UPDATE: thanks, everyone! It was a very successful couple of days, and I appreciate it.——————-

As this blog moves through its 20th year, I’m endlessly humbled and amazed that people keep coming by.

More below the jump.

Like a decent but shrinking share of National Public Radio (NPR) programming, “The Hidden Brain” has some redeeming value – in this case, some fascinating looks into the frontiers of cognitive psychology, at least among the episodes I’ve heard. A repurposed podcast, like an awful lot of NPR programming, it is one of the shows that’s filling the spot “Prairie Home Companion” and “Live from Here” used to fill – and is actually pretty interesting, even with the occasional challenge it provides.

But it’s NPR – National “Progressive” Radio. The network exists largely to affirm the left’s prejudices about itself and society. An NPR bumper sticker or tote bag was an Urban Progressive Privilege virtue-signal long before those became a cultural obsession.

And so when fact peters out, narrative sets in. And there is just no way that narrative gets challenged by anyone on the program. It might be off-topic – you’d be surprised how easy it is to fill an hour of radio – but it seems more and more obvious that NPR isn’t in the “challeninging Big Left’s tropes” business.

And so with last weekend’s episode, on “Honor Societies” – which, the hypothesis goes, include much of the American South and West.

You can argue the premise. You can argue the findings. And by all means, do.

But around forty minutes in, the host and guest swerved into a deeply counterfactual “discussion of ‘Stand your Ground’ laws”. I put it in scare quotes because it was no such thing; it was an unchallenged recitation of Big Left’s narrative about self-defense reform.

I wrote then an email, attached below.

I’m Mitch Berg, from Saint Paul, MN. My day job involves a lot of applied cognitive psychology, so I’ve become a bit of a fan of HIdden Brain [1]. I listen most Saturdays on KNOW in Saint Paul.

And I very much enjoyed your 3/29 episode, about “Honor Societies” – until about 40 minutes into it, where it swerved, hard, into misinformation.

Your host and guest spent a few moments discussing so-called “Stand your Ground” laws. Whether through ignorance or intent, that part of the show was highly legally erroneous at best, and misinformation at worst.

I’ll explain briefly [2]:

1. Self-defense laws vary by state – but in every case I’m aware of require that one meet the following criteria:
   One must reasonably fear being killed, violently, then and there (where “reasonable” means “would convince a jury”).
   
2. You can only use the force needed to end the threat in #1 above. When an attacker turns to run away, or falls over too injured to hurt you, the threat is over – you can’t hunt them down and finish them off.
   
3. One must not be the aggressor; one can’t start a bar-room brawl (or an “honor” incident, for that matter) and pull a gun when someone breaks a beer bottle.
   
4. One must make a reasonable effort to retreat (same definition of “reasonable” as above). In a “Castle Doctrine” state, this doesn’t apply in the home and, in some states, one’s business. In a so-called “Stand your Ground” state, it doesn’t apply outside the home, anyplace one has a legal right to be, while doing anything one has the legal right to do, provided you meet the three criteria above.

Your guest repeated the “misconception” – in many cases, it’s a propagandistic chanting point, but I’ll presume good motive, here – that “Stand your Ground” means, closely paraphrasing your guest, that “thinking you’re in danger gives you the right to kill someone, and call it self-defense”. In fact, even in situations where “Castle” or “Stand your Ground” laws apply, one must meet the other three criteria, subject to the details of state statute, to the satisfaction of the investigators, the prosecutors, and if worse comes to worst a jury.”Stand your ground” is not a legal grounds to claim the dog ate one’s moral homework to get away with murder.Beyond that? Your guest noted that “Stand your Ground” laws are most common in “Honor States” – implying “Honor”-based attitudes drive “Stand your Ground” laws.

But facts show that the correlation is far from accurate. 29 states, as diverse as Florida, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, have “stand your ground” statutes, and eight more – including Washington State, Oregon and Illinois – have it in case law. (And New York, Maine, Massachusetts and Minnesota are all “Castle” states, via statute or case law). So, rather than “Honor Society”, the valid correlation appears to be states with meaningfully strong and effective libertarian/conservative legislative majorities or minorities have such laws.

Fascinating as much of the episode was (I wound up driving around the city for an extra 40 minutes to hear the whole thing), this part of the episode veered sharply from fact into legal misinformation. And given this is a public radio production, even one I generally enjoy a lot, I’m given to suspect at least a tinge of classist narrative. The show was much the worse off for it.

