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Where’s Your Hill?
When Roy Moore was in the process of being brought down in the Alabama Senate race last December, the standard response from the establishment side of the GOP was, “Look, Moore is a nutcase. This is not a court of law. There is no due process or presumption of innocence. He’s not the hill you want to die on.”
When Alex Jones was purged off of social media the response was, “This is not a government action, but the actions of private individuals. Besides, he’s a nutcase and this is not the hill you want to die on.”
Enter Brett Kavanaugh. As his reputation is destroyed by the minority party suddenly the establishment is appalled. Why? Well, primarily because even though he was nominated to SCOTUS by Donald Trump, Kavanaugh is seen as “one of us,” one of the good chaps whose pedigree of private high schools, Yale and all the right government clerkships and appointments was beyond question.
Is this the hill now? When you surrendered all of that territory before, when you tucked your collective tails between your legs and ran like scalded dogs, now you want to turn and fight? Look what you gave up before. Like the Alabama race, proceedings in the Senate Judiciary Committee are not the equivalent of a court of law. The ideas of due process and presumed innocence you gave away in December are a little hard to reclaim now. When you look at all of the private, non-government entities behind this smear job, how can you rebuke them?
Principles are funny things. If you don’t apply them to the people you dislike then they are unlikely to be of any use when you really need them.
Published in Politics
Anything in those transcripts that contradicts “He tried, they said no, he stopped”?
Is that really the only standard you want to apply?
This is important.
There are principles—-lots of ’em—being stomped and trampled all over the place by progressives. Lots and lots and lots of hills. Making a stand on any given hill uses up what are evidently limited resources—not here at Ricochet, but out in the world—namely the attention and good will of the American people, emotional real estate which the left is skilled at fighting for, with few if any scruples.
This doesn’t mean that “we” couldn’t have taken a stand and defended Alex Jones or Roy Moore. Perhaps we could have persuaded the MSM to abandon the frankly sexier narrative of “creepy underage sex” or “horrible cruelty to bereaved parents,” to nobly forego eyeballs and market share in favor of dry explanations of due process and the First Amendment.
Maybe it would have worked: maybe the public could have been persuaded to imagine their neighbor or themselves as the guy who gets deplatformed next; maybe the distinguishing eccentricities of Roy Moore and Alex Jones wouldn’t inevitably have proved a terminal distraction from what should have been the real issue? Maybe.
And maybe the left would at least have found the process of taking those hills sufficiently expensive in time, money, moral authority) as to dissuade it from further unprincipled attacks. Without, at the same time, wholly exhausting the defensive resources of the right.
And maybe whether it worked or not, it would have been the right thing to do.
As luck would have it, however, all that needed to be done was to wait for the left to pick a fight on a hill where principle can be reinforced with reasonably competitive optic sand a narrative and characters with which/whom more Americans could identify. The left, being the left, was sure to do this sooner rather than later and so it proved. Unlike Moore or Jones, Judge Kavanaugh is an actual or aspirational Everyman; any husband/father/son, those could be my little girls exposed to shrieking harpies, my spouse having to wade through angry protesters and mendacious reporters camped on the front lawn.
Sooner or later, the left was bound to attack someone who—paradoxically—can therefore become “transparent,” a window through which its depredations (God willing) and the principles themselves can be revealed. This is definitely the hill to die on, in other words, and the left seems determined to detonate every bit of ordnance they’ve got—Amnesty-freakin’-International is flinging itself into the mine field! Seriously?
Perhaps (and I’m cheering myself up as I write this) Kavanaugh will, when we look back, mark the moment when the tide turned?
What are you talking about? I haven’t mischaracterized anything. I was referencing the obvious scolding and shaming and assertion by E.J. in the OP that those in the conservative ranks who, by his argument, didn’t support Alex Jones and Roy Moore and to his mind, should have – essentially acted like cowards. From the OP:
As for Donald Trump’s encouragement of violence, let’s try not to engage in revisionist history, shall we? This from National Review at the time (March 18, 2016) from the late Charles Krauthammer (since posting an article from the NY Times or WaPo or any other Left-leaning outlet might be discounted):
When I read a sentiment like that, I cannot help but think of Mark 8:36.
I disagree with this. It has always been like this. Do you think just any old Tom, Dick, or Harry could afford a printing press to get fliers and pamphlets out in 1776?
Stopping when they say “no” isn’t a sufficient defense?
If so, then this is now a documentary, not a satire.
https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/tv-funhouse-sexual-harassment-and-you/2751966
And yet somehow the violence is all directed at Conservatives (Ron Paul, Steve Scalise, etc, etc, etc).
