Are We Living in a "Post-Decency Era"?
Free speech, freedom of the press, civility and sanity are all casualties (of war) in these indecent times. | PLUS: Can we stop China from buying U.S. farmland? | Elephant in the Room
A legal scholar declares America is now living in a “post-decency era.”
Jonathan Turley, a highly influential law professor and writer who has provided legal counsel to significant cases involving free speech, national security, age-discrimination, and is also an expert on Presidential impeachments - is now calling our current times the era of “post-decency” in his recent article: Post-Decency Politics: House Democrats Use Hearings to Attack Both Free Speech and a Free Press.
“At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Those words were first asked by lawyer Joseph Welch in his confrontation with Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) during the Senate’s infamous Army-McCarthy hearings. This week, nearly 70 years later, Welch’s words seem more relevant than ever after House Democrats savaged two journalists who attempted to explain a government effort to censor citizens.
It was only the latest of a series of hearings in which FBI agents and other whistleblowers, experts and journalists have been personally attacked for raising free-speech concerns. Last week’s hearing showed definitively that we live in a post-decency era.
Turley then recounts the recent attacks on journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger during their testimony before the U.S. House. The hearing was called to attack the credibility of the “Twitter Files” reports. Democrat Reps like Stacey Plaskett and Debbie Wasserman Shultz immediately attacked their credibility as journalists—portraying them as biased Republicans. Turley writes, “The witnesses (Taibbi and Shellenberger) were attacked on everything but their choice of socks.”
Taibbi pushed back, saying that “I’m not a ‘so-called’ journalist” and giving a brief description of his award-winning career at Rolling Stone magazine and other publications. Yet other committee members also attacked the honesty of the two journalists. And after failed efforts to claim they were Elon Musk’s corrupt “scribes,” or limited by him in their investigations, the committee members attacked their ethics.
The witnesses were attacked on everything but their choice of socks. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) even claimed that “being a Republican witness today certainly casts a cloud over your objectivity.” When Wasserman Schultz impugned the two journalists’ honesty and ethics, she immediately “reclaimed (her) time” to prevent them from defending themselves. When the subcommittee chair gave them a chance to answer her claims, Wasserman Schultz and her Democratic colleagues objected that a witness was allowed to defend himself after being blocked from doing so.
In an earlier attack, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) prevented Taibbi from answering a question and dismissed his effort to defend his position, saying: “This is how it works now. I’ll ask the question and you try to provide an answer if you can.”
After attacking the very notion of investigating the government for possible censorship efforts, the attacks then took a particularly menacing turn as some members began to demand confidential information on the journalists’ sources. Taibbi pushed back and said he could not reveal information on his sources, but that only seemed to make the Democrats more irate.
Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) pressed Taibbi to say that Musk was a source. Taibbi again replied, “I can’t give it to you, unfortunately, because this is a question of sourcing, and I’m a journalist. I don’t reveal my sources.”
And that’s when it got ugly.
Garcia effectively declared that she had trapped Taibbi because the “only logical conclusion” was that Musk was his source. When House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) objected to badgering a reporter for his sources, Democrats piled on. Plaskett declared that if Taibbi wouldn’t comment on Musk, it must mean the Twitter owner was the source in question.
It was a chilling but defining moment.
Democrats abandoned their principles of free speech, freedom of the press, free association and freedom of religion for over a decade now. Turley calls Biden “arguably the most anti-free speech president since John Adams, and the Democratic Party is largely committed to censorship and speech regulations.
Many Democratic figures are now declaring hate speech to be unprotected under the 1st Amendment. Turley — one of the finest of America’s constitutional experts — calls that “categorically untrue.”
Democrats are also adopting the old Soviet tactic of launching unhinged personal attacks on journalists, forcing them to reveal sources and calling truthful reports a “public threat.”
House Democrats—who support vaccine mandates, lockdowns, shutting down media outlets they disagree with, and allowing indecency and degeneracy to be performed before our children—are cutting their historical ties with free speech and free press principles.