While I realize the odds of this email being acknowledged, much less broadcast, are about as likely as my getting a hot third date with Anna Kendrick, I grant permission to use this response on the air, and will edit and put it in audio form if you prefer.

I’ll also point out that as part of my “side hustle” (see [1], below), I’ll be discussing this episode, and my attempt to contact your program about it, on my show, podcast and blog, in the coming week or two, including reaching out (likely pro forms and in the interest of fairness and clarity) to your show’s guest.

Mitch Berg
651 xxx xxxx

[1] I mentioned my “day job” – now I should tell you about my side hustle. I’m a talk show host and podcaster at a Twin Cities radio station, as well as a modestly prominent regional blogger. That follows a career in radio and journalism, including at least some time doing news at a publicly-supported station.

[2] My bona fides: For over two decades, I’ve been an activist and volunteer for the groups that wrote much of MInnesota’s current body of firearms law, which have passed with strong bipartisan majorities and been signed by governors of both parties. I produce the podcast for this group. As a MInnesota carry permit holder, I have had to repeatedly demonstrate knowledge of the law as part of statutory permit training. I’m not a lawyer, but I get most of my information from lawyers who specialize in this area, both in criminal defense and legislative terms. You want cites, I got cites. If there is a person anywhere in American alternative media who’s paid more dues on this issue, I say with all due humility I have yet to be introduced to them.

Public radio – NPR, as always, and increasingly MPR – rarely deigns to acknowledge the proles. Suffice to say, this post (and my next NARN show) will likely be this topic’s only sojourn outside the memory hole.

…don’t you dare claim that major media have become stenographers for Big Left.

Perish the thought.

The Strib tweeted this over the weekend:

I mean, I’ve done it before. I used to give up cursing for Lent. It was a fascinating exercise, even though I’ve never been among the more foul-mouthed people I know.

But I’ve got a better idea:

Let’s do a “Detached Journalism Challenge”. Let’s try to not be stenographers for Big Left for a whole month.

I think I got this

How about you, Star/Tribune?

The women weren’t really trying, that’s the only reason they lost. Otherwise, they’d totes have dominated the field.  For sure.

Because if the professional women athletes really were trying but still got beaten this badly by a bunch of high school boys, we’d have to admit there truly is a physical difference between the sexes and that’s simply Unacceptable.

Joe Doakes

2+2=Women Can Literally Do Anything As Well As Men, Winston.

Ads don’t appear by accident.

Least of all television ads, with their high production costs and long lead-times. If you see something in a television ad, especially an “agency” spot (produced by an ad agency, as opposed to something shot at a store or TV station for a local merchant, you may be assured someone thought about the message it was portraying.

A lot.

As we’ve discussed recently, the high numbers of African-Americans in TV commercials challenge the idea that Americans are innately racist. If an add offends someone on some visceral level, it’s just not going to work.

With that in mind, I direct your attention to the latest round of commercials for “Hy Vee”, the national grocery chain, and what HyVee thinks it says about their customers. Both spots are done to the tune of the ’80s song Our House, by the British ska group “Madness”.

Here’s the first one, which came out over the winter:

Note the imagery (amid all the HyVee products):

• Mom is the executive rushing off to the high-power job.

• Dad is not only getting the kids ready for school. Not only is he kind of a bumbler, like most TV ad dads, but he looks like a buffoon.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with dads taking care of kids. I spent 20 years doing it, 11 of ’em mostly by myself, several more covering the day shift and working nights to save daycare. Fathers pulling their weight is nothing new.

But it’s not an unreasonable assumption that, in the typical family – whether two-parent or not – a woman is still making a lot of the shopping decisions. And HyVee, one of the major retailers, believes that not only is the image of the woman being the high-speed executive bread-winner one that appeals to those consumers, but showing hubby as a hapless buffoon who’d be lost without her appeals as well.

It’s hardly a novel observation.

HyVee has a new “Our House” spot out – it’s not out on Youtube just yet, so I can’t post it here just yet. And when I first saw it – with its improbably pretty mom cleaning the house to a fine sheen with her array of HyVee products, and a pronounced “Father Knows Best” vibe, I briefly thought “Ooofda – how did this get greenlit? The feministasi are going to have a cow.”.

