Posted on 08/19/2017 8:26:23 AM PDT by EdnaMode
The American Civil Liberties Union has a long history of defending the First Amendment rights of groups on both the far left and the far right. This commitment led the organization to successfully sue the city of Charlottesville, Va., last week on behalf of a white supremacist rally organizer. The rally ended with a Nazi sympathizer plowing his car into a crowd, killing a counterprotester and injuring many.
After the A.C.L.U. was excoriated for its stance, it responded that “preventing the government from controlling speech is absolutely necessary to the promotion of equality.” Of course that’s true. The hope is that by successfully defending hate groups, its legal victories will fortify free-speech rights across the board: A rising tide lifts all boats, as it goes.
While admirable in theory, this approach implies that the country is on a level playing field, that at some point it overcame its history of racial discrimination to achieve a real democracy, the cornerstone of which is freedom of expression.
I volunteered with the A.C.L.U. as a law student in 2011, and I respect much of its work. But it should rethink how it understands free speech. By insisting on a narrow reading of the First Amendment, the organization provides free legal support to hate-based causes. More troubling, the legal gains on which the A.C.L.U. rests its colorblind logic have never secured real freedom or even safety for all.
For marginalized communities, the power of expression is impoverished for reasons that have little to do with the First Amendment. Numerous other factors in the public sphere chill their voices but amplify others.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Mebbe K-Sue Park should move back to NorKo
Where she can have her beloved “no free speech zone”
I wonder how Park would feel if there were restrictions on “free press” for biased opinion and party water-carrying disguised as “news”
Haha. I wouldn’t be surprised. :D
Another reason to abolish immigration
These types are not wanted here. They are destructive a threat to our freedoms and economy
listen stooopid... it WASN'T the free speech what started the violence, it was the ANTI-FREE-SPEECH you silly cow you
“I volunteered with the A.C.L.U. as a law student in 2011”
Well that’s might big of you. No wonder you’re indoctrinated. And at what, 30 years of age, you’re one worldly genius
Prayers for anyone who takes “legal advice” from you
The NYT needs to be destroyed!
I wonder how much freedom lf speech and open discussion is allowed in Park’s classroom at UCLA?
K-Sue Park is a housing attorney and the Critical Race Studies fellow at the U.C.L.A. School of Law.
Ah, yes, Critical Race theory, a body of political hokum now sanctified by its very own chair at UCLA. It does explain quite a lot. Such as:
A black kid who gets thrown in jail for possessing a small amount of marijuana will face consequences that will directly affect his ability to have a voice in public life...
This is a lie. Marion Barry, anyone? And:
If you challenge hateful speech, gird yourself for death threats and for your family to be harassed... Left-wing academics across the country face this kind of speech suppression, yet they do not benefit from a strong, uniform legal response. Several black professors have been threatened with lynching, shooting or rape for denouncing white supremacy.
This is another lie. In fact, there is so little harassment of even the sort of silliness this article holds that its perpetrators have had to resort to faking such incidents. For students of Critical Race Theory this makes them true. For the rest of us it shows how ridiculous the entire structure of lies, misrepresentations, and rationalizations for violence and oppression really is.
How many NY Liberals are on the Comments section giving the Writer two thumbs up? I’ll hazard a guess, all of them.
There was no group more "marginalized" than blacks in the pre-Civil Rights South, and yet "they" managed to use their "impoverished" freedom of speech to change the system. And they did it peacefully. The left has forgotten the lessons of Martin Luther King.
The NYT now advocates censorship?? I guess that is OK as long as it is them (or Google, or Facebook) doing the censoring.
I’m presently re-reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm. I read it as a high-school student 50 years ago, not realizing then that the book’s message would one day apply to my own country.
What could be the problem? They’re only for suppressing Hate Speech.
Of course, anything the Left disagrees with, that a Conservative says, quickly becomes Hate Speech.
Don’t issue permits for the same day.
We don't yet know what his sympathies are.
...that at some point it overcame its history of racial discrimination to achieve a real democracy...
Actually that's the problem, we've become too close to a real democracy. We are a republic by design.
If you don’t like the first amendment, get the hell out of my country. Go live in Europe. They put all kinds of restrictions on free speech.
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