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Don’t Look for Good Guys in Trump’s Battle With the FBI

You don’t have to be a fan of the current president, or of the vindictive way in which he wields power, to recognize that he raises valid concerns about the FBI’s investigation into his presidential campaign’s involvement with Russian interference in the 2016 election. President Donald Trump may brandish the Department of Justice (DOJ) like a bludgeon, but he does so against an FBI and intelligence community that have powerful weapons of their own and a history of putting them to sketchy use.

“Justice Department officials have shifted an administrative review of the Russia investigation closely overseen by Attorney General William P. Barr to a criminal inquiry,” The New York Times reports. “The move gives the prosecutor running it, John H. Durham, the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents, to convene a grand jury and to file criminal charges.”

Yes, this means that the Justice Department is criminally investigating its own role in another investigation.

This investigation of an investigation is widely portrayed as a blatant political move by the Trump administration to discredit the work behind the Mueller Report and to retaliate against officials who participated in its creation. Honestly, Trump’s frantic search for allies foreign and domestic on the matter makes that portrayal pretty easy, though it doesn’t cover the full picture. In this scenario, the FBI is a tribune of the people, battling valiantly against the usurper in the White House.

But Durham’s participation casts doubt on that portrayal, given that he is “a widely respected and veteran prosecutor who has investigated C.I.A. torture and broken up Mafia rings,” as the Times acknowledges. Having also exposed misconduct within the FBI in the past, and sent a corrupt senior agent to prison, he would also seem well-suited for looking into FBI actions partially based on CIA information.

Also casting doubt on that white hats vs. black hats take on the Trump administration’s struggle with the FBI is the fact that the federal law enforcement agency has always been a lousy candidate for people’s tribune. It’s long been fingered in efforts to muzzle grassroots dissidents, and has repeatedly involved itself in political shenanigans.

“The FBI…has placed more emphasis on domestic dissent than on organized crime and, according to some, let its efforts against foreign spies suffer because of the amount of time spent checking up on American protest groups,” the Senate’s Church Committee complained in 1976. “The FBI developed new covert programs for disrupting and discrediting domestic political groups, using the techniques originally applied to Communists,” that report also noted.

In this case, the techniques used by the FBI against Trump and friends were originally developed for foreign intelligence and anti-terrorist operations.

“The FBI told a secret federal surveillance court in 2016 that it believed Carter Page, a onetime foreign policy aide to President Donald Trump’s campaign, ‘has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government’ in its efforts to interfere in the presidential election,” USA Today reported last year.

Ironically created as a check on domestic surveillance after the Church Committee report, and then altered by the fear-fueled Patriot Act after the 9/11 terrorist attack, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court is now seen as a poster child of the surveillance state most recently and dramatically unmasked by Edward Snowden.

“The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court is no longer serving its constitutional function of providing a check on the executive branch’s ability to obtain Americans’ private communications,” former Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court participant and U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson wrote in 2015. “Dramatic shifts in technology and law have changed the role of the FISA Court since its creation in 1978—from reviewing government applications to collect communications in specific cases, to issuing blanket approvals of sweeping data collection programs affecting millions of Americans.”

Those “sweeping data collection programs” former CIA officer and NSA contractor Snowden reveals in his new book, Permanent Record, make it “technologically feasible for a single government to collect all the world’s digital communications, store them for ages, and search through them at will.”

That capability makes it possible for the intelligence community and its allies in law enforcement to delve through endless records looking for something to use against anybody who annoys the wrong people. And don’t we all have something in our private communications?

President Trump claims he’s that “anybody” who has run up against a deep state conspiracy by long-time government employees who actively oppose his elected administration. It’s a self-serving appeal to conspiracy theories by a particularly clumsy politician who seems to excel at making his own problems. But, yes, he does have a point.

