Southern Poverty Law Center profits from hate

The Southern Poverty Law Center Makes Millions Trafficking Hate | Reason | John Stossel:

July 19, 2023 - "The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) just released a report claiming there are 1,225 hate and anti-government groups in America. These groups cause 'fear and pain [in] Black, brown, and LGBTQ communities.' The SPLC lists such groups on its 'hate map.' I once believed the Center. Well-meaning people still do. Apple once gave them $1 million. But what donors don't know is that today, the SPLC smears good people, not just 'haters.' 

"Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up Muslim in Somalia, but now she criticizes radical Islam, and sometimes (maybe this is what really bothers the SPLC) fraternizes with American conservatives. The Center put Hirsi Ali on its list.

"The Center also smears the Family Research Council. I sometimes disagree with the Council. But they don't belong on a 'hate map'.... The Council merely opposed gay marriage, an opinion they shared with Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Bill and Hillary Clinton. One man became so enraged by what the SPLC wrote, he went to the Council's headquarters to kill people. He shot a security guard. Fortunately, that wounded guard stopped him before he could shoot anyone else....

The Center also smears the Ruth Institute, a Christian group that believes adoption agencies should first try to place children with straight couples.... When the SPLC put the Institute on its hate map, its bank cut them off. 'You're an organization that promotes hate, violence…,' wrote the bank. 'Therefore we're not doing business with you.' The Ruth Institute and Family Research Council are still on the hate list....

"I suspect the Center keeps its hate list long to bring in lots of money. The Center pays some of its people more than $400,000 a year.... Harper's Magazine once reported that the Center was the richest civil rights group in America, one that spends most of its time and energy trying to raise more money. They promised they'd stop fundraising once their endowment reached $55 million. But when they reached $55 million, they raised their goal to $100 million, saying $100 million would allow them to 'cease costly fundraising.' But when they reached $100 million—they didn't cease. They collected $200 million. Then $400 million. Now they have $730 million. Yet they still raise money....

"Today the SPLC even smears groups like Moms for Liberty and Moms for America, calling them anti-government extremists because they oppose sexually explicit content in schools, and seek school board seats to try to 'stop…school districts [from] disregarding the opinions of parents'.... 

The Center puts Moms for America on its 'hate map,' but not Antifa, the hate group that beats up people on the right. Today the Southern Poverty Law Center is a hate group itself. It's a left-wing, money-grabbing smear machine."

Read more: https://reason.com/2023/07/19/the-southern-poverty-law-center-makes-millions-trafficking-hate/

Mises Caucus wins control of US Libertarian Party

Mises Caucus Takes Control of Libertarian Party | Reason - Brian Doherty: 

May 29, 2022 - "A four-year battle for control of the Libertarian Party (L.P.) ended Saturday in Reno with a victory for the Mises Caucus at the party's national convention. The faction's chosen candidate for chair of the party's national committee, Angela McArdle, won on the first round of balloting.... McArdle, a paralegal and current chair of the Libertarian Party of Los Angeles County, said in her speech to the convention Friday that the government response to COVID has left many working-class Americans thirsty for personal liberty, and 'we don't want to ignore them.' They have, she argued, 'low-resolution views of freedom…and we need to bring that vision into focus by communicating our message clearly and by supporting our candidates and affiliates.'

"While McArdle was the Mises Caucus candidate, the behind-the-scenes mastermind of its victory was caucus founder and leader Michael Heise. His disapproval of William Weld, Gary Johnson's running mate in 2016, was an initial inspiration for the caucus' launch.... The caucus's official platform is plumb-line libertarian, but its foes say that too many Mises Caucus members and fans downplay libertarian positions that might offend the right, are intentionally obnoxious and bullying...., The sense the caucus is soft on or actively encourages racism attracted the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center just before the convention began, which aired the concerns in a story reported with cooperation from many Libertarian Party members upset with the Mises Caucus. Both Heise and Mises Caucus stalwart Joshua Smith, who won the vice-chair election Saturday, denied the charges of racism. 

"Heise said in a phone interview prior to the convention that the basic vibe they are seeking is online youths into edgy comedic podcasts, a new counterculture for whom the old L.P. holds little appeal. Heise believes that the current rumored frontrunner for a Mises Caucus–approved presidential nominee in 2024, comedian and podcaster Dave Smith, is so well-connected to the Joe Rogan world that legacy respectable mainstream media will be meaningless for party messaging moving forward.

