One person testifying was Dennis Prager, whose website PragerU has suffered many instances of censorship by Google with no explanation.
PragerU takes on liberal shibboleths, such as the “Nation of Immigrants” myth, which may [...]]]>
One person testifying was Dennis Prager, whose website PragerU has suffered many instances of censorship by Google with no explanation.
PragerU takes on liberal shibboleths, such as the “Nation of Immigrants” myth, which may anger the far left. (Actually, we are a nation of citizens.)
The educational five-minute videos are aimed at a young audience to fill in the historical gaps left by the liberal education establishment, but the restrictions placed on some items are nonsensical: Mr. Prager learned from the first witness, a spokesman from Google, that the video about the Ten Commandments was put under restriction because it mentioned murder — negatively, of course, but those algorithms are strict!
Seriously, you would think that a major web publisher like PragerU would get responsible human attention.
]]>DENNIS PRAGER: I will take just a moment because my opening comment is under five minutes just to respond on the issue of the Ten Commandments video that was a placed on the restricted list by Google; the representative from Google mentioned that a reason that it would be on the restricted list was that it contains mentions of murder, so I was thinking, I have a solution that will I think appeal to Google. I will re-release it as that the Nine Commandments. That should solve the problem of including murder in my discussion of the Ten Commandments.
And as regards the swastika, yes, there is a swastika; it is again in the commandment of do not murder wherein I show that murder — there are people who believe murder is all right even today, and I use the swastika and the hammer and sickle as two examples. I would think we would want young people to associate the swastika with evil; that was why I had a swastika.
It is an honor to be invited to speak in the United States Senate, but I wish I were not so honored. Because the subject of this hearing — Google and YouTube’s (and for that matter Twitter and Facebook’s) suppression of internet content on ideological grounds — threatens the future of America more than any external enemy.
In fact, never in American history has there been as strong a threat to freedom of speech as there is today.
Before addressing this, however, I think it important that you know a bit about me and the organization I co-founded, Prager University, PragerU as it often referred to.
I was born in Brooklyn NY. My late father, Max Prager, was a CPA and an Orthodox Jew who volunteered to serve in the US Navy at the start of World War II. My father’s senior class thesis at the City College of New York was on antisemitism in America. Yet, despite his keen awareness of the subject, he believed that Jews living in America were the luckiest Jews to have ever lived.
He was right. Having taught Jewish history at Brooklyn College, written a book on antisemitism, and fought Jew-hatred my whole life, I thank God for living in America.
It breaks my heart that a vast number of young Americans have not only not been taught how lucky they are to be Americans but have been taught either how unlucky they are or how ashamed they should be.
It breaks my heart for them because contempt for one’s country leaves a terrible hole in one’s soul and because ungrateful people always become unhappy and angry people.
And it breaks my heart for America, because no good country can survive when its people have contempt for it. I have been communicating this appreciation of America for 35 years as a radio talk show host, the last 20 in national syndication with the Salem Radio Network, an organization that is a blessing in American life. One reason I started PragerU was to communicate America’s moral purpose and moral achievements, both to young Americans and to young people around the world. With a billion views a year, and with more than half of the viewers under age of 35, PragerU has achieved some success.
My philosophy of life is easily summarized: God wants us to be good. Period. God without goodness is fanaticism, and goodness without God will not long endure. Everything I and PragerU do emanates from belief in the importance of being a good person. That some label us extreme or “haters” only reflects on the character and the broken moral compass of those making such accusations. They are the haters and extremists.
PragerU releases a five-minute video every week. Our presenters include three former prime-ministers, four Pulitzer-Prize winners, liberals, conservatives, gays, blacks, Latinos, atheists, believers, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and professors and scientists from MIT, Harvard, Stanford and a dozen other universities.
Do you think the secretary-general of NATO, or the former prime-ministers of Norway, Canada, and Spain, or the late Charles Krauthammer, or Philip Hamburger, distinguished professor of law at Columbia Law School, would make a video for an extreme or hate-filled site? The idea is not only preposterous; it is a smear.
Yet, Google, which owns YouTube has restricted access to 56 of our 320 five-minute videos and to other videos we produce. “Restricted” means that families that have a filter to avoid pornography and violence cannot see that video. It also means that no school or library can show that video.
Google has even restricted access to a video on the Ten Commandments, as we have seen. Yes, the Ten Commandments.
