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E-Pluribus | December 28, 2022

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E-Pluribus | December 28, 2022

Astrophysics out of focus; financial regulators' backdoor attack on speech; and pay no attention to the big wooden diversity horse.

Jeryl Bier
Dec 28, 2022
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E-Pluribus | December 28, 2022

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A round-up of the latest and best writing and musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Jonathan Kay: In the World of Astrophysics, One Failed Cancel Campaign Led to Another

In his Quillette piece on a dust-up over the naming of a NASA telescope, Jonathan Kay observes that “no good deed goes unpunished” in the “social-justice hothouse.” Kay details the experiences of astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi after Oluseyi debunked false claims of “homophobia” made against former NASA legend James E. Webb.

Oluseyi isn’t a culture warrior (except perhaps by accident). And his investigative report wasn’t written as an explicit attack on the men and women repeating misinformation about Webb. Indeed, Oluseyi didn’t print their names, and was careful to contextualize his conclusions with bridge-building language that emphasized their shared commitment to social justice:

“As a Black scientist from the Deep South who’s had to navigate the shoals of a scientific establishment where I’ve not always felt welcome, I imagine how I would feel if I faced the equivalent—a flagship national observatory named after someone who was accused of being a staunch racist and national enforcer of racial segregation. Thankfully, Webb was not the bigoted homophobe who led State Department witch hunts, as rumored.”

But of course, no good deed goes unpunished in this kind of social-justice hothouse, where status is earned by leading successful vilification campaigns against heretical colleagues, non-ideologically compliant institutions, and (as in this case) deceased historical figures. Because the required posture is one of militant zeal and unflagging moral conviction, there is no face-saving way for activists to back down from their demands even once the underlying factual claims melt away.

Read the whole thing.

David B. Rivkin Jr. and Andrew M. Grossman: The NRA vs. the Censorship ‘Mob’

With the First Amendment standing in the way, some in government seem to always be looking for a loophole. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, David Rivkin Jr. and Andrew Grossman explain one such attempt by the state of New York to silence the National Rifle Association by leaning on the organization’s insurer.

Maria Vullo led the New York State Department of Financial Services, which has broad power to regulate almost every major financial player in the U.S. After the February 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., Ms. Vullo and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a press release stating that the department would “urge” the insurers, banks and companies it regulates “to review any relationships they may have with the National Rifle Association” for “reputational risk.”

The goal was to punish the NRA for its gun-rights advocacy. The press release quoted Ms. Vullo as saying that corporations need to “lead the way” on “positive social change . . . to minimize the chance” of future shootings. “DFS urges all insurance companies and banks doing business in New York to join the companies that have already discontinued their arrangements with the NRA.”

[. . .]

The NRA alleges in a lawsuit that, in a meeting with Lloyd’s, Ms. Vullo acknowledged that these problems were widespread in the marketplace but made clear that her focus was the NRA policies. The key to minimizing liability, she emphasized, was joining the department’s efforts to combat the availability of firearms by weakening the NRA.

Lloyd’s got the message. Despite its reputation for insuring even the most controversial risks, it understood that its regulator considered working with one of the nation’s most broadly supported advocacy organizations to be off-limits. Lloyd’s publicly announced that it was terminating all business with the NRA. It signed a consent decree with DFS permanently barring it from participating in any insurance program with the NRA—rather than the usual remedy of bringing policies into compliance and possibly paying a fine. The decree didn’t cover the non-NRA policies that ran afoul of the same New York laws. The NRA says its corporate insurer refused to renew its policy because it feared similar reprisals after seeing DFS target Lloyd’s and another NRA-affinity insurer.

Read it all here.

John Staddon: Diversity Is a Trojan Horse

On its face, “diversity” appears to be a noble goal. Writing for Minding the Campus, John Staddon says however that what you see isn’t always what you get as the citizens of Troy learned the hard way.

Diversity may be an agreeable outcome, but it should never be a goal for science. Here’s an analogy: confronted with a picture, an admiring viewer exclaims, “What a wonderfully colorful painting!” Would any sensible person infer from this that “colorfulness” is the ne plus ultra of painting; that no painting lacking color can be excellent? Of course not: Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring is not particularly colorful, but it is a great painting. In short, colorfulness is an accidental result of the effort to produce a good painting.

