The Words that Cultivate Free Speech

Samual Abrams:

“It’s a free country” signals that disagreement is permissible. “Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion” acknowledges dignity in dissent. “Sticks and stones” reminds us to meet speech with speech, not violence or censorship. Without such reminders, the civic muscle memory that protects a free society begins to atrophy. That last idiom in the table — “Address the argument, not the person” — may be the most telling of all. Only 30% of Americans even recognize it, and barely 1 in 10 say it often.

This absence shows up everywhere: in the pile-ons of cancel culture, the readiness to attack a person’s character rather than engage their reasoning and in why viewpoint diversity is so hard to come by on many college campuses. If you never learn the habit of separating people from their ideas, disagreement becomes personal and dissenters become enemies to be silenced.

And in their place? New slogans, often adversarial and absolutist. We hear “words are violence” or “speech is harm” far more than “defend to the death your right to say it.” The FIRE/NORC survey found that a quarter of Americans now say the “words are violence” framing describes their own view “mostly” or “completely.”

Samuel J. Abrams is professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Aaron Siri Introduces his New Book, Vaccines, Amen.

New post on X by Aaron Siri:

An excerpt from the intro to Vaccines, Amen:

Ever hear someone say, “I believe in cars” or “I believe in tools”? I cannot recall ever hearing anyone say they believe in a certain product. But I hear people say, “I believe in vaccines” all the time, especially in response to evidence regarding vaccines.

The expression “I believe in vaccines” carries a truism. The properties often attributed to vaccines require faith. Belief. This is because most claims about vaccines are not grounded in evidence. They are beliefs. It is why challenging claims about vaccines—meaning challenging beliefs—often results in an emotional, not logical, reaction.

This is also why wading into this topic is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for anyone seeking to avoid controversy. Just the word “vaccines” evokes emotions for many.

Falling Into Vaccine Law

For this reason, among many others, I likely would have laughed if someone had told me eighteen years ago that I would be managing a law firm, with over 100 professionals, working on vaccine injury, exemptions, and policy. Back then, I was working on high-stakes, multi-billion-dollar lawsuits at one of the country’s premier law firms. Even after starting my own law firm over a decade ago, I continued to handle mostly high-stakes business litigation matters.

Then, one fateful day, I learned something I could not unlearn: of all the corporations I was defending, I would likely never have to defend a pharmaceutical company against claims that children were seriously injured or killed by a vaccine. Why? Because in 1986, Congress granted these companies financial immunity for injuries caused by childhood vaccines in a law titled the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (the 1986 Act).

I learned that, because of the 1986 Act, parents of seriously injured or deceased children must sue the federal government’s health department, instead of the company that profited from the product that harmed their children. From that one data point, my journey regarding vaccines began. What I have uncovered along the way has frequently been unbelievable.

This journey, spanning over a decade of litigating vaccine lawsuits of all stripes across the country, has been unique. This is partly because, unlike doctors, who can appeal to their credentials, I do not get to just say, “trust me.” I need to prove claims I assert with real data. Real proof. Something that will hold up in court. Non-authoritative science will not do. Unreliable data will not do. This means my vaccine litigation work requires me to study the primary sources and carefully review and scrutinize the studies and data that support each claim. v In the course of that legal work, I have worked with well over a hundred immunologists, infectious disease doctors, pediatricians, and other medical professionals. I have deposed these specialists as well, including the world’s leading vaccinologists. This work requires an understanding of vaccinology, immunology, infectious disease, and pediatrics, among other disciplines, with regard to these products. Want to talk about any other drug, medical procedure, etc.? I am not your man. But vaccines, those I know.

Incredibly, most of the information needed to understand vaccine safety is freely available on federal government websites and public databases. Most doctors and parents never bother to look or don’t know it exists. Those who do know and look often learn things they cannot unlearn.

Continue ReadingAaron Siri Introduces his New Book, Vaccines, Amen.

