Razor Sharp Report is now JAFFAWire.
And hopefully you'll join in fighting for civil liberties and freedom of expression.
Dear reader,
For the past two years I've written to you my personal thoughts and opinions through the Razor Sharp Report direct to your email. It was called that because my nomme de plume has been "Razor Ray McCoy" or sometimes just "Ray McCoy" whether I'm writing on one of my newsletters or for a publication like American Greatness. It didn't have any greater meaning, and many people who know me in real life and read my material have asked why it's even necessary to write under a different name. The reason is that I work a day job totally unrelated to current events and politics, and have observed over the past few years that it isn't practical to expect to build a career in writing and media. So I use a pen name because of the endless stories of individuals that have had their careers destroyed for having the wrong opinion.
This isn't a new phenomenon. In 2017 a Google engineer named James Damore wrote an internal memo criticizing the identitarian bent of his company’s policies. When this was leaked by colleagues on his email list to the gamer news site Gizmodo he became the target of numerous complaints by colleagues and was fired from the company. It’s worth asking why did Gizmodo think it was newsworthy at all. That same year evolutionary biology professor Bret Weinstein, a committed progressive socialist, was hounded off the Evergreen State College campus in Olympia, WA by an actual lynch mob armed with clubs. His sin? Objecting to the practice of holding a "Day of Absence" on campus in which white students and faculty abstain from showing up to teach and learn in order to grant minorities a break from the stress of being around them. Many were recognizing at the time that Evergreen was a good barometer for how our culture was trending, but there had been this misguided sense of optimism that it would all blow over once these angst ridden fruit loops entered the work force and needed to adapt to reality.
What's transpired since then was not even on my radar at the time. Big Tech and social media companies, political organizations, Hollywood, and corporate America all saw this new generation of speech tyrants and brought out the welcome committee for them. We now have a world where Lockheed Martin, the maker of some of the most deadly weapons in the world was marching with its own float at the DC metro Capital Pride Parade already in 2017, and this year they had a horde of participants. All of these corporations impose their own internal speech codes and trainings in order to conform to the new corporate culture, because they are more committed to their access to wealth and power than they are to any principle right or wrong. Do they really think that parading their employees through the streets decked in rainbow colours will produce a better product/service and satisfy their customers more? Or rather do these slick executives cynically observe trends and find ways to fit in so that they can rem
When I started Razor Sharp Report it was with the goal that I could reach subscribers without having to worry that a writing submission gets tweaked, warped, or outright rejected by editors. It was just about me and the content I want to share. Then last year, after years of watching organizations like the Anti-Defamation League usurp the mantle of representing Jewish Americans and Judaism as a whole in the name of censorship I proposed a Jewish Alliance for the First Amendment. I still haven't received much of a reaction to this idea, to my dismay. Sometimes when people broach the topic of free speech to me, and don't mean only Jews, they agree that "political correctness", "wokism", and other constraints have gone too far. But what I used to hear right after this again was how lucky I was that I could speak my mind, because as a single childless man I didn't have to fear losing my family's livelihood. Well some of that has changed, since I got married only two years ago, and we hope to have kids, so is this the point where it's time to clam up, grin and bear it? On the contrary, I think we are seeing the result of years when parents would sit on the sidelines and just allow this cultural rot to wash over them. Last week in Glendale, California school parents showed up at a school board meeting and raged at how their children were being indoctrinated with gender ideology. The majority of those that objected were from the Armenian community, and they were scoffed at by a teacher who shamed them for not sympathizing with the LGBT community's plight given the experience of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. A parent who responded to her would not even give his full name, going by "Joseph".
I think this story encapsulates the reality that so many of us live in. I share almost no common background with "Joseph": He is Armenian, I am Jewish. He lives in California, I live in Ohio. He was drawn into the free speech fight by his local school system, I was inspired by censorship on Big Tech and social media. But we're in the same boat. Throughout my time writing, I have never been in a situation where I think I'm shielded enough that something I write or say could not impact my job or the people around me negatively regardless of where I said it. On paper we have the First Amendment to protect our freedom of speech, yet time and time again it has to be invoked through threat of legal action or even a Supreme Court battle in order for it to be affirmed. Just last week a preacher was arrested for loudly protesting at a Pride event in Reading, PA. A week before that two elderly pro-life protesters were severely beaten in Baltimore while picketing an abortion clinic. A lot of the parents, even the activists, do not go into these situations thinking they could end up in handcuffs or carted away on a gurney because they were innocent to believe that their free speech rights are protected up until the moment they actually decided to exercise them.
I find that among Jewish Americans First Amendment values are desperately underrepresented. Progressive Jews of the left are often on the other side supporting restrictions like hate speech laws. There is a huge group of apathetic middle class folks who don't feel the need to do anything because they don't think the new restrictions will apply to them. A great many Jewish conservatives believe that freedom of speech covers their opinions on taxation, foreign policy, and crime but do not care when anti-Israel or anti-Semitic speech is censored on the internet. I don't predict that JAFFA will cause any of those tendencies to disappear, but to represent a consistently liberty minded alternative. But I’ll need help from friends and colleagues like you. Here’s how:
Read, comment and share as often as you can on each newsletter article.
Send in your suggestions for a new article either through the comments or direct to my email.
Submit your own articles for publication.
Share ideas on how to transform JAFFA from an idea into a real group where people are committed in word and deed to furthering 1st Amendment awareness in Jewish communities and in America as a whole.