By Edward Achorn
Attacks on Americans, such as we saw Thursday night, will not play well with most voters. I condemn such actions and call on the government to protect our civil liberties.
I wish Democratic leaders would, too.
America is not America without free speech. Each of us has a right to engage in political activity without being violently assaulted or targeted for politicized prosecution by the other side.
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By Edward Achorn
The riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin are not protests. They are attempts — quite evidently organized — to stoke violence and hatred in America.
They are succeeding at that mission.
In recent days, an armed teenager who claimed to be at the riots to defend property can be seen on a cell phone video getting knocked to the ground. In many of the riots, the mob severely beats those it manages to bring down. The prone teenager in this case fired his weapon. He has been charged with first-degree murder in two deaths.
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By Edward Achorn
A new Franklin Templeton-Gallup research project bears out what I have been reporting for months: the media have misinformed Americans about COVID-19. While the disease is both nasty and deadly, a daily panic narrative has led people to grossly overrate its dangers.
That has powerful, and perhaps frightening, economic and political consequences.
Sonai Desai, chief investment officer for Franklin Templeton Fixed Income, wrote about the survey on July 28 (“They Blinded Us From Science”). (A cautionary note about the survey: Franklin Templeton pushes mutual funds, so it has a stake in promoting economic activity.)
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By Edward Achorn
It is good to be safe. But it is bad to be overwhelmed by fear, to the point you end up hurting yourself and others.
We got there with COVID-19. The data suggests the news media and the politicians (of both parties) scared Americans inordinately about the coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, China.
A recent Kekst CNC poll found that Americans believe 9 percent of the population has been killed by the coronavirus.
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By Edward Achorn
Is it possible that politicians, after stoking hatred and division, are having second thoughts about rioting in their cities?
Months of massive Black Lives Matter protests — threatening police (“pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon”) and calling for their defunding — have spun off rioting and looting. Neighborhoods have been wrecked, with billions of dollars of investment in cities destroyed. Black businesses have been wiped out, and black people killed.
As residents with money flee for safer places, some leaders fear their cities may never recover.
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By Edward Achorn
Earlier this summer, I posted charts showing dramatic declines in deaths from COVID-19, according to data collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I hoped that people would feel less panicked if they could see the big picture — something most of the news media were not showing.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked some of my Facebook friends.
They argued that it was the Sunbelt’s turn to experience the crowded hospitals and death spikes that New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts had endured in April. They warned me that events would soon render my piece embarrassingly obsolete.
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By Edward Achorn
I have spent my professional life defending the First Amendment and the free-speech rights it enshrines. It is the bulwark of all our freedoms.
The attacks on it are proliferating alarmingly. Now, the most powerful social media platforms — which function as today’s public square — are arrogantly silencing a U.S. president.
If a president’s right to be heard in the public square may be freely assaulted, who is safe? This is extremely dangerous to self-government and the perpetuation of our civil rights.
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By Edward Achorn
Will the raging cancel culture now cancel the presidential debates? A former press secretary to Bill Clinton hopes so.
Joe Lockhart argued the other day that Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden should not participate in any forum in which President Trump can express his views.
“We saw in the debates in 2016 Hillary Clinton showed a mastery of the issues, every point she made was more honest and bested Trump,” Mr. Lockhart told CNN. “But Trump came out of the debates doing better I think because he just kept repeating the same old lies: ‘we’re going to build a wall and Mexico is going to pay for it,’ ‘we’re going to keep all those Mexican rapists out of the country,’ and ‘we’re going to make great trade deals’ — none of these things have come to pass.”
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