What’s probably most telling about an opinion piece in Tuesday’s Washington Post entitled, “When ‘free speech’ becomes a political weapon,” is that a quick Google search pulls up a few think pieces sharing that exact title or a close approximation. It’s a hot topic to be certain.
https://twitter.com/CounterMoonbat/status/900073447715418113
For the past few years, it seems, and ramping up since the election, liberals have had second thoughts about claiming to be “free speech absolutists.” Remember in the spring when Howard Dean doubled down on his claim that “hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment”?
It seems Dean was triggered by the idea that right-wing provocateurs like Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos were getting speaking engagements at universities, “forcing” schools either to cancel or find alternative venues to prevent a repeat of the campus vandalism and rioting at Berkeley over a speech that didn’t even happen.
More and more liberals are coming out against free speech, and we’re not just talking about the antifa pepper-spraying elderly men at free speech rallies.
https://twitter.com/Heminator/status/900062993723015168
At least they're finally admitting to being against free speech pic.twitter.com/qrfm2lSknt
— Ben McDonald (@Bmac0507) August 22, 2017
https://twitter.com/JayCostTWS/status/900072760571039744
That's the whole fucking point of it, you pathetic tenured moron pic.twitter.com/ohJ7bM9h5w
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) August 22, 2017
Wow, they’re really going to run with this, aren’t they? Skidmore College’s Jennifer Delton offered up this perspective on college speakers in 2017:
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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.
This impossible dilemma is no accident. It has been part of a strategy, deployed first by conservatives and perfected by the alt-right …
Or — and this is just a crazy thought — don’t stand by and allow students to burn down your campus because they don’t want anyone else to hear whoever is speaking that night.
The problem, Delton explains, is that the provocateurs of the alt-right “seek to bait liberal institutions by weaponizing the concept of free speech, which is an issue that divides the liberal left.” It certainly does; we’ve seen professors on progressive campuses seek out “muscle” to physically remove journalists from “media-free zones” in which special snowflakes can speak without fear of their stupidity being picked up by reporters. Liberals love free speech on campus, where they can exact complete control over what’s acceptable and where it can be spoken.
Fear not: National Review Online’s Charles C.W. Cooke is on it.
To be fair, the Founders couldn’t have imagined robust political speech, and they’d never met any radicals. pic.twitter.com/kTUXnXWWaB
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) August 22, 2017
“Unlike fascists, I see the First Amendment as a sacred principle. It’s sacred, which is why I want to take it from people I dislike.” pic.twitter.com/gXgwcq8CtS
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) August 22, 2017
Best part is the explicit “but you shouldn’t censor people on my side” caveat. Do we know this person exists? Reads like parody. pic.twitter.com/bntztx8FGe
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) August 22, 2017
Am I surprised at how quickly WaPo's history blog decended into a platform for leftist propaganda? Not one bit. https://t.co/ERBWJOxxyS
— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) August 22, 2017
Democracy Dies From Dumbasses
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) August 22, 2017
These anti-1st Amendement editorials in the NYTimes and WaPo are becoming daily Ipecac
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) August 22, 2017
It's hard to stress how much I despise this op-ed. https://t.co/YIN9IvepGM pic.twitter.com/oePZkEDH5v
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) August 22, 2017
Good God. Constitutional rights "are not unchanging abstract principles," but can be infringed based on the "consequences for society." pic.twitter.com/EQLTCX1Bm6
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) August 22, 2017
This piece takes all the bad things that conservatives have said about academics and unapologetically cops to it https://t.co/SV4nMWl65o
— PoliMath (@politicalmath) August 22, 2017
The author literally says that we need to ban and suppress conservatives, but be careful not to suppress liberals who say the same things
— PoliMath (@politicalmath) August 22, 2017
https://twitter.com/CounterMoonbat/status/900075774320967680
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Related:
LA Times op-ed: Unrestricted free speech is giving marginalized groups PTSD and eating disorders https://t.co/b7WOFL3LAk
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) June 21, 2017
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