Freedom of Speech
I am not a libertarian nor am I a member of the ACLU, but I generally agree with them on the importance of free speech. This, I believe, is a real and growing problem on college campuses:
Students affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement crashed an event at the College of William & Mary, rushed the stage, and prevented the invited guest—the American Civil Liberties Union’s Claire Gastañaga, a W & M alum—from speaking.
Ironically, Gastañaga had intended to speak on the subject, “Students and the First Amendment.”
The disruption was livestreamed on BLM at W&M’s Facebook page. Students took to the stage just a few moments after Gastañaga began her remarks. At first, she attempted to spin the demonstration as a welcome example of the kind of thing she had come to campus to discuss, commenting “Good, I like this,” as they lined up and raised their signs. “I’m going to talk to you about knowing your rights, and protests and demonstrations, which this illustrates very well. Then I’m going to respond to questions from the moderators, and then questions from the audience.”
It was the last remark she was able to make before protesters drowned her out with cries of, “ACLU, you protect Hitler, too.” They also chanted, “the oppressed are not impressed,” “shame, shame, shame, shame,” (an ode to the Faith Militant’s treatment of Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones, though why anyone would want to be associated with the religious fanatics in that particular conflict is beyond me), “blood on your hands,” “the revolution will not uphold the Constitution,” and, uh, “liberalism is white supremacy.”
This went on for nearly 20 minutes. Eventually, according to the campus’s Flat Hat News, one of the college’s co-organizers of the event handed a microphone to the protest’s leader, who delivered a prepared statement. The disruption was apparently payback for the ACLU’s principled First Amendment defense of the Charlottesville alt-right’s civil liberties.
Organizers then canceled the event; some members of the audience approached the podium in an attempt to speak with Gastañaga, but the protesters would not permit it. They surrounded Gastañaga, raised their voices even louder, and drove everybody else away.
Two comments… First, as Gastañaga learned (assuming, and it may be one hell of an assumption, that the message sunk in), giving in to this sort of bullying, as with any kind of bullying, doesn’t mean the bully looks on you with more sympathy. It doesn’t even mean they save you for last. Bullies simply aren’t that smart, nor do they have that sort of self-control. They sense only strength, or its absence. Second, I’ve often wondered how Chinese people of a certain age explain the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards to their children. I guess I will find out first hand. Sooner or later, when my son is older, I will have to explain this nonsense to him. I just hope it has run its course by then.
I’ve been a card-carrying member of the ACLU for 40 years. They defend 1st amendment rights, even for some of the most unsavory messages, even from people who would be happy to kill me if they could. That’s the price of freedom of expression.
Your comparison of the Red Guards to this demonstration is absurdly hyperbolic. Try to learn a little history before making historical comparisons.
Just Kimel flying his racist freak flag again. He spends all day scanning the web for any excuse to scratch his aggrieved whiteness.
Mr. Kimel,
In your comments you said:
“Gastañaga learned (assuming, and it may be one hell of an assumption, that the message sunk in), giving in to this sort of bullying, as with any kind of bullying, doesn’t mean the bully looks on you with more sympathy. It doesn’t even mean they save you for last. Bullies simply aren’t that smart, nor do they have that sort of self-control.”
1. Gastañaga had what power to prevent “giving in’? Do you mean she should have used her limited physical power to drive the protestors away or what?
2.You equate a group of people protesting a speaker and thereby without the use of physical force applied to the speaker, intimidating her so that she chose not to speak or couldn’t speak over the protestor’s noise. Does the invited speaker have more free speech rights than the invited listeners in attendance? I’m not sure but what this simply amounts to a power struggle between the administration and students. The administration invites a speaker as if the power of the administration to give the speaker a platform takes precedence over the power of the students to speak in protest of the speaker. . Clearly this must mean students are only able to speak in protest of a speaker when the administration deems they may. I’m not sure that this isn’t an institutional bias based by one who has, or believes they have the power. If that power isn’t agreed by all then it must be enforced and there’s no indication in the link that the administrative power did anything to enforce their assumed power….. hence their power didn’t in fact exist in that circumstance at that time. Power is only as great as that which you use to enforce it.
3. You assume Bully’s aren’t “that smart” to “look on” another whom they oppose “with sympathy”. Bully’s come from a variety of levels of educational attainment and IQ’s so what makes you think people who protest in a form that prevents another from speaking “aren’t that smart”? And especially when you apply it to university students, who are most probably well above the intelligence of those who applied but weren’t accepted based on testing results, not to mention the vast bulk who didn’t apply because they knew their hgh school grades wouldn’t meet muster.
4. Bullies don’t have “that sort of self control”? What sort of self control did you deem it necessary for them to have that they didn’t have. Could it possibly be the case the what you wanted protesters to do isn’t what the protesters were doing with intent, and thus were in full control of themselves in fact? Nothing in the article implied or suggested that the protesters used physical assaults.
FWIW I’m an avid and strong supporter of the ACLU in every respect and a strong supporter of free speech as well… by the white supremacist even, although I don’t think “hate” speech should be tolerated, but can’t think of a way to define it such that “hate” speech” by innuendo and implied statements is also prevented. It comes down to preventing speech by it’s “nuances” which I don’t think can be done and still allow non-hate speech.