“Of course, nowhere do the people actually rule,” philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and Its Enemies, pointed out in 1988. “It is governments that rule (and, unfortunately, also bureaucrats, our civil servants—or our uncivil masters, as Winston Churchill called them—whom it is difficult, if not impossible, to make accountable for their actions).”

And our “uncivil masters” do have their own agendas that may be good, bad, or indifferent—and may certainly run contrary to the interests of other factions, or of the people over whom they reign.

“It had become clear, to me at least, that the repeated evocations of terror by the political class were not a response to any specific threat or concern but a cynical attempt to turn terror into a permanent danger that required permanent vigilance enforced by unquestionable authority,” Snowden wrote in his book of the arguments fueling the growth of intelligence-state apparatus, such as the FISA Court that authorized a wiretap on Page.

None of this should be taken to mean that Trump is the white hat in the battle against black-hat FBI and intelligence community officials. There is plenty to dislike in Trump’s conduct during his campaign, his behavior in office, his use and abuse of power, and his rallying of loyalists against out-groups.

But even if they unseat a president opposed by many Americans, the FBI and the intelligence community are not the heroes you’re looking for. They control frightening and secretive powers, and all too often act to advance agendas of their own. The FBI may take down a politician you dislike this year, only to turn its weapons against you in the future.

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California Has the Nation’s Worst Poverty Rate, New Census Data Shows

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

The US Census Bureau released new poverty data this month, and California once again has the nation’s highest poverty rate, according to the “Supplemental Poverty Measure.”

According to the SPM, California’s poverty rate in 2018 was 18.1 percent, followed by Louisiana with 16.5 percent, and Florida, with 16.2 percent.

The states with the lowest poverty rates per the period were Iowa at 6.7 percent, Minnesota at 7 percent, and Kansas at 7.8 percent.

The 2018 report shows a slight general decline in poverty rates throughout the nation in recent years. According to the 2015 report, for example, California’s poverty rate was over twenty percent, and the state with the lowest poverty rate — Minnesota — was at eight percent.

The SPM measure contrasts with the old “official” poverty measure developed in the 1960s. The old measure tends to apply a blanket standard for poverty nationwide, but the SPM takes into account local housing costs and also ” extends the official poverty measure by taking account of many of the government programs designed to assist low-income families and individuals.”

Using the old measure, California ranks considerably better, because, of course, nominal incomes in California are considerably higher than in rural states and many other regions with much lower costs of living. Poverty rates in places like Mississippi, Louisiana, and New Mexico tend to be driven by low worker productivity, low-education levels, local corruption, and unfriendly business environments. But, the cost of living in these areas also tends to be relatively low, mitigating the effects of lower incomes.

The situation is different in California where relatively high wages are often negated by very high living costs. And not surprisingly, California often dominates lists of the least-affordable housing markets in the United States.

Homelessness

The homelessness data coming out of California is also among the worst.

When it comes to homeless persons as a percentage of the overall population, California is the fourth-worst in the nation, behind only New York, Hawaii, and Oregon. 0.33% of California’s population (or 33 people per 10,000) is estimated to be homeless on any given night, according to the Point-In-Time survey of homelessness.

And while California is not the worst in terms of the proportion of the population that is homeless, the state is among the worst in delivering state services designed to lessen homelessness overall. Among the top-ten states with the highest percentage of homeless, California has the highest number of unsheltered homeless.1 Nearly 69 percent of the homeless population in California is estimated to be on the street. Massachusetts, by contrast, provides shelter to over 95 percent of its homeless population. Unsheltered homeless are also far less likely to receive treatment for mental illness or urgent health issues.

Some may note, of course, that Calfornia’s warm weather, makes it easier for the homeless to be unsheltered. This is no doubt a factor, but if we look at Florida’s homeless population, we find that 43 percent of the homeless population in that state is unsheltered — a difference of 25 percentage points. It appears unlikely that a warm climate is the only factor.

