Comment by tikhonj
6 days ago
> The government, on the other hand, has every right to put conditions its counterparty should conform to in order to get money from the government.
It really doesn't. There are both normal laws and Constitutional restrictions on how the government can make decisions, and the reasons it can have for making those decisions.
I'm very much not an expert here, but this includes restrictions on viewpoint discrimination in funding.
I agree! The government is not entitled to set arbitrary conditions. But it's entitled to set some. I suspect that some acts of Congress require the government to set some conditions on providing governmental funding, as the Constitution prescribes: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R46827
> is not entitled to set arbitrary conditions
Indeed, but most of these conditions _are_ arbitrary and often mutually-conflicting. Mask ban? What is the scientific basis for this?
The government already set numerous conditions on research funding relating to accounting, ethical conduct and so forth. Attaching conditions that are only tangentially related to the purpose of the funding is almost arbitrary by definition.