights inhering in atomistic individuals:

Civic Virtues as Moral Facts

Recovering the other half of the American Founding.

The article is clearly written and its argument, while not simple, is relatively easy to follow. I recommend the entire article to your consideration. Here I'll offer snippets to whet your appetite:

Until a half-century ago or so, there was a moral consensus, however fraying, that informed and shaped the exercise of freedom in the Western world. ... Few would have suggested that liberty and human dignity could long flourish without a sense of moral obligation and civic spirit on the part of proud, rights-bearing individuals.

...

The American Founders, for example, were in no way moral relativists, let alone moral nihilists. ..., they nonetheless appealed to honor, civic virtue, and the “honorable determination” of a free people to govern themselves. Facile relativism or easygoing nihilism, where all “values” are created equal, would have appalled them.

...

We now live in a different moral universe, and by no means a better one.