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The Kennebec Historical Societys October Facebook Live presentation, Introduction to the First Amendment Museum, will begin at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 21, according to a news release from Scott R. Wood, the societys administrative director.

The video also will be available to watch later if preferred. Those who have a question for the Q&A can submit it in the comments on this event, or comment with it during the live video presentation. Here is the link to the KHS Facebook page: facebook.com.

In 1789, James Madison penned the First Amendment protecting our freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition. A century later, WH Gannett of Augusta, Maine, used those freedoms to publish Comfort magazine, the first American magazine to reach 1 million paid subscriptions. His son, Guy Gannett, expanded the business to become Gannett Communications and became Maines most celebrated publisher, establishing newspaper, radio and tv brands we still recognize today.

Now, a century after Guy published his first newspaper, his granddaughters are building a museum in his former home on State Street. Join new CEO Christian Cotz as he explores the history of Madison, the First Amendment, and the Gannett family, and shares the latest developments in the evolution of the First Amendment Museum.

According to the release, Cotz was hired to be the CEO at the First Amendment Museum in January. Before that, he spent 20 years managing public programming at James Madisons Montpelier in central Virginia. He was deeply involved in Montpeliers relationship-building work with the descendant community, and was the project director for the celebrated exhibition, The Mere Distinction of Colour, which won six national museum awards.

For more information about the program, call Wood at 207-622-7718.

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See the article here:
'Introduction to the First Amendment Museum' topic of presentation - Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

John E. Finn, Wesleyan University

(THE CONVERSATION) The U.S. militia movement has long been steeped in a peculiar and unquestionably mistaken interpretation of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and civil liberties.

This is true of an armed militia group that calls itself the Wolverine Watchmen, who were involved in the recently revealed plot to overthrow Michigans government and kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

As I wrote in Fracturing the Founding: How the Alt-Right Corrupts the Constitution, published in 2019, the crux of the militia movements devotion to what I have called the alt-right constitution is a toxic mix of constitutional falsehoods and half-truths.

Private militias

The term militia has many meanings.

The Constitution addresses militias in Article 1, authorizing Congress to provide for organizing, arming and disciplining, the Militia.

But the Constitution makes no provision for private militias, like the far-right Wolverine Watchmen, Proud Boys, Michigan Militia and the Oath Keepers, to name just a few.

Private militias are simply groups of like-minded men members are almost always white males who subscribe to a sometimes confusing set of beliefs about an avaricious federal government that is hostile to white men and white heritage, and the sanctity of the right to bear arms and private property. They believe that government is under the control of Jews, the United Nations, international banking interests, Leftists, Antifa, Black Lives Matter and so on. There is no evidence of this.

On Oct. 8, the FBI arrested six men, five of them from Michigan, and charged them with conspiring to kidnap Whitmer. Shortly thereafter, state authorities charged an additional seven men with, according to the Associated Press, allegedly seeking to storm the Michigan Capitol and seek a "civil war. Included were the founders and several members of the Wolverine Watchmen.

As revealed in the FBI affidavit accompanying the federal charges, the six men charged claimed to be defenders of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, some of the men in April had participated in rallies in Lansing, the state capital, where armed citizens tried to force their way onto the floor of the State House to protest Governor Whitmers pandemic shut-down orders as a violation of the Constitution by a tyrannical government intent upon sacrificing civil liberties in the name of the COVID-19 fight.

According to the FBIs affidavit, the conspirators wanted to create a society that followed the U.S. Bill of Rights and where they could be self-sufficient.

Militia members imagine themselves to be the last true American patriots, the modern defenders of the United States Constitution in general and the Second Amendment in particular.

Hence, the Bill of Rights and especially the Second Amendment, which establishes the right to bear arms figure prominently in the alt-constitution. It is no accident that the initial discussions about overthrowing Michigans so-called tyrannical governor started at a Second Amendment rally in June.

According to most militias, the Second Amendment authorizes their activity and likewise makes them free of legal regulation by the state. In truth, the Second Amendment does nothing to authorize private armed militias. Private armed militias are explicitly illegal in every state.

No restrictions on rights

Additional foundational principles of militia constitutionalism include absolutism. Absolutism, in the militia world, is the idea that fundamental constitutional rights like freedom of speech, the right to bear arms and the right to own property cannot be restricted or regulated by the state without a citizens consent.

The far rights reading of the First and Second Amendments which govern free speech and the right to bear arms, respectively starts from a simple premise: Both amendments are literal and absolute. They believe that the First Amendment allows them to say anything, anytime, anywhere, to anyone, without consequence or reproach by government or even by other citizens who disagree or take offense at their speech.