The importance of housing costs to the issue of homelessness is made more clear when we note that chronic homelessness is only a fraction of the total homeless population. It is sometimes suggested that the cost of housing is a not a significant factor in homelessness because most homeless persons — it is claimed — are mentally ill persons incapable of paying even a small rental fee.

The truth, however, is that in most cases, well over two-thirds of the homeless population is temporarily homeless. Many of these are families, many of whom have been evicted from housing due to missed rent payments, lost jobs, and other temporary situations. These events are made far worse and longer lasting by high rents and high housing prices. In California, for instance, only 26 percent of the homeless are chronically homeless. Most homeless people are people engaged in a search for permanent housing.

Thanks to numerous land use, environmental, zoning, and building code restrictions imposed on builders in California, however, the cost of living remains extremely high in the state. The tax burden is among the highest in the nation, putting many middle-class earners far closer to the poverty line in case of temporary job loss. Even non-housing costs are well above most other states.

California may be the land of Silicon Valley billionaires, but thanks to the state’s regulatory environment, the prosperity is rarely felt by people of more ordinary means. Wealthy residents don’t want their views obstructed, and they don’t want to have to look at low-cost housing on their drives to work. So, they work to ensure that government regulations minimize new housing construction, thus further driving up housing prices and rents. New housing construction isn’t keeping up with population growth.

High taxes are a burden on the middle and lower-middle classes. Regulations make it harder to start and sustain a business.

Nor surprisingly, the result is a state with the highest poverty rate in the nation and the nation’s fourth-largest homeless population per capita.

Why the Cost of Living Matters

Although the SPM measure of poverty clearly provides a broader measure of poverty incorporating both social programs and housing prices into calculations, many leftwing columnists insist on using the older poverty rate measure — while ignoring the homelessness data — because the older measure makes states like California look better.

For example, wealthy investor Ken Fisher, writing in USA Today, claimed last year that the “poorest states have Republican legislatures, and richest have Democratic ones.” He writes:

“Eighteen of the 19 poorest states have legislatures where both chambers are Republican controlled. New Mexico (46th richest, fifth poorest) is Democratic. But there isn’t another blue or purple state until you get to purple Maine… But all five richest states have both legislative chambers controlled by Democrats – Maryland, New Jersey, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Overall, Democrats dominate the 20 richest states.”

Fisher was using rankings published earlier by USA Today, which relied heavily on the old poverty rate measure, and which used nominal median incomes not adjusted to local cost of living factors. If we do make that adjustment, things look very different.

Fisher’s analysis thus relies almost totally on nominal income numbers, and ignores how expensive it is to live in places like New York and California.

For most regular people, however, leaving California may be the best thing one can do to increase one’s real income and have a chance at a life that doesn’t involve working long hours to afford a fixer-upper that costs half-a-million dollars.

There is, after all, a reason California is exporting its poor to places like Texas.

Tyler Durden

Wed, 10/30/2019 – 12:45

Rep. Dan Crenshaw Claims We Have a ‘Very Cost-Effective, Small Footprint’ in the Middle East

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R–Texas) thinks that the United States has had a “very cost-effective, small footprint” in the Middle East that led to the death of ISIS terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

In an interview with Fox News’ Dana Perino on Monday, the former Navy SEAL, who sits on the Homeland Security Committee, advocated for a “forward presence” in the Middle East to combat radical Islamic terrorism and protect the “homeland.” Crenshaw lauded the 2011 assassination of Al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden and Saturday’s death of Baghdadi as proof that the U.S. has been successful in its war on terror, which has lasted 18 years.

Crenshaw says he does “understand the frustration” over extended military presence abroad, but thinks it’s necessary to protect America from “an ideology that truly wants to kill us.”

The most obvious sign of the costs of war in the Middle East is the actual price tag. A recent study conducted by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University found that the U.S. has spent and obligated $5.9 trillion dollars to wars post-9/11 through fiscal year 2019. This figure accounts for any war-related spending that “are consequences of these wars” as well—so it includes Department of Defense spending as well as “war-related spending by the Department of State, past and obligated spending for war veterans’ care, interest on the debt incurred to pay for the wars, and the prevention of and response to terrorism by the Department of Homeland Security.”