"In his nominating speech for McArdle before the vote, libertarian antiwar author and podcaster Scott Horton insisted that he's seen thousands of new convention-attending members energized by the Mises Caucus in the last couple of years.... Meanwhile, during that same period, fierce factional dueling has played out in hundreds of hours of podcasts, hundreds of thousands of words of tweets and Facebook threads, and often on the business listserv of the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) itself. One such fight, summed up at length in Reason in June, involved a faction of non-Mises libertarians in New Hampshire attempting to create a new L.P. affiliate so that the national party could disaffiliate the Mises-dominated one and recognize the new one. The gambit, which ultimately failed, led to the resignation of then-national chair Joe Bishop-Henchman and caused one of the party's few elected officials, Dekalb, Illinois, City Clerk Sasha Cohen, to quit in protest as well, saying 'we are a big tent party, but no tent is big enough to hold racists and people of color, transphobes and trans people, bigots and their victims.'

"Despite bad blood, I detected no booing or walkouts today when McArdle's victory made the caucus' victory manifest. None of the anti–Mises Caucus delegates or supporters that I have spoken to at the convention — including people from Illinois, Florida, Texas, Massachusetts, and even Mises stronghold New Hampshire — said that this takeover would make them walk. Two former significant donors to the L.P., Kyle Varner and Michael Chastain, both with decadeslong history in the party, did say in phone interviews that the Mises turn, which they see as importing a level of racist edgelording they have no taste for, has made them stop funding L.P. candidates.... Varner and Chastain see a distinctly right-wing culture and policy bent from the Mises faction.... 

"The caucus also wants to completely eliminate any mention of abortion.... A document of internal Mises Caucus strategizing that began circulating before the convention explicitly said ... that 'one of the major goals of the Mises Caucus is to make the LP appealing to the wider liberty movement that is largely not currently here with us. That movement strongly rejects wokeism and the word games associated with it. This along with the deletion of the abortion plank will display that there are serious cultural changes in the party that are more representative of that movement'.... (Disgruntled non–Mises Caucus libertarians in Pennsylvania have left the L.P. and formed the new Keystone Party.)...

"Heise wrote on Facebook Friday night that his faction already controls a majority of the LNC, having swept the votes for regional representatives to the LNC in meetings Friday night.... Mises Caucus favorite Caryn Ann Harlos, who was booted by the LNC from her elected secretary position over Mises-related faction fights, re-won her elected position Saturday as well.

"The Mises Caucus people often dub themselves the revival or continuation of the Ron Paul revolution of libertarian ideas in the GOP's 2008 and 2012 presidential races. (Paul spoke at a party the caucus hosted Friday night.)... In those 2008 and 2012 races, however, Paul studiously avoided anything that might be construed as 'anti-woke' and generally avoided talking to his campus audiences about abortion and immigration, where he was at odds with many other libertarians. While the Mises Caucus might argue that the threat of progressive woke thought control was less severe then, the podcaster/memelord edgy-offensive-insult-comedy stance they often embrace is entirely opposite to how Ron Paul presented himself and won his huge audience as a presidential candidate."

Read more: https://reason.com/2022/05/29/mises-caucus-takes-control-of-libertarian-party/ 

No right not to cater gay weddings, court rules

Florists Join Bakers, Photographers in Court Ruling Ordering Them to Serve Gay Weddings - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Scott Shackford:

February 17, 2017 - "Florists — at least those in Washington State — can be forced to provide their goods and services for gay weddings. That was the unanimous decision from the state's supreme court....

"The high-profile case ... pitted Baronnelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene's Flowers in Richland, against a gay couple who had come to her seeking her flowers for their wedding. She declined, citing her religious opposition to recognizing same-sex marriage.... Washington forbids discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

"Stutzman's argument was that she wasn't discriminating on the basis of the men being gay but rather refusing to participate in the wedding (which wasn't even legally recognized by the state when they started planning it in 2013). She argued that government mandating her participation by requiring her to provide flowers violated her constitutional rights to free speech, free exercise, and free association.

"The court roundly rejected all of her claims. The decision noted courts had previously rejected claims that attempted to separate 'status' from 'conduct' in similar ways, that, for example, discriminating against somebody who is pregnant falls under sex discrimination. As for her attempt to invoke her religious freedoms, they noted that the Supreme Court has set the precedent that 'that individuals who engage in commerce necessarily accept some limitations on their conduct as a result.'

"As for her free speech claim, the court [says] Requiring Stutzman to prepare flowers for a same-sex marriage is not actually compelling her to endorse said marriages. This is very similar to how courts have ruled on wedding cakes. They have declined to accept the argument that the creation of a wedding cake is in and of itself expressive speech, but a baker does have the freedom to reject orders to pass along a particular textual message.....

"The Cato Institute submitted an amicus brief defending the florist's right to say no to the couple as a First Amendment issue.... The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the shop (and was just designated a 'hate group' by the Southern Poverty Law Center) is promising to try to get the case before the U.S. Supreme Court."

Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2017/02/17/florists-join-bakers-photographers-in-co
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