Category Archives: Freedom of Speech

Nazi salutes high in the air, white supremacists rallying on the town green, colorful banners telling homosexuals they are going to hell this is what democracy looks like.

But the right to say and do those things no matter how offensive many Americans will find them is that First Amendment freedom of speech thing that demonstrators in Portland rallied for over the weekend.

Because as far as we know, the folks taking part in the Trump Freedom of Speech rally werent jailed by their government for anything they said.

They may have been ridiculed, harassed, marginalized, ostracized, asked to leave businesses, refused service, lost their jobs or positions of influence because of the things they said.

But they havent been jailed.

And thats the freedom the First Amendment guarantees. The right to speak out without being jailed though not the right to speak out without being criticized.

So its easy to see that we wield the greatest power punishing peer pressure to stop the growing tide of hatred in America. We have to speak out.

Heres an extreme example the white supremacist in the gym.

Richard Spencer, the Hail Trump alt-right movement leader who champions an American apartheid, complete with a whites-only state, was quietly working out in his Alexandria, Va., gym when he was confronted by another gym member.

I just want to say to you, Im sick of your crap, Georgetown University professor C. Christine Fair said to Spencer, as he was lifting weights.

As a woman, I find your statements to be particularly odious; moreover, I find your presence in this gym to be unacceptable, your presence in this town to be unacceptable, she went on.

Spencer wasnt wearing a swastika shirt or handing out white power fliers at the gym. He was just doing reps. It was the professor who went after him. And she was relentless, calling him a Nazi, then a cowardly Nazi after he refused to identify himself.

It got so uncomfortable, another gym member yelled at the professor for making a scene.

Guess who lost their gym membership?

And his world howled that this was a violation of his freedom of speech.

Most states ban most businesses from discriminating against clients based on the clients race, religion, sex or national origin, law professor Eugene Volokh wrote in The Washington Post last fall, right after the election, about a case where a New Mexico company said it would stop doing business with Trump supporters.

The Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects people from that kind of discrimination, while some states and cities also ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, marital status and other attributes.

But political affiliation is rarely on the list, Volokh wrote. A few cities or counties do ban such discrimination. D.C. bans discrimination based on the state of belonging to or endorsing any political party.

Spencers freedom of speech wasnt violated. He can say whatever he wants without being jailed.

The constitution doesnt protect his right to belong to a private gym that finds his political and social views dangerous and odious.

But what if a coffee place didnt want to serve a Muslim, a hotel wouldnt rent a room to black family, a baker didnt want to bake a cake for a gay couple or a restaurant didnt want someone with a wheelchair eating in their dining room?

Too bad for the businesses in those cases. State and federal laws prohibit businesses from discriminating against protected classes.

Neo-Nazi is not a protected class at least not yet.

The ACLU is used to these sticky debates, and their attorneys have consistently stood their ground in protecting everyones right to say what they want, no matter how disgusting. It probably wasnt easy to defend the Ku Klux Klans right to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, a town filled with survivors of the Holocaust.

Im not defending hate speech, Im defending free speech, said Claire Guthrie Gastaaga, head of the Virginia ACLU, which has been hearing plenty about Spencer, who lives in Alexandria.

As soon as you accept that its OK to suppress speech, you say its OK to suppress your speech.

But what about the rallies that seem so hateful?

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, D, had the wrong idea when he tried to stop that freedom of speech rally over the weekend. It was scheduled before two men were killed on the light rail trying to protect a woman in hijab being attacked by vocal white supremacist Jeremy Christian.

Christian, 35, was arrested for the killing of Rick Best, 53, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, and for stabbing another man, Micah Fletcher. When he was brought into a Portland courtroom last week, Christian yelled: Get out if you dont like free speech.

Dude, your free speech was protected at all those rallies where you threw the Heil Hitler salute. Killing two men and stabbing a third is not speech.

The protesters in Portland had the right to spew all their hateful views. The feds recognized that and rejected the mayors request to shut down the rally because it could incite violence.

It was the counter-protestors who behaved violently.

Until they started throwing stuff, damaging property and messing with the police who were there to do their jobs, the counter-protesters had the right idea.

The right response to speech you dont like is more speech, Gastaaga said.

The real harm, she said, is the nice people who say nothing.

So do it. Speak, yell, shout.

Dont shut the other guys out.

Just be louder than them.

Petula Dvorak is a columnist for The Washington Posts local team who writes about homeless shelters, gun control, high heels, high school choirs, the politics of parenting, jails, abortion clinics, mayors, modern families, strip clubs and gas prices, among other things.

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In Portland, the haters are entitled to free speech, but not to silence - Herald and News

In testimony on Capitol Hill this week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said the Department of Education will devolve power from the federal government to families, unleashing a new era of creativity in education.

But big changes may also be underway forthe departments stance on political correctness on college campuses in America, and the all-too-frequent trampling upon the free-speech rights of both students and professors, which has been going on for at least the past 25 years.

Adam Kissel, a free-speech advocate whos gone head-to-head with American universities over speech codes and denial of due-process rights and has almost always succeeded in getting them to back down has been appointed the agencys deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs.

Kissel now works for the Charles Koch Foundation, on grants to colleges and universities, but prior to this, he worked for FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, where he was one of the strongest and most active defenders of free speech on American college campuses.

At FIRE, Kissel shot off letters to college administrators nationwide, usuallyon behalf of particular students and professors who had been accused of some minor infraction, often involving expressing an unpopular view, and were being railroaded out of a job or kicked out of school.

In 2008, he wrote a letter to the head of the University of Oklahoma, David Boren, a former governor and United States senator, about the university's new rule that university employees couldn't support or oppose political candidates, and couldn't use the university email system to forward any political commentary or political humor.

"If what the university intended to do was to prevent state-university employees from creating the appearance that the university endorses a particular political candidate, it has wildly overshot," wrote Kissel in his letter. "While it is true that colleges are required because of their tax-exempt status or status as government agencies not to, for example, endorse a candidate, it is simply absurd to argue that any partisan political speech in which employees or students engage using their email accounts can be banned."

"Indeed, by placing such a blanket restriction on political speech, the University of Oklahoma is in clear violation of its legal obligation to uphold the First Amendment on campus. As a public university, Oklahoma is legally bound by the United States Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech. Students and faculty at Oklahoma enjoy this right in full."

He ended the letter by requesting a response not later than "5:00 p.m. EDT on October 10, 2008."

