Walter Russell Mead At the WSJ (behind a paywall) on European politics and Brexit (British exit from the European Union) below:

One angle: Most technology reduces distances, but not necessarily ignorance, and increases communication, but not necessarily understanding.

The EU started out as a trade union, but also, in seeking to protect its members and advance its interests, has been levying serious fines on American tech companies.  Controlling flows of information upwards towards mercantilism is an obvious result (Eurocrats and big players make and approve the rules, supposedly in favor of ‘the little guy’ but only so far as the moral lights and sentiments of the Eurocrats and big players can envision, if they spend much time envisioning).

These laws tend to be more restrictive than many American laws, but not nearly so restrictive as nearly all Chinese laws, where, apparently, Google has had to make concessions in order to create a search engine alongside the Chinese government.

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On speech, and the moral sentiments being animated on parts of many campuses across the country: Greg Lukianoff via Reason: ‘Speech Code Hokey Pokey: How Campus Speech Codes Could Rebound‘

‘Yesterday, we showed how speech codes are consistently struck down by courts. Today, we look at two ongoing cases that threaten to curb that trend by expanding the doctrine of mootness while narrowing what qualifies to establish standing.’

As posted: Nick Gillespie of Reason Magazine interviews Professor Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff on their new book: ‘The Coddling Of The American Mind:  How Good Intentions & Bad Ideas Are Setting Up A Generation For Failure‘

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It’s worth revisiting a once very committed Trotskyist who came to the U.S. and quite iconoclastically kept searching for the truth, and on speech, spoke pretty eloquently:

Fire….fire…fire…fire: