Posted on 04/24/2017 4:04:40 PM PDT by Kaslin
If you want to read something crazy, look no further than the New York Times opinion section. The paper actually published an editorial Monday morning that outright denied free speech applied to anyone who wasn’t a liberal. In his appalling article, “What ‘Snowflakes’ Get Right About Free Speech,” New York University professor Ulrich Baer argued that conservatives are simply wrong about what free speech means, and that protesters who censored conservative or otherwise “offensive” guest speakers were actually protecting free speech.
Baer begins his article by breaking down the modern understanding of free speech as “anything goes.” While Baer is not entirely wrong in the idea that certain situations do require limiting freedom of speech, (such as, yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater), that isn’t what Baer is arguing here. In a really bizarre way, Baer actually argues that by censoring speech the left finds offensive, they are doing a “public good” at restoring “freedom of speech”:
The idea of freedom of speech does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks. It means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate in discourse as fully recognized members of that community.
In other words, the left gets to judge which view is “inherently” worthy of being heard.
Baer then brings up everyone from Ben Carson, to Donald Trump, to American Enterprise Institute’s Charles Murray as examples of people who “invalidate the humanity of some people” and deserve to be censored.
Some topics, such as claims that some human beings are by definition inferior to others, or illegal or unworthy of legal standing, are not open to debate because such people cannot debate them on the same terms...When those views invalidate the humanity of some people, they restrict speech as a public good...In such cases there is no inherent value to be gained from debating them in public.
Like President Trump’s attacks on the liberal media as the “enemies of the American people,” his insults are meant to discredit and delegitimize whole groups as less worthy of participation in the public exchange of ideas.
Not only that, but the liberal, hissy-fit-throwing protesters at school campuses across the country are actually protectors of “free speech:”
The recent student demonstrations at Auburn against Spencer’s visit — as well as protests on other campuses against Charles Murray, Milo Yiannopoulos and others — should be understood as an attempt to ensure the conditions of free speech for a greater group of people, rather than censorship.
He praises the protesters for keeping a “vigilant” watch against the “dangers to our democracy” (ie: anyone they disagree with politically):
As a scholar of literature, history and politics, I am especially attuned to the next generation’s demands to revise existing definitions of free speech to accommodate previously delegitimized experiences. Freedom of expression is not an unchanging absolute. When its proponents forget that it requires the vigilant and continuing examination of its parameters, and instead invoke a pure model of free speech that has never existed, the dangers to our democracy are clear and present.
The best line comes at the end, however, when Baer praises liberal protesters of all stripes as the guardians of the very “soul of our republic.” Yikes.
We should thank the student protestors [sic], the activists in Black Lives Matter and other “overly sensitive” souls for keeping watch over the soul of our republic.
Perhaps speech which is against free speech, ought not to be be free. Such as this article.
We’re not going to Make America Great Again as long as commies are allowed to spew these lies.
The real answer to lies isn’t censorship but truth. However this presupposes a society that cares about truth.
Well I wouldn’t expect the New York Slimes to recognize the hypocrisy and stupidity they print in their rag.
Liberals ARE inferior. I do not strive to limit the human and civil rights of others; therefore I AM morally superior, of more intrinsic value than is someone who does that.
Those idiots don’t realize that speech which someone finds offensive is specifically protected by the first amendment.
The lowest slave is free to agree with his master.
yeah sure, I’ll be sure to go out and thank a snowflake for protecting my rights.
This has been going on a long time, the left lying that its crazy ideas are really based on traditional American ideals.
Be careful. That goes down the rabbit hole. A rightist hell and a leftist hell are equally miserable.
Cue the photo of the American Admiral from Red October.
And bragging about it you squander it before God.
I look forward to the day when the communists who run our public schools, colleges, and universities are lined up against a wall and shot.
Ironically, history makes clear that these people will probably be murdered by their own students.
“For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”
I TRIED to read the NYT source article, but after reading the first few paragraphs of yadda, yadda, yadda which had zero point or meaning, I figured the rest of the few thousand words iun the article would be equally pointless.
However, I assume if there IS a point, that the point is that only Progs have a right to free speech and everyone else with a different opinion should remain silent, but a one or two paragraph article to that effect would have been more effective.
Political Correctness is, among other things, Censorship and was designed to control the Narrative.
Not bragging. Refuting the author’s premise. While I framed it in the first person, I believe it with every bit as much fervor about anyone who has no desire to deprive others of their liberty.
Yes bragging of a status of superiority
what you do with it matters. If it isn’t pointing right back to God it is bragging vain.
The slowFlakes have certainly been a boon for freedom.
They riot when someone with an alternate opinion is asked to speak.
They label White kids racist based on nothing they have done.
They label White men as sexual predators based on them being between the ages of 18 to 22, and attending a university.
White kids are demanded to take sensitivity training.
The slowFlakes are dead certain the Islamic immigrants are better people than White U.S. citizens.
In some magical world that only they can understand, they think Whites are racists having done nothing wrong, and Islamic immigrants who hate anyone who doesn’t follow Islam, are the perfect candidates to carry on U.S. principles.
These thin skinned souls are a challenge.
The question for us is whether we will vent raw spleen on them or whether we will remember and sound forth the voice of God.
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