What is left is raw rage and politics.
There is a major difference between today and the McCarthyism of 1954. Back then, when attorney Welch objected to the Republican senator trashing his client, the press lionized Welch. Yet, as noted by Shellenberger and Taibbi, today’s media have remained largely silent as fellow reporters were attacked for covering the Twitter censorship story.
If Joseph Welch appeared today to support free speech, he might very well be dismissed as some QAnon conspiracy theorist or “Putin lover.” But his words from the past — that “until this moment … I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness” — should be read to every one of these members. It is not that we expect decorum from our leaders today, but decency itself now seems as irrelevant as reason.
The Democratic Party today resembles the ideals espoused by Chairman Mao and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
There’s nothing decent about that.
(Unfortunately, the Republican Party doesn’t provide much counterbalance. That Party is also trending authoritarian. Indecent, indeed.)
Six States Seek to Stop Foreign Land Ownership
Several western states in the U.S. are seeking to block foreign ownership of farmland.
State legislatures in California, Arizona, Washington, Utah, Montana, and Texas all have House or Senate bills drafted that will ban the sale or acquisition of property by foreign entities or governments. The Arizona bill (House Bill 2376) specifically targets China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. The Texas bill (Senate Bill 147) targets China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
But it’s not going to be enough, according to High Country News:
The Chinese surveillance balloon seen over Montana in January riled up state legislatures and got them asking the question: How much control should foreign countries have over U.S. land and natural resources?
Senate Republicans in Texas answered, “None whatsoever,” advancing a bill that would prohibit Chinese, Russian and Iranian citizens from owning not just land, but even a home, under the pretext of national security. “This bill may prove even more significant in light of a Chinese spy balloon that traversed across the continental United States,” said Sen. Lois Kolkorst, the bill’s author.
When bills single out individuals by their nationality, they draw startling parallels to the xenophobic Alien Land laws of the 20th century. They also raise concerns about their own legality and ethics.
Texas is not the only state looking to curtail foreign land ownership in the U.S., however. Five states across the West — and 24 across the country — have proposed laws that aim to restrict various forms of land, property and natural resource ownership by foreign citizens and companies.
The bills generally focus on “foreign adversaries” like China, even though the data shows that Canadians and Europeans possess far more property than citizens of any other country. Of the 40 million acres of U.S. agricultural land purchased by foreign interests, 0.9% are owned by China. Only 73 acres were linked to Russia, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The majority of foreign-owned ag land — 62% — is controlled by Canadian and European business interests.
“Rather than focusing specifically on another nation, I think we should focus on absentee ownership in general,” said professor Loka Ashwood, a rural sociologist at the University of Kentucky. An absentee owner is a person who lives outside of the county or country where the land in question is located. It’s the primary way that land becomes consolidated by corporate agribusiness, said Ashwood. Such businesses — including the Seaboard Corporation, a global food, energy and transportation company, and Border Valley Trading, one of the largest exporters of compressed hay products in the West — aren’t always foreign, Ashwood added.
By emphasizing the “who” — the individual countries — versus the “what” – multilayered business conglomerates, the proposed bills fall short of tackling corporate consolidation of land and natural resources, said Ashwood.
Right. States need to include banning Bill Gates and anyone or anything with ties to the World Economic Forum.
Naming certain countries does give off a racist vibe—these are nations we’re not technically at war with. Every state should ban all foreign investment in not only farmland but investment in any parts to the domestic food supply chain. Otherwise, crafty bad actors may find back doors into owning American farmland that work around the laws.
Big conglomerates and super rich folks are good at that.
Speaking of this current Post-Decency Era…
Elephant in the Room
NC high school cheerleader has heart attack during warm-up at competition
College student Liza Burke suffers brain hemorrhage on spring break in Mexico
FAA admits to airline pilot that his myocarditis was “possibly” vaccine induced.
Director of Kentucky Office of Rural Health - Age 46 - Dies Unexpectedly