BarryLaverty Posted May 21, 2021 Share Posted May 21, 2021 'For me, not thee....' is a guiding 'principle, over and over again. (Washington Post) Opinion: Hey conservatives, this is why liberals don’t believe you care about free speech Alyssa Rosenberg Columnist May 21, 2021 at 1:32 p.m. CDT If conservatives wonder why liberals aren’t inclined to trust their supposed concern for free speech, controversies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Associated Press would be a good place to start. In North Carolina, the university’s board of trustees denied a recommendation from the journalism school to award tenure to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones after a pressure campaign from conservative activists. And the Associated Press fired news associate Emily Wilder after the Stanford College Republicans called her an “anti-Israel agitator,” highlighting her social media posts about Israel and Palestinians, written when she was a Stanford student. Conservatives who claim to value a wide-ranging clash of ideas face a stark choice. They can prove they mean what they say by defending Hannah-Jones, Wilder and the concept of a truly broad spectrum of public opinion. Or they can demonstrate — as the civil libertarian Nat Hentoff put it — that they believe in free speech “for me, but not for thee.” The incidents at the Associated Press and UNC are hardly novel. At the same time that conservatives have turned the supposed scourges of “cancel culture” into a major cause, they’ve moved to use the law to shut down ideas they don’t like. In academics, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has documented an uptick in the number of state legislatures that have tried “to limit or prohibit the teaching or training of certain viewpoints on campus.” Many are conservative attempts to push back on concepts such as “critical race theory” or to ban the teaching of “divisive concepts,” such as that “the State of Rhode Island or the United States of America is fundamentally racist or sexist.” The 1619 Project — an ambitious attempt to recontextualize American history by giving slavery a central role in the national story, spearheaded by Hannah-Jones at the New York Times — has been a particular target. President Donald Trump appointed a commission to counter it, state legislators tried to ban its material from schools, and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced a bill that would yank federal funds from schools using any part of the project in the classroom. Beyond campus, Republican lawmakers have also cracked down on protest, in ways ranging from the punitive to the grotesque. Minnesota legislators want to bar anyone arrested at a protest from receiving state student loans. Indiana Republicans have proposed to ban anyone convicted of rioting from state jobs. Iowa and Florida have passed bills granting civil immunity to people who drive their cars into protesters blocking traffic. The contradictions between these efforts and the flogging of the “cancel culture” menace aren’t a problem when conservatives’ primary goals are to generate hours of Fox News programming and raise buckets of money from their riled-up base. But if they genuinely want to make more space for conservative ideas in settings such as Hollywood and academia, this approach makes no sense — it’s a failure that endorses the same principles and tactics the right claims to stand against. People trying to outlaw the teaching of the 1619 Project and people challenging Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” on the grounds that it includes White saviors and racist language don’t disagree that some material should be banned from schools. They just disagree on which ideas ought to be verboten. College Republicans digging up old social media posts in efforts to get alumni fired aren’t so different from a high school student who releases an old video of a classmate using a racial slur intending to make it harder for her to get into college. Both agree that certain behavior by young people should have material consequences long after that behavior took place. To actually seize the high ground on speech issues they already claim to occupy, conservatives will have to take an example from Reason Magazine’s principled cancel culture chronicler Robby Soave and get used to defending people that they may not like, or ideas that they’re embarrassed to be associated with. Maybe that means standing up for a professor who advanced the lab-leak theory of the origin of covid-19 in terms some interpreted as insulting. It could mean making the case for a Central Michigan University professor who displayed a racial slur in his classroom and invited members of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church to dinner with his students as part of their First Amendment education. Or it might mean defending Nikole Hannah-Jones instead of telling voters that a liberal Black journalist is coming for their precious George Washington. Engaging with the 1619 Project’s contentions will do more to advance both the goals of free speech and a conservative interpretation of history than trying to ban it. If conservatives want to win the free speech wars for real instead of posturing about them, they need to remember one thing about principles: They apply to everyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RETIREDFAN1 Posted May 21, 2021 Share Posted May 21, 2021 Libnuts are the ones who are fighting free expression......cancel culture TRUMPS your bull article everytime..... 