Then I mentally caught myself. “There’s going to be a whammy”.

And sure enough – Dad finally came home. And he reminded me of Rip Taylor, if Rip Taylor were playing a Gestapo agent (sans long black trench coat – this agent was dressed like, well, Rip Taylor in a HyVee commercial) – simultaneously petulant and way below Mom’s league.

So apparently HyVee’s marketing department believes that an ad Dad who is a mass of caricatures, coming across as a spoiled, petulant martinet to his improbably gorgeous, clearly put-upon spouse, is not only not going to turn their audience off, but will in fact bring them out to the stores?

What does this say about…

…well, not “society”, per se, but the advertising industry’s view of society?

I first observed that Big Left was devaluing the term “Holocaust” – redefining it as “any social change Big Left doesn’t approve of” – over 30 years ago. To be fair that one never really took off – at the time, when people still took “Never Forget” seriously. I’m less sanguine about Big Left’s next attempt to sandbag that word.

Next came “Fascist”. “Anti”-Fa was only the latest among decades of hijacking, during which “Fascism” became equated with “any idea I, a member of Big Left, disagree with on any level” (as opposed to “Socialism combined with nationalism”).

“Hitler” and “Nazi” started taking it in the shorts during the George W. Bush administration, but their devaluation in the not-very-informed minds of a generation is proceeding apace.

Likewise “Racist”, “Misogynist” and pretty much any socially-loaded “-phobia”.

And now? “Jim Crow”.

On Big Left, words no longer have meanings. Or, rather, they’re working overtime to detach words for the meanings they’ve always had.

The Garden Administration wants the Supreme Court to rule that cops can enter your house to take your guns without a warrant.

Joe Doakes

They want to keep the progressive base slobbering for more power over those they hate.

Monday, I linked to an article by Glenn Reynolds about how to deal with the attack-wokies.

To wit – never apologize, bring your friends, and punch back twice as hard.

I’ll come back to that.

One of conservatism’s great mistakes was forsaking the small, independent blogs that dominated (along with, naturally, conservative talk radio) the alternative media scene in the 2000s.

During the heyday of the independent blog, there was a natural, organic network of supporters that would rally – almost always online – when one of the left’s droogs started dishing what was, at the time, almost always some pretty pathetic smack.

Since then, two things have happened:

1. Altogether too many conservative content producers took their game to Twitter and Facebook – and either got censored into nothing, or just atrophied.
2. Big Left invested in turning their attack machine from a pack of chancred losers into a pack of chancred losers with venal, dull but constantly practiced teeth. Cancel culture has become the norm across swathes of society that were still fairly open and healthy a decade ago when Andrew Breitbart warned us about losing the culture war.

So – how do the good guys ‘n gals start to organize, to fight the dirty part of the culture war again?

Ten years ago, when it was still good, clean fun, we had it down. Today, the jackals are running rings around the good guys.

It’s two-minute warning time at the state cuture war finals, and we’re down by two touchdowns.

How do the good guys get back in the game with the game that matters – organization, organic institutions that fight these battles, and the will to fight and win?

(While I run an open discussion at all times, lefties are urged to sit this one out).

…like what this guy said was wrong, or even remotely inaccurate.

Other than the bit about Hyundais being a symptom of creeping progressivism, which left me a little confused.

Homeschooling triples during the pandemic.

It may be the closest thing we have to a good side-effect of this past year.

The state – SD? FL? – who makes tax money given to education completely portable for things like home schooling (individual or group) or vouchers will see an economic and population boom like this country hasn’t seen since the days of Ellis Island.

Seems like forever ago that Michael Mann published his hockey-stick
graph, Mary Steyn made fun of it in a column for National Review, and
Mann sued for defamation.  The case has lingered for eight years in the
courts, only now entering the ‘discovery’ phase after National Review
was dismissed as a defendant.

Mark Steyn was deposed by Michael Mann’s lawyer.  Steyn uploaded the
transcript here: https://www.steynonline.com/documents/11106.pdf

I suppose reading deposition transcripts isn’t everyone’s cup of tea,
but I found it entertaining.  Your mileage may vary.

Joe Doakes

I can’t imagine those lawyers knew what hit them.

I mean, when even Bill Maher gets uncomfortable…

Former North Dakota Senator and current useless mouth Heidi Heitkamp calls Gina Carano a “Nazi”. Plain and simple, full stop.

