Short Quiz – First Amendment “Free Speech” and Cancel Culture

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Short Quiz – First Amendment “Free Speech” and Cancel Culture

Post by johnkarls »

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1. Does the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protect Freedom of Speech?

2. Has the U.S. Supreme Court recognized an extremely-few “common sense” exceptions, such as NOT FALSELY yelling “fire” in a crowded theater?

3. Nevertheless, in the past decade, has the concept of “politically incorrect” morphed into full-blown “cancellation culture”?

4. And do, for example, such omnipresent accusations of racism (whether or not accurate) preclude any discussion of important topics?

5. For example, does Yours Truly regularly participate in a weekly Zoom chat with members of his Harvard Law School Class of 1967 who, on at least one occasion, had been so eager to launch attacks that they exhibited an embarrassing lack of reading comprehension – as demonstrated at viewtopic.php?f=714&t=2270&p=3073&hilit ... dc6f#p3073?

6. In particular, for our 8/15/2022 Zoom chat, did I send an e-mail beforehand on 8/13/2022 to participants re the pending U.S. Supreme case of “Students for Fair Admission vs. Harvard” saying my agenda proposal had been approved that we discuss “Students For Fair Admissions vs. Harvard” and the Harvard Law School website “53% students of color” statistic by saying vis-à-vis our 7/25/2022 Zoom chat which had NOT focused on affirmative action but rather the US News & World Report law-school rankings –

“I reminded everyone about how Nancy Schectman Nemon has often reminded us of how difficult it was for ‘women’ (her term) to find legal positions in 1967 and how she, in effect, was the beneficiary of ‘affirmative action’ in beginning her 43.5-year career in the Boston Office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (which was D/HEW back then). And surmised that the same may be true today for the HLS 56% ‘students of color.’ Accordingly I implored everyone, noting that one of the components of the USN&WR formula is the proportion of graduates who obtain a position within 12 months of graduation requiring a law degree, to encourage all of our colleagues in our old firms to hire HLS ‘students of color’ (ditto all of our friends & acquaintances in a ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ campaign to do the same re hiring and re importuning their friends & acquaintances to do the same in an unending chain).”

And was I was accused near the beginning of our 8/15/2022 Zoom chat of being “a racist” and later were e-mails received from several other classmates who had leapt to the conclusion that I was against “affirmative action” rather than proposing a practical modus vivendi to support it? And needless to say, was there only a brief and irrelevant discussion of affirmative action in the wake of the chilling “racist” accusation?

7. Was my reputation defended by Peter Trooboff who is still active in Covington & Burling and who worked on their Supreme Court Amicus Curiae brief in “Students For Fair Admissions vs. Harvard”? Had Peter been unable to attend the 8/15/2022 Zoom chat but said in my defense which was circulated to the group --

John

Sorry I had to miss today. It is quite surprising and regrettable that your summary of the case*** would be viewed as racist. The core of the Petitioner’s argument is that the Harvard and North Carolina admission policies and procedures have resulted in the actual denial of admission to Asian-American students. Indeed the Petitioner’s brief pulls no punches in saying almost explicitly — “Harvard did it to Jews in the 1920’s and 1930’s and has done the same to Asian-Americans in the 1990’s and 21st Century. “

There is a legal aspect to Petitioner’s argument based on whether the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act (similarly interpreted) allow any consideration of race for admissions purposes (I.e., Brown v. Board of Education means no use of race for any purpose ever — strict scrutiny can never be enough of a control — never means never!). And there is a factual aspect, can Harvard and North Carolina achieve diversity without taking account holistically of race in admissions procedures and are there alternative methods that ignore race that Harvard and North Carolina could utilize to achieve the same diversity as that achieved under current procedures. The latter factual issues were the subject of a lengthy District Court trial with many experts that reached conclusions in favor of the Harvard and North Carolina procedures that the Court of Appeals upheld after a careful and thorough review of the trial court proceedings and findings applying a strict scrutiny standard. To me the most unusual aspect of the case is the extent to which Petitioner seeks to retry the factual issues in the Supreme Court. That explains, I expect, the structure of the Harvard reply brief that focuses initially on the attempt to retry the facts in the Supreme Court.

