The “Democracy” lovers when they actually get “Democracy”:
Elon Musk boosts antisemitic bid to ban ADL from X: 'Perhaps we should run a poll on this?
Elon Musk's credentials as a "free speech absolutist" came into question over the weekend after the X owner elevated an antisemitic campaign to ban the Anti-Defamation League from his social media site. "Perhaps we should run a poll on this?" Musk tweeted on Saturday, responding to a…pundit, who noted that #BanTheADL was trending on the site.…The ADL responded to calls for a ban by saying it is "unsurprised yet undeterred that anti-semites, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and other trolls have launched a coordinated attack on our organization….”
So how does the simple tongue-in-cheek suggestion to help make a decision by conducting a poll set the ADL’s (and apparently, the NYPost’s) hair ablaze?
Well, there is more than a hint of an answer to this question in a recent NYPost Op-Ed:
Don’t buy Cornell’s PR baloney that it wants to ‘elevate’ free speech
A coalition of 13 university presidents…just launched a joint initiative to “elevate free speech” on campuses.
If you’re skeptical, so am I.
A closer look reveals a heavy helping of the usual buzzwords.
We’re told about the importance of “diverse communities” in “countering threats to democracy.”
Oh, the irony of it.
The first paragraph on the ADL’s home page prioritizes that ADL also, “works to protect democracy”.
How funny that the entire Liberal universe and apparently, by default, the academic universe are so committed to defending against “…threats to democracy” while simultaneously being horrified about the unfettered exercise of “democracy”.
After all, what could be a purer exercise of “democracy” than a poll?
For years X, formerly known as Twitter, has been banning people and groups (for mostly secret reasons) with nothing but applause from the left. In fact, Twitter is neither democratic or very well governed…it is a fiefdom aka a pimple of a totalitarian state. Yet, when a left-leaning group hears that its ability to use X as a free platform for its purposes might be democratically decided via a “poll”, that group goes apocalyptic.
And when academic institutions are called on the carpet for not protecting free speech (one of many civil rights) they jump to the defense of “democracy”.
Yet, “Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch.” (unknown credit).
Liberals usually love to cite polls when trying to end-run proper Constitutional governance. For instance, Raymond La Raja, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of an Umass/Amherst poll announced that, “Americans also favor term limits for Supreme Court justices by a wide margin – 65% say the justices should serve a set number of terms….”
I bet the Constitution has something to say about that despite the poll’s plebiscitary fervor.
And ergo, my point.
Democracy is a much-overrated canard for the rights that properly owe themselves to Individual Liberty, i.e. the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
“Democracy” is often used as an obfuscation for those too fearful or insincere to defend legally guaranteed civil rights.
What is democracy without individual liberty? In many cases it is nothing more than the tyranny of the majority violating the civil rights of the minority.
In a pure “democracy” the majority could pick a group to exploit and vote to enslave them…all perfectly legal in a pure “democracy”. It is your Constitutional rights as US citizens that allow the individual to be an autonomous individual.
To quote left-leaning Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were, “…designed to protect individuals and minorities against the tyranny of the majority….”
Hence, all freedom, including academic freedom has little to do with “democracy” other than the specific democratic representation defined in the Constitution.
Freedom is a civil rights issue in the very real sense that when any of one’s Constitutional rights are denied, there is a civil rights violation. And only tyrants and the ignorant fear the wonderment of Constitutional rights…just read the history of the Jacobins, “a democratic club established in Paris in 1789” (my bold).
The ADL should be more concerned with protecting EVERYBODY’s Constitutional rights rather than throwing hissy-fits and threatening further persecution and harassment over the possibility of being “democratically” voted out of X for not being allowed to censor the X site. Rich, isn’t it?
And the same holds true for the Universities that joined the free speech campaign and seem to be conflating civil rights (free speech) with some concept of defending democracy. Perhaps they are confusing the Bastille-like attacks by raving students, faculty and administrators on unpopular speakers as ‘democracy” in action?
The issue of denying individuals their First Amendment rights in 2023 is as daunting and serious as the civil rights movement of the 1960’s.
I am certain that many good people who witnessed the voter suppression and segregation of the 1960’s knew it was wrong and were very bothered by it, yet too intimidated by the threats of reprisals and violence that openly protesting could and did cause. Thankfully, there were those brave enough to take up the battle which ultimately induced the full-throttle support of the DOJ et al to defend and enforce the Constitutional rights of all citizens.
We are at an intersection of interests now facing liberty and that intersection requires the courage to protect every individual’s Constitutional (Civil) Rights. And, history has proven that a new civil rights quest will take the full commitment, cooperation and involvement of the DOJ et al.
As laughable as expecting the DOJ to step in and defend the Constitutional rights of unstylish thought and speech may now sound, it is far better that our elected representatives demand the tasked federal agencies take firm and corrective action before the academic mobs help them to lose their heads in defense of unfettered “democracy”.
COPYRIGHT 2023 DAN SARGIS