We have repeatedly asked Google why our videos are restricted. No explanation is ever given. But, of course, we know why. Because they come from a conservative perspective.
Liberals and conservatives differ on many issues. But they have always agreed that free speech must be preserved. While the left has never supported free speech, liberals always have. I therefore appeal to liberals to join us in fighting on behalf of America’s crowning glory – free speech. Otherwise, I promise you, one day you will say, “first they came after conservatives, and I said nothing, and then they came after me. And there was no one left to speak up for me.”
Thank you.
One point of contention was Macron’s strange argument that nationalism was the opposite of patriotism. Not in my dictionary, [...]]]>
One point of contention was Macron’s strange argument that nationalism was the opposite of patriotism. Not in my dictionary, or President Trump’s.
MACRON: Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. By saying, ‘Our interests first, who cares about the others,’ we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what gives it grace and what is essential: its moral values.
That’s a funny thing to say to the American president, when US soldiers have twice fought and died in France against its enemies.
Below, the Normandy American Cemetery, where more than 9,000 US soldiers are buried after being killed in France during WWII.
Back to the nationalism controversy, on Monday, Tucker Carlson interviewed Professor Nicholas Giordano of Suffolk Community College who explained the concept clearly:
Audio file:
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: Tell us what nationalism actually is, if you could sum it up as crisply as you can — what is nationalism?
PROFESSOR NICHOLAS GIORDANO: Nationalism is important because it’s what links us together as a country. We are a nation state, and so when you’re looking at the concept of nationalism, it’s the acceptance of the American creed, the tenets of the American creed, as well as it helps us to motivate us to help our country. Nationalism is one of the most important concepts out there. Macron’s just wrong — it’s as simple as that.
CARLSON: The knock against nationalism is that there’s something racially exclusive or racist about it. Is it inherently a racial creed? Does it have anything to do with race?
GIORDANO: No, it doesn’t. What nationalism does, it fosters the democratic consciousness, and that’s an important point that people get wrong. We have a stake in the system, and we are the legitimate authority over the system as the people of the United States. Prior to nationalism, loyalty was to one leader; now it’s to the country as a whole, and nationalism fosters patriotism.
In my classroom I used Hurricane Harvey as a great example. During Harvey, you had people, citizens affected by the hurricane took their own boats, their private boats and they went and they helped out their fellow citizens. They didn’t say this is the black boat, and the white boat’s 15 minutes behind us. They didn’t say this is the Republican boat or the Democrat boat — they were just out there to help Americans, and that’s what nationalism fosters. If you look at countries without nationalism — nationalism defeats tribalism — so Afghanistan, Libya, those countries are where tribalism is enforced. There’s no loyalty to the country of Afghanistan as a whole or Libya as a whole and that’s why those countries have been engaged in tribal warfare for the last 3,000 years.
CARLSON: It’s so nicely put, what you just said, and it’s such an obvious point. Why would there be such a loud caucus against nationalism, against national unity?
GIORDANO: I think there’s two things going on. When you look at someone like President Macron of France, I think he likes the idea of trans-nationalism, trying to replace the idea of nationalism with this regional nationalism. And then for other people, if we look at the United States, the people that say that nationalism is a bad thing or nationalism is racist, I think they just aren’t necessarily proud of the country that the United States is. They focus on all the bad that the United States has done and they don’t look at the positives of how the United States has actually changed the world .
CARLSON: Well exactly. Professor, that was such a nice explanation. I hope you’ll join us again.
Still, it’s a day off for [...]]]>
Columbus Day is an odd holiday for Americans to have, since it celebrates an Italian navigator who never came close to the present United States. He arrived in the Bahamas on his first voyage, and later reached Central and South America, but not the territory of the present USA.
Still, it’s a day off for some of the working stiffs — though a James Madison Day might be more appropriate since he is remembered as the “Father of the Constitution.”
However any patriotic topic is anathema to the left, so Columbus Day is becoming verboten for the PC crowd and beyond. Even Columbus, Ohio, has turned against its namesake, as noted by Tucker Carlson on his Monday show.
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: Columbus, Ohio, is ditching Columbus Day and celebrating Veterans Day instead.
James Robbins is the author of “Erasing America: Losing Our Future by Destroying Our Past” joins us tonight. This is part of a larger trend you write about in your book which I hope our viewers read. tell us what that trend is.
