6 ms·

There's a big difference between being anti-free speech and just not wanting someone to speak on your campus.

by tomdell 9y ago

jtuente 9y ago
The funniest part is that Coulter was invited by a group that disagrees with her views.
- orblivion 9y ago
  The UC College Republicans?
  - rfrank 9y ago
    Young America's Foundation. http://www.yaf.org/news/statement-young-americas-foundations-april-27-lecture-uc-berkeley/ http://www.yaf.org/news/statement-young-americas-foundations...
    - orblivion 9y ago
      "Young America’s Foundation is committed to ensuring that increasing numbers of young Americans understand and are inspired by the ideas of individual freedom, a strong national defense, free enterprise, and traditional values." Doesn't mean they like Coulter but at least they're not far off.
kolbe 9y ago
not really. especially when it's not your campus, and it's just a publicly funded school that you attend, and you express your dislike with violence.
- drewbuschhorn 9y ago
  Obviously this is political and so shouldn't be hitting HN, but I'll swing at this pitch. "Violence" is always somehow brought into the mix by conservatives. The whole Berkeley-is-against-free-speech talking point falls apart when you see how quick conservative America was drop Milo like a hot potato once he said something that crossed their lines. Ann Coulter is the same way, and the sheer craziness of saying a woman on the New York Times best seller list, on talk shows everyday, somehow is having her right to free speech stopped by not being able to give a lecture on campus at the most crazy liberal college in the nation. You believe in free speech, so long as it's your free speech and don't pretend otherwise. I'm not out protesting at Fox news for giving Coulter a talk show, but we've seen how far conservative belief in free speech goes for Colbert this week.
  - redthrowaway 9y ago
    >"Violence" is always somehow brought into the mix by conservatives. It ain't conservatives rioting or assaulting professors. >Ann Coulter is ... somehow is having her right to free speech stopped by not being able to give a lecture on campus at the most crazy liberal college in the nation. Your right to speak at a publicly funded institution is not limited by your ability to speak elsewhere. >we've seen how far conservative belief in free speech goes for Colbert this week. Was there anybody saying he didn't have a right to say what he did? I'm pretty sure most people were criticizing what he said, not rioting about it or saying he didn't have a right to say it. Coulter routinely says atrocious things in order to gain attention. I think it's stupid of campus Republicans to invite her to speak. But once that invitation is given, she has every right to speak and they have every right to listen. And the campus left, for their part, has every right to protest. But not to shut the event down, not to riot, and not to assault professors.
    - Goladus 9y ago
      So, here's the deal about Colbert. The left-wing has been attacking the employment and incomes of ideological opponents with impunity for several years now. Sometimes, often even, it's just a hapless nobody and done to make an example out of the target. The left has consistently ignored anyone trying to point this out, and indeed will usually turn on that person and make them the next target. So, conservatives, young ones mostly, decided to start fighting fire with fire and using their own unorthodox and questionably virtuous tactics to attack their political opponents. It's important to realize, though, that the aims are different. The left has been collecting scalps to intimidate and control. The right is using those same tactics to create chaos and disorder in enemy ranks. It's unlikely that anyone really expects CBS to terminate their contract with Colbert, although I'm sure if that happened they'd find it hilarious and satisfying. But so long as the left-wing media is occupied defending their own (Colbert, in this case) then they'll have less time and energy to spend making life miserable for conservatives. Plus they'll have to make arguments against the very tactics they've been using. I'm not happy with this particular turn of events. But the media had 8 years of a popular liberal-progressive president to practice tolerance, encourage a diversity of viewpoints, and defend freedom of speech for anyone other than themselves. To take the moral high ground and restore trust across political lines that has been slowly eroding for the last couple of decades. They did not, in fact did the opposite, and so I can't find it in me to condemn the conservatives for something like #FireColbert.
- justin66 9y ago
  > it's just a publicly funded school that you attend, and you express your dislike with violence You've got an inaccurate picture of what the average (or even the exceptional) UC Berkeley student is like. When you see a nut standing on something that's on fire wearing a bandana on TV, you probably should just go ahead and assume that's not somebody between classes. Sometimes it is, but that is an open campus right in the middle of Berkeley, right next to Oakland...
  - kolbe 9y ago
    you're right that the 95th percentile Berkeley student is likely nonviolent. but my characterization of the student body as a group of entitled people who think that being given the opportunity to consume education at Berkeley somehow endows them with ownership of it is a belief that permeates that whole place.
nyolfen 9y ago
ah, the 'in theory'/'in practice' distinction
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ctdonath 9y ago
It's a big campus. Just because you don't want someone to speak doesn't mean someone else shouldn't (thru threat of violence) exercise their "speech & association" right to invite the speaker & listen.
carsongross 9y ago
There's a big difference between just not wanting and threatening violence against.
factsaresacred 9y ago
And there's an even bigger difference between 'just not wanting someone to speak on your campus' and physically obstructing the ability of someone to speak on your campus. The rise of the latter is why this matters.
- justin66 9y ago
  There's a distinction between the everyday students, who might not want Coulter on their campus (who would?) but aren't going to do anything about it, and the violent anarchists who come in to cause trouble. The latter group very much wants Coulter to be there.
  - cmdrfred 9y ago
    If Berkeley police weren't told to stand down some of the violent anarchists would have been arrested and this distinction would have been proven.
Goladus 9y ago
There's a big difference between being anti-free speech and just not wanting someone to speak on your campus Technically true. But it's not hard to see that the motivations of the people hostile to these speakers are completely antithetical to free speech. Whether they are conscious of this or not is less clear. In most cases, I suspect it's more a case that their ideology has so dominated their thinking that free speech just isn't something they think about. I will note that I have seen slogans that directly attack free speech, however ("No Free speech for hate speech" or something like that)

