John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MICHAEL ARRIA IN MONDOWEISS
“Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that prohibits anti-Semitism in public schools and universities throughout the state. However, the legislation also equates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, effectively censoring the advocacy of Palestinian rights.”
Such legislation is shameful, as all people embracing the best liberal spirit of Western tradition know.
But people with special passions and loyalties have always been willing to cast aside larger principles to “support” what it is they are so passionate about, just like parents who break rules for their children’s advancement or advantage, a practice vividly coming to light in the recent national scandal over outfits who cheat the rules of admission for the best universities in return for handsome fees.
It has been an endless battle in all societies that could be called even moderately democratic, and “moderately" is very much the operative word when it comes to the United States.
Its entire history is marked by anything but a broad dedication to free and open society, no matter what the high school civics class textbooks or the Fourth of July speeches claim. It has been an uphill battle every step of the way for over two centuries.
Today, all of Western society - not just the United States, although perhaps more visibly there than anywhere else because of the county’s immense influence on others - is faced with a determined, organized lobby which effectively opposes some of our best Western traditions - especially those of transparency in government, equal treatment under the law, and free speech - a special-interest lobby representing the narrow interests of a foreign state.
When some members of the lobby are not maligning others openly with charges of prejudice for simply criticizing the behavior, and not the identity, of that state, they are lobbying legislators both in Washington and in many individual American states to see anti-constitutional legislation enacted, as it has been in a number of cases, including this in Florida.
Anti-constitutional? Why, there’s always a remedy in the courts, isn’t there? Not really unless people are determined to spend substantial amounts of money and time seeking it. Plus, American high courts are heavily burdened and often slow to act.
And even after a successful legal action, the lobby often marshals its resources on an alternative method for achieving much the same end.
Since this is a phenomenon occurring in many jurisdictions, it represents a challenging effort to obtain fairness. After all, the special-interest lobby has made, and continues to make, serious focused efforts not only to get the legislation it wants but to protect it.
The lobby seems to believe that (moderately) oppressive measures supporting its special cause, Israel, are acceptable and necessary. Either that, or it is so focused on its cause, it just doesn’t see the unfairness of what it is does. It represents dangerous thinking for the long-term interests and freedoms of hundreds of millions of people.
The basic problem is carefully outlined here:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/john-chuckman-comment-how-american-politics-really-work-why-there-are-terrible-candidates-and-constant-wars-and-peoples-problems-are-ignored-why-heroes-like-julian-assange-are-persecuted-and-r/
