Free Speech and the Antifa

I'm no fan of Ann Coulter.  I don't disagree with what she says so much as I don't like her delivery. Same with Milo Yiannopoulos.  Both are conservatives who use shock and awe to get their messages across.  I prefer those who are more understated, like the late conservative George Will.

Still, the so-called Antifa (which, I finally figured out, is the cool way to shorten Anti-Fascism...) has summarily prevented both Ms. Coulter and Mr. Yiannopoulos from giving a speech which they were invited to do by campus conservative groups at the University of California at Berkeley.  The irony is that the free speech movement, at least insofar as modern times is concerned, traces its roots back to UC Berkeley.  For free speech to be quashed there is not only sad, it's dangerous.

The liberal zealots who prevented the two from speaking claim that they are against hatred and threats, which they also claim aren't protected speech.  That's interesting,  First, hateful speech is protected so long as it's not inciting violence.  They only have to look so far as the Nazis' right to march through Skokie, Illinois, a largely Jewish community, to see how protected hate speech is.  The same would go for the Westboro Baptist protesters who picket veteran funerals.   If they're claiming that it's constitutional to prevent hate speech, they need a refresher course.  And while they're at it, if they're going to go after hate speech, where are they when Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and just about any Islamic imam speaks?

As could be expected, the MSM stands by without leveling any criticism.  If we were to play what Sharyl Attkisson calls The Replacement Game, and substitute Republican/conservative actors for what the Democratic/liberal actors are doing, there would be such an outcry that it would dominate the news for months.  What's more, it would finally justify the sobriquet that these vandals have given themselves, because were they really set upon by conservative groups preventing their right to speak, they would be engaged in anti-fascist behavior that anyone with functioning grey matter would applaud.  Yet because it's liberal nabobs silencing conservative speakers, the MSM yawns and moves on to the next non-newsworthy story that warms the cockles of one's heart while distracting them from the real news that's fit to print.

If even a liberal firebrand such as Bill Maher gets it, why doesn't the liberal establishment...one might ask?

The answer is simple:  By having the unhinged liberal fringe elements taking on the conservative ruling party, the liberal establishment can sit back and wait for the conservatives to overreact, commit some huge error publicly that the MSM can then pounce on and justify the claims that these provocateurs have been making about fighting fascism.  Enough clueless moderates then switch their votes in disgust at the mid-term elections, the Congress goes back to being split or totally democratic, and then Hollywood gins up for the 2020 elections to get its candidate elected.  It's all quite Machiavellian.

But what about free speech?

Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes famously wrote that one cannot yell Fire in a crowded theater, leading to time, place and manner restrictions on the First Amendment.  Yet, hatred alone is insufficient to invoke censorship.  What these vandals are doing is using extra-judicial means to shut down conservative speakers.  The MSM is aiding and abetting them by not reporting this as a criminal news story and selling it instead as political protest.

Somewhere, Voltaire must be spinning in his grave.

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Random Facts About Truxton Spangler

The anonymity of the internet means many things to different people, or different things to many people.  For professional reasons, and not because I'm advocating the overthrow of the government, I prefer to maintain my privacy.  If anyone wanted to challenge something I've written in person, I'd be open to that, provided there were safeguards in place. 

Still, I think the few souls that actually follow me are entitled to learn something about me, even if what I have to disclose is either silly or insignificant.  Some of what I'll post below I may even have let slip in other blogposts.  So be it. 

--  I am not affiliated with any political party.  I am a Marxist:  I'd never join a club that would have me as a member.

--  If I weren't an attorney, my dream job would be the head coach of the U.S. men's Olympic basketball team.  For life.

--  If I weren't practicing in this particular field of the law, I'd love to be an intellectual property or constitutional law attorney.

--  I have a unicorn hair.  You'd have to see it to understand.  My hairline is about an inch beyond where this one hair continues to grow in the upper middle of my forehead.  It's weird.

--  I prefer mountains to beaches.  My perfect beach is secluded, down below high ground.