The request for a response was therebecause FIRE doesn't just ask that universities abide by the Constitution: It holds them accountable by waging public-relations battles and taking universities to court when they persist in their violations of constitutional rights.

A Jewish professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, very nearly lost his job when two students, backed by the Anti-Defamation League and other pro-Israel groups, came after him for critical comments he made about Israel's assault on Gaza in 2009. He wrote in an article in Truthout in 2014 that it was a group of graduate students and Adam Kissel at FIRE who defended his right to free speech.

"On June 10, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education (FIRE), a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit, had come to my defense in the name of First Amendment rights and academic freedom. One of their attorneys, Adam Kissel, wrote the chancellor warning him that if all charges against me were not dropped by 5 p.m. on June 24, his organization would launch a major media campaign and a lawsuit against the University of California. An hour or so before this deadline, the university chose to inform me of the decision, made six weeks earlier and kept secret, that the charges against me had already been dropped."

Kissel's writing, however, shows not just a rapid-fire response to free-speech violations on campuses, but a deep understanding of the level of thought control that has developed, and the ways in which students are pressured, under threat of expulsion and ruin, to comply.

"A female freshman arrives for her mandatory one-on-one session in her male RA's dorm room," Kissel wrote in a piece published on the FIRE website on October 30, 2008, entitled "Please Report to Your Resident Assistant to Discuss Your Sexual IdentityIt's Mandatory!"

"It is 8:00 p.m. Classes have been in session for about a week. The resident assistant hands her a questionnaire. He tells her it is 'a little questionnaire to help [you] and all the other residents relate to the curriculum.' He adds that they will 'go through every question together and discuss them.' He later reports that she 'looked a little uncomfortable.' When did you discover your sexual identity?" the questionnaire asks. 'That is none of your damn business,' she writes. 'When was a time you felt oppressed?' 'I am oppressed every day [because of my] feelings for the opera. Regularly [people] throw stones at me and jeer [at] me with cruel names. Unbearable adversity. But I will overcome, hear me, you rock-loving majority.'"

There is a story about the University of Delaware's dormitory diversity program, in which every single incoming freshman is forced to undergo Marxist-inspired questioning and thought-moderation.

The program, Kissel wrote, "crossed the line not just a little, but extensively and in many ways from education into unconscionably arrogant, invasive, and immoral thought reform. The moral and legal problems posed by the residence life education program were abundant and cut to the core of the most essential rights of a free people. What made the program so offensive was moral: its brazen disregard for autonomy, dignity, and individual conscience, and the sheer contempt it displayed for the university's students as well as the so-called dominant culture that made them so allegedly deficient."

As the new deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs at the Department of Education, Kissel will oversee a part of the agency that includes FLAS grants for foreign language study, Fulbright-Hays grants for study abroad, and numerous programs that serve black students, historically black colleges, Hispanic students, students who are veterans, and students with disabilities. It's unclear whether all of these programs will be continued, or whether some will be cut as the department reorganizes to accommodate the 13 percent cut in the president's budget. It's also unknown whether new initiatives will be started under Kissel to correct or prevent abuses on college campuses related to free speech and due process.

Kissel is slated to start hiswork at the department on Monday, June 19.

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Department of Education Taps Free-Speech Warrior to Oversee ... - LifeZette

YANGON More than 100 reporters in Myanmar are preparing to protest against laws seen as curbing free speech when two senior journalists go on trial on Thursday, after the military sued them for defamation over a satirical article in their journal.

The rare campaign, in which journalists will wear armbands reading "Freedom of the Press", underscores growing public unease at the laws, after the courts recently took up a raft of similar cases.

Despite pressure from human rights bodies and Western diplomats, the government of Aung San Suu Kyi has retained a broadly worded law that prohibits use of the telecoms network to "extort, threaten, obstruct, defame, disturb, inappropriately influence or intimidate".

The law was adopted by the semi-civilian administration of former generals led by former president Thein Sein which navigated Myanmar's opening to the outside world from 2011 to 2016.

Arrests of social media users whose posts are deemed distasteful have continued under the administration of Nobel Peace Prize winner Suu Kyi.

These include the case that sparked the protest, after the chief editor and a columnist of the Voice, one of Myanmar's largest dailies, were arrested for publishing their take on a film on the army's fight with ethnic rebels.

Myanmar journalists have urged authorities to release the reporters and have set up a Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists.

"The 66 (d) law should be terminated, because the government and the military have used it to cause trouble for the media and the people," said Thar Lon Zaung Htet, a former editor of the domestic Irrawaddy journal who organized the meeting, referring to a controversial clause in the telecoms law.

He said the journalists would gather in front of the court and march to the Voice office wearing the armbands. The panel will also gather signatures for a petition to abolish the law, to be sent to Suu Kyi's office, the army chief and parliament.

Other recent cases include last weekend's arrest of a man publicly accusing an assistant of Yangon's chief minister, Phyo Min Thein, of corruption, and charges against several people over a student play critical of the military.

Phyo Min Thein's assistant has rejected the accusations in a subsequent media interview.

Besides repressive laws, journalists often face threats and intimidation in Myanmar. One recently received threats after speaking out against nationalist Buddhists. In December, a reporter covering illegal logging and crime in the rugged northwest was beaten to death.

"This law is totally against human rights," said Tun Tun Oo, a land rights activists who was charged for live-streaming the student play via his Facebook account. "The government should think about terminating it as it restores democracy and we will fight until the law is abolished."

(Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

BEIRUT A military alliance fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad threatened on Wednesday to hit U.S. positions in Syria, warning its "self-restraint" over U.S. air strikes would end if Washington crossed "red lines".

DUBAI/DOHA U.S. President Donald Trump offered on Wednesday to help resolve a worsening diplomatic crisis between Qatar and other Arab powers as the United Arab Emirates invoked the possibility of an economic embargo on Doha over its alleged support of terrorism.

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Myanmar journalists take fight for freedom of speech to court - Reuters

At least 13 states have now proposed or implemented legislation designed to protect free speech on college campuses.

While Utah, Colorado, Tennessee, Virginia, and Arizona have already passed bills that would crack down on disruptive university demonstrators and so-called free speech zones, legislators from California, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin are attempting to push similar bills through their own state chambers.

"There is good evidence for believing that respect for free-speech has declined in the last few years."

[RELATED: Prof: college campuses are not free-speech areas]

A Louisiana state senate panel on Thursday, for instance, cleared a free-speech measure, House Bill 269, advancing it to the next step of the legislative process.

