Reason’s Robby Soave writes, “There are many Republicans and Democrats who want to scrap Section 230 entirely: President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump, Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) have all denounced the statute’s protections for Big Tech companies. Getting rid of Section 230 wouldn’t solve the problem of overly aggressive fact-checking and content moderation, though. On the contrary, it could very well exacerbate it. The more liability Facebook is subjected to, the less permissive it is likely to be.

Facebook labelled one of my articles “false information” and threatened to punish @reason because of it. So I contacted the third-party fact checker, Science Feedback. They admitted they screwed up (!) and changed their evaluation. Bizarre.https://t.co/BTuqifokW5

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) December 29, 2021

But that doesn’t mean the status quo is particularly satisfying. It’s good that the fact-checker reversed course in my case, but needless to say, Facebook should revisit its formal, contractual relationship with an organization that routinely misquotes the people it scrutinizes.”

Read the entire column.

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Reason’s Robby Soave writes, “The U.S. government is unlikely to ever defeat COVID-19 in the same sense that it defeated Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. In the meantime, the government is claiming more and more power for itself; this power is being wielded by the agencies least accountable to the democratic process, and it is being used to enact harmful restrictions on people’s lives that will apparently last for years, for decades, or forever. Americans still remove their shoes and belts in order to board air planes, even though the event that inspired this policy happened more than 20 years ago—and even though the evidence against this policy is overwhelming.

“It’s kind of like we’re halfway through World War II, and you decide, well, I think I’ve had enough of this,” said Fauci.”

We will never defeat covid in the sense that we defeated Nazi Germany. If this is what we’re waiting for, we’ll wait forever.https://t.co/PSCwS3lE7n

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) December 20, 2021

The Faucists clearly want to make masks just as permanent as the TSA: Indeed, they have said so explicitly, as Fauci just did. At every stage of the pandemic, public health bureaucrats have uttered some version of the sentence Now is not the time to ease up. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Not as long as they are in charge.”

Read the entire column.

The post Against Faucism appeared first on Liberty Tree.

Reason’s Robby Soave writes, “Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who shot and killed two men during the riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last summer, was acquitted on Friday. Prosecutors had charged him with first-degree reckless homicide, first-degree intentional homicide, attempted first-degree intentional homicide, and two counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, but the jury was persuaded by Rittenhouse’s argument that he acted in self-defense.

The ACLU thinks that Kyle Rittenhouse’s civil liberties got too much protection https://t.co/9zcJoGz9vQ

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) November 19, 2021

For anyone who had followed the trial closely, this outcome is unsurprising. The prosecution simply did not meet its burden of proof, and Rittenhouse’s defense team presented considerable evidence that he reasonably feared for his life each time he pulled the trigger. A witness testified that Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man shot by Rittenhouse, had threatened Rittenhouse’s life and was attempting to wrest control of Rittenhouse’s AR-15. The second man, Anthony Huber, struck Rittenhouse with a skateboard. And the third man—Gaige Grosskreutz, who survived—admitted on the stand that he had first pointed his own gun at Rittenhouse; Rittenhouse shot him in response to this perceived threat. As former Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.) put it: ‘The Rittenhouse case was a clear case of self-defense based on the evidence presented. The initial media narrative was false. Justice prevailed…’

More troubling is the response to the verdict from an organization that should know better: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In a statement reacting to the verdict, ACLU-Wisconsin Interim Executive Director Shaadie Ali lamented the ‘deep roots of white supremacy’ in Kenosha that prevented Rittenhouse from being ‘held responsible for his actions.”

Read the entire column.

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Reason’s Robby Soave writes, “Last month, NBC reporter Kelli Stavast was interviewing NASCAR driver Brandon Brown following his victory in the NASCAR Xfinity Series Sparks 300 race when fans started chanting ‘f*** Joe Biden.’ But that’s not what Stavast heard.

And so the ‘let’s go Brandon’ chant—a less vulgar way of signaling one’s opposition to the current president—was born. Fans say it at sports gatherings. Conservatives tweet it at each other…

So what?

On “Let’s Go Brandon” blowback: Why does the mainstream media think its job is to police speech critical of Joe Biden as of it were criminal? https://t.co/mVN2XC88ce

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) November 5, 2021

Well, even though it was completely normal for Democrats to vigorously insult former President Donald Trump throughout his presidency, some liberal media figures have decided that the comparatively mild ‘let’s go Brandon’ chant is an essentially violent utterance. Asha Rangappa, a commentator for CNN, said it was akin to making a pro-ISIS statement…

say what you will but bizarrely encouraging someone to say “long live ISIS” on an airplane is extremely on brand for an FBI agent pic.twitter.com/PLACtTiMM3

— Sam Biddle (@samfbiddle) November 1, 2021

Make no mistake: The chant is clearly First Amendment–protected speech, even if some would consider it hate speech. Contrary to what many progressive activists naively assume, hate speech is free speech. There is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment, because there is no mutually agreed-upon definition of hate speech, and there are no Supreme Court decisions supporting such an exception. The Supreme Court has carved out some categories of speech that don’t qualify for protection—threats of imminent violence, for instance—but hate speech isn’t one of them. On the contrary, the right to insult political leaders and government officials is perhaps the most important and obvious component of the First Amendment.”

