This is Brain Candy, a non-partisan newsletter about politics and elections. If you’re new here, sign up for free below or click here to learn more.
If you’re already subscribed, thanks for coming back!
I took a break from writing this week, which is why I didn’t post a new article on Tuesday and why I don’t have one for you today. I’ve been doing a lot of travel over the past two weeks (San Diego two weekends ago, Yosemite last weekend, and I arrived in Rwanda last night) and figured it was better not to publish anything at all than to push out half-baked articles.
Starting on Tuesday, I’ll be back on schedule. I’m still going to be traveling around Rwanda until mid-July, so may miss a day or two. But for the most part, I plan to post every Tuesday and Friday as usual.
I don’t write about Rwanda while I’m here, for obvious reasons. But one thing I will say is that being in a country where speech is exceedingly limited makes you appreciate the freedoms we have in America. It’s only when you see how a regime of censorship and obedience seeps into every area of life that you truly appreciate how good we have it in America. Even if our politics can get divisive and ugly, it’s still remarkable that we can criticize our government without ever worrying that doing so will earn us a prison sentence or worse.
It’s deeply unfortunate that neither political party in America takes the importance of free expression seriously. On the left, there’s a desire to crush speech deemed harmful, like so-called “misinformation” or “hate speech.” On the right, there’s a growing contingent that wants to use government power to punish progressive academics and organizations. The bulk of our free speech protections emanate from the First Amendment and the Supreme Court, not our political parties.
Regardless of where that right comes from, though, I’m tremendously grateful to have it. And I’ll get back to exercising it on Tuesday with a new article.
Each post I ask free subscribers to do one thing to help me grow my newsletter.
For this one, I want to do a bit of crowdsourcing on what would make this a newsletter worth $4/month: more articles, paywalls, Q&As, a different format, etc. If you can think of anything, please reply to this email and let me know.
.'safe journey and thank you for letting us know, Dorsey.