To put that number in perspective, it amounts to more than one-third of the current national debt.

The less obvious costs of America’s foreign policy in the Middle East are measured in bodies and time. The Watson Institute also compiled the human cost of the United States’ post-9/11 wars, finding that 6,951 U.S. soldiers and at least 244,000-266,000 Iraqi, Pakistani, and Afghan civilians have died directly due to war violence as of October 2018. Notably, the study doesn’t even include the more than 500,000 lives lost in the Syrian conflict.

Back in 2007, Reason‘s Brian Doherty noted that that one day, war in Iraq might be perceived as having, “turned out well enough in the end.” Doherty observed that, “Time can make every war seem like a good idea, or at least like not an obviously bad one. The progress of civilization being what it is, and people’s ability to gin up strong feelings about events far away in space and time being what they are, it can all start to seem For the Best.”

Doherty’s words ring eerily true 12 years later as politicians like Crenshaw claim our safety as a nation hinges on aggressive, interventionist foreign policy.

As Perino noted in the interview, Middle Eastern interventionism has turned into a “generational fight.” “There are many people joining the military today who weren’t alive on 9/11,” she says. An entire generation of Americans have come of age knowing nothing other than perpetual war—not to mention the resulting debt and destruction. Crenshaw’s “forward presence” strategy of U.S. involvement in the Middle East is doomed to continue America down this path, since there will always be another bad guy to pick up the mantle of extremism and fight. Throwing trillions of dollars and more young lives at the problem won’t change that.

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UBS Warns: “If History Were A Perfect Guide…Stocks Would Be In A World of trouble Here”

UBS strategist Francois Trahan’s latest note titled If History Were A Perfect Guide…Stocks Would Be In A World of trouble Here suggests that S&P500 earnings deterioration will accelerate through 4Q19 and might not trough until 2Q20.

Trahan predicted the rate of 12-month earnings growth would likely plunge into negative territory in the coming months. He said, “There are many ways to assess the health of S&P 500 earnings, but at this stage, no matter how you slice it, the trend is slowing.”

“The earnings landscape has already deteriorated and will likely get worse: The consensus year-over-year growth rate in S&P500 forward earnings is down to a mere 1% from a peak of 23% in September of 2018. Forward earnings are already contracting in the Midcap and Smallcap indices…If history were a perfect guide, the S&P500 would trough in Q2 of 2020 and rebound after that. Should the economy bottom in Q4 of 2020, as interest rates suggest, then history argues, the S&P500 would begin to price in a sustainable recovery sometime between April and August of 2020…PMIs Argue That Forward EPS Growth Will Trend Lower For Another 6 Months,” Trahan wrote.

Trahan’s note has a bearish macro tilt: S&P500 earnings growth might not bottom until 2Q20. It might not be until November 2020 when the overall economy bottoms.

His bearish forecast could be disastrous for stocks, considering many equity indexes are at all-time highs. “Ultimately, the most vulnerable macro backdrop for equities occurs when forward earnings growth turns negative as LEIs are trending downward (pushing [price-to-earnings] lower),” Trahan warned, who offers this ominous chart:

Bloomberg data shows 3Q19 S&P 500 company profits will likely expand by 1% to zero, which is significantly below the 3.3% forecast from last month. Estimates for 4Q19 are moving lower, could be below zero by year-end.

Trahan also suggests the Fed might be less inclined to prop up the stock market as it slams interest rates lower to act as a countercyclical buffer against a faltering economy. He warned that interest rates moving lower would also mean more depressed equity prices. He ended the piece by saying the upcoming earnings contraction is likely to kick off the next bear market.