Read the entire column.

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Reason’s Robby Soave writes, “Bright Sheng is a professor of composition at the University of Michigan. He was born in China in 1955; when he was a child, the Red Guards took away his family piano. Nevertheless, he grew up to become a widely celebrated musician: He received a MacArthur ‘genius’ Fellowship in 2001, and has twice been a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in music.

Bright Sheng survived the Cultural Revolution. Or so he thought. https://t.co/6v7ti3tFao

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 8, 2021

His undergraduate students should certainly count themselves lucky to be able to learn from him. Instead, they are demanding the university fire him for rendering the classroom an unsafe space. The administration is looking into the matter, and Sheng has stepped down from teaching the class for the time being. He has apologized profusely for making his students feel wronged, though many have loudly rejected his apology.

What was Sheng’s transgression? He screened the 1965 version of Shakespeare’s Othello in class as part of a lesson about how the play was adapted for the opera.”

Read the entire column.

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Reason’s Robby Soave writes, “Anthony Fauci is not sure whether Christmas might have to be canceled yet again this year. On Sunday, the White House’s top coronavirus advisor told CBS’s Margaret Brennan that it was ‘too soon to tell’ whether Americans will receive the public health bureaucracy’s permission to celebrate the holidays with friends and family members.

‘We can gather for Christmas, or it’s just too soon to tell?’ Brennan asked.

‘You know, Margaret, it’s just too soon to tell,’ said Fauci.

How could Anthony Fauci possibly think that anyone—except, I guess, epidemiologists—is going to skip Christmas this year? People are having parties *right now* and cases are likely higher than they will be in coming months https://t.co/RKn4mW9BZ6

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) October 3, 2021

Here’s another question for Fauci: What planet are you living on?

Many modelers now believe that we have surpassed the peak of the delta variant’s wave, and expect that COVID-19 cases will fall precipitously in the coming weeks and months. That’s great news: Widespread vaccination is working to counter delta’s increased transmissibility while significantly decreasing severe disease and death.

But even if cases remain higher in the winter months than we are hoping for, it’s simply not realistic to expect Americans to skip Christmas parties for another year in a row.

Read the entire column.

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Reason’s Robby Soave writes, “KFOR, an Oklahoma news channel, reported last week that rural hospitals throughout the state were in danger of becoming overwhelmed by victims of a very specific poisoning: overdoses of ivermectin, an anti-parasite drug promoted by vaccine skeptics as a possible treatment for COVID-19.

The story went viral, and was seized upon by the mainstream media. But its central claim is substantially untrue…

The story ran under the headline: ‘Patients overdosing on ivermectin backing up rural Oklahoma hospitals, ambulances.’ It was quickly picked up by national news outlets, such as Rolling Stone, Newsweek, and the New York Daily News. Numerous high-profile media figures, including MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, tweeted about ivermectin overdoses straining Oklahoma hospitals—the implication being that the right-wing embrace of a crank COVID-19 cure was dangerous not only for the people who consumed it but for the stability of the entire medical system.

Rolling Stone pulled a Rolling Stone! https://t.co/muhfAMgp6o

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) September 6, 2021

It was a story that appeared to confirm many of the mainstream media’s biases about the recklessness of the rubes. But it’s extremely misleading. There is, in fact, little reason to believe a purported strain on Oklahoma hospitals is caused by ivermectin overdoses; one hospital served by the doctor quoted in the KFOR article released a statement saying it has not treated any ivermectin overdoses, nor has it been forced to turn away patients.

This is yet another example of the mainstream media lazily circulating a narrative that flatters the worldview of the liberal audience, without bothering to check on any of the details.”

Read the entire story here.

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If COVID-19 is probably 99% survivable for most age groups, why did PolitiFact rate this false?

Another example of the “experts” getting it wrong again on COVID-19 which resulted in spreading their own misinformation.

Reason’s Robby Soave writes,

“A viral Instagram post claimed that COVID-19 is 99 percent survivable for most age groups—the elderly being an important exception. The post cited projections from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but was flagged as misinformation by the social media site and rated ‘false’ by the Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact.”

PolitiFact rates as “false” a viral claim that COVID-19 is 99% survivable for most age groups. I say this is fact-check is itself misinformation! https://t.co/UJxgB1JW74

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) August 9, 2021

“That’s a curious verdict, since the underlying claim is likely true. While estimates of COVID-19’s infection fatality rate (IFR) range from study to study, the expert consensus does indeed place the death rate at below 1 percent for most age groups.”

Soave later adds, “It often seems like the mainstream media reporters, federal health experts, and policy makers who form Team Blue are so concerned about people taking the pandemic insufficiently seriously that they resort to needless fearmongering.”

Exactly. Read more here.

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