“Mind your own business,” Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) said in the vice presidential debate. He likes this line and has made it his motto. Its slightly crasser version, “Mind your own damn business,” has been his best applause line on the campaign trail.
This is Walz’s “golden rule,” he has repeatedly told us. He is trying to replace the far older golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The reciprocity of that older version has got to go.
When Walz barks, “Mind your own damn business,” it might sound like a laissez-faire attitude. You may assume he is saying, “The government shouldn’t meddle in people’s affairs.”
It could even sound like a call for pluralism, localism, or a restrained federal government. But if you listened to Walz in the vice presidential debate, and if you’ve been following his record, you know he means nothing of the sort.
Walz attacked the first two articles of the Bill of Rights: the freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. He invoked his crusade to limit parental control over schools.
Walz tied these all up with a bow, repeatedly telling the public to trust “the experts.” In this context, “Mind your own damn business” takes on a darker meaning.
“The most sacred right under the United States democracy is the First Amendment,” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) said before turning to Walz. “You yourself have said there’s no First Amendment right to misinformation.”
Walz said exactly that on television. When you recall what Democrats and the news media have labeled misinformation — that COVID might have come from a lab, the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, that President Joe Biden might drop out of the presidential race, and that unborn babies have heartbeats — you realize Walz’s view would allow for bans on political dissent.
Walz defended his view, saying, “You can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. That’s the test. That’s the Supreme Court test.”
Walz is factually wrong — he, of course, was not fact-checked by the otherwise fact check-happy moderators. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes did write that the First Amendment doesn’t extend to yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, though contrary to Walz’s claim, that was never binding law. Also, the decision that included this assertion, Schenck v. United States, was overturned because it was a horrible decision.
Holmes wrote the “fire in a crowded theater” line to justify a law banning anti-war activists from distributing pamphlets. Walz apparently sides with such a law. You see, whether the U.S. military’s war is just or prudent is not your business, Walz feels.
During the debate, Walz added that he also doesn’t believe the First Amendment protects “hate speech.” This is a novel and narrow understanding of the First Amendment, especially considering what Democrats have called “hate speech”: rejecting transgenderism, opposing current immigration levels, and criticizing Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), among other perfectly good and fine arguments.
Walz wants to ban the AR-15, the most popular gun in America. In the debate, he laid out, ineloquently, his defense of a ban: “And the idea, to have some of these weapons out there. It just doesn’t make any sense. Kamala Harris, as an attorney general, worked on this issue. She knows that it’s there.”
That slurry of words contains two arguments.
First is the common complaint that nobody needs an AR-15: “The idea, to have some of these weapons out there. It just doesn’t make any sense.” This is a condescending and paternalistic viewpoint and hardly a “live your own life” sentiment. Second, he cites Harris’s prosecutorial credentials as a way of flexing expertise.
When he says to “mind your own business,” he intends to dictate to you what your own business is, and owning a powerful rifle is not your business — Miss Harris will tell you what sort of guns you need, thank you very much.
Walz also invoked “book banning” during the debate. “We’ve seen that,” he said. Walz has bragged throughout the campaign that he signed a supposed ban on book bans. The details of this law are revealing.
Walz banned local schools from controlling what books go in their libraries. His law stripped parents of the power to mind their own libraries and dictates that the only person who can decide on library collections is “a licensed library media specialist … an individual with a master’s degree in library science or library and information science; or a professional librarian or a person trained in library collection management.”
Parents, principals, and school boards trying to keep inappropriate books out of their libraries are not “minding their own business,” according to Walz, it seems. Whether your child is exposed to the pornographic books is not your business — it’s only the business of the politicians and their preferred experts.
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Sure enough, Walz attacked Vance for not trusting the experts — on immigration, guns, climate, and so on.
So now we see what Walz means by “Mind your own damn business.” He means defer to experts and don’t criticize the government. Tim Walz’s golden rule is that you plebes should know your place.