Tyler Durden

Wed, 10/30/2019 – 12:25

Rep. Dan Crenshaw Claims We Have a ‘Very Cost-Effective, Small Footprint’ in the Middle East

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R–Texas) thinks that the United States has had a “very cost-effective, small footprint” in the Middle East that led to the death of ISIS terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Crenshaw says he does “understand the frustration” over extended military presence abroad, but thinks it’s necessary to protect America from “an ideology that truly wants to kill us.”

To put that number in perspective, it amounts to more than one-third of the current national debt.

Doherty’s words ring eerily true 12 years later as politicians like Crenshaw claim our safety as a nation hinges on aggressive, interventionist foreign policy.

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Obama Slams ‘Wokeness’ – “That’s Not Activism”

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly.”

Many have criticized ‘woke’ culture as a new form of puritanism, however a surprising development occurred Tuesday when former President Obama slated the idea as politically naive, saying that people need to “get over that quickly.”

Speaking during his foundation’s third annual summit in Chicago, Obama said wokeness is “not activism”:

“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly,” Obama said, to some laughs from the crowd.

“The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.” he continued.

Obama cited college campuses and social media as a breeding ground for wokeness.

“One danger I see among young people particularly on college campuses,” he said, “I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media, there is this sense sometimes the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people and that’s enough.”

Obama then directly poked fun at ‘woke’ keyboard warriors:

“Like if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb or then, I can sit back and feel good about myself: ‘You see how woke I was? I called you out.’” he mocked.

“Get on TV. Watch my show. Watch Grownish. You know, that’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change.” he added sardonically.

“If all you’re doing is casting stones,” he said, “you know, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.”

Wokies take note, even your beloved Obama thinks you’re dumb!

Tyler Durden

Wed, 10/30/2019 – 12:06

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Stocks Slide As Mnuchin Warns “Will Take Time To Scale Up” China Ag Buys

E-mini Dow futures are starting to slide as Steven Mnuchin says in a Reuters interview that “China purchase commitments for US agriculture goods will ‘take some time to scale up’ to $40-50 billion in annual targets.

Here’s the complete list of headlines:

MNUCHIN SAYS CHINA PURCHASE COMMITMENTS FOR U.S. AGRICULTURAL GOODS WILL ‘TAKE SOME TIME TO SCALE UP’ TO $40-50 BLN ANNUAL TARGET-REUTERS INTERVIEW
MNUCHIN SAYS AGRICULTURAL TARGETS IN ‘PHASE 1’ TRADE DEAL BASED ON CHINESE COMMITMENTS TO BUY SPECIFIC PRODUCTS
MNUCHIN SAYS ‘ENCOURAGED’ BY CHINESE VICE COMMERCE MINISTER’S COMMENTS ON PLANNED MARKET OPENINGS, REMOVAL OF CERTAIN INVESTMENT RESTRICTIONS
MNUCHIN SAYS CHINESE VICE COMMERCE MINISTER’S PLEDGES TO FULLY OPEN FINANCIAL SERVICES MARKET, ELIMINATE FORCED TECHNOLOGY TRANSFERS ARE ‘CONSISTENT WITH OUR AGREEMENT’ FOR PHASE 1 TRADE DEAL
MNUCHIN SAYS NO TRIP PLANNED TO BEIJING FOR MORE IN-PERSON TALKS, SAYS PHONE CALLS HAVE BEEN PRODUCTIVE AND WILL CONTINUE
MNUCHIN SAYS NOT AT POINT OF MAKING RECOMMENDATION TO TRUMP ON DISPOSITION OF SCHEDULED DEC. 15 TARIFFS ON CHINESE GOODS
MNUCHIN SAYS CHINA FINANCIAL SERVICES MARKET OPENINGS NOT BASED ON ANYTHING NEGOTIATED DURING OBAMA-ERA BILATERAL INVESTMENT TREATY TALKS

Tyler Durden

Wed, 10/30/2019 – 11:52

Barack Obama Slams Woke Scolds and Hashtag Activism

Former President Barack Obama had strong words for progressive activists whose tactics rely on shaming all those who disagree with them.