Similarly, the alt-right gun advocates hold that the Second Amendment protects their God-given right to own a weapon any weapon and that governmental efforts to deny, restrict or even to register their weapons must be unconstitutional. They think the Second Amendment trumps every other provision in the Constitution.

Another key belief among militia members is the principle of constitutional self-help. Thats the belief that citizens, acting on their inherent authority as sovereign free men, are ultimately and finally responsible for enforcing the Constitution as they understand it.

Demonstrating this way of thinking, the men arrested in Michigan discussed taking Gov. Whitmer to a secure location in Wisconsin to stand trial for treason prior to the Nov. 3 election. According to Barry County, Michigan Sheriff Dar Leaf a member of the militia-friendly Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officer Association the men arrested in Michigan were perhaps not trying to kidnap the governor but were instead simply making a citizens arrest.

Leaf, who appeared at a Grand Rapids protest in May of Gov. Whitmers stay-at-home order along with two of the alleged kidnappers, mistakenly believes that local sheriffs are the highest constitutional authority in the United States, invested with the right to determine which laws support and which laws violate the Constitution. The events in Michigan show how dangerous these mistaken understandings of the Constitution can be.

There will be more

The Wolverine Watchmen are not a Second Amendment militia or constitutional patriots in any sense of the word. If they are guilty of the charges brought against them, then they are terrorists.

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The FBI and Michigan law enforcement shut down the Watchmen before an egregious crime and a terrible human tragedy unfolded. But as I concluded just last year in my book, there is little reason to think the militia movement will subside soon.

Unfortunately, I did not account for the possibility that President Trump would encourage militias to stand back and stand by, which seems likely to encourage and embolden groups that already clearly represent a threat. Expect more Michigans.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/plot-to-kidnap-michigans-governor-grew-from-the-militia-movements-toxic-mix-of-constitutional-falsehoods-and-half-truths-147825.

See original here:
Plot to kidnap Michigan's governor grew from the militia movement's toxic mix of constitutional falsehoods and half-truths - Huron Daily Tribune

Law360 (October 7, 2020, 6:37 PM EDT) -- The U.S. government should be able to limit any service that poses a threat to the country's national security, whether or not that company facilitates communications, the Trump administration has argued in its bid to ban WeChat in the U.S.

In a Tuesday court filing, the administration told a California federal judge that the simple fact that Tencent-owned WeChat is a mobile communications app doesn't entitle the company to First Amendment protection orpreclude the government from cracking down on it for national security purposes.

"Were Tencent to sell electricity to U.S. consumers and, in so doing, systematically collect and send payment...

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Trump Admin. Says First Amendment Is Moot In WeChat Case - Law360

The Trumpsters dont have the corner on sign pimping, though. Any Functioning Adult 2020 signs have popped up around here.

In another time, people didnt wear their politics on their sleeves quite so much. Men and women of my parents generation could often be heard to say, Who I vote for is between me and the voting booth. It was considered polite not to preach politics to friends and neighbors. But then there was a time when driving around in vehicles with roaring straight exhaust pipes wasnt considered polite, either. Nor was screaming into a microphone. Times change, obviously.

Stevens Point was once such a polite city that it banned political signs. Then a little guy named John Anderson led an effort to overturn the ordinance based on First Amendment rights. He was successful. Anderson was a supporter of Lee Sherman Dreyfus, the local university chancellor who ran for governor in 1978, and he wanted to proclaim so with a yard sign.

I get the First Amendment stuff, but I sort of pine for the time when people were more guarded about their political leanings. All the blabbing and blustering is a big reason why I quit Facebook and other social media. Such a relief. But the signs are hard to turn off. These days, its common to erect not one, but two, three or a half-dozen signs for one candidate or the other. Couldnt we have a bit of restraint? I guess not.

Visit link:
Bill Berry: Looking forward to replacing campaign signs with Christmas lights - Madison.com

Over the last few years, a new fear has been forming in the already anxious minds of liberal and leftwing Britons. The fear is that the right, made more aggressive by an injection of populism, is no longer satisfied by dominating national politics and defining the shape of the economy. It wants to dominate British culture as well.

Starting with the Brexit campaign, the right has launched a series of culture wars: against remainers, the BBC, the universities, the legal system, the big cities and seemingly anywhere that liberal or leftwing thinking still lingers strongly, despite a decade of Tory rule. These culture wars have mobilised and united conservative Britons, ensured that debates about patriotism and social cohesion are conducted on rightwing terms and helped the Tories win a big parliamentary majority.

