Tag Archives: free speech

Cowardice? Or Tyranny?

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Earlier in the week, Breitbart News Editor Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at UC Berkeley, but the institution (I can’t call it a school) canceled his appearance two hours before its start because protestors enrolled in the institution protested, violently with fire and smoke bombs.

Security allegedly was present, but the violence and damage occurred anyway.  UC Berkeley issued a statement about its decision that said, in part,

We condemn in the strongest possible terms the violence and unlawful behavior that was on display, and deeply regret that those tactics will now overshadow the efforts to engage in legitimate and lawful protest against the performer’s presence and perspectives[.]

The institution’s management talked about condemnation of the violence, but it chose to do nothing about it, it chose instead to allow the violence contribute to the destruction of free speech within its facilities.

Notice another thing in that statement.  The institution’s managers regret that violence “overshadowing” other protests against free speech, but they don’t have a minim of regret for the protests against free speech.

Nor is free speech in the Berkeley institution helped by the timidity of the Berkeley College Republicans.

Pieter Sittler, a spokesman for the Berkeley College Republicans, said the club doesn’t support everything Yiannopoulos says but “he gives a voice to repressed conservative thought on American college campuses.”

There’s no need for the protective qualifier; it isn’t relevant to the matter at hand: whether a man will be allowed to speak aloud a contrary opinion in the institution.

The cowardice, or the tyranny, of the Left says the only speech that may be freely spoken is that which the Left will permit and no other.  The timidity of the others functionally condones this tyranny.  The overt actions of the institution’s managers, limited as it is to idle chit-chat, actively condones this tyranny.

The only question remaining concerns Yiannopoulis’ description of the event:

[T]he Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.

Are they such cowards?  Or do they really favor such tyranny?  Or is this the cowardice of tyranny?

A Large Misunderstanding

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A Wall Street Journal article about Breitbart writer and speaker Milo Yiannopoulos and his impact on college campus views of free speech opened with a widespread misunderstanding.

The tour by Milo Yiannopoulos is sparking reaction from more groups than any recent speaker has on college campuses, heightening tensions between free speech and public safety.

There is no tension between free speech and public safety, though: there is no public safety without free speech.  The relationship between free speech and public safety is not only—not even primarily—concerned with people whose feelings get hurt, or people legitimately insulted, and who then act out emotionally and dangerously.  The relationship is centered on Government’s ability to control what will be spoken or done and the threat that those abilities represent to public safety.

It’s only necessary to look at the vociferous protests from the Left and from the Right against what each side saw in its time as Government overreach to see the relationship.

Again: there is no public safety without free speech.  Full stop.

The Bias of the Press

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It’s going to continue, as Howard Kurtz, writing for FoxNews has recognized.

Many in the media, mostly on the liberal side, have come up with a verb that captures their disgust at the man who will be America’s 45th president.

It’s a word that clearly signals that they will remain in opposition, in a state of perpetual outrage, that, in truth, they don’t fully accept the results of the election.

Donald Trump, they say, should not be normalized.

Especially that perpetual outrage part.  That’s not normal; that’s pathology.  Here’s Slate, as cited by Kurtz, describing the typical NLMSM and its refusal (not inability) to accept Donald Trump as the duly elected next President:

In an essay for the New York Times Magazine, Teju Cole wrote, of the days following Trump’s win, “All around were the unmistakable signs of normalization in progress. So many were falling into line without being pushed. It was happening at tremendous speed, like a contagion.” David Remnick told CNN, “We’ve normalized [the results] already. Less than a week after the election is over, suddenly Washington is going about its business talking about who’s going to get what jobs. You would think that Mitt Romney had won. It’s a hallucination.” …  “He is not normal,” insisted John Oliver over the weekend. “He is abnormal.”

The NLMSM as Fourth Estate?  Not anymore.

The Bias of Journalists and Journalism

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Howard Kurtz, that self-styled bastion of journalistic criticism who writes for Fox News has a piece out about a Trump-hostile media and “some pundits admitting they blew it.”

After producing a litany of…mistakes…made by newspapers and pseudo-journalists as they produced their erroneous analyses and predictions, though, this is all that Kurtz could conclude:

[W]e somehow decided that we knew what was best for them.

Kurtz is missing the point.  His fellow pseudo-journalists didn’t miss their predictions because they misunderstood or blew off mainstream Americans—Americans outside their New York and West Coast bubble—or because they thought they knew what was best for us.  That’s a symptom, not a cause.  His fellow pseudo-journalists misunderstood and blew us off because they’re too biased to see the truth.

And so Kurtz exposes his own bias.

I suggest that the era of the NLMSM is past.  It’s time for ordinary Americans to go elsewhere for our news and other information.  It’s time for us to use our own judgment in evaluating that news and information.

The print and broadcast sources have shown they cannot be trusted; their output has no reliable value.  Their output, at bottom, is no different than the entertainment fluff published by the National Enquirers or the Globes or the Stars of the entertainment industry.  Kurtz and his ilk just take themselves more seriously.

A Protest for Free Speech

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On Wednesday, the Young Conservatives of Texas club at the University of Texas at Austin held an “affirmative action bake sale” offering cookies at different prices based on the race and sex of the buyer.

A cookie cost $1.50 for Asian males, $1 for white males, and 50 cents for African-American and Hispanic males. Cookies for American Indians of both genders were free of charge.

[The affirmative action link is in the original of the above quote; I included it so readers can see Instagram’s complicity at the time of my writing (27 Oct) in censoring this bit of news.]

That pricing is a direct reflection of the nature of UT Austin’s affirmative action programs, which similarly varies accesses to the school based on ethnicity and not merit.

But never mind that.  The school objected to having its racist policies so blatantly illustrated.  Gregory Vincent, the school’s Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement, had this on the matter:

[F]ocusing our attention on the provocative nature of the YCT’s actions ignores a much more important issue: they create an environment of exclusion and disrespect among our students, faculty and staff[.]

Such dialectics are at the core of freely conducted debate, though.  This university’s management plainly does not understand actual freedoms acknowledged in the First Amendment.

Embarrassingly, Vincent went on, and unable to form a coherent argument on the matter, stooped to attacking the protestors and not the protestors’ argument.

He…questioned the club’s motive behind the bake sale.

This is what our State’s tax dollars are buying, and it’s not education.