Peter

[*** My “summary of the case” in my 8/13/2022 e-mail which was called “racist” had said in toto – “SCOTUS has granted certiorari in “Students for Fair Admission Inc. vs. President & Fellows of Harvard College” with oral argument scheduled for 10/31/2022 (please see https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/c ... d-college/). If memory serves, appellants are primarily Asian-Americans whose admissions suffer in order to admit unqualified African-Americans.”]

8. Indeed, have ReadingLiberally-SaltLake’s attempts to engage in First Amendment “free speech” in examining public-policy issues over our 17.5 years of existence often been met by “cancel culture” – with such “cancel culture” warriors often taking contradictory positions?

9. In fact, haven’t many attempts to “cancel” ReadingLiberally-SaltLake been launched by internet providers, e-mail providers (e.g., gmail, yahoo, etc.), etc., etc., apparently based on mindless algorithms noting the use of words commonly employed in public-policy discussions?

10. Don’t our weekly e-mails start, before “Dear Friends,” with “To Each of Our 224 Members One-By-One – for reasons explained in the 4 postings in Sec. 2 of www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org”?

11. Did we first become aware on 9/1/2018 of a refusal by major e-mail providers to deliver our weekly e-mails courtesy of our “Canary In The Coal Mine” – Barbara Washburn?

12. Is Barbara typical of 4 dozen or so of our weekly e-mail recipients who are old friends whom I haven’t seen in decades but who like to keep in touch from their locations around the world -- at least in touch one-way by reading the e-mails?

13. In Barbara’s case, did she especially like the e-mails that contained the quizzes and suggested answers because she was teaching high school history for the two years that I knew her 1965-6 after she received a Masters from Harvard Ed School and she liked the insights from someone (Yours Truly) who had read 12-15 historical tomes and biographies PER YEAR for the 33 years he was married to the co-author of the nation’s best-selling High-School World-History textbook (McGraw-Hill with National Geographic illustrations) in order to uncover overlooked nuggets for possible inclusion in the next edition, of which there were 6 during the 33 years - as well as continuing to read 20-25 tomes/biographies PER YEAR for the then-19.5 years since the “gavel went down” because Old Dogs don’t learn new tricks?

14. Did Barbara also like the public-policy raison d’être of our organization because, after I knew her, she attended Georgetown Law School and then spent her career as the chief tax-law lobbyist in Washington DC for General Motors?

15. So had Barbara, whom I hadn’t seen or heard from in 52.5 years (she had never participated in one of our meetings via Skype), been receiving our weekly e-mails for more than a decade?

16. And when they stopped arriving, did she e-mail me on 9/1/2018 to find out what had happened?

17. Did we immediately complain to the e-mail providers that e-mail has effectively displaced the U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. Postal Service is prohibited by law from steaming open letters to ascertain what they contain so that the U.S. Postal Service can decide whether to deliver them?

18. Were our complaints (surprise, surprise) unsuccessful since e-mail providers are private companies that are NOT prohibited from CENSORING e-mail traffic?

19. Is that why our weekly e-mails are sent ONE-BY-ONE to our 224 recipients?

20. Does this require approximately 3 hours every week?

21. Does Yours Truly NOT mind spending 3 hours every week doing this because he is simultaneously listening to his favorite operas and performers from the Metropolitan Opera’s on-line streaming service containing more than 700 recordings of performances over the last century?

22. Is it a testament to the “odd ball” character of Yours Truly as an opera lover that ReadingLiberally-SaltLake did NOT cease to exist in 2018?

23. How many other benign publicly-spirited public-policy organizations do you think were successfully CANCELLED by e-mail providers because they lacked an “odd ball” opera lover?

24. Is it healthy for a so-called “democracy” to permit only “free speech” from sources of which e-mail providers approve?

25. Can you think of “cancel culture” warriors in addition to e-mail providers who are dooming “democracy”???

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