--  One time in Chicago, on the lakefront, I was able to ride my bike up to 36 mph.

--  I own two Hoberman spheres.  I don't know why, but they fascinate me.

--  Karen would tell you otherwise, but I can't do laundry.  I mean, I try, but it's always done wrong.  She says it's because I don't want to do it. I say all the different settings and requirements for different clothing confuses the stuffing out of me.

--  Los Angeles holds no appeal for me.  Las Vegas holds even less appeal for me.

--  I enjoy Irish bulls.  And chiasmus.

--  As I've gotten older, it's gotten worse, but my handwriting is almost effeminate.

--  I can't think of a Pink Floyd song that I like.

--  Country pork ribs are my favorite ribs.

--  If it weren't for Bupkes, I'd have a game of Axis & Allies set up in the basement.  He'd view it as an invitation to play with pieces.

--  I prefer unsweetened tea.  Sweet tea is disgusting.  Peach or lemon iced tea isn't bad, though.

--  I don't like to use blue ink pens, and I prefer fine nibs to medium nibs on fountain pens.

-- I don't like much candy beyond chocolate, and even then, I'm not much into frou-frou chocolate.

-- If I could, I'd wear my hair really short.

--  The season I'm least fond of is summer.

-- Twenty-five more days....

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Random Thoughts -- Political Division

I went non-political first, so here are my random political thoughts:

--  Someone must be paying Susan Rice a ton of money for being such a public liar.  I mean, this women is shameless when it comes to touting the party line.  But she's so accomplished, so practiced.  If I knew that what I was spewing was pure hogwash, I'd be smirking.  This woman's a sphinx.  So she is either the most clueless person in the world, the best-paid liar we've seen or such a dedicated party member that dead and buried Soviets are standing in their graves and applauding her.

--  I hate that the Republicans used the nuclear option to get Justice Gorsuch on the SCOTUS bench.  He's eminently qualified, and I think the Democrats did the country a disservice by opposing the nomination of such an accomplished jurist by trying to paint him as an unrelenting ideologue.

-- By the same token, I think Republicans blew it by not putting Merrick Garland up for consideration during that last year of the Obama administration.  Judge Garland is already sixty-four-years-old.  Had he been approved by the Senate, he might have lasted ten years on the bench, fifteen at most.  To hardcore conservatives, that was completely unacceptable.  The trouble with that is thinking is that Judge Garland had already issued an opinion against the Obama administration.  He was far from a leftist ideologue.

--  One last note on this SCOTUS stuff:  The Democrats really blew it.  By pushing the Republicans to go nuclear, that ensured a conservative court -- barring another Earl Warren conversion -- for the next fifty years, probably; well, at least forty.  With Justice Gorsuch on the bench and the likely retirements of Justices Thomas, Breyer and Bader Ginsberg, if President Trump gets to nominate their replacements the conservatives would outnumber their liberal counterparts at least six to three.  Sure, justices cross over sometimes, but just looking at the lineup, the Democrats will rue the day they pushed their luck.

--  People need to remember that the First Amendment does not protect all speech.  For example, one cannot shout Fire in a crowded theater due to the potential injuries a panic might cause.  Likewise, suggesting that the White House be bombed by ISIS or having pictures showing the President beheaded go beyond the pale for me.  Like him or not, he's our President.  Caricatures of him are tolerable, but those calls for his death or dismemberment are seditious and should be prosecuted.  If nothing else, it would reinstill the notion that there are time, place and manner restrictions to the First Amendment.  Irresponsible journalists and academics who believe otherwise need a lesson in Constitutional Law.

--  I'm not fan of Ann Coulter, but kudos to her for not rescheduling her speaking engagement date at UC -- Berkeley.   Officials wanted her to move it to a week when students were off.  She refused.  No matter how you color it, that was an attempt to chill free speech by removing her audience.

