Latest Kim R Holmes News | Fox News

The new intolerance: Attorneys general try to shut down free speech

Tue, 12 Apr 2016 05:00:00 -0400

Last week more than a dozen attorneys general gathered in New York. You might think they were there to discuss how to combat crime, the heroin epidemic… maybe even terrorism. They weren’t. Instead they were conferring on how to use the law to punish scientists and researchers who question climate change orthodoxy.

That’s right—if your scientific research bucks the party line on global warming, you could face government-inspired lawsuits. The ringmaster of this legal circus, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, was not at all subtle about what he was trying to achieve. He vowed “collectively, collaboratively and aggressively” to investigate whether fossil-fuel companies have misled shareholders about the risks of climate change. And it’s not just state officials who are itching to prosecute dissident scientists.

A couple of weeks earlier, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch had told a congressional hearing that she had asked the FBI to look into this question of climate “fraud.”

This is perfectly Orwellian. Put aside what you may think about climate change. Should government lawyers be threatening to punish scientists and researchers who may, for example, merely question why the results of some computer models don’t match up with real world events? Should the iron hand of the law be employed to enforce conformity in science, supposedly in the name of a “scientific consensus,” when in fact there is nothing approaching consensus as to whether human activity has us headed for global-warming catastrophe? And if money is such a corrupter of science, as Schneiderman and others argue, why are not the billions of dollars funneled into pro-climate change research, often through government subsidies, fair game for accusations of “fraud”? After all, there are documented instances of pro-climate change scientists misrepresenting evidence in the now infamous “climategate” case at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.

You might think such nonsense is isolated, but it’s not. A new breed of intolerance is sweeping all across the land, and to the surprise of many it’s not coming from the right, but the left. Judges, prosecutors, government officials, politicians and activists are increasingly using public shaming rituals and the force of the law to impose their views on people with whom they disagree.

Corporate leaders are forced to resign if they don’t toe the line of a particular political agenda. Religious people are punished with fines for their personal beliefs, while a city government (New York City) threatens to fine employers up to $250,000 for “misgendering” bathrooms (i.e., not allowing transgender people to choose which ones to use).

Courts routinely overturn laws and referenda over policy differences—a practice that is patently anti-democratic and in many cases unconstitutional. Colleges and universities across America have abandoned free speech and open debate in favor of “speech codes” and “safe spaces” where students need never hear a viewpoint they don’t already embrace. “Due process,” too, is in short supply on campus, where administrators send students accused of sexual assault to kangaroo courts.

Not even our local governments are immune from the new spirit of intolerance. A seventh grader, for example, was recently expelled from school for sharing an inhaler with a girl suffering an asthma attack, even though doing so likely saved the girl’s life.

There’s a pattern here: All of these abuses are being done in the name of progressive liberalism. No matter what the cause, progressives are increasingly willing to use any means necessary—the law, public shaming and in some cases even a threat of violence (“no justice no peace”) to get their way.

It’s not even correct to call progressivism liberal anymore. It has, in fact, become its opposite, an illiberal code of coercion and intolerance—and a movement intent on shaming all those who disagree. It is fast becoming a political force hostile to freedom, democracy and even equality. It champions intolerance in the name of tolerance, closed-mindedness in the name of open-mindedness, and hatred in the name of compassion. It’s the master of double-think—to pretend things other than they really are.

Whatever progressivism is, it is not the liberalism of yesteryear. It’s become something much more radical—and mendacious. And it’s threatening the constitutional order, not to mention the civil peace, of the country.

ObamaCare mess begs the question: how can we get America back to great?

Fri, 15 Nov 2013 10:15:36 -0500

Hundreds of thousands -- perhaps millions -- of people have lost their health care coverage under ObamaCare. And it’s not the botched website or even bureaucratic incompetence (although there’s plenty of the latter to go around) that accounts for the failings of the new health program.

Rather it’s the misguided idea that government should replace the individual and his or her doctor in making health care decisions. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the proper role of government.

Both of us have written books about the greatness of America. We’ve looked at the history of what made America a successful country and are deeply disturbed that the nation has gotten off track.

[pullquote]

We are concerned by the vision of America, represented most baldly by ObamaCare, which assumes that only a centralized government can solve vast social and economic problems such as health care.

If our history tells us anything, it’s that such a vision is a mirage.

Government didn’t make America great. It was individual Americans possessing the freedom to make the important decisions in their lives.

They formed voluntary associations and insurance companies to protect themselves from ill health.

They gathered together in churches and community halls to solve problems on their own, without the heavy hand of government.

It was the miracle of the American ethos interacting with limited government and a free economy that made America the wealthiest, most successful nation on earth.

The key assumption was that no government would ever be as effective as a free people in solving complex social and economic problems.

If this were manifest only in programs like ObamaCare, perhaps we could worry less. But it actually is part of a much larger trend. The growth of government across the board is not only drowning the nation in debt, it is killing the free spirit of the American people.

