Substacks
Free Speech in a Time of War Bari Weiss
Wars are a test of many things: military prowess, political leadership, and national unity, to name just three. They’re also a moral test.
Behind the many debates, protests, and proclamations concerning the Israel-Hamas war loom a few big questions: Is this a just war? And given the fact that Hamas does not follow the rules of war—hiding its men and weapons inside mosques and schools and hospitals—how is Israel to strike back?
There’s no one better qualified to answer these questions than the political theorist Michael Walzer. Ever since he published Just and Unjust Wars in 1977, Walzer has been the authority on the morality of war. So The Free Press’s Peter Savodnik gave Walzer a call and asked him to guide us through the moral maze presented by this conflict. Scroll down to read their conversation.
Wars also test our commitment to the principles we claim to value. Principles like the right to free speech. There has been an explosion of hateful, antisemitic speech in America and Europe in the days since Hamas’s attack on Israel—including on college campuses. In response to these loathsome expressions, some have pushed for a crackdown.
In our second piece this morning, former ACLU president Nadine Strossen and social psychologist Pamela Paresky say this would be a mistake: “It is easy to appreciate the rage over today’s blatantly antisemitic rhetoric, particularly when our society wouldn’t tolerate, much less celebrate, similar expressions of delight after the brutal slaughter of other minorities. We feel that anger personally. But when it comes to calls to silence, fire, or even deport those who express such noxious views, we are also clear: we must resist it.”
Scroll down to read their full essay: Even Antisemites Deserve Free Speech.
Here’s Peter’s interview:
Here are Nadine and Pamela making their case:
And if you haven’t already heard it, please listen to the latest episode of Honestly, which is perhaps the most powerful we have ever published, thanks to the tireless efforts of Candace Mittel Kahn and Suzy Weiss.
The Free Press exists because of our subscribers. Become one today:
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Marianne Williamson: The Democratic Elite Should Resign Marianne Williamson
At half past eleven last night, Democratic campaigner Marianne Williamson joined us on our epic six-hour livestream. Marianne has run to be the Democratic presidential candidate twice: in 2020, when she ultimately endorsed Bernie Sanders, and in 2024, against Joe Biden. By the time she joined us, Trump’s win looked inevitable. We asked her what her initial reactions were. What follows is an edited transcript of her response.
Well, obviously I’m not happy about it. But I also feel that everything that went wrong is what I’ve been saying would go wrong for the last year and a half. I ran for president because I knew that the traditional Democratic playbook—the corporate Democrats are in charge of that playbook now—would not be enough to defeat Trump this time. I’ve said repeatedly that this election would be more like 2016 than like 2020, and it’s very clear to me that the elites of the Democratic Party and media don’t know how to read the room. The Democratic elite should resign their positions tonight. Many of those people have not sauntered out of their gated communities long enough to have made sense of what is going on out there.
Over the last year and a half, we could have been having a robust conversation about the following facts:
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46 percent of Americans are regularly skipping meals in order to pay their rent.
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70 to 90 million people are underinsured or uninsured.
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Over half of our bankruptcies are medical bankruptcies.
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One in four Americans live with medical debt.
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1.3 million Americans are rationing their insulin.
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Over 70 percent of Americans say that they are living with chronic economic anxiety.
People are feeling hopeless out in America now. In my opinion, Donald Trump offers false hope. He’ll name a pain, but he will not name a policy that’s going to fix it. But people will take false hope over no hope.
And the Democratic Party offered no hope. Instead of talking about these things, what the Democratic elite did was this: They just decided on an agenda. We weren’t even supposed to discuss what an agenda might be. They suppressed a presidential primary. They felt, in their smug arrogance, such a sense of entitlement: They would choose Joe, then they would choose Kamala, and they would suppress any candidate or any conversation about the wider issues that could have provided a compelling alternative—a compelling vision—for the American people.
Watch Marianne Williamson discuss why the Democrats failed:
Where do we go now?
Substacks
November 9, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson
“Off the Bar” is one of my favorites of my friend Peter’s photographs, and after I fiddled around with all sorts of images and captions that hinted at the chaos of these days, I threw them all out and just came back to this image of peace and quiet for tonight.
I’m still catching up on sleep and am headed to bed early. I hope you all can do the same.
I’ll be back at it tomorrow.
[“Off the Bar,” by Peter Ralston.]
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Notes:
You can find Peter and his wife Terri at the gallery in Rockport, Maine, or online at: www.ralstongallery.com.
Substacks
I Raised $50 Million for the Democrats. This Week, I Voted for Trump. Evan Barker
I was 17 when I started working in Democratic politics. While still in high school, I was an intern for Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign; later, I served as a field organizer for Hillary Clinton. By the time I turned 26, I was a consultant for dozens of U.S. House and Senate campaigns, four George Soros-backed district attorney races, and a wide range of Democratic organizations. I’ve raised at least $50 million for the left.
And yet, on Tuesday, I voted for Donald Trump. It felt like the biggest middle finger I’ve ever raised to the party I’d supported for most of my adult life. When he won, I was utterly euphoric.
Let me tell you why.
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