Pun Salad

Journalist Abigail Shrier spoke to Princeton University students at a private event on Wednesday, discussing everything from free speech and academic freedom to gender ideology and parental rights.

The talk was held at an off-campus venue, the location of which was revealed solely to RSVP’d guests just a few hours before the event due to “threats and harassment” organizers said were leveled against Shrier and student groups co-hosting the lecture.

If you’re here, you no doubt are familiar with at least some of the unpleasantness you encounter whenever you deviate from the approved script. So, again, what’s it like to be the target of so much hate? It’s freeing. That’s what I’d like to talk about tonight.

As an undergraduate studying philosophy, I spent an inordinate amount of time wondering whether my will was free. This is the metaphysical question of whether anyone can be said to have acted ‘freely.’ And most of the philosophers seemed to agree that our will wasn’t all that free. The hard determinists painted a world in which every human action was ultimately explicable by the wave function of elementary particles, ultimately leading neurons to fire—setting off of axonal conduction well beyond our control and none of which we directed.

Even if you weren’t a hard determinist, you struggled with the obvious problem that human decisions – and the reasons behind them – are structured by one’s upbringing, experience or even inborn personality traits, all of which shape our motivations. Compatibilists claimed that, at most, one could hope to live according to one’s own motives and preferences. That is, motives and preferences that were largely determined by things like personality.

“The Actions of man are never free,” 18th Century determinist Baron Holbach once wrote. “They are always the necessary consequence of his temperament, of the received ideas, and of the notions, either true or false, which he has formed to himself of happiness, of his opinions, strengthened by example, by education, and by daily experience.”

I remember reading those lines as an undergraduate, tugged by the worry that Holbach was right: maybe our motivations were determined by our personalities and upbringing and received ideas. Today, I read them and think: if only.

In my new Hill essay and others [sic] articles (all of which are listed down below), I argue there is a principled classical liberal approach to these issues that was nicely outlined by President Ronald Reagan in his 1987 veto of Fairness Doctrine legislation, when he said:

History has shown that the dangers of an overly timid or biased press cannot be averted through bureaucratic regulation, but only through the freedom and compe­tition that the First Amendment sought to guarantee.

Let’s break that line down. Reagan admits that media bias can be a real thing. Of course it is! Journalists, editors, and even the companies they work for all have specific views. They all favor or disfavor certain types of content. But, at least in the United States, the editorial decisions made by these private actors are protected by the First Amendment. Section 230 is really quite secondary to this debate, even though some Trumpian conservatives wrongly suggest that it’s the real problem here. In reality, national conservatives would need to find a way to work around well-established First Amendment protections if they wanted to impose new restrictions on the editorial rights of private parties.

But why would they want to do that? Returning to the Reagan veto statement, we should remember how he noted that, even if the First Amendment did not protect the editorial discretion of private media platforms, bureaucratic regulation was not the right answer to the problem of “bias.” Competition and choice were the superior answer. This is the heart and soul of the classical liberal perspective: more innovation is always superior to more regulation.

Should we ignore the costs of the "Build Back Better" bill and simply focus on the benefits? Wouldn't that be nice? Unfortunately, the most constructive criticisms of the legislation reveal why the magical thinking behind this monstrously expensive spending package will not improve American society.

In urging us to focus less on costs, economist Alan Blinder asserts: "The House bill includes several real winners. Do you oppose universal pre-K education? You shouldn't; it works. Are you against more-affordable child care? Not many Americans are. Do you think we should ignore global climate change? If so, think again."

But these assertions are weak. You can support pre-K education and affordable child care and worry about climate change without believing that heavy-handed government is the best answer. A compelling case can be made that the most effective policy lawmakers could follow to achieve these goals is simply to get out of the way. Indeed, it's likely that a great deal of the BBB legislation will obstruct progress.

U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas hopes New Hampshire gets a new commuter rail service connecting Nashua and Manchester to Boston. Critics note how few Granite Staters use available rail now and don’t think local property taxpayers want to pick up the estimated $11 million tab to subsidize the trains.

Commuter rail is part of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending package pushed by President Joe Biden and supported by all the members of New Hampshire’s congressional delegation. Biden signed the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which includes $66 billion for rail, in November.

“This is a project that continues to bubble from the bottom up here in New Hampshire,” Pappas told Manchester’s InkLink last summer about the Capitol Corridor rail project. “I hear about it everywhere I go, residents who are looking for an opportunity to get to work, businesses that are looking to attract the kind of talent they need, and from local leaders who understand this can be an economic engine for New Hampshire.”