Update On Michael Mann v. Mark Steyn Litigation

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  • In my last post a couple of days ago, I referred to the defamation lawsuit brought by Michael Mann against Mark Steyn as an example of abusive litigation seeking to use the expense of the legal process to suppress public debate on an important subject.

  • The lawsuit was originally brought in October 2012. Other defendants in the case include National Review (where Steyn published the blog post that is the subject of the lawsuit), Competitive Enterprise Insititute (which published another blog post which Steyn used as a basis for his own post) and Rand Simberg (author of the CEI blog post).

  • The tortured history of this case very well illustrates the difficulty of trying to strike a good balance between, on the one hand, having libel law as a mechanism for people to defend themselves against false statements that could ruin their reputations and, on the other hand, having a wildly expensive litigation process that can be wielded as a weapon by the powerful to threaten to bankrupt political opponents and thereby silence debate on important topics of public interest.

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Is It Time To Overrule New York Times v. Sullivan?

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  • Likely, most readers of this blog have heard of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case of New York Times v. Sullivan, which came down in 1964. That case imposed a big limitation on the state law of libel, said to be based on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

  • The law of libel — which is a matter of state rather than federal law, and mostly of common law rather than statutory law — generally allows a plaintiff to sue someone who harms his reputation by publishing false statements about him. At the time of the New York Times decision in the 1960s, there was widespread perception that state libel rules were being abused by public officials to silence legitimate criticism of them by the press.

  • The holding of New York Times v. Sullivan was that, to be consistent with the First Amendment, a public official cannot sue for libel, even based on published false statements, unless the official proves that the publisher acted with “actual malice” in making the statements. Subsequent federal court decisions have expanded the protections of the rule to apply not only to “public officials,” but also to “public figures” — a broad and indefinite category that might include anyone who speaks out on any subject of public interest.

  • But has the pendulum now swung too far?

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Update On Bill de Blasio Report Card -- Income Inequality

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  • Last month, shortly after New York Mayor Bill de Blasio reached his seventh anniversary in office, I had a post giving him a “report card” on his achievements, or lack thereof. As you may know, de Blasio is term-limited at eight years, so he is now in his last year. In fact the contest to replace him is well under way, with the primary (that will likely determine the result) scheduled for June 22.

  • My February post on de Blasio covered subjects like taxes, spending, crime, schools, and rent regulation. On all of those, his performance has been abysmal, if not worse. But recently it occurred to me that the post had omitted to cover another subject that de Blasio himself has consistently emphasized as being his signature issue. That subject is income inequality.

  • How has de Blasio done on this issue? The answer is, disastrously. Despite — or maybe because of — de Blasio’s policy initiatives and greatly increased public spending, measured income inequality has actually increased. That result will of course not come as any surprise to Manhattan Contrarian readers. Things like income inequality are just not subject to cure, or even amelioration, by government tax-and-spend programs.

  • So de Blasio’s failure was inevitable. But that has not stopped him and his supporters, let alone his most likely successors, from continuing to believe that the next round of such programs and spending is finally going to work.

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Is The Left On The Cusp Of Permanent Triumph, Or Is It Committing Suicide?

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  • If you think that cancel culture and social media deplatforming have gotten out of hand, you should know that those are only two examples of many strategies that the fascist left deploys to enforce its political orthodoxy.

  • Another such strategy, currently sweeping the country, takes coercive suppression of dissent to a whole new level. The model here comes straight out of the old Soviet Union’s playbook: use control over institutions to demand a continuous series of expressions of loyalty to the orthodoxy, and then to destroy the livelihood and career of anyone who refuses to comply.

  • This latest strategy, which has emerged at academic institutions, is to make so-called “antiracism” or Critical Race Theory or Social Justice training into a required course of study. Or better still, to make such training not only a single required course on its own, but also something integrated as a significant component into multiple courses, or even into every course. Then, have the course grades and evaluations be determined not just by the mastery of, say, calculus, but instead or also by the demonstrated willingness of the student to regurgitate and swear loyalty to the “antiracism” or Critical Race Theory or Social Justice orthodoxy. Fail to show sufficient enthusiasm as (for example) an “antiracist,” and you get humiliated in class, you receive grades of D or F in your courses, and finally you get labeled as a “racist” to all potential graduate schools and future employers.

  • The more I read about this, the more I am astounded at how far the strategy has progressed before many normal people realized what was happening or began to push back. The question is, is this really a strategy by which the left can achieve its final triumph, or are the left and the institutions in question in the process of committing suicide?

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Is China About To "Win" In The Battle For The Future?

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  • David Goldman, who writes at PJ Media largely on issues of foreign affairs, has just weighed in with a new (March 12) piece called “Why China Is Winning.” Goldman’s article never states explicitly what exactly China is “winning,” but from the context it looks to be some combination of economic success and/or military hegemony.

  • And why is China “winning”? Goldman’s answer boils down to one word, “meritocracy”:

  • Meritocracy will win, because it always does, and all the more so in a high-tech, winner-take-all world.

  • In predicting China’s imminent “win,” Goldman joins a long list big-shot pundits. Is he on to something that we ought to worry about?

  • My short answer is no.

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Is It Possible To Vote Left-Wing Government Out? The Case Of Argentina

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  • As I have written many times at this site, the consequence of socialism, and of left-wing public policy more generally, is gradual relative economic decline. Take a prosperous country (or state or city), then put in place the progressive policy prescriptions, and wait twenty or thirty or forty years, and you will find a place that has been passed by by all the competition.

  • But why would the people give governing leftists twenty or more years if they are running the place into the ground? The answer is that great promises are made of infinite government resources to solve all human problems; and special favors are granted to strong interest groups like government workers and labor unions and subsidized corporations, who return the favors with votes. Economic decline continues, but slowly, and the only way to perceive it is to make comparisons with other countries.

  • The true archetype for long-term economic decline through left-wing policy is Argentina.

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