According to a report by The Advocate, State Rep. Lance Harris, a Republican lawmaker behind the initiative, called the bill necessary to protect free expression on campuses.

"I bring this bill because of things happening across the country," Harris remarked, noting that "this is something other states have addressed or are addressing as we speak."

In New Hampshire, the introduced House Bill 477 would limit the ability of an academic institution to "to restrict a student's right to speak in a public forum."

Similar legislation in Michigan seeks to develop "a policy on free expression" by underscoring that "it is not the proper role of the community college to shield individuals from speech protected by the First Amendment."

While not precisely identical, most of the bills seek to address similar problems across college campuses, such as the increasingly common free speech zones and the rise in campus disruptions, as seen most recently at place like the University of California, Berkeley and Evergreen State College.

Accordingly, a legislative push out of California, a heavily Democratic state, is looking to penalize demonstrators who prevent controversial figures from expressing their views on campus after Berkeley experienced some of the most violent and destructive protests in recent memory.

According to The Los Angeles Times, Republican legislators in the state have responded to the incident by backing a measure that would restrict the university's ability to regulate student speech on campus.

[RELATED: Harvard students protest free-speech event as hate speech]

The recent spike in free-speech legislation comes after the Goldwater Institute and Stanley Kurtz produced model legislation to help state lawmakers craft their own bills around the country.

Weve had campus demonstrations since the 1960's that were not properly respectful of freedom of speech, so you could say that theres nothing new here, but I do think that there is good evidence for believing that respect for free-speech has declined in the last few years even beyond what it has been, Kurtz told Campus Reform when introducing the model legislation in February. We know this from various surveys and of course the rise of things like microaggressions, safe-spaces, and trigger-warnings. They all indicate to me a generation that has been educated by left-leaning professors who werent fans of free speech themselves.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @nikvofficial

Editor's note: This article has been amended since its initial publication to include legislation in Michigan and New Hampshire.

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MAP: Growing number of states consider free-speech bills - Campus Reform

Dave Rubin: Were continuing our partnership with Learn Liberty this week, and joining me is an author, journalist, editor, and free-speech advocate, Flemming Rose. Welcome to The Rubin Report.

Flemming Rose: Nice to be here.

Rubin: Im glad to have you here, because you are sort of at the epicenter of everything that our current free speech battle is all about. I guess Im going to give you an open, easy question to start. How did you end up in the middle of this battle?

Rose: I didnt choose this fight. It was imposed upon me eleven years ago, when I was the editor responsible for publication of the so-called Danish Muhammad cartoons. They didnt come out of the blue, as some people sometimes think. They were published as a response to an ongoing conversation in Denmark and Western Europe about the problem of self-censorship when it comes to treating Islam.

Back then, I think I was pondering two questions. Is self-censorship taking place when it comes to dealing with Islam? Do we make a difference between Islam and other religions and ideologies, question number one? Question number two, if there is self-censorship, is that self-censorship based in reality, or is it just the consequence of a sick imagination not based in reality? Is the fear real, or is it fake? Eleven years later, I think we can say for sure the answer to both questions is yes. Yeah, there is self-censorship, and the self-censorship is based in reality because people were killed in Paris. I live with bodyguards 24/7 when Im back home in Denmark, so it is a real problem.

Rubin: Yeah, its so interesting to me that eleven years ago, 2005, you were addressing the idea of self-censorship, because thats obviously different than what we have here with the First Amendment, where the government cant censor us. My awakening over the last couple years about this has been about the self-censorship part, that we are doing it to ourselves. Just to back up to the specifics of what happened, you guys solicited cartoons from people, right?

Rose: Yes, we did, yes.

Rubin: Tell me about the process.

Rose: It started with a childrens book. A Danish writer was writing a book about the life of the prophet Muhammad. In Denmark, when you publish a childrens book, you need illustrations of the main character. I suppose it would be the same here.

Rubin: Same here; that goes across borders, yeah.

Rose: It turned out that the writer had difficulties finding an illustrator who wanted to take on the job. He went public saying, Ive written this book, but I had difficulties finding an illustrator because of fear. The guy who finally took on the job insisted on anonymity, which is a form of self-censorship. You do not want to appear under your real name, because you are afraid of what might happen to you.

In fact, this illustrator later acknowledged that he insisted on anonymity because he was afraid. He made a reference to the fate of Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who was killed in 2004 because of a documentary he did that was critical of Islam.

Rubin: Who then many people know, the note to Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Rose: Exactly, yes.

Rubin: Who I think is one of the greatest people on planet Earth

Rose: Yes, who is a good friend of mine.

Rubin: Saying that they were coming after her next, yeah.

Rose: Exactly, and the second individual was Salman Rushdie, who in 1989 was the object of a fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, and had to live in hiding for many years. That was the context, and some people were saying, Oh, this was just a media stunt by this childrens writer to sell more books. Other people were saying, No, that is self-censorship.

Through the commissioning of those cartoons, I wanted to put focus on this issue: is self-censorship taking place, or is it not, and how do illustrators and cartoonists in Denmark face this issue? I received twelve cartoons that were published September 30, 2005, and I wrote a short text laying out the rationale behind this journalistic project.

I dont think that it in any way transgressed what we usually do. As an editor and journalist, if you hear about a problem, you want to find out if its true or not. In this case, we asked people not to talk but to show, not to tell but to show, how they look at this issue of self-censorship. In fact, I think only three out of twelve cartoons depicted the prophet Muhammad, so there was no stereotyping, no demonizing, even though a lot of focus has been put on one cartoon, of the prophet with a bomb in his turban. That, to me, is in fact a depiction of reality. There are Muslims who commit violence and murder in the name of the prophet.

Rubin: Yeah, and not only was that theory proven, but it was put into action because over 200 people were subsequently killed throughout the world after they found out about these cartoons. Before we get to the aftermath, when you decided to do this, and youd done some controversial stuff before thatand well talk about reporting in the Soviet Union and that kind of stuffbut when you decided to do this, did you have any inkling that anything like this could possibly happen?

Rose: No, and anyone who today says, You should have known, I think its a rationalization after the fact. There was a lot of coincidences, and in fact cartoons of the prophet Muhammad had been published before without this kind of reaction. It just happened so that a coincidence of different factors, and the domestic political situation in different Muslim countries, exploited those cartoons to promote their own interests and agenda, and it all exploded.

Rubin: Yeah, and it probably had a little to do with just that it was sort of the beginnings of social media, so things could travel around the world quicker.

