Libertarian: A Reckoning for Teachers Unions
“Another day, another set of parents who discovered” the reopening of their kids’ schools thwarted by a politically powerful teachers union,” laments Reason’s Matt Welch. This time, it was in wealthy Montclair, NJ, whose superintendent announced Friday that schools, closed for the past 319 days, wouldn’t reopen on a hybrid basis as planned — because the union balked. “Unions and union-backed politicians” across America, Welch notes, are “making a mockery of science” and ignoring the conclusions of experts that schools are safe. With rumors that even a September reopening is in doubt, parents will now be “checking local private-school prices and further-flung real-estate prices.” Unions seem unaware “how much public sentiment is poised to turn against them.”
Conservative: America’s Real History
The New York Times’ 1619 Project presents “preposterously false” historical claims to argue that “America’s Founders hoodwinked people into believing they were a nation because their real intent was to establish a durable race-based tyranny,” notes Peter Wood at The American Mind. The 1776 Report from a Trump administration commission much more accurately explains that “America was born from recognition of an emerging collective identity — and out of ‘self-evident truths’ that were not yet self-evident to much of the rest of the world.” While this understanding “doesn’t say anything that would have challenged the intellect of an average middle-school student,” the left has attacked every part of it, even prompting President Biden to abolish the 1776 commission. But “Americans who do love their country, and are not ashamed to wave a flag now and then, should read the 1776 Report carefully.”
Media watch: The Press’s Censorship Craze
Some journalists have “identified a new root cause of mob violence: free speech,” snarks John Tierney at City Journal. Since the Capitol riot, they’ve “cheered the social-media purge of conservatives and urged further censorship of ‘violent rhetoric’ and ‘disinformation.’ It’s a remarkably self-destructive move for a profession dependent on freedom of speech.” The drive has shifted from “ ‘deplatforming’ individual heretics” to bids “to eliminate the platforms, too,” with some even calling for telecom companies to drop Fox News. These precedents “will give Republicans weapons for payback when they return to power,” Tierney warns. “Far better to let police and courts deal with rioters — and leave Americans free to say what they want.”
From the right: The Filibuster Must Survive
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he has secured “an ironclad promise from two Democrats not to eliminate the legislative filibuster,” but it still “hangs by a fragile, two-vote thread,” worries The Washington Post’s Marc Thiessen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is determined to rid the minority of its “procedural safety valve,” though he has “vigorously” used the filibuster to “force Republicans to reduce the scope of some of their biggest legislative achievements.” But if Dems “eliminate the filibuster to enact their own radical agenda, they would rue that decision when they return to the minority — and hasten that return by provoking a populist backlash that could sweep them out of power.” The move would “turn every election into a matter of life or death for the other side,” so it’s pathetic “that one of our democracy’s most important institutional guardrails is just two votes away from elimination.”
Centrist: Amazon’s Chilling Power
A federal court’s refusal to order Amazon Web Services to restore service to Parler exposes the hosting service’s enormous power, warns Noah Feldman at Bloomberg Quint. With a rush of new members fleeing Twitter, Parler was unable to keep up with content violations. That prompted Amazon, Apple and Google to cut Parler off. But “no social-media platform can possibly have perfect content moderation. Violations occur all the time. Not all are addressed, and not all are addressed rapidly.” So Amazon “could choose to take down almost any platform whenever it wanted to, claiming that the platform had violated its terms of service.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board