Common sense thought control

The censorship America really needs can be done by law.

Growing up in a household of teenaged girls in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I have an encyclopedic knowledge of the early days of rock and roll. I also was quite familiar with the adventures of Gerald Lloyd Kookson III, also known as Kookie, the parking valet at 77 Sunset Strip, a fictional address and the name of the TV show with perhaps the best theme song ever.

Kookie was a hipster who constantly combed his hair, which inspired Henry Winkler in his portrayal of Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli a decade-and-a-half later on Happy Days. Connie Stevens and Edd Byrnes (who played Kookie) had a hit record, Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb).

Connie played Cricket on Hawaiian Eye, another of the period’s four Warner Brothers detective shows that weren’t government propaganda unlike NCIS, Hawaii 5-0, and the various FBI sagas where the cops are always right. I prefer Perry Mason reruns because the prosecutor is always wrong. The presumption of innocence is the ginchiest!

I thought about that Kookie song as I read the New York Post story, “MSNBC legal analyst says First Amendment makes U.S. ‘vulnerable,’ calls for ‘common sense’ speech restrictions.”

That would be MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor. I am not saying she is kooky. I just want her to lend me her comb.

Actually, I don’t. Her hair is flatter than Kansas. Why do so many liberal women look like they are passing kidney stones when they are on TV?

McQuade said, “I hope that by dissecting it, explaining it, and educating the public, we can all see disinformation for what it is so that we can begin to push back against it.”

Maddow said, gee willikers, certainly Americans are not dumb enough to fall for disinformation.

McQuade said, “Actually, Rachel, I think we’re more susceptible to it than other countries, and that’s because some of our greatest strengths can also be our Achilles Heel. So, for example, our deep commitment to free speech in our First Amendment. It is a cherished right. It’s an important right in democracy, and nobody wants to get rid of it, but it makes us vulnerable to claims [that] anything we want to do related to speech is censorship.”

I agree that many Americans foolishly and readily accept propaganda. A majority of Americans still believe that carbon dioxide kills life on the planet even though the reality is that carbon dioxide and water make life possible.

Many Americans also fell for believing Putin rigged the 2016 election, that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian plant and that a protest inside the Capitol was an insurrection.

What these outrageous lies share in common is that they all are promoted by the central government in efforts to expand its power (climate change), cover its crimes of spying (Russian Hoax), fix the 2020 election (not investigating the laptop), and imprison a president to keep him from getting a second term (insurrection).

McQuade is not interested in stopping those lies by the government. No, no, no. She is interested in silencing those of us who tell such truths as Obama had the FBI spy on Donald Trump and covered it up with a whacky tale of Putin being in cahoots with The Donald.

But for that darned Constitution, it would be easy for fascists like her to shut us up. She is unhappy with that situation.

She said, “Of course, the Supreme Court has held that all fundamental rights, even the right to free speech, can be limited as long as there is a compelling governmental interest and the restriction is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. But I think any time someone tries to do anything that might limit free speech, people claim censorship.”

How dare they claim censorship is censorship.

Her best line was “We need to have a conversation and common-sense solutions to these things. Instead, we throw out terms like censorship, call each other names, use labels and retreat to our opposite sides. We need to be pragmatic and come up with real solutions.”

Liberals have no problem with liberals calling Trump and any other Republican candidate Hitler, but calling a tranny “he” is a hate crime worthy of a lengthy prison sentence.

Too bad, birdbrain. Dylan Mulvaney is a man, baby.

Oh it could be worse. We could be Canada. Canada Proud, a conservative group, tweeted last night, “Trudeau Liberal justice minister Arif Virani says that putting Canadians under house arrest on suspicion that they may commit a hate crime in the future will ‘help to deradicalize people who are learning things online.’”

Suddenly, Mexico is more free than the USA or Canada.

McQuade’s call for common sense thought control — which is what ending free speech actually is about — reminds me of common sense gun control. Just as gun control misses its stated target of reducing black-on-black murders in urban America, so common sense thought control will miss its stated target of ridding America of propaganda. They both will miss for the same reason because they strip Americans of protecting themselves.

Our government went loco with lies in covid. Cloth masks don’t stop a virus. Social distancing doesn’t stop a virus. Keeping people from using ivermectin doesn’t stop a virus. Making people stay indoors doesn’t stop a virus. Shutting down the economy doesn’t stop a virus.

The government played up the virus. Putting covid patients in nursing homes made the death count rise immediately. The government paid off hospitals to fluff the covid numbers up. The deaths were counted not by people who died OF covid, but rather people who died WITH covid, which would include people who died in a car wreck.

If Americans had common sense, they would censor the government, not themselves. Judges would refuse to issue gag orders on defendants after a U.S. attorney has leaked selective information to a friendly press. In fact, we would end sting operations and require an actual victim before prosecuting a fraud case.

This common sense infringement of the government’s speech could be done next week by law, but Congress has no common sense left. The Democrats crave more government and the government has bought off (or blackmailed) half the Republicans. Obi Wan Kenobi Supreme Court is our only hope.

This has led the New York Times to attack the Supreme Court in “The Crisis in Teaching Constitutional Law.”

Those mean nine old men. Oh wait, it no longer is a boys club. Those mean five old men and four old women.

The column said once upon a time, teaching constitutional law was simple: “First you learned the basics: the Supreme Court’s power to say what the Constitution means. Then you read and discussed cases that set precedents for different parts of the Constitution — the commerce clause, presidential powers, due process, equal protection and so on. Finally you studied how the court balances individual liberties against the government’s need to act in the public interest.”

Actually the only need the government has is to protect individual liberties. We seem to be returning to that, which is why the left is pissed.

The nut paragraphs in the piece were:

“Teaching constitutional law today is an enterprise in teaching students what law isn’t,” Leah Litman, a professor at the University of Michigan law school, told me.

Rebecca Brown, at the University of Southern California, has been teaching constitutional law for 35 years. “While I was working on my syllabus for this course, I literally burst into tears,” she told me. “I couldn’t figure out how any of this makes sense. Why do we respect it? Why do we do any of it? I’m feeling very depleted by having to teach it.”

Well, Clarence Thomas, you made Rebecca Brown cry. Are you happy? Are you proud? You should be ashamed of yourself.

In the film Adam’s Rib, Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy play a husband and wife arguing. When he starts winning, she begins to cry. He says, “Here we go again. The old juice. Guaranteed heart melter. A few female tears, stronger than acid.”

When Professor Brown is done crying, I want to borrow her comb.

Ah, Kookie. His part as the heartthrob on the show ended in 1963 as did the childhoods of my three eldest sisters who married that summer. It was a simpler time, when we had fewer laws, less power in Washington, and more freedom.