From the Wall Street Journal today:
Yup, that's a Charles Koch
editorial illustrated ... by the Daily Kos flag guy. Oops!
To be clear, the use is legal. That image is royalty-free clip art available at many clip art sites. It's what I chose to originally illustrate the site. Eventually, I tracked down the artist and had her do a horizontal version for me, and I bought full and exclusive rights to it ($5,000, at a time when I didn't have $5,000, so credit card advance!). But this little square one remains a royalty-free image to this day.
So the use may be legal, but it's still ironic as all hell. Particularly when it illustrates such Orwellian concepts Koch is all about like "free and open debate:"
Instead of encouraging free and open debate, collectivists strive to discredit and intimidate opponents. They engage in character assassination. (I should know, as the almost daily target of their attacks.) This is the approach that Arthur Schopenhauer described in the 19th century, that Saul Alinsky famously advocated in the 20th, and that so many despots have infamously practiced. Such tactics are the antithesis of what is required for a free society—and a telltale sign that the collectivists do not have good answers.
There's nothing more free and open than swamping out your foes with hundreds of millions of dollars of propaganda, repeatedly and consistently proven to be
full of shit. If Charles Koch wants to get on a stage and debate, say, Elizabeth Warren, then we can all say, "Yup, that was free and open." Until then, we see a guy trying to buy
entire states.
Because it's not his speech that anyone cares about. It's the hundreds of millions he's spending to try and buy what real democracy won't deliver.
Still, cool logo, dude!