“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised, and you’re always politically ‘woke,’ and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly,” he said.

His remarks came during the Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago this week. The former president expressed particular frustration with young people on college campuses who think the best way to enact change is “to be as judgmental as possible about other people.”

“If I tweet or hasthag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb, I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, see how woke I was, I called you out,” said Obama, criticizing this way of thinking. “That’s not activism. That’s not being about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far.”

Obama noted that some people who do great things have serious flaws, while some of the people fighting hardest against the things liberals want “love their kids and share certain things with you.”

This is not the first time Obama has made comments like this. In his 2016 Rutgers commencement address, he criticized fragile students for being unwilling to even listen to the other side. He’s also assailed hypersensitivity and expressed disagreement with leftists who think “that those who aren’t like you because they are white or they are male, somehow there is no way they can understand what I’m feeling, that somehow they lack standing to speak on certain matters.”

As I noted in my book about campus free speech issues, Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump, Obama has always been an eloquent defender of the culture of civil discourse and tolerance. (Contrast that with Hillary Clinton, who famously said that half President Donald Trump’s supporters were deplorable and should be written off.)

One of the best ways to combat cancel culture is for more liberals in good standing to condemn it. Obama scolding the scolds should always be treated as a welcome development.

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Barack Obama Slams Woke Scolds and Hashtag Activism

Former President Barack Obama had strong words for progressive activists whose tactics rely on shaming all those who disagree with them.

“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised, and you’re always politically ‘woke,’ and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly,” he said.

One of the best ways to combat cancel culture is for more liberals in good standing to condemn it. Obama scolding the scolds should always be treated as a welcome development.

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Former Time Editor and CEO of Constitution Center (!) Wants To Cancel First Amendment, Pass Hate Speech Laws

If you need more proof that free expression is under serious and sustained attack, look no further than The Washington Post, that legendary and often self-congratulatory bastion of First Amendment support, which has just published an op-ed calling for hate speech laws because “on the Internet, truth is not optimized. On the Web, it’s not enough to battle falsehood with truth; the truth doesn’t always win.”

What’s even more disheartening is that the author is Richard Stengel, a former managing editor of Time, chairman of the National Constitution Center, and Obama-era State Department official whose soul-searching apparently began when challenged by diplomats from a part of the world notorious for particularly brutal forms of censorship. As a journalist, Stengel avers, he loved, loved, loved the First Amendment and its commitment to free speech. But then he got stumped by unnamed representatives of unnamed governments who asked banal questions:

Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Koran. Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect that?

Is he kidding? “Why would a country founded in large part on the Enlightenment values of free speech and religious freedom allow free speech and religious freedom?” doesn’t seem like a tough question to answer. He doesn’t name the countries his “most sophisticated Arab diplomats represented, so we need to fill that detail in. Let’s assume they were from Saudi Arabia, a country completely unworthy of emulation when it comes to respecting basic human rights and whose Prince Mohammed bin Salman has taken responsibility for the brutal torture and murder of Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. We allow the burning of the Koran for the same reasons we allow the burning of King James and St. Jerome Bibles, the desecration of the U.S. flag, and the potential libeling of elected officials: We believe that individuals have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. With a few exceptions such as “fighting words,” “true threats,” and obscenity, we know that it’s better to allow more speech rather than less. Surprisingly, people get along better when they can more freely speak their minds. The search for “truth”—or at least consensus—benefits from free expression, too, as ideas and attitudes are subjected to examination from friends and foes alike. But the pragmatic answer is ultimately secondary to the expressive one: We allow free speech because no one, certainly not the government, has a right to curtail it.

As befits a man who helmed a legacy media outlet that is slowly being reduced to rubble like a statue of Ozymandias in the desert, Stengel is particularly distraught over “the Internet” and the “Web.” He implies that the “marketplace of ideas” worked well enough when John Milton and, a bit later, America’s founders pushed an unregulated press, but, well, times have changed.