There are some things that are legitimate, intrinsic goals. There are also agreeable conditions that are nevertheless not legitimate goals; call them accidental. In painting, beauty—hard to assess, to be sure, but some aesthetic quality—is an intrinsic goal, but colorfulness is an accidental outcome of the attempt to achieve beauty. In science, truth is an intrinsic goal, but diversity, assessed simply by numerical racial representation, is accidental—like colorfulness in a painting. Diversity is pleasing to many, but it is utterly irrelevant to science, which is entirely about empirically provable fact.

Read it all.

Around Twitter

Some excerpts from a David French thread on how the First Amendment applies to government speech in response to a somewhat controversial thread French posted earlier regarding government actions revealed in The Twitter File series:

Twitter avatar for @DavidAFrench
David French @DavidAFrench
It's apparent from the responses to this tweet that lots of folks are completely unaware of the government speech doctrine--the notion that the government has its own rights as a speaker. (But as I explain in the thread, its rights to speak don't include a right to coerce). /1
Twitter avatar for @DavidAFrench
David French @DavidAFrench
The Twitter files discussion contains so little nuance because it hasn't distinguished different forms of government power. Lots of folks don't know this, but government actors have their own 1A rights even as they're constrained from violating the 1A rights of others. /1
3:30 AM ∙ Dec 28, 2022
163Likes21Retweets
Twitter avatar for @DavidAFrench
David French @DavidAFrench
I like the way Cornell Law's Legal Information Institute defines the doctrine: "Although the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause limits government regulation of private speech, it does not restrict the government when the government speaks for itself." /2
law.cornell.edugovernment speech
3:30 AM ∙ Dec 28, 2022
Twitter avatar for @DavidAFrench
David French @DavidAFrench
Another way of putting it is that "When government speaks, it is not barred by the Free Speech Clause from determining the content of what it says." It could thus refuse to issue a Confederate flag license plate. That's Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans. /6
3:30 AM ∙ Dec 28, 2022
22Likes1Retweet

Oliver Traldi engages with writer Sam Mace on Mace’s essay “The myth of liberal neutrality":

Twitter avatar for @thoughtgenerate
Dr. Sam Mace @thoughtgenerate
theorymatters.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-… @olivertraldi thought you may be interested in my latest piece on why liberalism cannot be considered neutral and the problems that it brings :)
theorymatters.substack.comThe myth of liberal neutralityDoes liberalism really offer a neutral vision of government?
5:52 PM ∙ Dec 28, 2022
Twitter avatar for @olivertraldi
Oliver Traldi @olivertraldi
@thoughtgenerate I agree with a lot of this, but I think - as opposed to virtually everybody, I guess - that neutrality is pretty easy to come by. A parent decides their child will pick where they eat on the child's birthday; the parent is acting neutrally with regard to the restaurant question.
6:13 PM ∙ Dec 28, 2022
Twitter avatar for @thoughtgenerate
Dr. Sam Mace @thoughtgenerate
@olivertraldi I guess my response would be liberal regimes are more choosy about where the child would want to eat than they'd like to admit. Whilst the parent may claim to give true choice there is still a range of options the parent would not entertain even if they claimed otherwise.
6:18 PM ∙ Dec 28, 2022
Twitter avatar for @olivertraldi
Oliver Traldi @olivertraldi
@thoughtgenerate Yeah, for sure! Again, I don't think that intuitively destroys neutrality, since neutrality can come in degrees. I do agree with you that there's a tension between liberalism and democracy!
6:19 PM ∙ Dec 28, 2022

And finally, President Biden celebrates Christmas by throwing some serious shade at his old White House partner Barack Obama. Ouch.

Twitter avatar for @WhiteHouse
The White House @WhiteHouse
President Biden has built the most significant legislative record of any president since Lyndon B. Johnson.
President Biden walks outside.
5:00 PM ∙ Dec 26, 2022
46,760Likes5,479Retweets
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E-Pluribus | December 28, 2022

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E-Pluribus | December 28, 2022

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Marla Hughes
Dec 29, 2022

Excellent choices of content.

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