Culture critic: DEI = ‘Didn’t Earn It’?
“Perhaps a jeering minority will rid us of today’s most egregiously indefensible phrase: ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,’” hopes John Tierney at City Journal. “Didn’t Earn It,” a new take on the acronym, has “become an Internet meme, a buzz phrase on social media, and a conservative talking point on cable television, radio, and podcast.” Don’t forget “the surest sign of its success”: Being “denounced by DEI executives, progressive pundits, and the left-wing watchdogs at Media Matters.” But “there’s nothing racist about expecting people to earn what they get.” That’s why the phrase “appeals to Americans’ basic sense of fairness.” And while “a quick death is too much to hope for” on DEI, “perhaps Didn’t Earn It will at least achieve a linguistic triumph.”
Libertarian: Europe’s Harsh Laws Suppress Speech
“Free speech advocates,” thunders Reason’s J.D. Tuccille, are right to warn that new laws in Europe that “imposes enforceable duties on private platforms to purge ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’ . . . threaten to muzzle expression far beyond the bounds of their nominal targets.” “ ‘Hate’ and other forms of unacceptable content are often in the eyes of the beholder. And the power to punish platforms for allowing forbidden speech encourages suppressing content.” The result: deletion of an average of 3.4% of all social media comments in Sweden, France and Germany, though “most of the content being removed from social media is permissible even under local laws.” But with “the prospect of massive fines and even outright proscription from Europe, it’s no wonder that internet companies might be a little overenthusiastic about yanking content.”
Foreign desk: French Left Imploding
The runup to European Parliament elections has “exposed the desperate state of the French left,” writes Charles Devellennes at Spiked. “A broad left-wing coalition” of Socialists, Communists, Greens “and the radical-left France Unbowed,” once united against Emmanuel Macron, has completely fractured. Now “the four parties are all running separate candidates for the European elections” — “split over identity and culture-war issues,” sacrificing the chance to unite and pull up to 25% of the vote. They bickering even extends to meat consumption — with Greens denouncing the last as a manifestation of “toxic masculinity,” while Fabien Roussel of the Communists “said the saucisson (sausage) was the apotheosis of French culture.” Is anything more French than a political food fight?
Eye on Albany: Outsourcing Tax & Spend Power
After years of “surrendering some of their policymaking and taxing powers to the executive branch,” New York’s Legislature is now poised to “turn those powers over to an organization outside of government entirely,” grumbles the Empire Center’s Ken Girardin. A bill to increase the use of reusable or recyclable packaging would hand a nonprofit group “a ten-year monopoly” to set and collect tax-like fees on what producers sell — and decide “how the money gets spent.” Already, the Public Service Commission and Department of Environmental Conservation collecting and spending billions “outside the regular appropriations process,” weakening public accountability. “Forking legislative powers over to an unelected organization outside government should be the last thing on any lawmaker’s mind.”
Justice beat: Ignoring Anti-Catholic hate
At The Hill, Tommy Valentine complains that “the Biden administration has turned a blind eye” to a two-year wave of anti-Catholic hate crimes that include “bricks hurled through windows” and “churches set on fire in the middle of the night.” The pretext was the Supreme Court’s reversing Roe v. Wade: “Since the leak of the draft Dobbs opinion on May 2, 2022, there have been 259 documented acts of violence and vandalism against Catholic churches in the U.S.,” causing millions “in physical damage,” but they even more “serious damage to the safety and civil rights of Catholics.” “Normally, a sustained wave of violence against an identity-based group, organized by shadowy extremist forces, would merit federal law enforcement resources,” yet “the Department of Justice under our second Catholic president has not prosecuted a single one of the attacks on Catholic churches.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board