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DB2point0 Posted May 21, 2021 Share Posted May 21, 2021 What a bunch of cobbled together blather. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DB2point0 Posted May 21, 2021 Share Posted May 21, 2021 Just now, RETIREDFAN1 said: Libnuts are the ones who are fighting free expression......cancel culture TRUMPS your bull article everytime..... Ding ding ding we have a winner 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DB2point0 Posted May 21, 2021 Share Posted May 21, 2021 Just for good measure 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarryLaverty Posted May 21, 2021 Author Share Posted May 21, 2021 3 minutes ago, DB2point0 said: Just for good measure Man, that is just the most original meme. I am inspired. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarryLaverty Posted May 21, 2021 Author Share Posted May 21, 2021 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DB2point0 Posted May 21, 2021 Share Posted May 21, 2021 Just now, BarryLaverty said: Man, that is just the most original meme. I am inspired. Unoriginal yet true. If people would worry more about truth than originality this would be a better country for it. And for the record, RR was the best president ever! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DB2point0 Posted May 21, 2021 Share Posted May 21, 2021 1 minute ago, BarryLaverty said: Cute, a photoshopped picture with a liberal slant. Mine was an original quote by the greatest president ever. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DB2point0 Posted May 21, 2021 Share Posted May 21, 2021 Do you know Dee? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarthDawg77 Posted May 21, 2021 Share Posted May 21, 2021 1 hour ago, BarryLaverty said: Man, that is just the most original meme. I am inspired. Hypocrisy knows no political affiliation; There are Plenty of examples wherever one looks.js. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monte1076 Posted May 21, 2021 Share Posted May 21, 2021 Ya know, @BarryLaverty, I'll believe Liberals believe in Free speech when "free speech" zones are gone on college campuses, and the entire campus is allowed free speech, and liberals actually demonstrate they want free speech. I can use broad brushes, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveTV1 Posted May 21, 2021 Share Posted May 21, 2021 As for the woman spewing her anti-Semitic pro terrorist rhetoric I would have let her speak to her libtard minions. As for the censure of the 1610 Project if it wasn't the only viewpoint being taught in schools then I would say okay spread your lies, but allow for the counterpoint of truth in what really happened in America. That should also show all of the warts of the past as well. I see more attempts by the left to suppress free speech, then these two measly examples that this writer has given. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarryLaverty Posted May 21, 2021 Author Share Posted May 21, 2021 2 hours ago, DB2point0 said: Cute, a photoshopped picture with a liberal slant. Mine was an original quote by the greatest president ever. The Republican Party of today is a long, long, long way from the party of Reagan. Trump doesn't deserve one of Ronnie's jellybeans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DannyZuco Posted May 21, 2021 Share Posted May 21, 2021 2 hours ago, BarryLaverty said: 'For me, not thee....' is a guiding 'principle, over and over again. (Washington Post) Opinion: Hey conservatives, this is why liberals don’t believe you care about free speech Alyssa Rosenberg Columnist May 21, 2021 at 1:32 p.m. CDT If conservatives wonder why liberals aren’t inclined to trust their supposed concern for free speech, controversies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Associated Press would be a good place to start. In North Carolina, the university’s board of trustees denied a recommendation from the journalism school to award tenure to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones after a pressure campaign from conservative activists. And the Associated Press fired news associate Emily Wilder after the Stanford College Republicans called her an “anti-Israel agitator,” highlighting her social media posts about Israel and Palestinians, written when she was a Stanford student. Conservatives who claim to value a wide-ranging clash of ideas face a stark choice. They can prove they mean what they say by defending Hannah-Jones, Wilder and the concept of a truly broad spectrum of public opinion. Or they can demonstrate — as the civil libertarian Nat Hentoff put it — that they believe in free speech “for me, but not for thee.” The incidents at the Associated Press and UNC are hardly novel. At the same time that conservatives have turned the supposed scourges of “cancel culture” into a major cause, they’ve moved to use the law to shut down ideas they don’t like. In academics, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has documented an uptick in the number of state legislatures that have tried “to limit or prohibit the teaching or training of certain viewpoints on campus.” Many are conservative attempts to push back on concepts such as “critical race