I’ll chalk this up to the (utterly true) idea that any Democrat can parrot any narrative twaddle, no matter how moronic, without fear, knowing that their audience hasn’t the critical thinking skills to call them on it. Or anything.

But I won’t get mad. I’ll just get on the air. I sent this to her Facebook page.

Senator,

I’m Mitch Berg. I grew up in Jamestown. My mother, Jan Berg/Brooks, was a volunteer for any number of your campaigns at the state and federal level.

I fell a bit farther from the tree, politically, of course.

I’d like to make a media request – I’d love to interview y ou on my show (WWTC AM1280) in the Twin Cities regarding your assertion that Gina Carano is a “Nazi”.

I can either do it live on Saturday at 2PM, or record an interview at any time convenient to you.

Hope we can discuss this.

Thanks.

Why, sure – I expect a response! Why wouldn’t I?

Vice President – and let’s be honest, future President, most likely after January 2023, so she has the statutory opportunity to “serve” two full terms of her own – Harris, expressing her deep empathy for working parents with kids at home:

If homeschooling, charter school and private school activists don’t start using this in their ads, they have only themselves to blame.

CNN’s ratings, without Bad Orange Man to thump on, plunge:

That leaves 55 to go.

I’m doing my bit.

A buddy owns an electrical contracting shop.  He writes:

“14/2 shot up about 50% since the inauguration.   It doubled since last
week.  It was running about $38 a roll last summer.  It hit $92.   And
the word is that there will be shortages. Suppliers are limiting
customers to 60% of normal inventory.  I had a few bids out.   I may
need to pull them.   For certain I won’t be in a hurry to write a lot of
new ones.”

For those who don’t speak Electrician, 14/2 is the size of plastic-clad
copper electrical wire used in Minnesota homes for common household
circuits (15 amps).  Busy electricians go through miles of it every
year.  The smallest change in price can upset the bid price.  So why is
the price of wire spiking now?  Why are shortages looming?

Turns out, the plastic coating of the wire is made from PVC which is
made from natural gas, which is extracted from leases on federal lands,
which the Garden Administration terminated by Executive Order to reverse
President Trump’s policy of American energy independence, because
anything the Bad Orange Man did was Bad and must be ended, regardless of
how much it costs.  It’s a moral imperative. Sometimes you have to
destroy a civilization in order to save it.

The first order effect of ending leases was to signal their virtue.

The second order effect is to make crude oil and natural gas less
plentiful domestically thus requiring the use of higher priced imports,
which push futures prices higher for gas and oil and PVC, which causes
higher prices for consumers of those products (such as electrical wire).

The third order effect is a slow-down in travel and home construction,
as higher prices push marginal customers out of the market.

The fourth order effect is lower tax revenues from reduced sales of gas,
wire and homes.

The fifth order effect is higher income taxes on the middle class to
offset the tax revenue lost in other areas.

We’re seeing it happen in real time.  We know what’s coming.  Why are we
the only ones who notice, the only ones who care?

Joe Doakes

To answer Joe’s question – because the “progressive” pols running the show today don’t care, and their voters aren’t smart enough to know better.

Dominic Greene at the Spectator ponders the depressing spectacle of the Biden “presidency” via the lens of last week’s gawdawful “news conference” and what it symbolizes for our democracy:

Joe Biden is the face of the United States. But Joe Biden no longer looks like Joe Biden. And he no longer sounds like Joe Biden — especially in the long and excruciating silences when he forgets what he’s saying or fumbles for his cue cards.

The United States no longer looks like itself either. The sorry theatrical display of Biden’s first press conference is an accurate image of what has happened to American democracy. A carefully limited number of carefully selected journalists asked carefully vetted questions. A carefully chosen president read carefully written answers off his cue cards, and carefully avoided taking any questions from Fox or Newsmax.

The White House is no longer the home of democracy. It’s a reality TV series in a care home. Biden mused about how the country has lost its way, about how it used to be so much better, but he seemed fatalistically feeble, as if it was all too much and all too late, and he has already given up. As if the nation is in its twilight years.

Open note to Ron DeSantis, Kristi Noem, Dan Crenshaw, Nikki Haley and everyone else lining up to run against this ongoing case of elder abuse: do lots of press ops involving clearing brush with a chainsaw, or out at the range, or just being joyfully, intensely physically capable. America – real America – doesn’t like seeing itself as feeble, of mind or body.