Rose: Yeah, but you know Dave, if this had

Rubin: Once people saw

Rose: If this had been today, I cant imagine. We didnt have Facebook. We didnt have Twitter back in 2005. We were just at the beginning of it.

Rubin: Just the beginning, yeah.

Rose: Today, it would have been even worse.

Rubin: Yeah, so you publish it. Now theres the reaction, theres some violence. What was it like for you at that time, and did the magazine do anything to help you, protect? Were they taking your side? You were the editor, so you were pretty high up, a pretty big deal.

Rose: Yeah, the whole newspaper stood behind me, but it took a while. The cartoons were published in September, and the violence only erupted at the end of January, beginning of February the following year. You had to build up. This also tells you a little bit about the fact that this was no coincidence. People had to plan, to promote. It wasnt spontaneous, just happening right after the publication.

Rubin: Do you have any evidence of that, or who do you think was actually

Rose: Yes, there are researchers who have been travelling and talking to people in different parts of the world where demonstrations happened, and its very clear that the government of Egypt was in the drivers seat in the beginning. The Fatah movement on the West Bank in the Palestinian territories were also behind this, because they were in an election up against Hamas, with the Islamist movement there, and they wanted to be the real protector of Muslims interests. Same in Pakistan, same in Qatar and Saudi Arabia; yes, absolutely, this was not a spontaneous uprising.

Usually I say, never have so many people reacted so violently to something that so few people in fact have seen. Very few people had seen the cartoons, and the man behind the attack on the Danish embassy in Tehran, in Iran, a Danish journalist, found him several months later and talked to him. When he showed him the cartoon of the prophet with a bomb in his turban, his angry reaction was not against the bomb, but he said, Why does the prophet look like a Sikh and not like an Arab?

Rubin: Wow, that tells you a lot right there. You make two interesting location points, because saying that Fatah, which was really the secular counterpart to Hamas

Rose: Secular.

Rubin: They were using it as, as you said, were protecting Islam. You had the secularists actually fanning the flames

Rose: Yes, and it was the same region.

Rubin: It was the secular. The same thing in Egypt, where Mubarak was the secular leader

Rose: He was up against the Muslim Brotherhood, who had been allowed to run an election for the first time in many years in the fall of 2005.

Rubin: Ive never thought of it in such interesting terms like that, but in a weird way, then, the secularists sometimes are more dangerous than the actual Islamists, because theyre playing both sides, right? Were you shocked that thats how it turned out?

Rose: I didnt know at the time. It took me some studying to figure out what actually had happened. It was very surreal. Sitting in Copenhagen in the beginning of February of 2006, and looking, watching TV and Danish embassies in flames in Beirut and Damascus, I couldnt make the connection in my mind. How come that people can go crazy like this several thousand kilometers away to something that had been published in a Danish newspaper three or four months before? It seemed surreal.

I would say, back then I didnt understand the gravity of it all. It took me several years, and it was only I would say in January of 2015 when my friends and colleagues at Charlie Hebdo in Paris were killed that I finally understood that I will have probably to live with security probably for the rest of my life. I somehow illusioned myself created an illusion that somehow it may go away, but it wont, and these people, they do have a long memory. I dont find it very traumatic myself, but I just know that I somehow will have to manage this situation.

Rubin: Yeah, so what was the reaction like? Your newspaper defended you, but what about the other publications within the country? Were people saying, Man, he just created a huge problem for us? Were they actually defending free speech at the time?

Rose: Not everybody; the country was divided, and it was really something new for Denmark, a small, peaceful country. We had never experienced anything like that, and the prime minister said it was the worst foreign policy crisis in Denmark since World War II. No, back then I was the object of a lot of criticism and anger, and I was labeled a fascist, Nazi, Islamophobe, and so on and so forth. Today, its different, I would say. Im less of a controversial figure today in Denmark than I was in 2006, because people have finally understood that this was not an empty provocation, just to stir up things. Its very difficult when you look around the world and see what is happening, that this was just an invention of my sick imagination.

The problem is real, and we have somehow to face it. I also had the time to write three books in fact now about this issue, one of them published in English about the whole thing, and free speech. I think people understand that Im not a warmonger, and Im not out to get Muslims, but I think Islam and Muslims have to accept the same kind of treatment as everybody else in our society.

In that sense, usually I make a little bit of a joke, but still its serious when I say that the publication of those cartoons was in fact an integration project in the sense that we were integrating Muslims in Denmark into a tradition of religious satire. Thereby we were saying to Muslims, We do not expect more of you. We do not expect less of you, but we expect of you exactly the same as we do of every other group and individual in Denmark, and therein lies an act of recognition. We say that youre not foreigners, youre not outsiders, you are part of society.

Rubin: Right, weve welcomed you to our society, but you have to be part of our society, not a separate part. Do you think that

Rose: You have to play by the same rules; free speech, we do have free speech, and it applies, the right to criticize and ridicule religion.

Rubin: Yeah, just to probably get rid of some of your naysayers real quick, you clearly do. I know this is the truth, but I just want you to say it so that people wont selectively hear anything. You do make the distinction between the ideas of Islam and Muslim people, correct?

Rose: Yes.

Rubin: You fully understand that difference, and all that?

Rose: Yes, I think any idea needs to be criticized and open for debate and scrutiny, but you shouldnt attack or demonize individuals and people.

Rubin: I feel silly sort of having to ask you that, but I know just for the nature of the way these things work

Rose: I dont have Muslims for breakfast.

Rubin: Okay, good.

Rose: In fact, some of the people who supported me back in 2006 now criticize me because I have supported the right of radical imams in Denmark to speak out and defend Sharia law and discrimination of women, as long as they do not do it in practice. We have the separation of words and deeds. I think people should have a right to say whatever they want, as long as they do not insight criminal activity and violence. I have in fact defended the radical imams, who would have liked to see me I guess in a different place than I am right now.

Rubin: Right, and thats what having principles when its hard to is all about. You are the very person who published these cartoons, now defending these peoples abilities to do things that are very against the West, very against your own personal beliefs. Is there some line there, or is it only violence? Im with you on that, that to me its the call to violence that then changes what free speech is. In a case where there are imams that we know, that are in Denmark and Sweden and some of these other countries, that are literally throwing for the overthrow of the government, for Sharia law to be implemented, horrible things about women and gay people and all those things, now theyre playing that line very closely to

Rose: As long as they do not incite violence, I think they should have a right to say whatever they want. In fact, I believe this not only as a matter of principle, but also as a matter of practical reality. You and I fight these people and their ideas in the best way, not through bans and criminalization, but through an open and free debate where we challenge them in the public space. I have never seen people change their beliefs just because they were criminalized.

