Tag Archives: free speech

Sounds Like A Reason

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…to continue shedding light on this man, and on Progressivism and the Democratic Party generally.

Nevada’s Democrat Secretary of State [Ross Miller] says he’ll do all in his power to crush a conservative organization that ran ads against him in his campaign to become the state’s attorney general.

As Secretary of State, he’s also the one who oversees elections—including the one in which he’s running.

And he’s doing his “Stifle, Edith” act because he doesn’t like a political ad being run by the State Government Leadership Foundation.  If you’re curious, the ad is here, but the content isn’t particularly important.

What’s important is that this man is so terrified of a contest of ideas in the town square that he’ll do everything he can to evict from that arena any speaker saying things of which he personally disapproves.  What’s important is that this man is so terrified of a contest of ideas in the town square that he’ll do everything he can to make sure that folks in that arena can hear only the speech he deems fit for their tender ears—he won’t allow them to decide for themselves what they’ll listen to.

And this is typical of Progressives/Democrats.  See Brendan Eich and Mozilla, see Condoleezza Rice and Dropbox, see the Obama administration’s IRS.  The list is endless.

It makes me think that Progressives/Democrats know only too well that their ideas can’t survive the disinfecting sunlight of open competition.

What Ayaan Hirsi Ali Might Have Said

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…at Brandeis University, had the school’s…management (I hesitate to say leadership)…not been so cowardly.  Following is excerpted from her op-ed in The Wall Street Journal (RTWT).

So I ask: Is the concept of holy war compatible with our ideal of religious toleration?  Is it blasphemy—punishable by death—to question the applicability of certain seventh-century doctrines to our own era?  Both Christianity and Judaism have had their eras of reform.  I would argue that the time has come for a Muslim Reformation.

Is such an argument inadmissible?  It surely should not be at a university that was founded in the wake of the Holocaust, at a time when many American universities still imposed quotas on Jews.

The motto of Brandeis University is “Truth even unto its innermost parts.”  That is my motto too.  For it is only through truth, unsparing truth, that your generation can hope to do better than mine in the struggle for peace, freedom, and equality of the sexes.

But she couldn’t say that, in that venue.  Other venues will be similarly abject at their peril.  And at ours.

Another Blow

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…in the Progressives’ war on diversity, this one struck against the concept of free speech.

Brandeis University in Massachusetts announced Tuesday that it had withdrawn the planned awarding of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a staunch critic of Islam and its treatment of women….

Their “rationale?”

She is a compelling public figure and advocate for women’s rights, and we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world.  That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.

Apparently those core values don’t include the sanctity, or a recognition of the necessity to a free society, of freedom to express an opinion different from that of an authority figure, nor do they seem to include a respect for diversity of opinion.

Ali’s offensive speech?

Once [Islam]’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful.  It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now.  They’re not interested in peace.  I think that we are at war with Islam.  And there’s no middle ground in wars.

Even truth is offensive at Brandeis, because, according to Joseph Lumbard, Chairman of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis

This makes Muslim students feel very uneasy.  They feel unwelcome here.

Well.  There it is.  Discomfort is a crime at this place.  When it concerns the appropriate groups.

The Progressives’ War on Freedom and Diversity

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The forced resignation of (ex-)Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich over a viewpoint he held of which Progressives disapproved—in the name of diversity of opinion, yet.

(Ex-)Harvard President Larry Summers, forced out because he disapproved of a rap album that was liked by Progressives, and because he suggested the under-representation of women in science and engineering might be due to differences in aptitude—Progressives insist that equality includes identical capacity.

Mark Steyn, National Review, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute sued for defamation by Michael Mann for ridiculing Mann’s hockey stick and for disparaging the anthropogenic “aspect” of Global Warming—Progressives consider this settled science so much they even tout the efficacy of lying in support of it.

The Gannet newspapers—in particular, the Lower Hudson Journal News—published a map of names and addresses of registered New York gun owners and tried to sue for more such data—knowing as they did so that they were identifying those honest Americans (Conservatives, though, so not so honest, after all, eh?) as targets.

The Los Angeles Times closing off and refusing to accept further commentary disputing anthropogenic global warning—see above.

Chik-fil-A threatened with boycott because its owners held a view of marriage that is disapproved by Progressives.

The IRS targeting and actively suppressing the free speech of organizations of which our Progressive government disapproves—and which now is finalizing a set of rules that would formalize the abuse.

Conservative women routinely smeared for not toeing the Progressive womanhood line—with one Progressive “commentator” insisting that Governor Sara Palin should be tied down and defecated into her mouth.  Progressive approval of this behavior is demonstrated by their silence on the despicable nature of this insistence.

Conservative blacks routinely smeared as Uncle Toms, or worse, for not toeing the Progressive Black-American line (and notice that—not “Progressive black line:” that hyphen matters to Progressives).

The steady drumbeat of slurs against Tea Partiers as racists, tea baggers, and so on—because they hold opinions of which Progressives disapprove.

The routine smearing of those with tales of damage, even ruination, due to Obamacare as liars, as tellers only of “horror stories, all of them untrue”—solely because Progressives find these truths uncomfortable.

Vice President Joe Biden openly agreeing with Congressman Mike Doyle (D, PA) as the latter called Republicans terrorists for disagreeing with Progressive views of the Federal debt ceiling.

The list goes on, without end.  It’s time we Conservatives—and Independents, and middle-of-the-roaders, and anyone else—with an opinion, or a fact, we wish to speak without murderous assault responded.  With facts and logic, because most Americans aren’t as droolingly imbecilic as Progressives make us out to be.

 

h/t Belmont Club

Free Speech

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…especially, the aim of those clauses of the First Amendment, free political speech.  Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the Court, had this to say in striking down aggregate limits to political contributions:

There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders. Citizens can exercise that right in a variety of ways: They can run for office themselves, vote, urge others to vote for a particular candidate, volunteer to work on a campaign, and contribute to a candidate’s campaign. This case is about the last of those options.

And

Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so too does much of what the First Amendment vigorously protects. If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades—despite the profound offense such spectacles cause—it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition.

And [bold added, italics in the original]

The Government has a strong interest, no less critical to our democratic system, in combatting corruption and its appearance.  We have, however, held that this interest must be limited to a specific kind of corruption—quid pro quo corruption—in order to ensure that the Government’s efforts do not have the effect of restricting the First Amendment right of citizens to choose who shall govern them.  For the reasons set forth, we conclude that the aggregate limits on contributions do not further the only governmental interest this Court accepted as legitimate in Buckley.  They instead intrude without justification on a citizen’s ability to exercise “the most fundamental First Amendment activities.”

What he said.  The Supremes’ ruling can be seen here.