On the Internet, truth is not optimized. On the Web, it’s not enough to battle falsehood with truth; the truth doesn’t always win. In the age of social media, the marketplace model doesn’t work. A 2016 Stanford study showed that 82 percent of middle schoolers couldn’t distinguish between an ad labeled “sponsored content” and an actual news story. Only a quarter of high school students could tell the difference between an actual verified news site and one from a deceptive account designed to look like a real one.

If you’re basing the erosion of constitutional rights on the reading comprehension skills of middle schoolers, you’re doing it wrong. And by it, I mean journalism, constitutional analysis, politics, and just about everything else, too.

Stengel pivots from discussing truth in media to “hate speech,” a ridiculously expansive term he never defines with precision (he even writes, “there’s no agreed-upon definition of what hate speech actually is”). But because mass shooters such as Dylann Roof, Omar Mateen, and the El Paso shooter “were consumers of hate speech,” it’s time to chuck out hard-fought victories that allow individuals and groups to express themselves in words and pictures. Hate speech, laments Stengel, doesn’t just cause violence (though strangely, violence is declining even as social media is flourishing), it also

diminishes tolerance. It enables discrimination. Isn’t that, by definition, speech that undermines the values that the First Amendment was designed to protect: fairness, due process, equality before the law? Why shouldn’t the states experiment with their own version of hate speech statutes to penalize speech that deliberately insults people based on religion, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation?

All speech is not equal. And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails. I’m all for protecting “thought that we hate,” but not speech that incites hate. It undermines the very values of a fair marketplace of ideas that the First Amendment is designed to protect.

A quick reading of the First Amendment would have reminded Stengel—the former chairman and CEO of the National Constitution Center, fer chrissakes!—that the First Amendment isn’t about limiting speech that bothers the sensibilities of people. It’s actually all about Congress not making laws that would create an official religion or restricting individual speech and freedom of the press; it also guarantees that we have the right of assembly and petition. The values it reflects involve pluralism and tolerance, not shutting down, regulating, or restricting speech that makers of “new guardrails” find offensive, annoying, or inconvenient.

If you grew up any time in the past 60 years or so, you’ve taken freedom of speech for granted. That’s due to a series of legal rulings that struck down the ability of elected officials to strangle speech they didn’t like, ranging from potentially libelous personal attacks to once-banned literary works as Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Howl, and Ulysses, along with materials such as the Pentagon Papers and the rise of technology that made producing and consuming all sorts of texts, images, music, video, and other forms of creative expression vastly easier.

It’s incredibly dispiriting to see baby boomers like Stengel brush aside the incredible wins in free expression because of concerns about vaguely defined terms such as “hate speech.” He gives off a strong whiff of internet and Cold War paranoia—”Russian agents assumed fake identities, promulgated false narratives and spread lies on Twitter and Facebook, all protected by the First Amendment”—that seems widely shared by his generational peers. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) is an increasingly strong presidential candidate who has vowed to regulate explicitly political speech, especially its online iterations:

If we can lie in Facebook ads and get away with it, we know that campaign finance laws are not equipped to address online political advertising. My plan would modernize campaign finance law for the digital age. If you are ready to regulate political ads on the internet, sign up.

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 15, 2019

Older boomers are syncing with millennials and younger Americans, who show a strong predilection to limiting “bad” speech (a 2015 Pew survey found 40 percent of millennials supported censoring “offensive statements about minorities”). These are not good developments, and neither is an op-ed in The Washington Post calling for an effective revocation of the First Amendment. Throw in bipartisan interest in regulating social media platforms as public utilities, the president’s interest in “opening up” the libel laws so he can more easily sue his critics, the rise of “cancel culture,” and we’re one Zippo lighter short of a good, old-fashioned book burning.

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