JAMES ROBBINS: The trend is to assault the American narrative, to make us all feel ashamed to be Americans, to look at every aspect of the american story and say the founders was bad and the constitution is racist. And what better place to start than with Christopher Columbus who is really patient zero of the European invasion of america.
CARLSON: I could not agree with you more — that’s clearly the thread that ties all these stories together. What is the point of that? Why would they want to do that?
ROBBINS: The point is if we feel bad about our country, if we feel bad about the past, then they can rewrite any kind of future they want. Progressives want to turn the United States into a socialist country. In order to do that, if you say the founders were all evil men and an evil document and everything in the past was bad, they can come up with a future that fits whatever they want to make it.
CARLSON: So they are telling the rest of us you don’t have the right to defend yourself against our assaults? You don’t have the moral legitimacy to defend your own country.
ROBBINS: Oh, definitely. It’s all about shame; it’s all about blame. About the assault on Columbus — by the way, as a Buckeye, I am sad about Columbus, Ohio, ditching the holiday. I think they should change the name of the city if that’s what they’re thinking.
CARLSON: I agree with that — to Indigenous City.
ROBBINS: Or Virtueville, something like that.
CARLSON: Obviously this has been going on in academia for some time, but it seems to have spread to normal places like Columbus, Ohio, which is a great town, filled with normal people. How did it get to Columbus?
ROBBINS: Well, I think it’s been insinuated into the American education system for decades. Starting in the 1970s, we’ve had this creep of revisionism in American history books until it became the accepted narrative. Particularly with Columbus, he starts off chapter 1 in Howard Zinn’s revisionist history of America, so people have grown up saying Columbus is a bad guy.
CARLSON: Unbelievable.
On the day after the shirt altercation, the Mexicans staged a walkout from the school.
American Flag Clothing Sparks New Protest, NBC Bay Area, May 6, 2010
[. . .]The boys said the administrators called their T-shirts “incendiary” that would lead to fights on campus.
To many Mexican-American students at Live Oak, this was a big deal. They say they were offended by the five boys and others for wearing American colors on a Mexican holiday.
“I think they should apologize cause it is a Mexican Heritage Day,” Annicia Nunez, a Live Oak High student, said. “We don’t deserve to be get disrespected like that. We wouldn’t do that on Fourth of July.”
It’s called winning through intimidation, and the case must be counted as a loss for the freedom to express American patriotism.
]]>Supreme Court Rejects American Flag Student Speech Case, Bloomberg News, March 30, 2015
White high school students sued after an assistant principal asked them to turn their American flag shirts inside-out to prevent fights on Cinco de Mayo.
(Bloomberg) — The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from white high school students who sued after an assistant principal asked them to turn their American flag T-shirts inside-out to prevent fights from breaking out on Cinco de Mayo.The justices left intact a lower court ruling that said officials at Live Oak High School in northern California had justifiable safety concerns and didn’t violate the students’ free speech rights.
The case tested what has proven to be a tricky balance between school security and the First Amendment. Live Oak officials said they had reason to worry about ethnic and gang violence at the school-sanctioned Cinco de Mayo celebration in 2010. The suing students said they shouldn’t pay the price for the possibility that others would react negatively toward their clothing.
A year earlier Cinco de Mayo, which celebrates Mexican culture, was marred at the school by an altercation between white and Hispanic students over the display of an American flag. The school’s assistant principal, Miguel Rodriguez, acted in 2010 after hearing from students that more trouble was brewing.
School officials met with five students who were wearing American flags on their clothing, along with their parents. Two were allowed to return to class because their flags weren’t prominent. Three chose to go home for the day rather than turn their shirts inside-out.
Parents of three of the students — Matt Dariano, Dominic Maciel and Daniel Galli — later sued.
Student Safety
In dismissing the suit, a three-judge panel of a San Francisco-based federal appeals court said the response by school officials was “tailored to avert violence and focused on student safety.”The ruling prompted another judge on that court, Diarmuid O’Scannlain, to call for reconsideration. He said the ruling was “condoning the suppression of free speech by some students because other students might have reacted violently.”
Although the Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that free speech rights don’t evaporate “at the schoolhouse gate,” later rulings have said students don’t always get the same protections that adults enjoy.
In a 2007 case involving a student who hoisted a banner declaring “Bong Hits 4 Jesus,” the court said schools have broad power to curtail expression that might undermine their anti-drug messages.
The case is Dariano v. Morgan Hill Unified School District, 14-720.