July 13, 2017

Conservatives Have a New Free-Speech Warrior

We have news from National Review today:

National Review Institute is launching the Center for Unalienable Rights, created to be the home of free-speech warrior David French, whose new podcast, The Liberty Files, is a must-listen for anyone who cares deeply about combating the leftist assault on the First Amendment, whether on our campuses or in any other place patrolled by the ruthless Thought Police.

….The Left wants to gag, marginalize, intimidate, shut up, and, if they can, even criminalize conservatives for what we think and what we say. We intend to fight the intolligentsia, in a more focused way. We intend to beat the determined enemies of our unalienable rights. Help us prevail.

You are expecting me to mock this, aren’t you? But I’m not! Instead I have a serious suggestion.

Believe it or not, there are plenty of liberals who are concerned about this stuff too. The safe spaces/microaggressions/heckler’s veto/trigger warnings movement is not entirely beloved on the left. If this project were toned down and aimed at free speech repression on both sides, it might actually attract some bipartisan support.

I know that’s not really plausible these days. I just felt like mentioning it.

DOES IT FEEL LIKE POLITICS IS AT A BREAKING POINT?

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Thanks for reading—whether or not you can pitch in today, or ever, I'm glad you're with us.

Signed by Clara Jeffery

Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

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