Posted on 04/27/2017 1:27:04 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The phrasing here skirts awfully close to suggesting right-wingers are complicit in the “anti-fascist” violence directed at them. If a provocateur like Coulter “throws herself into a volatile situation,” don’t be surprised if the locals are provoked in a “volatile” way, I guess.
Charles Cooke anticipated this idea of “volatility” yesterday in summarizing the campus view of speech this way: “Your opinions are fighting words because I’ll riot if you express them.”
[A]cross the country, conservatives like her are eagerly throwing themselves into volatile situations like the one in Berkeley, emboldened by a backlash over what many Americans see as excessive political correctness, a president who has gleefully taken up their fight, and liberals they accuse of trying to censor any idea they disagree with.
The situation adds up to a striking reversal in the culture wars, with the left now often demanding that offensive content be excised from public discourse and those who promote it boycotted and shunned.
Did Charles Murray throw himself into a “volatile situation” when he tried to give a talk at Middlebury? Nope, says Murray. He just wanted to give a talk. But if he knew beforehand that the reaction would be “volatile,” so what? I’m sure it’s true that some right-wing speakers are deliberately choosing citadels of liberalism like Berkeley as places to speak, but there are virtuous reasons to do that beyond simple provocation. Intellectually you might do it for the same reason Bernie Sanders chose to speak at Liberty U, to reach an audience that normally isn’t exposed to your ideology. Symbolically you might do it to make a statement that universities, especially public ones, should live up to their promises of diversity and the free exchange of ideas.
I don’t think the Times excerpt is inconsistent with that. If anything, I think it sins not by implying that conservatives are to blame when “antifa” dirtbags rampage but by implying that self-promotion is the chief reason conservatives might want to be able to speak freely at Berkeley. The piece begins by noting that “Coulter on Wednesday made herself the latest cause célèbre” in the battle over campus free speech. Even if that were true, and it’s not — the leftists who turned the speech a security risk made her a cause celebre — again, so what? Coulter’s speech might have been a PR stunt from the word go, but if it succeeded in drawing attention to the fact that some American universities are no longer fully safe for half the population (insert your own joke about “safe spaces” here), it served a purpose.
And it forced people to take sides, including liberal thought leaders. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and the ACLU all spoke up this past week against the “shutdown” approach to unpopular speakers:
The heckler’s veto of Coulter's Berkeley speech is a loss for the 1st Amendment. We must protect speech on campus, even when hateful.
— ACLU National (@ACLU) April 26, 2017
It’s good to have those lines drawn, because the shutdown approach isn’t always limited to universities and may be less limited in the future. Here’s a nice report about very liberal Portland having to cancel a parade because of threats against a local Republican group promising “two hundred or more people [will] rush into the parade into the middle and drag and push those [Republicans] out” if they attempted to march. Should the Republicans have quit or “eagerly thrown themselves into a volatile situation” to assert their rights in the face of intimidation? Exit quotation via WaPo: “On social media, however, many in the anarchist and antifascist camps pointed to Coulter’s cancellation as proof their use of violence as a tool works.”
I held my nose and read the Slimes article. Unbelievable. The classic example of blaming the victims. How dare conservatives even think of exercising their free speech rights at a public university, no less.
Yeah, how dare they throw themselves into volatile situations... like free speech!
There is a fascist yearning to break out of every Democrat.
This dhimmi deserve their abuse by Muslims for not converting to Islam.
How do we take back the narrative?
Is conservative media strong enough to reach over the lying MSM/libs/facist-anarchists???
NYT on Kristallnacht: Jews are “eagerly throwing themselves into volatile situations”
See Lies of Socialism.
The Left believes that they own the protest as a means of expression and a voice to effect change. It's been this way since the 1960s. We are supposed to sit quietly while they chant in the streets, throw bricks, burn and smash things.
Now the Right is starting to show up ato confront them. They don't know what to do. The Left is not used to defiance.
I did not stab him. He fell on my knife. Over and over he fell on my knife. He kept getting up... and falling on it again.
George Soros. Cut off the head and the body will flop around a bit, but then eventually it will die.
One .308 round in Soros’ forehead would solve a lot of problems. Instead the government sends carrier battle groups to Korea.
Soros is only a middle manager.
And he is one of many.
Jews “eagerly threw themselves into volatile situations” in Nazi Germany too...
Same with early civil rights workers who bravely stood up to the KKK and other democrat Jim Crow organizations...
I guess as conservatives we’re suppose to cower and hide from the thugs... eff em. Eff all the democrat thugs.
Drew68 wrote:
How dare conservatives even think of exercising their free speech rights at a public university, no less.
By admitting to volatility, they are tacitly recognizing the abject failure of the University.
The stupidity is quite revealing, no?
Well if this is how these morons think then they should definitely blame all women who wear anything less than a burka when they get raped — after all, they are creating a “volatile” situation with male lust in the world.
Maybe a better idea is to blame (and punish) lawless perps whoever they may be, without excusing or rationalizing their violent illegal behavior.
The slimes is basically saying, “the rape victim threw them self at their attacker.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.