Rubin: Right, just because of a ban or a punch or a

Rose: It drives them into the underground, and it makes them sexy, in a way, when they are not allowed to air all their bullshit in public. I believe its the most effective way to fight them. I believe that you should never criminalize words just because of their content, only because of what they call for, that is, incitement to violence. Apart from that, Im in favor of a very narrowly defined libel law, and Im also in favor of the protection of a right to privacy. I believe that privacy and free speech, in some instances, are two sides of the same coin. If you know that the government is surveilling you at home, you will speak less freely, and that is an invasion of your privacy.

Rubin: What would you say to the people, because this is the argument that I heard just in the last couple weeks when I was defending the right of Richard Spencer to speak his stuff and not get punched; as I said on Twitter, I have family members on both sides of my family who died in the Holocaust. I grew up knowing Holocaust survivors. Its not something that I take lightly, but I have to defend free speech when its uncomfortable speech.

People, of course, were saying I was a Nazi and a white supremacist and all of this nonsense, but a few people said, This is different. If these people wont play by the rules of decency in society, then we cant treat them with the same thing. Now, I dont agree with that, but what do you think is a good argument against that?

Rose: Oh, I think we did very well during the Cold War in Denmark, not banning Communism. We didnt even ban Nazism, though we were occupied by the Nazis for five years during the Second World War. Richard Spencer enjoys the same civil liberties and rights as you and me. You cannot make a distinction. If you go down that road, it just takes a new political majority, with people like Richard Spencer in power, and he can use the same principles against you and me, and against Muslims or blacks or other minorities.

Its very important to defend these principles for your enemies, because it just takes. Youre just an election away from a possible other majority that can use exactly the same kind of violence against you, that you are defending when its used against your enemies. I think this is what democracy is about, what a free and liberal foundation of our society is about, that you. This is what tolerance in fact is about. Tolerance means that you do not ban, and you do not use violence, threats, and intimidation against the things that you hate.

A lot of people hate the ideology and the values of Richard Spencer, but we should not use violence and try to intimidate and threaten him, and ban what hes saying. That is the key notion of tolerance in a democracy. Unfortunately, we have forgotten about that. Today tolerance means yes, you may have a right to say what you want, what you say, but I think you should shut up. Its become a tool to silence your opponents, but in fact it means that you have a right to say whatever you want as long as you do not use violence and bans.

Rubin: Right, and of course then theres the slippery slope argument which is that if you say, All right, you can punch a Nazi or silence a Nazi, and then you come along and defend their free speech, why cant they punch you, and why cant they punch me for having you on my show?

Rose: Exactly.

Rubin: The list goes on and on.

Rose: Yeah, and when you open that door, you never know when it stops. Thats very precarious in a young democracy, because sometimes a democracy wants to defend itself. I spent time in Russia after the fall, during its time as the Soviet Union, after the fall of the Soviet Union, and that transition in Russia from Communism to democracy in fact got off track because they started bending the rules in order to defend democracy against the enemies of democracy. Here you are, twenty years later, with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, and a lot less space for the individual to say and do what they want.

Rubin: Ive talked to a bunch of people. Ive had, I dont know. Do you know Tino Sanandaji, from [crosstalk]?

Rose: Yeah, Sweden, of course.

Rubin: Ive had him on, and I get a lot of mail from people in Sweden particularly, but Denmark also, talking about the rise of Islamism, and talking about how this is happening in the mosques, and its happening in the public square now, and we know that theres a rape epidemic and a whole series of problems. If the best defense is to let these people say what they want, isnt the problem that were still seeing these bad ideas rise? Is the problem of Islamism worse now than it was, say, five years ago in Denmark?

Rose: It is, but

Rubin: So then, isnt that an inherent conflict then, with the idea of sort of full free speech, which again, Im for?

Rose: No, I think you have to go further back to identify the root causes. We had an understanding. I taught immigrants the Danish language twenty-five, thirty years ago in Denmark. My wife is an immigrant herself, by the way, from the former Soviet Union. We had this understanding, of people arrive and they just stay long enough in our country, they will become like us, without telling them what the rules of the game are, what our values are, and so on and so forth.

Today, we understand that this doesnt happen in and by itself. Even if you learn the language, it doesnt mean that you start to support the values and the foundation of society. We have been too weak on communicating the foundation of our society, and why free speech matters to us, and why you have to accept that your religion may be the object of satire and criticism and so on and so forth, that homosexuality is not a criminal offense, that equality between the sexes is crucial. Its one of the most important things we achieved in the second half of the 20th century.

Were not willing to give that up, and we have been very bad at communicating these ideas. It all exploded during the cartoon crisis. I think thats why we still talk about those cartoons, because that conflict made it very clear, this clash of values. No, I dont think that there is an inherent conflict. We had anti-democratic movements and forces also during the Cold War. We had a legal Communist Party in Denmark that wanted to overthrow the government. They sat in parliament. They had their own newspapers. They had their own unions. They had their own festivals. They had their own schools, but we did not criminalize them. We confronted them, and had this debate in public, and it turned out in the end that reason and the values of liberty prevailed.

Rubin: Yeah, so this is really, sunlight is the best disinfectant argument

Rose: I think so.

Rubin: Eventually, these things will crumble because they dont lead us to actual human liberty and the things that people want, really.

Rose: Yeah, and if we want to get more Muslims on our side, we have to be consistent and make it clear to them that if there are individuals, dissenters within Muslim communities, they have an opportunity to leave their religion, and we have an obligation to protect them.

Rubin: I suspect I know the answer to this, but when Ive had certain people including Ayaan and Maajid Nawaz and other Muslim reformers like Faisal Saeed Al-Mutar and Ali Rizvi and Sarah Haider and many of these people on the show, theres been a theme, which is that the left abandoned them. They started talking about these ideas, not being bigots in that they are brown themselves, and that their families often are still practicing Muslims. In the case of Maajid, he still is Muslim. Some of them are ex-Muslims, but that they felt abandoned by the side that they wanted as their ally, or that should have been their natural ally. I suspect you got plenty of that as well.

Rose: Yes, absolutely. I think thats true, because if you look at the Enlightenment and the West, the criticism of religion came from the left, but the left abandoned its insistence on criticizing religion when Islam arrived and became a hot issue. I think thats [inaudible] to the core values of the left. Religion is power, and its a way to establish social control, whether it is by Christianity, by Islam, or by other kinds of religion.