--  So Gayle King, an anchor with the CBS This Morning Show, goes vacationing with her best friend Oprah Winfrey and the Obamas.  Yet, we're supposed to believe in an impartial fourth estate?

--  And Bill O'Reilly is out at Fox.  Good.  I couldn't stand him.  Is Tucker Carlson the heir apparent?  And who woulda thunk that a mere four months into the Trump administration, both Megyn Kelly and Bill O'Reilly would be out at Fox?

-- I understand what Antifa means, I think, but what exactly is it that it's fighting? 

--  Are people that seriously affected by Donald Trump's election that they're depressed?  I want to know what exactly he's actually done that's depressed them so personally.

--  When the Patriots visited the White House, several players declined the invitation in protest over the President's policies.  This was noted solemnly by the MSM, presumably to show the inherent patriotism in the players' stances.  When President Obama was in the White House, several players on championship teams also refused the invitation.  If their absence was mentioned at all, it was seen as disrespectful.  Hypocrisy, much?

--  Keep an eye on Nikki Haley and Joni Ernst.  Anyone looking for a viable female POTUS candidate should check them out.

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Thank You For Your Service

Recently, there's been a spate of blogposts about how veterans are weary of people stopping them in public and thanking them for their service.  As someone who does this regularly -- albeit as discreetly as possible -- I found this hard to believe.

This is going to sound bad, but I'm a military history junkie.  I know war is horrible.  I've read stories that would curl or straighten people's hair, depending.  I've watched the snuff videos that ISIS puts out not because I'm entertained or because I have some morbid sense of adventure.  I watch them to remind myself not only of the lengths man's inhumanity to man will go, but also to know my enemy.  So when it comes to a background in conflict, although I never served and only once stepped foot on a U.S. military base -- Torrejon outside of Madrid, January 1, 1985; it's a long story -- because of my reading habits I am more informed that the typical civilian who isn't a professor of history.

So when I read the blogposts complaining about people approaching and thanking vets for their service, I was taken aback.  I could understand if people were making a spectacle out of it, embarrassing not only the veteran but themselves with an ostentatious display of false patriotism and gratitude.  But when I do this, I do this discreetly:  I lean in, offer my hand and thank the veteran for his service (in truth, I think I've only been able to identify one female veteran, but it's not for want of looking.  They, for some reason, don't wear the garb that readily identifies them as veterans as much as their male counterparts do).  If I can tell by the hat or the shirt in which war they fought, I'll ask them where they were stationed.  Because I read as much military history as I do, I follow up with a question about their assignment with some intelligence.  I'm not doing this to make myself feel important or better; I want the veteran to feel appreciated, knowingly so.

One time, I was in local Speedway when I saw two young servicemen in the store.  I discreetly approached the manager, told him to quietly tell the men that someone had paid their tab, and then took care of it when they'd left.  I didn't make any fanfare about it (it didn't amount to much, unsurprisingly) and left the store without anyone but the manager and the cashier knowing about it.

I haven't seen other people thanking vets much.  Perhaps they do it and I don't notice it.  But when I do it, I do it quietly and without drawing any attention to myself.  Oftentimes they're done via drive-by in an aisle or a doorway, where I reach out my hand and thank the veteran for his service.  I can only remember one time when a veteran seemed less than appreciative of my gesture.  But that was in Ohio, so what should I expect?

I don't know what motivations other people have when they express their gratitude to veterans, so I make no comment about that other than to say that I'm sure most people are sincere, and others just feel some weird obligation without really having any sentiment behind it. 

The other day I was coming out of Wal-Mart and ran into a Marine Vietnam veteran.  I offered my hand and thanked him for his service, then asked him where he'd served.  He told me he was based up in Danang near the DMZ.  He mentioned having rotated to Khe Sahn, so I asked him if he was there during the siege.  The siege of Khe Sahn was an infamous Marine battle in which General William Westmoreland used the Marines stationed on a hilltop as bait to draw North Vietnamese forces close so they could be killed with artillery and aerial bombing.  For as effective a strategy as that may have been in theory, for the Marines being used as bait it was a nightmare.  I've never been west of Kansas City, but because of my reading I know about the siege of Khe Sahn.  And this is what sets me apart from many people who thank veterans.

