About Reclaiming Free Speech

Jonathan Zimmerman has noticed that progressives are starting to cringe at the idea of robust free speech.  He has this to say about that cringing at the Wall Street Journal:

When speech can be suppressed, the people with the least power are likely to lose the most. That’s why every great tribune of social justice in American history—including Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. —was also a zealous advocate for free speech. Without it, they couldn’t critique the indignities and oppression that they suffered.

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To What Extent Can the Government Prosecute Liars?

To what extent can the government prosecute lies? First Amendment Law Professor Eugene Volokh has written an excellent article considering many angles. Here's an excerpt:

Surprisingly, the Supreme Court has never resolved the question. It hasn’t resolved the big-picture question: When can the government punish lies? It hasn’t resolved the medium-size question: Can the government punish lies in election campaigns? And it hasn’t resolved the particular question: Can the government punish lies about the mechanisms of voting, and in particular about how to vote?

[T]he court considered the case of Xavier Alvarez, a local government official in an LA suburb; he had lied about getting the Congressional Medal of Honor, and was prosecuted under the Stolen Valor Act, a statute that bans such lies about military decorations. Unconstitutional, six justices said. There was broad agreement that “Laws restricting false statements about philosophy, religion, history, the social sciences, the arts, and other matters of public concern … would present a grave and unacceptable danger of suppressing truthful speech.” “The point is not that there is no such thing as truth or falsity in these areas or that the truth is always impossible to ascertain, but rather that it is perilous to permit the state to be the arbiter of truth.” (That’s from the dissent, but the concurrence endorsed it, and the plurality’s opinion was even more speech-protective than the others.)

Yet when it came to more specific lies, whether about one’s own medals or something else, there was no majority opinion.

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Number One Crime in my Neighborhood: Theft of Catalytic Converters

Numerous catalytic converters are being stolen in my neighborhood in the City of St. Louis. This note is from a recent meeting of my neighborhood association: "The number one crime continues to be the stealing of catalytic converters from people’s cars. These types of crimes are hard to investigate since they happen very quickly." The attached surveillance video below that it only takes 1 minute to steal a catalytic converter.

One of my neighbors was very upset to find hers stolen a couple weeks ago. To replace the converter on her Honda Element would have been in excess of $3,000, and this was more than the value of her car. How much do the thieves get for damaging or destroying your car? "Although the amount of metal in a single catcon is relatively small, a thief could expect to get from $50 to $100 out of a single poaching."  This can ruin a car for many people and this is happening during the pandemic, when many people are already severely stressed.

There are various devices you can buy or create to make it a lot harder to steal your catalytic converter. I'm looking into buying and installing one of these devices now.

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