America was once a place where people could pursue the American Dream with encouragement from the government. Government would protect us in our daily lives and make sure the economy was free enough for people to go as far as their energy and talents would take them. Unlike in Europe, Americans did not want government to take care of their every need, or control their decisions.

Another part of American exceptionalism is a willingness to take care of those who truly cannot take care of themselves. This is our duty as Americans and has spawned many charitable organizations and churches. Government does not need to be in control of charity.

What made America different -- exceptional, if you will -- is the historical fact that Americans embraced a culture, economy and system of government that put a premium on freedom. People were free to prove themselves, which meant that some failed while others succeeded.

Freedom of opportunity, not equality of results, set America apart.

Millions of immigrants came to America looking for this freedom and were (and still are) willing to take that chance.

George Santayana once said that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” If Americans cannot remember what worked and what didn’t work in their past, they are condemned to lose their future.

It’s not about resurrecting the past. Some things are obviously best left behind. Rather, it’s understanding that America’s unique path to success as a nation depended on very specific things.

We would never have become a great nation had we let others do for us what we, as individuals, felt obligated to do for ourselves.

Freedom was not some abstract principle but the life blood of everyday life. It worked so well because it harnessed a secret about the truth of human nature -- that everyone yearns to be free, prosperous and, yes, secure -- to the service of the greater good.

The people who constructed ObamaCare forgot all this. They overlooked that it is unjust to punish one set of people -- e.g., force them out of their current insurance -- in order to subsidize another.

They forgot that the genius of the American system -- in the past -- was that it was decentralized, allowing people the freedom to experiment in order to solve problems on their own.

In this respect, for example, it would have been far better to have reformed whatever ailed our health care system by providing people with more choices, and to help those who needed it to obtain adequate protection, rather than have the government dictate those choices for them – and denouncing as “substandard” the choices many had freely made.

But that would have required President Obama to change his world view and his understanding of American history.

We can turn America around if we focus on what made the country great in the first place: an abiding faith in the individual and respect for his or her freedom; the beliefs that the best government is one that governs least and that the bonds of trust that bind civil society together are still the very things that made our freedom possible.

Remembering that is how we get America back to great.

Will Obama, Kerry cave on Ukraine just like they caved on Syria?

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 14:00:00 -0500

The Obama administration would like nothing more than to find an off ramp from the Ukrainian crisis. An unwelcome distraction from its domestic agenda, Ukraine is also dangerous territory for an administration that is unsure of its footing in foreign policy.

The last thing President Obama wants is an ongoing international crisis that could focus attention on the need for him to stop the retrenchment of American power.

So what better way to defuse the crisis than to try the Syria gambit? By this I don’t mean the threat of force, but rather talking tough at the beginning but caving at the slightest hint of compromise.

[pullquote]

The president’s critics may think that his Syria policy has been a disaster, but that’s not how the administration sees it. To them it resulted in an agreement for Syria to abolish its chemical weapons.

Never mind that this process has stalled and that President Bashar al-Assad used the time to consolidate his gains over the rebels. The administration still believes that the “hit them hard at first but then cave” approach worked in Syria.

And they may think it will work in Ukraine as well. Secretary of State John Kerry has been blowing hot and cold from the very beginning of the crisis.

He talked tough early on, more or less calling the Russians liars and lecturing them about being on the wrong side of history. But Wednesday, after meeting in Paris with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Kerry hinted at possible soft-landing to come.

Despite the lack of any substantial progress, he asserted that the talks were promising because they marked "the beginning of a negotiation." A negotiation toward what exactly was unclear. But therein lays a clue about what could happen next.

Here is how it could go down in Ukraine.

At the first hint of Russian flexibility -- it doesn’t need to be much; a mere vague phrase of conciliation by Lavrov or Putin will do -- the administration grabs it and turns it into Kerry’s “beginning of a negotiation.”

It could involve international oversight of a referendum in Crimea, which likely would go in Russia’s favor. Or it could result in talks over reinstating the original Ukrainian agreement, which the Russians claim has been overturned.

There would be plenty of people cheering Kerry on in this direction. The Germans and the French don’t want to rupture economic relations with Russia and would likely jump at the chance.

At home a bevy of experts who fear confrontation would celebrate the “breakthrough” as a diplomatic triumph.

Amidst all the confusion over what the negotiations actually mean would be the reality that Putin’s troops are already inside Crimea. That hard, cold reality would hang over any talks, and the most likely outcome would be at least de facto Western tolerance if not outright acceptance of the “facts on the ground.”

There’s only one problem with this scenario. It may not be the one Putin has in mind. He may actually want more than Crimea.

At this point we frankly don’t know what his endgame is. But we cannot rule out that he may surprise us all and double down on a hardline that will not give Obama the way out he seeks.

In the meantime we should be careful not to convey that Russia has an historical claim to Ukraine. This will only encourage Putin to dig in his heels and not cooperate.

The Ukrainian people, not the Kremlin, have an historical claim to Ukraine. Let them decide their fate -- as a nation, not province by province.