Insight

“Protection … against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.” —John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Re: The Left

“While our schools are overrun with drugs and failing to actually educate, the left is going to the mat to force critical race theory and gender confusion on our children. But a coach praying on the football field is seen as a threat to our children.” —Gary Bauer

“Over the past 60 years, public schools have been scrubbed of religion, stripped bare in the name of the name of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which bars favoring one religion over others. Now the void is being filled by social justice ideology, the left’s religion by another name. Why should traditional religion be discriminated against, while teachers and coaches are allowed to proselytize their woke belief system, displaying Gay Pride symbols and BLM slogans in the classroom? Are children any less at risk of coercion or indoctrination by these ideas presented by authority figures whom they’re eager to please?” —Betsy McCaughey

“The Left’s outsized panic over [Elon] Musk’s takeover is revealing for two reasons. First, it shows that the Left always understood Twitter to be a key part of its ecosystem, a Left-biased platform designed to obscure its own leanings while propagandistically pushing a particular political agenda. For years, the Left claimed that conservative concerns about Twitter bias were simple paranoia. Now, upon Musk’s takeover, the Left has broken into spasms of apoplexy. That wouldn’t happen if they thought Twitter wasn’t their sole property. Then there’s the bigger problem: the Left despises both transparency and free speech in the political realm. The Left would prefer secret algorithms that conceal ‘shadow-banning’ and bottlenecking; the Left prefers ‘equity’ in speech to freedom of speech. To the Left, the potential ‘harm’ of allowing free speech outweighs the value in open debate. Better to ban The Babylon Bee for stating that Lia Thomas is a man than to allow such content to be passed around Twitter — and better never to let anyone know the algorithms behind such bans. After all, with transparency comes accountability. And the power is the point.” —Ben Shapiro

Race Bait

“I know a lot of people, and journos especially, are like me and use [Twitter] DMs for sourcing, for background conversations, and for market testing opinions before taking them live. In the future, Elon will own all that. Do you trust him to protect your privacy? If you’re white, maybe you can. Maybe you implicitly can. Maybe you are so secure in your whiteness and your ‘but the market would punish him’ expectations that you just assume that there’s no way ol’ Elon would sell you out when Roger Stone comes calling. I’d say you’re wrong. But even if your whiteness protects you, it won’t protect me. Or my sources.” —The Nation legal correspondent Elie Mystal

Belly Laugh of the Week

“We inherited a broken and dismantled system that is already under strain. … Yet we have effectively managed an unprecedented number of non-citizens seeking to enter the United States.” —Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas

Swamp Doctor’s Flip-Flops

“We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase.” —Anthony Fauci on Tuesday

“We’ve now decelerated and transitioned into more of a controlled phase. By no means does that mean the pandemic is over.” —Anthony Fauci on Wednesday

Lack of Self-Awareness Award

“I got involved in politics because I think the greatest sin anyone can commit is the abuse of power.” —Joe Biden

Village Academies

“They’re all our children. And the reason you’re the teachers of the year is because you recognize that. They’re not somebody else’s children. They’re like yours when they’re in the classroom.” —Joe Biden

And Last…

“‘Elon Musk could end world hunger with $6 billion.’ Well, Elon paid $11 billion in federal taxes last year which coincidently is the same amount of money America gave to the UN. Why hasn’t the UN ended world hunger yet?” —Greg Price