Mar
27
2026

Reminder: The First Amendment Allows You To Flaunt Your Moral Depavity in Public

Our Eye Candy du Jour is pretty nasty, and comes via Nellie Bowles' TGIF column:

Nellie mentions other stuff too, but here's her commentary: `

→ Just for a little taste of the streets: You should probably know what is being said in those fun progressive pro-peace protests happening all over the place. Here’s a great example from a protest in Philadelphia this week. A man stands in front of a boisterous crowd: “Until we have done everything in our power to bring the United States to its knees, let us not lose sight of the enemy!” Ok, me too, peace and love, man. He continues: “For every U.S. soldier who comes back in a casket, we cheer!” The crowd cheers.

He also says: “Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansar Allah, all of the resistance forces we celebrate. These popular forces on the ground spend every waking moment in direct confrontation with Zionism and they rely on a strong Iranian state to maintain their fighting capacity.”

He also says: “Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansar Allah, all of the resistance forces we celebrate. These popular forces on the ground spend every waking moment in direct confrontation with Zionism and they rely on a strong Iranian state to maintain their fighting capacity.”

`

To be fair it's not a huge crowd. Still…

At the WSJ's "Free Expression" newsletter, James B. Meigs has more on the morons: The Radicals Next Door. (WSJ gifted link)

Here is one of the hardest things for my liberal friends to accept: Some of our fellow Americans really do hate this country. In fact, they hate the whole Western liberal tradition. They’d like to see democratic governments and free-market economies—especially ours—torn down. By any means necessary.

The radicals I’m talking about include dedicated Marxist revolutionaries and hardcore Islamists, two groups that openly advocate for the violent overthrow of Western governments (and that happily work together). This collection of anti-American extremists isn’t huge. But it’s more than big enough to worry about. Look at how many antifa-style operatives manage to show up at leftist protests around the country. Mayhem—including arson, assault and even gunfire—often follows.

I'm sure tomorrow's "No Kings" protests will avoid encouraging "any means necessary." Or maybe not. (My awful local paper posted a "news" story that's essentially a No Kings ad.)

Also of note:

  • Just don't call it something cute, like "Librtarianism 2.0". Randy Barnett has some thoughts about tweaking the philosophy: Libertarianism Updated.

    I see five distinct ways that libertarian theory needs to up its game.

    First, the need for natural law ethics in addition to natural rights; second, the need to distinguish between libertarian ideal theory and second-best libertarianism in a world of governments and competing nations; third, the need for a libertarian theory of citizenship and civil rights; fourth, the need to separate the public-private binary from the government-nongovernment binary; and fifth, the need for a more refined theory of corporate power and corporate rights.

    He expands on each. It's worth any libertarian's (or semi-libertarian's) consideration.

  • For another philosophical take… Erik W. Matson writes at the Freeman about The Classical Liberal Sensibility.

    In 2019, George Will elaborated his vision of American conservatism in The Conservative Sensibility. American conservatism is a “sensibility,” according to Will, in that it is something “more than an attitude and less than an agenda.” It entails a broad approach to politics flowing from an appreciation of the wisdom of the American founders—especially James Madison. Will’s conservatism does not prescribe specific policy commitments, but rather emphasizes prudential action to preserve the American constitutional order, which Will characterizes as “classically liberal.” To be a true American conservative, then, is to strive to promote and conserve classically liberal social and political arrangements.

    But what does it mean to be a classical liberal? This question, surprisingly, has received some media attention in recent weeks, provoked by the podcaster Katie Miller’s remarkable assertion that “the principles of classical liberal democracy” represent a “woke and deeply leftist ideology.”

    Miller’s assertion has been widely and justly ridiculed in a number of outlets from Yahoo News to The Atlantic to Reason. Her respondents have offered various descriptions of classical liberalism. The articles at Yahoo News and The Atlantic approvingly quote an X post by the actor and podcaster Jon Favreau responding to Miller that equates classical liberalism with a “system of liberal democracy that’s built on free elections, the rule of law, equal rights, and the freedom of speech; assembly, press, and religion.” At The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait describes classical liberalism as “an Enlightenment philosophy, developed by thinkers such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill, built upon individual rights and limited government.” Robby Soave at Reason says that classical liberalism is a “forerunner of modern libertarianism: It is a philosophy that emphasizes individual rights, including civil rights and property rights.”

    I missed all the Katie Miller pushback, but I hope the above links make up for that. I reported on George Will's book here. Spoiler: I liked it a lot.

  • It's a little sad that the competition is so poor. But, overall, the Josiah Bartlett Center brings the good news to Granite Staters: NH ranks first in taxpayer ROI for 11th straight year.

    “New Hampshire is the state with the best taxpayer return on investment, which is due in large part to the fact that it has no state income tax,” WalletHub’s report concludes. “Residents only pay property taxes, sales taxes and excise taxes to the state. The Granite State’s tax resources have had a good impact on crime prevention and the environment, as the state has the lowest crime rate and the third-lowest air pollution in the country. It has one of the best public school systems as well.”

    The top three states for taxpayer ROI—New Hampshire, Florida and South Dakota—have no income tax.

    Of the other New England states, only Rhode Island (19th) ranks in the top half of states on taxpayer ROI.

    WalletHub's study is here: States with the Best & Worst Taxpayer ROI

  • I wasn't ackshually cheering, but anyway… FIRE's Ari Cohn The Big Tech verdicts you’re cheering for are actually terrible for free speech.

    The verdicts against social media companies in California and New Mexico over the past two days reveal a disturbing trend: Americans are increasingly willing to view speech as a “product,” subject to regulation in the same way physical substances like alcohol or tobacco are. Many are cheering the decisions, likening them to landmark lawsuits against Big Tobacco.

    Let’s be clear: An Instagram post isn’t a cigarette. A YouTube short isn’t a shot of whiskey. Social media platforms and the information, ideas, and entertainment they connect people to aren’t tangible items that inherently and invariably have physical impacts on the human body. No matter how you feel about social media, the minute we start treating speech as if it were just another physical product is the minute we hand the government the power to decide what we can read, watch, and say.

    That’s dangerous — and the First Amendment forbids it.

    Sigh. The censors (and litigious lawyers) are forever trying to get around that pesky First Amendment.