The latest culture war is the war on woke being waged by the Tory press, and increasingly by the government as well. This campaign caricatures as dangerous extremists those who believe that Britains power structures, social relations and national identity should fairly reflect the countrys diversity. Conservative commentators describe wokeness as a cult, an epidemic, anti-western, totalitarian, and even as cultural Marxism an interpretation that began as a far-right conspiracy theory.

In his unusually brief party conference speech this week, Boris Johnson still found room for an anti-woke passage, inaccurately associating Labour with those who want to pull statues down, to rewrite the history of our country to make it look more politically correct. Over the summer, the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, warned a London museum that it might lose its state funding if it removed a statue of the slave trader Robert Geffrye from its grounds. Last month, the Department for Education instructed schools not to teach pupils about extreme political stances such as the desire to overthrow capitalism, or to teach victim narratives that are harmful to British society.

Such episodes reveal a government that regards culture wars as more than a way of gaining electoral advantage. As the Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley recently explained, Boris and Cummings understand that you cant change Britain unless you march through the [cultural] institutions that you cant simply cede culture to the left.

To the rightwing culture warriors, subversive ideas have been allowed to spread through British society largely unchecked for far too long, regardless of who has been in government. But now the Conservatives have realised, as Stanley put it, that when youre in power and you control the purse strings of some cultural institutions, you do have a say to change their political balance. The idea that the dedicated enemies of liberalism Charles Moore and Paul Dacre should respectively chair the BBC and head the broadcasting regulator Ofcom, both supposed to be politically neutral roles, should be seen in this context. That Moore has now withdrawn his interest does not rule out further rightwing candidates.

This new Tory assertiveness owes much to populism. In 2018 the political theorist Nadia Urbinati wrote: Populism in power is an extreme majoritarianism. Populist governments act as if [they] were the expression of the one right and true majority, and consider any opposition morally illegitimate because it is not made of the right people. Such an intolerance of dissent has been one of the Johnson governments few consistent qualities. Its this seemingly insatiable need to identify and defeat enemies that many non-Tories and some Tories find most frightening about Cummings.

Yet launching constant culture wars is a sign of Tory weakness as well as strength. Even over Brexit, the partys attacks on a liberal elite have been an admission that it can no longer rely on economic arguments. And since the Johnson government has begun to struggle, its striking that its talk of a war on woke has increased.

How effective will this war ultimately be? In the short term, its given the right a cause to rally around during a difficult year. But over the long term, the evidence that culture wars work for the right in Britain is much more mixed.

Like now, the early 1980s saw an upsurge of British activism for racial, sexual and gender equality. Parts of the left became involved, in particular the powerful Greater London Council, led by Ken Livingstone, which gave grants to the activists and also diversified its own workforce and practices. The rightwing press and Margaret Thatchers government were appalled by what they saw correctly as a major threat to the status quo. But they also saw a political opportunity. Branding all practitioners of the new identity politics the loony left, they created a bogeyman that helped the Conservatives win elections for a decade.

But the effects of this culture war gradually wore off. When Thatchers successor, John Major, tried to restart it in 1993 with a speech arguing that social values should go back to basics, his provocation backfired, partly because of a succession of personal scandals involving Tory ministers, but also because public attitudes were changing. The Labour government that replaced Majors repealed clause 28, a homophobic Conservative law passed in 1988, and introduced liberal social reforms such as civil partnerships. There was no significant backlash from voters.

Nowadays, political stances widely considered loony in the 80s, such as celebrating multiculturalism, are commonplace even in the Tory party. The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, describes himself as a proud Hindu. As prime minister, Johnson promotes Black History Month.

Such inclusivity sits very uneasily alongside the war on woke. But its possible that the government will manage to sustain both. Johnson has spent his political career sounding both liberal and reactionary, sometimes in the same sentence, and generally getting away with it. Populists, and the people who vote for them, are rarely bothered about ideological consistency.

Yet the fact that todays Tory culture war (like the Tories) is most strongly supported by older Britons suggests its limits as a political strategy. Back in the 80s, Livingstone predicted that Thatchers social conservatism would ultimately fail because she was trying to restore the more monocultural, conformist country shed grown up in, a country that no longer existed. She abolished the GLC, but he was right.

Some of todays culture warriors act as if wokeness can and should be abolished. At the Tory conference this week, at events about the threat of wokeness, some of the participants spoke with such urgency it was hard to make out all their arguments, but you could hear their desperation their wish that social diversity would simply go away.

But other rightwing commentators accept that some form of wokeness is here to stay. They write about it being kept at bay. Its a reminder to fearful leftists and liberals that the right isnt always as confident and all-conquering as it seems. This may be little consolation to its victims, but for the Tories cultural counter-revolution, the clock is ticking.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

Read more from the original source:
The Tories culture war is a reminder that the right isn't as fearless as it seems - The Guardian