In Denmark, the socialist party in Denmark, for fifty years they were in favor of getting rid of the blasphemy law. Today, they defend the blasphemy law, because they now believe its important to have it to protect Muslims, and I think thats crazy.

Rubin: Are people right now being prosecuted under the blasphemy law?

Rose: No, its a sleeping law, I would say, but we see that hate speech law. We also have a law against racism. We see that people are in fact being prosecuted for racism, for saying things that actually is blasphemyfor instance, comparing Islam with Nazism. Its criticism of ideas, not of individuals, so there also is a slippery slope in that direction.

Rubin: What do you make of the far right parties that seem to be growing throughout Europe? Im not sure, is there a far right party thats now gaining momentum in Denmark? I dont know specifically.

Rose: It depends on how to define it. I

Rubin: I dont like the phrase far right anymore

Rose: Right, exactly.

Rubin: Because our whole thing is so crossed up now, that I think what used to be far right is thought now as more center, because theyre the only ones talking about certain issues. That then brings in a lot of centrist people who otherwise wouldnt vote for the right.

Rose: We have two parties of this kind, one an old party that in fact is the second biggest party in Denmark, the Danish Peoples Party, which I would say is the second social democratic party opposed to immigration. We have a rather new party that is more conservative for small government, but also anti-immigration. I would not call them far right. They are not outside. They dont want to undermine the political order through violence. For instance, in Greece you have Golden Dawn, which is more a fascist movement, and they have nothing in common with Golden Dawn, even not with Marine Le Pen in France.

Rubin: Do you think that this is the route that Europe is going to go? It seems like its just going to be the reaction to what has happened. Merkel opened the doors to what, 1.1 million people or so?

Rose: Yeah.

Rubin: Even if 95 percent of them integrate perfectly, it doesnt take a lot of people. First of all, 1.1 is a lot of people, but it doesnt take a lot of people to sow a lot of chaos.

Rose: Yeah, a couple of points; I think polarization will intensify. This year, we will have an election in the Netherlands where a populist party, where Geert Wilders probably will not get to run the government, but he may become the biggest party.

Rubin: What do you think of someone like Geert? Do you I know hes sort of A lot of people that I think I trust, basically, say he really straddles the line between bigotry and

Rose: I had a debate with him. Absolutely, and we disagree on the two most fundamental building blocks of a democracy, equality and freedom; equality before the law, and the right to freedom of expression and freedom of religion. He is in favor, if he gets the power, to abandon the right to freedom of religion for Muslims, building mosques, having faith-based schools, and so on and so forth, and also the freedom of speech. He wants to ban the Koran.

Hes not willing to provide the same fundamental freedoms to Muslims as to Christians, atheists, and all individuals. We disagree on the building blocks, and the funny thing is that if he gets into power, he will use exactly the same hate speech law against Muslims that the current government has used against him, for demonizing Muslims as a

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Free Speech, Muhammad Cartoons, and Islamism in Europe: Dave Rubin's Interview with Flemming Rose - Learn Liberty (blog)

Free speech has once again become a highly charged issue on college campuses, where protests frequently have interrupted, and in some cases halted, appearances by polarizing speakers.

At a lively panel last week during the Education Writers Assn.s annual conference in the nations capital, free speech advocates and a UC Berkeley student leader debated who was at fault and what could be done.

Alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos tour of colleges across the country drew protesters off and on campus, and sparked violent clashes, including one in which a man was shot in Seattle. At Berkeley birthplace of the Free Speech Movement 50 years ago university officials canceled his scheduled appearance in February and later pulled the plug on a scheduled April visit by conservative commentator Ann Coulter, citing safety concerns.

In March, a protest at Middlebury College left both the speaker, controversial social scientist Charles Murray, and a professor who wasnt his supporter injured.

The way the altercations on campus were characterized by the media and in a growing national public debate frustrated many students.

This whole issue of free speech is a lot more nuanced than what it appears to be in a single headline or what it appears to be on the surface, Pranav Jandhyala, who co-founded the nonpartisan campus group BridgeUSA at Berkeley, said during Thursdays panel discussion. Its not just about the people who invited the speaker and the people who are trying to silence her.

BridgeUSA, Jandhyala explained, was formed earlier this year after university leaders at the last minute canceled Yiannopoulos talk an appearance the university had been defending, citing its commitment to tolerance. The decision was made after protests escalated by what appeared to be a group of outside protesters who were not students on the day Yiannopoulos was scheduled to appear caused about $100,000 in damage.

Violence replaced conversation that day, Jandhyala said, and his student group set out to create more events where students could debate and challenge different views without fear of violence. They asked liberal student groups to pick a speaker to come to campus and debate with students from all sides. They did the same for the Republican students, who picked Ann Coulter.

We wanted to invite her because if you viewed her as hateful and you viewed her as inflammatory and nothing of value, then why don't you go ahead and actually challenge her? he said. We were creating this larger Q&A with her that would essentially be liberal Berkeley students challenging Ann Coulter on the issue of illegal immigration.

Jandhyala and fellow panelists, moderated by Scott Jaschik, editor of Inside Higher Ed, discussed a recent Gallup survey that found that when they were asked if they believed in free speech, a majority of students across all political, racial and ethnic groups said yes. But when asked if they favored college policies that banned hate speech, an overwhelming majority of students also said yes, without seeing a contradiction in the two answers.

Greg Lukianoff, president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which promotes free speech and due process rights at universities, said the narrative so often gets oversimplified to the cliche PC run amok. Lukianoff said not all free speech issues are political.

Last year, the case I was the most upset about was the case at Northern Michigan University, where students who took advantage of the counseling services there were then sent scary letters saying, 'Listen, if you talk to any of your friends about thoughts of self harm, you will be punished, he said. This is telling people who are either depressed or anxious that they're a burden on their friends and that they should isolate themselves. But somehow, that does not get the same coverage."

Judith Shapiro, the former president of Barnard College who now heads the Teagle Foundation, which works to strengthen liberal arts education, said the heart of the debate really may be less an absence of freedom of speech and more an absence of quality of speech.

The institution has the right to say: OK, is it worth it?... Who should we be listening to and engaging with? Who, even if you disagree, could you actually learn something from? she said, which led to a lighthearted discussion about the relative cultural value of a campus hosting Snooki from the reality show Jersey Shore or Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison.