So I took the opportunity to ask Walt from P. what he thought about these blogposts.

"I can spot someone a mile away," he said.  "If they're phony, I know it."

I would like to think that most veterans are this discerning.  Perhaps some are just tired of being accosted by strangers in public.  But I remember the time when servicemen returning from Vietnam were spit upon, harassed verbally and physically and generally treated like pariahs in our society.  I think it's a small thing to thank someone for their service, especially those who served overseas.

No matter what bloggers are saying, I'm not stopping.  It's a small thing to do.  And if one or two of them don't like it, they're free to tell me so.

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Random Thoughts -- Non-political Division

I haven't been sleeping, really.  I've just been busy -- very busy.  But that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking. 

Here, then, are some random, non-political thoughts I've been pondering:

--  Have you ever been driving down the expressway and gotten into the left, or fast, lane, because there's a slow-moving truck in the right lane, and find yourself behind a string of cars because some dingus doesn't realize or care that he should be moving along and pass the truck before moving over to the slow lane where he belongs?  I find myself swearing at the driver in the lead car and gesturing in hopeless frustration because someone's too clueless to move over to the slow lane.

--  Not all keyboards are created equal.  Trust me.

--  Without a doubt, the best fast-food hamburger is made by Culver's.

--  Why would anyone dare to swim or surf in waters that are known to be shark-infested?  And if one were to dare fate, what goes through his mind while the shark is munching on his body part?

--  This radio station that I've found plays all the music I went through high school and college listening to:  Aerosmith, The Cars, Chicago, The Doobie Brothers, The Eagles, Heart, The Steve Miller Band, Foreigner, ZZ Top, Boston, Billy Joel...every once in awhile a song will come on that evokes memories of four decades ago.  It's like a cold beer.  If I haven't tasted one in awhile, the taste and scent of the beer takes me back to when Jeff, Jim, Evan and I drove around (illegally) drinking and killing time before that weekend's party.  People will wonder how we survived, but the truth of the matter is we were ahead of our time:  The driver never drank, and then the next night, one other guy drove and abstained while the driver of the night before drank with the other two.

--  I'm forever amused by the talking heads of network and local news.  How they can turn on the pathos is amazing.  We have this one woman who does the traffic in the morning who must have negotiated a heck of a deal with the station:  Weekday mornings she does the traffic and at night they air specials she's done with local law enforcement who tracks down the area's most wanted and dangerous criminals.  Make no mistake:  This woman has about a twelve for her body and about a seven for her face, but she acts like a coquette while delivering the traffic updates.  Then when she delivers her Most Wanted reports, she casts a stern look at the camera with her hair pulled back in a pony tail as she glares at the camera from behind her bulletproof vest.  Seriously?

--  When eateries tout something as being grilled or cooked to perfection, just what is perfection?  On a similar tack, why must I eat my beef medium raw?  I can't stand how chewy medium raw is.

-- In that same vein, it cracks me up how certain reporters have go-to moves in every on-air report.  A fellow bimbo of the station mentioned in the paragraph above always turns and gestures to the location in front of which she's reporting.  For example, if she's talking about a daring rescue at some burning building that happened overnight, the producers will have trotted her out in the station van so she can report from the scene, and as she talks to the camera, she says something along the lines of, "And firefighters conducted a daring rescue here," and she turns and gestures at the remains of the once-burning building, a la Carol Merrill, as if we wondered why she was standing in front of a burnt-out building.  Ridiculous.

-- Speaking of ridiculous, how is it that The Bachelor or The Bachelorette are still on television?

-- If last year was the year of musicians' deaths -- and it was -- this year is turning into the year of the actors' deaths.  I can't remember all of the luminaries who have passed, but there have been quite a few.

