Here’s the dilemma college presidents face in the fall: Either uphold free speech on campus and risk violent counterprotests, or ban conservative provocateurs and confirm the “freedom of speech” crisis on campuses. Either way their institution’s legitimacy is undermined.Brilliant! How did they ensure the risk of violent counterprotests?
This impossible dilemma is no accident. It has been part of a strategy, deployed first by conservatives and perfected by the alt-right.
The whole thing urges a rethinking of "free speech absolutism." If I were the editor of the Washington Post, I would have declined to print it. Ordinarily, I would have explained, my paper was so committed to free speech that we would publish the ideas even of those hostile to the most basic American values. But in this case, the dangers associated with her point might be best illustrated by example.
3 comments:
I sort of think the Editors of the Post should be arrested for sedition. And when their lawyers show up, arrest them too for conspiracy. Just to show what it's all about.
Here’s the dilemma college presidents face in the fall....
There's no dilemma there, except in the fetid minds of the cowards sitting in college management chairs that are plainly too big for them.
Uphold free speech, host the conservative speakers (among others), and in the face of violent counter-"protests," arrest and prosecute the criminals, whether they are pupils at the institution or interlopers. The violence involves criminal behavior, not Precious crossings of school rules of comportment. That'll last through a couple of violent "protests," or so, and then civility, even if tense, will ensue.
Not doing that, surrendering individual liberty to the CTL-Left, is how their institution’s legitimacy is undermined.
I won't dignify Delton's drool about who started the thing or her shout-out to her imaginary friend, the "alt-right," with a response beyond my advice that if she gets her keyboard too wet, she's likely to short it out.
Eric Hines
"Our ideas have an internal contradiction, and it's our opponents' fault."
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