theory” or to ban the teaching of “divisive concepts,” such as that “the State of Rhode Island or the United States of America is fundamentally racist or sexist.” The 1619 Project — an ambitious attempt to recontextualize American history by giving slavery a central role in the national story, spearheaded by Hannah-Jones at the New York Times — has been a particular target. President Donald Trump appointed a commission to counter it, state legislators tried to ban its material from schools, and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced a bill that would yank federal funds from schools using any part of the project in the classroom. Beyond campus, Republican lawmakers have also cracked down on protest, in ways ranging from the punitive to the grotesque. Minnesota legislators want to bar anyone arrested at a protest from receiving state student loans. Indiana Republicans have proposed to ban anyone convicted of rioting from state jobs. Iowa and Florida have passed bills granting civil immunity to people who drive their cars into protesters blocking traffic. The contradictions between these efforts and the flogging of the “cancel culture” menace aren’t a problem when conservatives’ primary goals are to generate hours of Fox News programming and raise buckets of money from their riled-up base. But if they genuinely want to make more space for conservative ideas in settings such as Hollywood and academia, this approach makes no sense — it’s a failure that endorses the same principles and tactics the right claims to stand against. People trying to outlaw the teaching of the 1619 Project and people challenging Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” on the grounds that it includes White saviors and racist language don’t disagree that some material should be banned from schools. They just disagree on which ideas ought to be verboten. College Republicans digging up old social media posts in efforts to get alumni fired aren’t so different from a high school student who releases an old video of a classmate using a racial slur intending to make it harder for her to get into college. Both agree that certain behavior by young people should have material consequences long after that behavior took place. To actually seize the high ground on speech issues they already claim to occupy, conservatives will have to take an example from Reason Magazine’s principled cancel culture chronicler Robby Soave and get used to defending people that they may not like, or ideas that they’re embarrassed to be associated with. Maybe that means standing up for a professor who advanced the lab-leak theory of the origin of covid-19 in terms some interpreted as insulting. It could mean making the case for a Central Michigan University professor who displayed a racial slur in his classroom and invited members of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church to dinner with his students as part of their First Amendment education. Or it might mean defending Nikole Hannah-Jones instead of telling voters that a liberal Black journalist is coming for their precious George Washington. Engaging with the 1619 Project’s contentions will do more to advance both the goals of free speech and a conservative interpretation of history than trying to ban it. If conservatives want to win the free speech wars for real instead of posturing about them, they need to remember one thing about principles: They apply to everyone. Another OP-ED, from the OP-ED Parrot of the Year. Dang It Barry, can't you think for yourself. Do you really believe that the revolution was fought to keep slavery in the Americas? SMFH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RETIREDFAN1 Posted May 21, 2021 Share Posted May 21, 2021 10 minutes ago, BarryLaverty said: The Republican Party of today is a long, long, long way from the party of Reagan. Trump doesn't deserve one of Ronnie's jellybeans. Reagan let the Rothchilds take over after they tried to kill him..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarryLaverty Posted May 21, 2021 Author Share Posted May 21, 2021 7 minutes ago, DannyZuco said: Another OP-ED, from the OP-ED Parrot of the Year. Dang It Barry, can't you think for yourself. Do you really believe that the revolution was fought to keep slavery in the Americas? SMFH Nope, but that wasn't the point. The point was the shameless hypocrisy of 'cancel culture' opposition in the GOP completely in the throes of attacking differing opinions, even within their own ranks. And everybody knows that the American Revolution was fought to give white, male landowners the right to govern themselves and break away from British control of our economy, so profits could be maximized for them, not the East Indian Trading Company. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DannyZuco Posted May 21, 2021 Share Posted May 21, 2021 2 minutes ago, BarryLaverty said: And everybody knows that the American Revolution was fought to give white, male landowners the right to govern themselves and break away from British control of our economy, so profits could be maximized for them, not the East Indian Trading Company. Well, I will agree with that. But I do believe that both sides of the aisle are not very open when it comes to freedom of speech. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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