As soon as you actually start trying to evaluate people on the basis of the quality of the discourse that theyre bringing to campus, thats when a lot of peoples biases really present themselves, Lukianoff said.

This national fight over where to draw the line, however complicated, needs to focus more on emphasizing the power of engagement than on protecting free speech for free speech's sake, Jandhyala said.

Its about creating an environment where you're willing to listen to all different perspectives, form your own from listening ... and also be willing to challenge and debate with others and engage in discussion with the people that you disagree with, he said. That is the driving purpose of free speech.

rosanna.xia@latimes.com

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Hate speech vs. free speech: Where is the line on college campuses ... - Los Angeles Times

FREEDOM OF SPEECH is not just freedom from censorship, Harvards president, Drew Gilpin Faust, just told the Class of 2017. It is freedom to actively join the debate as a full participant.

So much for that lofty theory. When it comes to practice, Harvard University just rescinded acceptances for at least 10 prospective students, the Harvard Crimson reports, after they traded sexually explicit memes and messages targeting minority groups, in a private Facebook chat. According to the Crimson story, by Hannah Natanson, the admitted students formed a messaging group entitled, Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens, and sent messages and other images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust and the deaths of children. One called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child piata time.

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Thats ugly language, allegedly coming from young people entitled and dumb enough to post it without worrying about the consequences. But theres also something creepy about Harvards policing of it especially since Faust dedicated her 2017 commencement address to a passionate defense of free speech and the battle raging over it on campuses across the country, from trigger warnings to the rights of conservative speakers to address college audiences.

Silencing ideas or basking in intellectual orthodoxy independent of facts and evidence impedes our access to new and better ideas and it inhibits a full and considered rejection of bad ones, Faust told graduates on May 25 (in a speech that also referenced the next act, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg). We must work to ensure that universities do not become bubbles isolated from the concerns and discourse of the society that surrounds them. According to the text of her speech, posted on the Harvard website, she also noted, We must support and empower the voices of all the members of our community and nurture the courage and humility that our commitment to unfettered debate demands from all of us.

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Many will agree these students crossed a line and forfeited the right to engage in unfettered debate, at least at Harvard. But whats the next line of unacceptability? What if a private Facebook chat involved a screed against Elizabeth Warren, expressed support for a Muslim travel ban, or labeled as fascist Harvards effort to ban social clubs? Private schools write their own discipline codes. But with this action, Harvard is sending a message with a classic free-speech chill: You can say anything but not here.

The students exchanged explicit images and memes in a private Facebook group chat, according to a report.

The issue of revoking admission has come up before at Harvard, most recently involving the case of Owen Labrie, the St. Pauls graduate who was accused of sexual assault. While never formally confirming that Labrie was barred from attending Harvard, a spokesman at the time told the Crimson, An offer of admission can be rescinded if a student engages in behavior that brings into question his or her honesty, maturity, or moral character.

If youre convicted of a crime, the decision to withdraw an admission offer makes sense. If you post something offensive on a private Facebook page, thats a very different standard of judgment. After this, why would any prospective student take the risk of posting anything remotely edgy? And could enrolled students, not just newly admitted ones, be expelled for posting similar thoughts?

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According to the Crimson, admitted students found and contacted each other using the official Harvard College Class of 2021 Facebook group. The admissions office, which maintains the official page, warns students that it takes no responsibility for unofficial spin-off groups, which is what this group formed. Students are also told their admissions offer can be rescinded under specific conditions behavior that calls into question honesty, maturity, or moral character.

Harvard just drew one line to define what that means. Where will the next one be drawn? That would be a good topic for next years commencement speech.

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Harvard draws the line on free speech - The Boston Globe

Nazi salutes high in the air, white supremacists rallying on the town green, colorful banners telling homosexuals they are going to hell this is what democracy looks like.

I know, awful.

But the right to say and do those things no matter how offensive many Americans will find them is that First Amendment freedom-of-speech thing that demonstrators in Portland, Ore., rallied for over the weekend.

Which is odd.

Because as far as we know, the folks taking part in the Trump Freedom of Speech rally werent jailed by their government for anything they said.

They may have been ridiculed, harassed, marginalized, ostracized, asked to leave businesses, refused service, lost their jobs or positions of influence because of the things they said.

But they havent been jailed.

And thats the freedom the First Amendment guarantees. The right to speak out without being jailed although not the right to speak out without being criticized.

So its easy to see that we wield the greatest power punishing peer pressure to stop the growing tide of hatred in America. We have to speak out.

[Our ugly racisms newest artifact: The noose left at the African American Museum]

Heres an extreme example the white supremacist in the gym.

Richard Spencer, the Hail Trump alt-right movement leader who champions an American apartheid, complete with a whites-only state, was quietly working out in his Alexandria, Va., gym when he was confronted by another gym member.

I just want to say to you, Im sick of your crap, Georgetown University professor C. Christine Fair said to Spencer, as he was lifting weights.

As a woman, I find your statements to be particularly odious; moreover, I find your presence in this gym to be unacceptable, your presence in this town to be unacceptable, she went on.

Spencer wasnt wearing a swastika shirt or handing out white power fliers at the gym. He was just doing reps. It was the professor who went after him. And she was relentless, calling him a Nazi, then a cowardly Nazi after he refused to identify himself.

It got so uncomfortable, another gym member yelled at the professor for making a scene.

Guess who lost their gym membership?

Spencer did.

And his world howled that this was a violation of his freedom of speech.

No, sorry, folks.

Most states ban most businesses from discriminating against clients based on the clients race, religion, sex or national origin, law professor Eugene Volokh wrote in The Washington Post last fall, right after the election, about a case where a New Mexico company said it would stop doing business with Trump supporters.

The Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects people from that kind of discrimination, while some states and cities also ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, marital status and other attributes.

But political affiliation is rarely on the list, Volokh wrote. A few cities or counties do ban such discrimination. D.C. bans discrimination based on the state of belonging to or endorsing any political party.

Spencers freedom of speech wasnt violated. He can say whatever he wants without being jailed.

The Constitution doesnt protect his right to belong to a private gym that finds his political and social views dangerous and odious.

But what if a coffee place didnt want to serve a Muslim, a hotel wouldnt rent a room to black family, a baker didnt want to bake a cake for a gay couple or a restaurant didnt want someone with a wheelchair eating in their dining room?

Too bad for the businesses in those cases. State and federal laws prohibit businesses from discriminating against protected classes.

Neo-Nazi is not a protected class at least not yet.

