On February 1, ABC News suspended Whoopi Goldberg, of popular talk show “The View,” for two weeks over “wrong and hurtful” comments concerning the Holocaust.

The Holocaust, Goldberg said, is “not about race. It’s not. It’s about man’s inhumanity to other man.” She characterized the Nazis and the six million Jews they murdered as “two white groups of people.”

Oddly, Goldberg’s construction is partially correct insofar as it tracks pretty closely to the modern identification of  race as “a social construct.” The term “white” originated specifically as an identifier for persons not permitted to be held as chattel slaves, and Jews of the European diaspora did generally fall under that definition, despite the many other persecutions they suffered.

On the other hand, the Nazis certainly defined “Aryan” and “Jewish” as racial categories in their own “social construct,” so Goldberg was in error as to the attitudes involved. Like the proverbial Facebook relationship status, “it’s complicated.”

But there’s also a bigger question involved here. Who “owns” the Holocaust when it comes to claims of historical or current victimization?

While Jews, whatever their “race”, constituted a plurality of Holocaust victims, they weren’t the only victims, or even the majority of the victims.

Yes, the Nazis murdered six million Jews.

They also murdered nearly twice as many others, including (per Wikipedia)  non-Jewish Russian civilians, Soviet prisoners of war,  Polish Catholics, Serbs, disabled people,  Romani,  Freemasons,  Slovenes, homosexuals, Spanish Republicans, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Some of these murders were predicated on racial or ethnic grounds. Others weren’t.

The only positive aspect of the Nazis’ orgy of persecution and murder is that it inspired a continuing, persistent sentiment and determination: “Never again.”

But even that positive aspect is continually tarnished in one of two ways.

One is inapplicable invocation: For nearly any political cause, someone’s nearly certain to cite the specter of the Holocaust as an analogy to their travails. In doing so, they often, though not always, abuse the memory of the dead to score trite, trivial, or simply inaccurate political points.

The other is inapplicable claims to sole  ownership of Holocaust victim status by organizations (and states) claiming to represent the Jewish people.

“No @WhoopiGoldberg, the #Holocaust was about the Nazi’s [sic] systematic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race,” tweeted the Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblatt.”

As Greenblatt continues, right after distorting the Holocaust, “Holocaust distortion is dangerous.”

Any time the Holocaust gets compared — credibly or not — to any issue that doesn’t bear directly on the Jewish community, Greenblatt and others can be counted on to raise the rooftops, demanding that such comparisons only be made in support of their preferred causes.

There are good and obvious historical reasons for Jews to take an ongoing interest in the Holocaust, and to be especially energetic in opposing an encore of any kind.

Those good and obvious reasons don’t justify Greenblatt et. al’s assertions of monopoly ownership, or of veto power over the use of Holocaust analogies to current events.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“They can have Neil Young or [Joe] Rogan. Not Both.” Thus the ultimatum from legendary musician Young, over his concerns with what he deems  “misinformation” on the subject of COVID-19 vaccines, to streaming service Spotify.

Spotify, unsurprisingly, chose Rogan. It invested an estimated $100 million in bringing the Joe Rogan Experience podcast exclusively to its platform, and that investment is likely paying off in a big way. His talk show is currently more popular, by far, than Neil Young’s music (although the latter is probably enjoying a bump on other platforms and in other formats, and songs have a much longer shelf life than talk shows focusing on current events).

Still, it’s sad that this kind of thing is happening.

Other artists are joining Young’s exodus from Spotify. Fewer choices for listeners is bad for artists and bad for platforms.

It seems to me that we have a much better answer for situations like this than “they can have me or they can have him, not both.”

“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education,” Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in 1927, “the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

Rogan is implementing the “more speech” prescription by  promising “balance” between dissident and establishment views on the podcast.

Rogan and his guests — many of whom who seem well-qualified to discuss COVID-19 and vaccines even if (maybe because!) their opinions run counter to, say, Anthony Fauci’s — are already voices in the wilderness compared to the might of an establishment narrative that runs 24/7 in official government statements and on most news media.

Given that the toll of government policies largely based on that establishment narrative comes to nearly 900,000 COVID-19-related deaths in the United States so far, it’s hard to argue that Rogan owes  “balance” to those working to silence, rather than refute, skeptics. But still, good on him for channeling Brandeis.

There’s a way for Rogan and Young to both be “the better man” here. Rogan should invite Young to appear on the podcast, and Young should accept. Not to have it out over COVID-19. Just to make nice, shoot the breeze about everything, and maybe smoke some cannabis together. Good times.

Right now, Rogan is “the better man.” I wish Neil Young hadn’t taken that particular route, but this southern man still needs him around, anyhow.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Now in its second decade, National School Choice Week (observed January 23-29 this year) concentrates that movement’s steady, decades-long drumbeat into a few days of all-out advocacy. After two years of pandemic-related school closures, “remote learning,” and homeschooling from necessity rather than preference, this year’s National School Choice Week had its amplifiers turned to 11.

I’m all in favor of “school choice,” in terms of parents and students having the ability to choose the educational options they prefer, but it’s important to be realistic about who’s really making — and who’s entitled to make — which choices.

While the “school choice” movement pays lip service to homeschooling and other non-institutional options, it mainly emphasizes “public” charter schools and voucher or tax credit schemes for private schools. A perennial favorite  slogan in favor of those alternatives is “funding should follow students, not institutions.”

The problem with that slogan is simple: Where there’s funding, the funder calls the tune. That’s especially true when the funder is government.

The charter / voucher / tax credit line of thinking doesn’t give new choices to taxpayers who don’t have children to educate. They’re still expected to write those checks, with no say in how the money is spent.

It does give additional choices to parents with children. They can send the kids to government schools (whether “regular” public schools or charter schools), or they can receive financing for private school tuition.

That, in turn, gives private schools a choice to make: They can turn down the money, or they can become de facto government schools.

This isn’t a hypothetical. We’ve watched it happen in higher education for nearly 80 years now.

Since the inception of the GI Bill, Pell Grants, and government-guaranteed student loans, formerly “private” colleges and universities have increasingly found themselves required to implement government-mandated standards on everything from curricula to athletics to hiring practices if they want to accept the students who bring that money with them, or receive federal grants for things like research.

The result: Of about 4,500 colleges and universities in the US, a grand total of 18 remain truly private, refusing federal grants and declining to admit students who participate in federal student aid programs so that they retain full control of their admissions standards, curricula, etc.

The main practical (as opposed to philosophical) argument for “school choice” is that government-run schools fail to provide America’s children with quality educations.

How would turning the vast majority of private schools into clones of those government-run schools fix that problem?

The answer, as I tell my libertarian friends who mistakenly think of the charter / voucher / tax credit  approach as “a move in the right direction” is that it wouldn’t. As both a practical and philosophical matter (for those who want less government involvement in education, period), it’s a move in the WRONG direction. It may increase choice in superficial ways, but it reduces choice where choice really matters.

Real “school choice” for taxpayers, parents, and students, as opposed to government, can only be achieved through separation of school and state.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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