So you admit we are only dealing with those disrupted Trump events and Trump did not generically encourage violence as you originally indicated. What if you had said: “I once scolded a prominent Ricochet contributor for not soundly rebuking primary candidate Donald Trump for encouraging violence
duringwhen confronted with organized disruption of his campaign speeches.” That would have been more accurate but would have weakened your attack.I’m clearly not arguing that those on the Left are somehow less prone to violence when the facts, since the late 1960s in America, speak for themselves. I’m challenging the assertion that Trump never encouraged violence during the 2016 campaign.
It’s your characterization that I made a “generic” claim that Trump encouraged violence. The historical record is quite clear. He encouraged violence on at least three occasions during his campaign in remarks to his supporters. My original statement is true and factual and in no way suggests that Trump generally encouraged or routinely encouraged or frequently encouraged violence. That you interpret it this way is your problem not mine.
Again, you have to separate the tactics from the target.
In this instance, the GOP is like a ball player who can’t hit the curve. And when you expose your vulnerability you’re going to get a steady diet of curveballs until you make the adjustment and prove otherwise. All I’m saying is that they made Kavanaugh vulnerable to this because of the tepid-to-almost-non-existent response last December.
The thinking always is, that guy is a nutcase so he deserves it. But it sets up the tactic for the guy who doesn’t deserve it.
So in other words, use the power of the government to force them to serve customers they disagree with.
I recognize that the law distinguishes between platforms and publishers. I also disagree with this construct, primarily because I think private businesses should have nearly unlimited freedom of association. Common carrier provisions make some sense when the carriers are using limited public resources with monopoly potential such as the airwaves. They don’t make sense for the internet where there is no physical or legal limit to the number of potential Facebook competitors.
And regardless of the legal details, if our main recourse is to use the same principles here that the left is using to force Christians to serve gay weddings, then we’ve lost the war by winning the battle.
Are you really arguing that Franken was dumped as a matter of principle? That the same outcome would have occurred if Minnesota had a Republican governor who would appoint his successor? Seriously?
You may disagree with my analysis but it is not a conspiracy theory. For future reference there is a difference between Alex Jones’ Sandy Hook ravings and understanding how political calculations are made by politicians of both parties.
I hope so. First, though, the Right has to stop turning on itself and setting up circular firing squads to take each other out.
Is “Kavenaugh Hill” one that’s worth taking? Yes. Then I suggest we do so. Together. And that we go to war with the army that we have, not the army that we might want or wish to have at a later time. Or even the army we had thirty or forty years ago. This is now. People are enlisting in droves for this one. Sign them up for the cause, instead of turning them away. Maybe, if they can win one, they’ll feel better about themselves and others, and they’ll keep fighting.
Distracting, and deflecting, by starting hares which cause one lot of people to line up on the one hand and say “these other cases have nothing to do with the Kavenaugh case,” and another lot of people to line up on the other hand and say “these other cases have everything to do with the Kavenaugh case,” ensures only one thing–that you end up with two lines of people, neither of which, in itself, is long enough, or powerful enough, to accomplish anything, and neither hand of which cares, or knows, what the other one is doing because they are incapable of working in concert.
Sorry to double down here, but I find “willing to take some hits” just as abstract and hyperbolic as “getting bloody”. My question was really: what do all of these fighting terms mean on a practical, real-world basis?
Take myself for example. I’m pretty squishy by Ricochet standards. I disagreed with most of Moore’s politics and I thought he acted very guilty of the charge of assaulting a minor. I also am in favor of legalized gay marriage but was opposed to it being enshrined as a Constitutional right by the Supreme Court.
I also used to live in San Francisco, where I made my opinions known among friends. As you can imagine, I was considered a pariah by many for being opposed to the Obergefell decision despite being pro-SSM. I even lost friendships.
I’d call losing friendships “taking hits”. But most people on your side of the argument would probably consider me an unmanly coward because I didn’t defend Roy Moore on an obscure conservative website while safe in my home in a very conservative city.
And I find it ridiculous that keyboard warriors taking “controversial” stands in safe spaces like Ricochet consider themselves fighters when those stands have no real-world consequences for them.
Hehe . . .
Maybe they’ve heard of the name “Kermit Gosnell” . . .
I drove to Raleigh over the weekend, but I had to take a different route because portions of I-95 and I-40. I waved hello to D.C. when I drove through Charlotte, then I waved when I passed Durham . . .
I think that’s a terrible idea. But those people who wash their hands and say this censorship is a private matter are going to lead us down that path.
So?
Amen. What he actually said has been misstated by tons of folks, even on our side. Hopefully this link still works:
https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37595321
Yes, there are women out there who would love to be groped by celebrities or athletes.
Heck, men too (Can you hear me, Sandra Bullock?)
Moderator Note:
Rude.Q: “Where’s your hill?”
A: Not Roy Moore, not Alex Jones, but Brett Kavanaugh.
Anything else?
Congrats on writing a post of “Michael Avenatti” quality.No one would be forced to do anything. They are perfectly free to defend themselves against ten million lawsuits. And the only government action required for this to happen would be one court case with a ruling that they are, in fact, a publisher. Which should be easy… because they are.