The ACLU is used to these sticky debates, and their attorneys have consistently stood their ground in protecting everyones right to say what they want, no matter how disgusting. It probably wasnt easy to defend the Ku Klux Klans right to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, a town filled with survivors of the Holocaust.

Im not defending hate speech, Im defending free speech, said Claire Guthrie Gastaaga, head of the ACLU of Virginia, which has been hearing plenty about Spencer, who lives in Alexandria.

As soon as you accept that its okay to suppress speech, you say its okay to suppress your speech.

But what about the rallies that seem so hateful?

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) had the wrong idea when he tried to stop that freedom-of-speech rally over the weekend. It was scheduled before two men were killed and another wounded on the light-rail train trying to protect two girls, one of whom was wearing a hijab .

Jeremy Christian, 35, was arrested and charged in connection with the slaying of Rick Best, 53, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, and the stabbing of another man, Micah Fletcher. When he was brought into a Portland courtroom last week, Christian yelled: Get out if you dont like free speech.

Dude, your free speech was protected at all those rallies where you threw the Heil Hitler salute. Killing two men and stabbing a third, as Christian is alleged to have done, is not speech.

The protesters in Portland had the right to spew all their hateful views. The feds recognized that and rejected the mayors request to shut down the event because it could incite violence.

It was the counterprotesters who behaved violently.

Until they started throwing stuff, damaging property and messing with the police who were there to do their jobs, the counterprotesters had the right idea.

The right response to speech you dont like is more speech, Gastaaga said. The real harm is the nice people who say nothing.

So do it. Speak, yell, shout.

Dont shut the other guys out.

Just be louder than them.

Twitter: @petulad

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In Portland, the haters are entitled to free speech, but not to our silence in the face of their views - Washington Post

Matt Houston, Manship School News Service Published 8:48 p.m. CT June 2, 2017 | Updated 14 hours ago

The Young Americans for Liberty chapter at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette invited students to write anything on a 9-foot beach ball called a on campus. Chapter founder and president Joe Shamp explains. Young Americans for Liberty UL Lafayette Chapter

Lance Harris, R-Alexandria, explains his bill that would protect free speech on college campuses.(Photo: Sarah Gamard/Manship School News Service)

BATON ROUGE The Senate passed a bill, 30-2, Friday that is intended to ensure college students can choose to hear all speech, especially speech considered unwelcome.

The House Bill 269, authored by Lance Harris, R-Alexandria, requires state institutes of higher education to state their support for the First Amendment and create a system of disciplinary sanctions for students who interfere with speakers' campus speech.

MORE:Students say college policies violate their right to free speech|College free speech bill falters

Additionally, a special subcommittee of the Board of Regents will be appointed to report the status of freedom of speech on Louisiana campuses annually to the Legislature. The schools would have had to inform students of their policies during freshman orientation.

Freedom of speech seems to be increasingly imperiled, Harris said during the bills House introduction.

Some legislators, including Reps. Rob Shadoin, R-Ruston, and Sam Jones, D-Franklin, expressed concern during the House debate that the legislation isnt necessary.

Whats wrong with the First Amendment? Jones asked.

Shadoin made reference to an event at University of California-Berkeley, in which conservative commentator Ann Coulter canceled a speaking event due to threats of violence from students. Shadoin said hes unware of similar events in Louisiana.

Louisiana hasnt had any problems with this, so if thats the case, do we really need any enforcement that allows the universities to do what theyre already allowed to do?

Similar questions did not come up during the Senate debate. The bill now goes to the governor for a signature.

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Speaking freely: College free speech bill heads to governor - The Daily Advertiser

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In the past several months we have seen a debate on free speech that has had been festering for several years. With speech codes and free speech zones prevalent at colleges across the United States, the 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech has been restricted. We have seen this debate on my own campus, with the Free Speech Wall and the invitation of Milo Yiannopoulos by the Cal Poly College Republicans. The Free Speech Wall was subjected to vandalism, being taken down several times, while various groups on campus tried to get Milos event cancelled. And when those attempts failed, they showed up in black masks and waving anarcho-communist flags pretending theyre making a difference.

Conservatives were the original anti-free speech defenders. Joe McCarthy and his witch hunt against communism in our government (who was defeated in part by Dwight E. Eisenhower.) Or the FBIs constant monitoring and assault on communist and progressive groups in the Red Scare. Ronald Reagan was elected partly on the base of dealing with the Berkeley problem where the original Free Speech Movement began in response to restrictions on academic freedom and political activities. They still are in a way; just as Reince Priebus and Donald Trump about libel laws and the 1st Amendment. Or banning books they dont like because it has LGBT characters.

However, even with all this, conservatives and other speakers now find themselves under assault both in their freedom of speech and sometimes physically. Like Ann Coulters speech was cancelled at UC Berkeley or Charles Murrays speech at Middlebury College, the author of the Bell Curve, which was rocked by violent protests where a progressive professor who had attended the speech was assaulted and injured. Richard Spencer basically got the U.S District Court to force Auburn to host his speech because they tried to cancel it and it was rocked by violent protests.

Do these speakers sometimes hold views that most people would fine horrible? Yes. Especially Richard Spencer who has somehow gained prominence because the media keeps talking about him. But attacking him, by throwing punches and committing violence against his supporters and others you dont like, youre not helping your cause.

We live in the United States, a country built on the freedom that you should be able to speak without the government silencing you and that you have a right to hold views that are morally wrong and repugnant. John Stuart Mill in On Liberty defended speech because if you silence an opinion, you are essentially elevating it. He wrote,If any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.

Free speech should be defended to the utmost. College is about learning and refining our ideals and beliefs. I myself, have gone through this transition, with spirited debates and exchanging of ideas. And yes, protesters have used their freedom of speech as well, by voicing their opposition or support. The groups who protest outside of Milo events without violence are good. The ones who have beaten up his supporters, pepper sprayed them, and caused property damage are not.

And by using violence or government force against your opponents is sending a message of intolerance and that you are afraid. It is the tactic used by fascists in the early 1930s when they used violence against screenings of All Quiet on the Western Front and then banning it when they came into power. Or how modern and historic communist regimes suppress speech despite the father of modern communism, Karl Marx, defending it .

Free speech is for all people, not just the ones you like. Its for people like Richard Spencer and Linda Sarsour. For people like you and me. Defend it for all.

AntifaCommunismDonald Trumpfree speechmiloRichard Spencer

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Free Speech Is For All, Not Just For People You Like - The Libertarian Republic