And that’s the vision we’re being gaslit with today.

…that DFL politicians have is that they can say anything, no matter how illogical, preposterous and risible, anything at all , knowing that not only will the media never call them out on it, but that “their” voters, of all races, classes and education levels, having as they do zero critical thinking skills, will gobble it up.

Councilman Philippe Cunningham, in a “Neighborhood Safety Manual”, repeats the assertion from last year that “Klansmen”, complete with robes and pointy hoods, were roaming North Minneapolis during the riots.

Note to non-MSP residents: Klansmen in robes will occur in the Twin Cities about the same time I go on a hot third date with Anna Kendrick.

So let me get this straight:

It’s impossible for people to get and keep a government ID, making voter ID laws “unfair“…

… but we’ll implement a “vaccine passport“ that is simultaneously accessible and will protect personal health and medical information that will be the baseline needed for people to participate in business, social life and travel?

Seems perfectly rational.

Within two months of the Garden Administration taking office, we’ve seen
military troops occupying the nation’s capitol; gas prices climbing
steeply; Covid deaths rising sharply; a massive surge in child smuggling
at the Mexican border; North Korea lobbing cruise missiles and China
launching simulated raids on the Theodore Roosevelt task force; plus two
highly publicized mass shootings.

81 Million Americans voted for this because they were offended by the
President’s tweets?  We’re doomed.

Joe Doakes

Eric Clapton turns 76 today.

And it’s good to see Clapton’s whole career getting the long look it deserves from the Long Look industry.

Because he’s been one of the essentials for nearly six decades – a career getting up there into BB King or Les Paul level duration. He started out as a blues legend in his late teens, did some of the best music of any kind in the late sixties and early seventies, became a poster guy for the dissipation of stardom in the seventies and early eighties…

…and then it got intense.

For my money, here are a few of his best. my fave from the “Cream” years (from Cream’s 2005 reunion:

Has anyone ever written about trying to steal someone else’s wife as Clapton did about trying to heist Patti Boyd from George Harrison?

From his relatively fallow, drunk-all-the-time period (in this case, with original backup singer Marcy Levy back from forty years ago)?

And for my money, my favorite Clapton song ever. Most people go straight to “Layla”, but I keep going down the track list from that same album, and arrive here:

Keyboard player and co-lead singer Bobby Whitlock said about the recording of Keep on Growing:

The sessions started out with the four of us. Eric, Carl, Jim and me. Derek and the three Dominos.

When we started the recording process we treated it the same way that we treated our live performances. No different. We always started out where ever we were with a jam or two. No matter if it was Royal Albert Hall or the Speakeasy. In the studio nothing changed in that department. We jammed before “I Looked Away”, then into the song. Then we jammed before and into “Bell Bottom Blues”.

The third song was about to go down, so we did our usual jam and it was astounding! It had a groove like never before. Then suddenly Eric said, “Let me put another guitar on it!”

He did as I was standing in the doorway of the control room and looking at him through the glass about eight feet away from me. The song ended and he said again, “Let me put another one on.” He played the second over-dub without listening to the first one. When that was finished he said, “Let’s do another.” He put the third guitar part on without listening to the other two over-dubs while he was recording. When that one was finished he said, “Just one more.” Eric heard only the original guitar while he was doing the over-dubs. He could hear what he had already done in his head. When he was finished he got up and walked in and said, “Let’s hear what they all sound like together.”

It was amazing what we heard back. All of the guitars blended together as if they had been worked out long before the session. It was incredible standing there watching and listening to Eric the master at work.

I felt like a fly on the wall. I thought that was akin to watching Rembrandt at work. What a very special moment for me. And now you all! When we had finished listening to it Tom said that it was going to the can because we didn’t have room on this record for an instrumental. I said to them, “Give me twenty minutes!” I took a yellow note pad and a pencil out into the foyer of Criteria and my relatively short life fell out of me, words and melody and all, so fast that I could hardly get them down on the paper.

When I was finished I went back into the studio where Eric and Tom had been waiting in the control room for me to finish. The mike was there waiting for me, so I walked up to it and started to sing the song. I got half way through the first verse when I stopped it and said to Eric, “Hey man come on out here and let’s do our Sam and Dave thing to it.” Eric came out and we did it first run through.