--  What's up with all the Chicago-centric shows?  NBC seems to have cornered the market on Chicago flavoring:  Chicago Fire, Chicago Justice, Chicago P.D., and Chicago Med.  Trust me, folks:  It's not that exciting.

--  I'm not half-bad at using the grill, but I think it's time to become better at it.

--  I've misplaced the cord to my electric razor and I can't find it.  This is troubling.  Karen has about thirty pairs of reading glasses and can never find one.  That'...unbelievable.

--  When we grew up, there were no ads for Viagra or Cialis.  I'm typing this as I listen to an ad on the radio for Noxitril, which the flack says the porn industry calls Viagra on steroids.  I don't know what's worse:  That it's being advertised or that I don't even blink as I hear it.

--  Thirty-six days, people, thirty-six days...

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Rock Voices

Finally, I've found a radio station that I enjoy.  When we moved to this state, I gravitated naturally to the sports talk stations, but the more I listened to them, the more I grew to dislike them, both for being overly parochial and for being insanely immature.  It was like listening with frat brothers who had never grown up.

Since my car's as old as it is, I don't have Sirius radio.  Karen tried to get some attachment that would allow it, but given that my car is a 2004 Volvo XC 90, satellite radio isn't compatible somehow.  That leaves me to whims of local radio.  Finally, after nearly four years, I found a classic rock station here that lets me listen to bands that I grew up listening to:  Aerosmith, the Steve Miller Band, Fleetwood Mac, Heart, Chicago, the Eagles and others.  Interestingly, I get to learn some of the lyrics to songs I only absentmindedly listened to growing up.

One thing this station does is repeat a lot of the same songs over a two-week period.  Were it any other music, I might be annoyed.  But since I really like this music, I enjoy it.

The Who gets played a lot (and thankfully Pink Floyd does not).  I kept hearing You Better You Bet and noticed just how much Roger Daltrey gets into the lyrics.  Now, I'm not opposed to listening to Mr. Daltrey; I think he has a fine rock voice.  His work on this song is phenomenal.  It sells the song.  But I wonder whether I'd want him singing Christmas carols.

There are other rockers out there who fit into the same category.  Chief among them is Janis Joplin.  She sounds like a cat being tortured on a tin roof.  But her voice makes the song Me and Bobby McGee.  I can't imagine anyone doing it better.  In the same vein is Melissa Etheridge.  I would not buy an album of standards from her, but I'd listen to Come to My Window gladly.  It's another perfect rock voice.

Geddy Lee soars as Rush's lead vocalist.  Were he singing anything else it would be horrible, probably.  Same with David Lee Roth.  His is a rock voice; his forays into other genres like country did not end well.

Can anyone imagine Axl Rose singing a Christmas carol?  Not me.  But Welcome to the Jungle would be less if it were sung by any other artist.  It sounds weird calling him and the rest of these singers artists, but in truth, they are, even if they don't sound like conventional vocalists, because what they do is art.  It just so happens that in this format, I appreciate their art. 

Although I'm older, I can appreciate art in various forms.  Growing up, we had to listen to classical music, or show tunes, or Herb Alpert.  Even though it was the Sixties, we weren't exposed to The Beatles, the Stones, the Doors or any of the counterculture artists because our parents were still stuck in the Fifties -- and not the Fifties that involved Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley.  I still appreciate classical music (although I'm no fan of opera) and there are Broadway tunes I like.  In fact, about the only genres I don't like are opera, gansta rap, reggae and perhaps some other stuff, but I like most mainstream genres. 

I've just come to appreciate that there are voices that belong in one category or another.  Not everyone can sing like Carrie Underwood or Faith Hill and do justice to both Christmas carols as well as country music.  Listening to Josh Groban try to sing a heavy metal song might well prove embarrassing.   But for every multitalented singer there's an Axl Rose, a Geddy Lee or a Janis Joplin who can bang out a tune that just sound right.

Thanks, Roger Daltrey.

There's no question who you are.

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles