More Interesting Photos:
More Amazing Photos:
Last Thursday night down on Bleeker Street in Manhattan, the libertarian entertainment company We The Internet gathered to throw a bash celebrating its latest mini-documentary, and the launch of its “The Funny Thing About Hate Speech” tour. The 15-minute film, “5 Reasons We Need Hate Speech,” is a full-throated defense of free speech that is well-produced, very clever, and often quite funny. Both the documentary and the party were hosted by Lou Perez, We The Internet’s jocular impresario whose straightforward and aw shucks style cuts straight to the heart of the matter.
The party in a downtown club space was fun and festive, a gathering of free thinkers and iconoclasts. Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie was there (yes, he wore a leather jacket), and former American Civil Liberties Union head Nadine Strossen and author Zachary Wood joined Perez for a panel discussion. Among the questioners from the audience was journalist Jesse Singal, who appears in the film.
The documentary is now airing on YouTube and is linked below. The reasons it discusses for why we need hate speech, or more specifically need to not ban hate speech, are not particularly new. They focus mostly on how such bans not only make hate speech stronger, but that defining hate speech always winds up as a slippery slope that captures at its bottom a much wider range of speech than was ever intended.
What makes the film special, and is true of much of We The Internet’s work, is how difficult it is to pin down politically. Indeed one of the central focuses is European and to a lesser extent American efforts to criminalize or ban criticism of Israel.
In one of the film’s more humorous moments, Perez is on his way to interview a pro-Palestinian group at Fordham University that had been denied the right to organize. Before he arrives, he receives an email from them, explaining that in light of his previous controversial work, they were declining the interview. The irony was amazing. Those demanding free speech were declining this opportunity to engage in free speech.
While We The Internet is not conservative, and Perez insists the group attacks all sides, in this case the libertarian value of free speech overlaps considerably with...
How do you repay all the people that worked their way through college, paid off their debt and how do you repay all the parents that paid for their children's college?
You can't, the cost would be astronomical.
Free college would be worthless college, the current low quality of a college education would simply become an extension of the low quality, mal-education our children currently receive in public schools.
If you want to improve colleges and universities, fire communist indoctrination professors, and deport them to Venezuela.
Consumer spending increased by the most in more than 9-1/2 years in March, but price pressures remained muted, with a key inflation measure posting its smallest annual gain in 14 months.
The surge in consumer spending reported by the Commerce Department on Monday sets a stronger base for growth in consumption heading into the second quarter after it slowed sharply in the first three months of the year. Tame inflation, however, supports the Federal Reserve’s recent decision to suspend further interest rate increases this year.
Fed officials are scheduled to meet on Tuesday and Wednesday to assess the economy and deliberate on the future course of monetary policy. The U.S. central bank in March dropped forecasts for any interest rate increases this year, halting a three-year policy tightening campaign. The Fed raised borrowing costs four times in 2018.
Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, surged 0.9 percent as households stepped up purchases of motor vehicles and spent more on healthcare. Consumer spending edged up 0.1 percent in February. Data for January was revised up to show...
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was just treated like nothing more than a sex object by the most unlikely of sources.
The New York Times published an op ed on Sunday that reduced all of the 29-year-old’s, admittedly bonehead ideas, to her looks.
“The men at Fox News have a sickly obsession with AOC, partly because they resent her cleverness, charisma and moral vitality, but mostly because they suspect that in high school she was one of those girls they had no hope of getting a date with,” The Times wrote in a tweet.
“I realize that this has become axiomatic on America’s excitable right. I know also that in this country we employ terms like ‘socialism’ with wanton indifference to historical details and conceptual distinctions.
“I grasp too that many among us truly believe that, say, a higher marginal tax rate or a public subsidy for poor children’s dentistry is only a step away from the gulags.
“And I am painfully aware that the male Fox commentariat nurtures its sickly obsession with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez partly because they resent her cleverness, charisma and moral vitality, but mostly because they suspect that in high school she was one of those girls they had no hope of getting a date with (though, really, she comes across as someone who could look past a face of even the purest suet if she thought she glimpsed a healthy soul behind it),” the author wrote.
The worst part about it was that the op ed itself managed to somehow be worse than the tweet which got destroyed.
If You Get Infected With This Disease, It Will Lead To Income Confiscation, Tyranny, Starvation, And Finally: Mass Murder.
