With the exception of Professor Walter E. Block, libertarians, lite and hard-core, have lined-up like a monolith—much as mainstream media has—on the side of conspiracy and counteract, in the matter of Michael Brown’s shooting by Darren Wilson. (At least Reason.com has been willing to entertain differences of opinion.) Broad patterns of police transgression exist. However, each “cop killing” must be decided on the merits of the facts. Regrettably, this libertarian column had also expressed the opinion that Brown was the victim of “murder-by-cop.” I was wrong and have corrected myself.

Mentor and friend Walter Block did not fall in lockstep. Here’s the lovely comment received after the publication of “Ferguson: Thankful for Founding Fathers’ Legal Legacy”:

Dear Ilana:

Yet another eloquent, beautifully argued, magnificently written article, greatly informed by a libertarian sense of justice. Congratulations once again.

Best regards,

Walter

Walter E. Block, Ph.D.
Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics
Joseph A. Butt, S.J. College of Business
Loyola University New Orleans

South African media (even more illiberal than America’s) have almost nothing positive to say about Steve Hofmeyr, an immensely popular singer, songwriter, actor and Afrikaner activist. (In the new multicultural South Africa, Afrikaner identity is tantamount to a “racist” identity, naturally.) For speaking out of turn, the forces of tyranny have converged on Hofmeyr with the intent to silence him, and worse. Note the sovietized nomenclature used to bring one man to heel and to induce conformity: Hofmeyr is said to go against “nation-building,” to be “extremely abnormal,” to express a “startling sentiment.”

OMG!

A fellow named Brad Cibane, in training at the American Ivy League (which, increasingly, does not stand for true intellectual excellence) to excel as Conformity Enforcer in South Africa, illustrates his terrifying notion of allowable speech. Deploying somewhat specious distinctions such as the “vertical right to free speech vs. horizontal right to free speech”— Cibane does, however, make a valid point with respect to Hofmeyr’s court injunction against a clown called Conrad Koch. Both have a natural right to speak out of turn. Nevertheless, I do understand Hofmeyr wanting to use all arrows in his quiver because the deck—the state included—is stacked against him and his cause.

The libertarian imperative here is to deal with the meta-issues, leaving out the substance of the offending words: They are irrelevant. As this column has explained, policing what people say for political propriety is not a dance in which libertarians should partake—it is “a dance adopted by the political establishment to cow contrarians into submission. By going on the defensive—allowing themselves to be drawn into these exchanges—libertarians are, inadvertently, conceding that speech should be policed for propriety, and that those who violate standards set by the PC set are somehow defective on those grounds alone, and deserve to be purged from “polite” company.”

The current column, “Don’t Get ‘Grubered’ By W’s Groupies,” now on WND, is just in time for Barack Obama’s logically “broken” address on immigration is . An excerpt:

On Fox News’ “The Five,” one female host energetically involved in genuflecting to George Bush turned to another, a former prosecutor and lingerie model, to solicit her “constitutional take”—those are shudder quotes—on President Barack Obama’s impending executive amnesty. A better constitutional authority on presidential powers than Kimberly G-string is Jonathan Turley, professor of law at George Washington University. …

… Barack Obama’s cringe-factor has crescendoed—so much so that conservatives feel comfortable about dusting off an equally awful dictator, Bush 43, and presenting him and his dynasty to the public for another round. However, when James Madison spoke of “war as the true nurse of executive aggrandizement,” he was speaking not only of Obama.

“Speak softly but carry a big stick—the stick being executive power,” preached another Republican tyrant, Teddy Roosevelt. While Turley will be tackling the constitutional quagmire posed by Obamacare, immigration is the latest legislative stick with which Americans are being stuck.

Greg Gutfeld, the one and only neoconservative on that current-affairs show mentioned who entertains and occasionally edifies, is correct about the “broken” inchoate verbiage: “Our immigration system is broken” is a euphemism for the refusal to enforce immigration law (against certain ethno-racial groups). It is statist semantics; Orwellian Newspeaks; a linguistic trick to lead Americans to believe urgent action is required. …

Read the rest. The complete column is “Don’t Get ‘Grubered’ By W’s Groupies,” now on WND.

UPDATE: A reply to a critic, here:

The time to be a follower of Bush ditto-heads is over. Ask the Bush groupies why they ooze over and promote a mass murderer and his ugly art, on what is supposed to be a current-affairs program. This column was simply reporting what’s discussed on these multiplying panels of pig-ignorant loudmouths. (By the way, strong language is not vitriol.) Moreover, why confuse sexiness with smarts/ideas?! There is a reason Ann Coulter and Ms. Malkin don’t get a TV show: they are too clever for the cable master’s comfort. It is up to the consumer of this dross (“The Five,” “Outnumbered”) to know he is being entertained and not edified by most cable and nitwork shows. If he does—he should be OK.

When their guy is in power, both dyed-in-the-wool Republicans and Democrats—and the military-media-congressional complexes attached to each political affiliation—shun truth and justice. When Bush was in power, Fox News did a poor job of holding him accountable (they had “TUNED-OUT, [WERE] TURNED-ON, AND HOT FOR WAR”). MSNBC did the opposite; they held Bush accountable. The position was framed by a Facebook friend as follows:

Stephen James Bernier: How is it when you point out the obvious faults of George W. Bush you are a “Bush hater”? When you point out the faults of Barack Hussein Obama you are a “patriot”?

A hint of this is found in the response at Powerline to the choosing by House Speaker John Boehner of Jonathan Turley, prominent “constitutional scholar,” “to represent [the House of Representative] in a lawsuit against the Obama administration. The suit challenges changes the administration made to Obamacare without congressional authorization.”

The liberal law professor is pretty impartial when it comes to Obama. Yet Powerline worries that Turley is too much of an extremist on this issue, as “he believes in severely restricting presidential power.”

This first became clear during the Bush years, when Turley became a hero of the left, and a constant presence on such shows such as Keith Olbermann’s and Rachel Maddow’s, by consistently claiming that the president’s counter-terrorism efforts were lawless and unconstitutional. Turley went so far as to accuse Bush of committing war crimes and advocated prosecuting top administration officials for their approval of harsh interrogation techniques.

Essentially, Powerline begrudges Turley for having applied to Bush the same constitutional principles he is applying to Obama.

MORE.