Patrick Maines writes in USA Today of the new idea of the meaning of free speech.
" The latest example is the recent shoutdown of NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who was invited to speak at Brown University about the city's "stop and frisk" policy. After he was met with protesters who wouldn't allow him to speak, the university pulled the plug.
As reported in the Huffington Post, one of the students who helped organize the protest, Jenny Li, said that when the university declined to cancel the lecture, "we decided to cancel it for them." It was, this Li said, "a powerful demonstration of free speech."
He also reports on some voices from the left who are condemning this kind of thing. So there is hope.
" The latest example is the recent shoutdown of NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who was invited to speak at Brown University about the city's "stop and frisk" policy. After he was met with protesters who wouldn't allow him to speak, the university pulled the plug.
As reported in the Huffington Post, one of the students who helped organize the protest, Jenny Li, said that when the university declined to cancel the lecture, "we decided to cancel it for them." It was, this Li said, "a powerful demonstration of free speech."
He also reports on some voices from the left who are condemning this kind of thing. So there is hope.
I would have to work on it a bit, but I think Oliver Wendell Holmes remark about a fist and a nose embraces the required concept here.
ReplyDeleteMs. Li's idea that suppressing free speech is an exercise of free speech is unnervingly Orwellian.
ReplyDeletePerhaps, in Ms. Li’s world, Squealer has changed the writing on the barn to accommodate her interpretation of free speech.
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