Let me begin by saying this was not easy. There were many excellent comments on a wide range of topics across nearly every piece of content we published last week. But as they say in the Movie Highlander. There can be only one.
A maxim they then messed with because of profits, but they would not be the first or last to damage an idea with a franchise.
For our purposes, there can be only one winner each week, but there can be many quality comments.
Before I announce the winner this week, I’d like to thank all the commenters like NHNative, gramps, Ian Underwood, Patricia A Arsenault, Agent Liberty, Nitzakhon, 1776Mall dot com, Kimberly Morin, Steve Earle, Bowana, Manny, Dragon, David S, noraNH, Darkoss, Mike Remski, Jatin Jones, Geraldo E V Bentley, and many more. Many more. We’re happy to have you and hope you spread the word and invite others to join you here.
Picking a Comment/Commenter of the Week
I opened a new note in Evernote to store the stuff I liked for review later, and it filled up quickly. I will add that I did not receive many recommendations from the audience or commenters for nominees for best comment of the week. I got one. If you read something that truly impresses you, please email it with a link to steve@granitegrok.com. It will weigh on my decision, which – we should get to.
This week’s winner is Ian Underwood.
There are a lot of reasons why Gay shouldn’t be running Harvard, but her testimony before Congress isn’t one of them. I went back and watched as much of the hearing as I could stomach, and what I heard all three university presidents saying was: Anti-semitism is bad, but speech is different from action.
I guess I shouldn’t be a university president either, because I agree: Anti-semitism is bad, and speech is different from action. I’m on board with Justice Hugo Black’s definition of freedom of speech:
Without deviation, without exception, without any ifs, buts, or whereases, freedom of speech means that you shall not do something to people either for the views they express, or the words they speak or write.
And I’m also on board with John Stuart Mill’s explanation for why this is so important:
If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
I was hoping that one of the university presidents would ask Elise Stefanik to point to the particular passage in the Harvard, Penn, or MIT code of conduct that she thinks forbids someone from saying something because someone else finds it hurtful, hateful, horrible, or heinous.
By the way, here’s just one of the many reasons why Claudine Gay shouldn’t be at Harvard, let alone running it:
Ian had several comments in that same thread that were runners-up, and the competition for the win across the week was excellent. Ann Marie Banfield, Ornery Nurse, NHnative, Dragon6, Stan Ding, and a few others were finalists this week.
Keep up the great comments, and you could be next, and thank you to everyone!