In what way is that? Did I accuse someone of something untoward? There’s a lot of folks who disagree with me here and that’s fine. (It was designed and written to provoke conversation.) But Avenatti?
Not helping.
This post created a reasonable amount of mostly respectful back and forth conversation. That is kind of the point of the entire site.
These are not the only three places, just the “biggest” examples. Is there a place between Roy Moore/Alex Jones and Brett Kavanaugh that would be a worthy a fight? I at least think this is a reasonable thought provoking way to look at the issues presented in the OP.
If you find the post and our discussion wanting, you could have just skipped it. That probably would have been better then jumping in with insults.
But consistent with a body of work. The good news is that it’s usually a hit and run thing.
You are asking the wrong question(s). Simply put, how many prominent conservatives have spoken out against Trump as president? How many on the left have you ever heard speak out against a sitting president who is a Democrat? Or any other major figure on the left? Hillary is still getting a pass, while Trump (justifiably or not) is regularly roasted from the right. Bush received and still receives criticism from many Republicans, while one rarely hears a peep about his predecessor from the left. And most on the left will also argue with a straight face that the Obama Administration was “scandal-free.”
That is not a stronger case from the left. It’s a brief summation of the phenomenon I was referencing.
That is not his argument! And he is not treating different things differently! OMG people! Can you and the others in this thread who say similar things not see what’s happening here?
During Roy Hill and then during Alex Jones, I made arguments similar to @ejhill ‘s in this post, and I was similarly castigated. I was and am appalled at the lack of clarity some of you are exhibiting. So in case the people in the back didn’t hear me, here we go again.
This is not about Roy Moore. It’s not about Alex Jones. And it most certainly is not about Brett Kavanaugh. When I and others tried to sound the alarm as they destroyed Roy Moore and Alex Jones, the cowards and oh-so-“principled” useless bumps on a log allegedly on our own side accused me and anyone like me of defending those two individuals. Those posts about Alex Jones were especially thick-headed.
I was accused of being “an Alex Jones supporter” when the truth is I’m a Constitution supporter. I mean some of you even airily said “I’m not on Facebook so the Jones thing doesn’t matter to me.” I mean huh?!?
Even if you can’t see it, I can clearly see what’s happening here. When we stood aside and allowed them to destroy Moore and Jones so as not to dirty our evening clothes on our way to the country club, we emboldened the Democrats. I even said at the time that with those first two, the Dems chose well. As their trial balloon they picked two men that nobody would want to be associated with. They’re like the dog who figures out what works to get a dog biscuit so he does it every time.
It worked on Moore and Jones, so here we go again, and because Kavanaugh is a normal person instead of a fringe lunatic, our side is finally reacting. But thanks to the ones who allowed the precedent to be set, it might be too late. We shall see, I guess. What fries me is that the ones who tried to distance themselves from Moore and Jones (“Oh I’m not like them”) the very ones who are always ridiculing Trump because they have “principles,” are utterly blind to the fact that they should not have allowed the fake accusations against Moore and the silencing of Jones – on principle.
There was a larger principle under attack in both those cases, but you were staring so hard at the unsavory aspects of the knothole under your magnifying glass that you missed the entire forest around you. I hope you’re all proud of yourselves. Because this time, they’re coming close to establishing their new “Guilty Until Proven Innocent” yardstick. Is that what you guys want?
Afternoon EJ,
Part of the problem is that the tools we use to fight back with seem rather tame. What do you think of this go fund me site doing research on members of the press? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ZVEVufWFI I like it. Are there other tools you would like us to use to fight fear, he will end abortion, etc.? Also the same with character assassination, how do we fight back against that?
I find the Moore and Jones situations to be significantly different. One is about very old allegations of sexual impropriety, revealed decades after the fact and in the 11th hour before an important election. The other is about private companies banning a conspiracy-theory nut and “shock jock” from their sites. These raise entirely different issues.
One is an issue of something like due process. There is an inherent unfairness involved in making a career-ending allegation decades after the fact, when it will be far more difficult for the accused to marshal the witnesses or other evidence necessary to a defense. This does not mean that all such accusations are false, and does not mean that there are not understandable reasons for accusers to have not come forward earlier. But a prompt investigation is essential to finding the truth, and it is plainly true that an accuser, in this situation, could have raised their complaint in a timely manner and chose not to. Allowing this sort of thing sends precisely the wrong message to women who believe that they are mistreated today. We need a system that encourages prompt reporting.
The other is an twofold issue of market power and regulation of internet providers. First, sufficient market power could justify regulation as something like a public utility. Second, the immunity of such providers from defamation liability is based on the argument that they are mere platform providers who do not edit their content. Once they start editing that content, this immunity is no longer justifiable. This is a difficult issue, because almost everyone wants to allow them to bar horrid things like child porn or snuff videos.