Personally, what I’m most curious about is how the organized group was constituted to view the ACLU’s defense of free speech by the white supremacists as being any less important that defending liberal non-racist speech. Who were the groups organizers and leaders. Were they in fact even anti-right wing? or what?
Joel,
As I noted to Longtooth, there is a difference between willingness and capability. The stifling of dissent by college students is very much a Red Guards thing. If they aren’t going any farther than surrounding people and screaming at them from a foot away, its because unlike a few decades ago in China, there’d be repercussions here and now.
BillB,
I’m against bad behavior. I am not against groups of people.
Longtooth,
Gastañaga may have been driven off the stage regardless. But starting off with a simpering “Good, I like this” makes it clear she doesn’t get what is going on. And is probably part of the problem.
So how was this accomplished without the application of physical force:
I’m not sure you are correct, unless you assume that grades and test scores are uncorrelated with intelligence: http://getschooled.blog.myajc.com/2015/07/07/if-colleges-admitted-solely-on-grades-and-sat-scores-would-there-be-fewer-winning-teams-and-males/
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-asian-race-tutoring-20150222-story.html
Once again, how was this accomplished:
Because I have a hard time figuring out how it can be that audience members wanted to speak with Gastañaga, and presumably she wanted to speak with them, and yet the protesters would not permit it. The protesters are free to protest. But what right do they have to prevent two parties from interacting with each other?
In this case, it seems to me that the protesters should protest outside, and the people who want to talk to each other should talk inside. The protesters have a right to protest, but they do not have a right to prevent others from speaking too.
Kimel: “I’m against bad behavior. I am not against groups of people.”
But curiously, all of your posts seem to be criticizing certain groups of people. Just coincidence, I guess. Just following the data, I guess.
It’s too bad that BLM has been hijacked by such intolerant assholes. They have made it so much easier for people to dismiss the message of the original BLM’ers, who courageously stared down the stormtroopers in Ferguson and finally were able to flush out that corrupt rat’s nest.
BillB,
Actually, I have been writing for well over a decade, and my posts criticize bad behavior/ideas. Some of that bad behavior or bad ideas seem to occur disproportionately in different groups of people. I make note of that, because sunlight is the best disinfectant.
I remember at one point I was criticizing our war mongering and I got called an anti-Semite, apparently because many neo-cons are Jewish. It so happens I am Jewish. You may have called me anti-Hispanic. It happens I am Hispanic. I am almost certain you called me anti-immigrant. My father is an immigrant.
The fact is, I call out bad behavior when I see it, and I don’t particularly care if there’s a stereotype that said behavior is associated with a group I happen to be a part of or not. The world would be a better place, I believe, if everyone thought for themselves and behaved for themselves and dropped tribal affiliations.
I’ve stated my philosophy before. If you want to know what I think, start here: http://angrybearblog.com/2016/12/discussing-differences-a-letter-to-my-son-a-few-years-from-today.html
Jerry Critter,
Agreed.
KK,
A rule of thumb: if Occam’s razor doesn’t fit the building blocks of a narrative, it probably doesn’t fit the rest of the narrative either. Since I’m referencing old posts, here’s a really old one: http://angrybearblog.com/2006/12/does-australia-exist.html
Be careful when you support the ACLU these days. The ACLU has been infiltrated by Snowflakes…
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/us/aclu-charlottesville-white-supremacists.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
Also, when your son is old enough to go college, make sure you do your research on which institutions (many government institutions) are denying men due process under the cover of Obama’s interpretation of Title IX.
Jay:
If you keep your pecker in your pants, you have no problem.
Of course there is a modern solution that eliminates the need for a meeting room etc where folks gather to have a speech, just stream it online with a q&A page to take questions. No audience no possibility of
protesters interfering, as the room where the speech is given would not be open to the public. The event could be streamed just on campus or wider as the speaker and the institution desire. Essentially this is the model of CSPAN carried down to the local campus level. Further if you take the model a bit further you eliminate the need for carbon emitting travel as well. (The speech in fact need no longer be on campus. If netmeeting type techs are good enough for business meetings, why not use them for any discussion that might for example occur otherwise during the pre event meal with the organizers)
Re Run75441 I might add keep the booze consumption under control also, as it appears that that is also an issue,
Sex education class at the AngryBearBlog…. Abstinence. The question is, until marriage?
Gee Jay:
If you are that concerned about due process, and by the way everything in a court room is open to interpretation, then do not indulge. It is pretty simple.
The reporting on this subject has been execrable as Cracked has shown. I wouldn’t trust this.
Mike asserts: “If they aren’t going any farther than surrounding people and screaming at them from a foot away, its because unlike a few decades ago in China, there’d be repercussions here and now.”
Again, the courageous use of the counterfactual as a core argument. We’re all safer with you keeping those straw men at bay, Mike.
You are correct. Some of them actually would be going farther if they hadn’t been physically stopped. Hence the 9 illegal weapons in that news story.
Of course, you might say there was no definitive proof they were going to use the weapons. But then you can also say there was no definitive proof that a guy caught with a home made bomb who vowed to blow up non-believers actually was going to try to harm anyone. Or that it wasn’t really space aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy who actually shot up the concert in Las Vegas and used their technological prowess to frame Stephen Paddock.