First take! That was it! And the song “Keep On Growing” had been born.

I mean, if this song had spawned from weeks worth of “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “Born to Run” or “Be My Baby”-style studiomongering, I wouldn’t have liked it any less. Learning that part of the story after all these years?

Happy birthday, Eric Clapton.

They’re not even bothering to couch it in academic abstractions anymore:

If the people have any kind of memory or moral sense at all, 2022 is going to be a bloodbath.

But I’m worried about the whole memory and moral sense thing.

Big Left has had to reckon with the idea that, among major states, Florida and its science-driven approach to Covid has been more successful than the states that Big Media cast its lot with last year.

And by “reckon”, I mean “try to undercut, among the ‘try-not-to-think-too-hard’ crowd” that is the “progressive” base.

The Atlantic tries to cover both sides of Florida’s approach. And the story makes a decent shot at fairness of a sort:

If you want to say something declarative that will be proved wrong in a few months, I strongly encourage you to comment on Florida. Liberals projected that the state would suffer disproportionately for its casual approach to the pandemic, but its deaths are in line with the national average. Conservatives hailed the state for its open-air and open-business approach to 2020, but the available evidence doesn’t seem to prove that Florida’s economy is doing exceptionally well compared with those of its southern neighbors.

And, in fact, the story notes that Florida’s record, on Covid fatalities and economics, is relatively middle of the road:

As far as I can tell, though, it didn’t. At 4.8 percent, its unemployment rate is 18th in the country, and not meaningfully different from that of the median states, South Carolina and Virginia, at 5.3 percent. Real-time data tracking state spending and employment show that Florida is doing, again, no better than average. Compared with January 2020, its consumer spending is down 1 percent, which is right in line with the national average. Its small-business revenue is down about 30 percent—again, almost exactly the national average. These statistics may be missing something. But the national narrative of an exceptionally white-hot Florida economy doesn’t match the statistical record of its performance.

I mean, true – as far as it goes.

But that wasn’t the standard that was set for Florida, then or now .

Nearly a year ago, the media looked up from polishing Andrew Cuomo’s toenails only to confidently predict Florida’s policies would lead to a Walking Dead-level die-off that never came.

The Atlantic piece compares Florida with the average, and finds it right there.

But the valid comparison is with New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts – states with the opposite, media-blessed approach.

There is no such thing as race, or gender, no objective reality, there is
only how I feel about it:

Joe Doakes

Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds has a recipe for fighting back against the woke cancel mob: “Never apologize, rally your friends, punch back harder“.

And it’s a good one:

This is what’s going on with the University of San Diego Law School, whose dean shamefully capitulated to an absurd student campaign against a professor who did nothing wrong. In a post on his personal blog, Professor Thomas Smith said that those who dismiss the possibility that the Wuhan coronavirus escaped from a lab there were “swallowing whole a set of Chinese” — and here he used an scatological phrase meaning, in effect, “balderdash.”

He was, of course, referring to the Chinese regime’s denials, which are facing growing scientific skepticism.

Asian students complained — preposterously — that this was somehow a racist slur against Chinese people, rather than a criticism of the brutal Communist regime. Rather than telling them that, as law students, they needed to work on their reading skills, Dean Robert Schapiro issued a craven response, suggesting that there was some basis to the complaints. In an e-mail to the law-school community, he charged Smith with “bias” and with using “offensive” language and announced an investigation.

But here’s where the story changes. Some of the most eminent faculty members at the law school — including such big names as Larry Alexander, Maimon Schwarzschild, Steve Smith, Chris Wonnell and Gail Heriot — fired back at Schapiro. They wrote: “We are concerned that treating these complaints the way you are doing validates student reactions and strained interpretations that are misguided, that reflect a lack of critical thinking and that will chill faculty members’ teaching and scholarship.”

The one problem – it depends on having friends to rally.

Oddly enough, in academia – which has become a “woke” gulag in the past few decades – conservatives may be better placed to fight back. As lopsided as things are in academia, there is at least a tradition of academic freedom to uphold, and groups like FIRE, with money and lawyers, to help do it.

But if you’re at a company that’s become infested with Wokies? Getting pressure to just shut up? Seeing dissenting thought shouted down around the water cooler? Seeing management starting to buckle?

Normals need to start organizing in the real world.

More on this tomorrow.