Thomas Massie Update on Smith Mundt Act

https://x.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1967227762592338048

Mike Benz discussed the Smith Mundt Act with Joe Rogan, as summarized by Wall Street Ape:

The Smith-Mundt Act is trending on X, don’t let this momentum die

We must Restore the Smith Mundt Act and call it The Charlie Kirk Act to end legalized mainstream media propaganda

Mike Benz talks with Joe Rogan about what Barack Obama really did by repealing the Smith–Mundt Act

It’s SO MUCH BIGGER than just allowing use of propaganda on Americans, it allowed for: ‌

- Infiltrate and co-opt the universities

- The unions

- The media

- The politicians

- The judges

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It allowed ‌

- Foreign policy establishment can fund groups that effectively work with prosecutors domestically or that work at media, dual sort of dual use

- To give them foreign grants to do media propaganda abroad but they operate here, or social media censorship to coerce foreign countries to pass foreign censorship laws that explicitly and are intended to attack US social media companies and in US peer-to-peer speech ‌

“1948, Congress recognized the Frankensteinian monster they were creating by authorizing a covert permanent department of dirty Tricks. And this is their phrase, not mine, to do this cloak and dagger to infiltrate and co-opt the universities, the unions, the media, the politicians, the judges, the whole swarm army. You know what I have been calling for a long time, the USAID Truman Show” ‌

“That are effectively a movie set being constructed by the US State Department and its sister influence orgs — The CIA” ‌

“So the Smith–Mundt Act was always designed to say, listen, you can do this dirty stuff abroad, but it can't come home. We have that protection, which lasted for 70 years and only, we only lost it a decade ago.” By BARACK OBAMA ‌

ALL THESE THINGS and more were to be allowed to be used OVERSEAS ONLY, the Smith–Mundt Act was created to ensure that ‌

But then Barack Obama got installed, he repealed the Smith–Mundt Act and now ALL THESE TOOLS were used against the American people and we paid for it all ‌

Every person in America needs to watch every second of this video. There would not be a single Democrat voter left. Obama was installed to start the takedown of America and use our own agencies against us ‌

You could also argue THIS is why we have so many activist judges

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Pfizer and “Risk Reduction”

In 2021 I was joyous that Pharma had vaccines that were on the order ot 95% effective. Now we know what that means.

How Pfizer duped billions via statistical manipulation: Pfizer reported that its vaccine shows a 95% efficacy. That sounds like it protects you 95% of the time, right? But that's not actually what that number means. That 95% refers to the relative risk reduction, but it doesn't tell you how much your overall risk is reduced by vaccination.

For that, we need absolute risk reduction. In the Pfizer trial, 8 out of 18,198 people who were given the vaccine developed COVID-19. In the unvaccinated placebo group, 162 people got it, which means that even without the vaccine, the risk of contracting COVID-19 was extremely low at 0.88%, which the vaccine then reduced to 0.04%. So the net benefit or the absolute risk reduction that you're being offered with a Pfizer vaccine is 0.84%. That 95% number, that refers to the relative difference between 0.88 and 0.04%. That's what they call 95% relative risk reduction.

And relative risk reduction is well known to be a misleading number, which is why the FDA recommends using absolute risk reduction instead, which begs the question, how many people would have chosen to take the COVID-19 vaccines had they understood that they offered less than 1% benefit?

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Eli Steele is Over it

Eli Steele (son of Shelby Steele) is "over it":

We are over black power

We are over white guilt

We are over white privilege

We are over respectability politics

We are over white fragility

We are over white-adjacent

We are over inclusivity/belonging

We are over BIPOC

We are over victimhood

We are over oppressor vs. oppressed

We are over cancel culture

We are over antisemitism

We are over cultural appropriation

We are over systemic racism

We are over Black Lives Matter

We are over DEI

We are over systems of oppression

We are over reparations

We are over Uncle Tom

We are over performative allyship

We are over ideology

We are individuals.

Who is Eli Steele?

[From Grok] Eli Steele is an award-winning American filmmaker, writer, and commentator known for his documentaries that critically examine race, identity, and social issues in the United States. Born around 1974, he is Black, Jewish, and deaf (relying on cochlear implants and lip-reading), and he lives in Los Angeles with his two children. He is the son of Shelby Steele, a prominent Black conservative author and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, with whom Eli has frequently collaborated on projects.Background and HeritageSteele's family history reflects resilience and diverse experiences: his paternal great-grandfather was born into American slavery, while his maternal grandmother escaped Nazi persecution in Europe before returning to rescue her family. These roots inform his perspective on identity and freedom, often framing his work around themes of individual agency over group-based ideologies.

I'm not over the modern versions of these things because I immediately recognized these things to be the grifts they are, performative grabs for money and power.

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