There's a big difference between being anti-free speech and just not wanting someone to speak on your campus.

jtuente 9y ago

The funniest part is that Coulter was invited by a group that disagrees with her views.

orblivion 9y ago
The UC College Republicans?
- rfrank 9y ago
  Young America's Foundation. http://www.yaf.org/news/statement-young-americas-foundations-april-27-lecture-uc-berkeley/ http://www.yaf.org/news/statement-young-americas-foundations...
  - orblivion 9y ago
    "Young America’s Foundation is committed to ensuring that increasing numbers of young Americans understand and are inspired by the ideas of individual freedom, a strong national defense, free enterprise, and traditional values." Doesn't mean they like Coulter but at least they're not far off.

kolbe 9y ago

not really. especially when it's not your campus, and it's just a publicly funded school that you attend, and you express your dislike with violence.

drewbuschhorn 9y ago
Obviously this is political and so shouldn't be hitting HN, but I'll swing at this pitch. "Violence" is always somehow brought into the mix by conservatives. The whole Berkeley-is-against-free-speech talking point falls apart when you see how quick conservative America was drop Milo like a hot potato once he said something that crossed their lines. Ann Coulter is the same way, and the sheer craziness of saying a woman on the New York Times best seller list, on talk shows everyday, somehow is having her right to free speech stopped by not being able to give a lecture on campus at the most crazy liberal college in the nation. You believe in free speech, so long as it's your free speech and don't pretend otherwise. I'm not out protesting at Fox news for giving Coulter a talk show, but we've seen how far conservative belief in free speech goes for Colbert this week.
- redthrowaway 9y ago
  >"Violence" is always somehow brought into the mix by conservatives. It ain't conservatives rioting or assaulting professors. >Ann Coulter is ... somehow is having her right to free speech stopped by not being able to give a lecture on campus at the most crazy liberal college in the nation. Your right to speak at a publicly funded institution is not limited by your ability to speak elsewhere. >we've seen how far conservative belief in free speech goes for Colbert this week. Was there anybody saying he didn't have a right to say what he did? I'm pretty sure most people were criticizing what he said, not rioting about it or saying he didn't have a right to say it. Coulter routinely says atrocious things in order to gain attention. I think it's stupid of campus Republicans to invite her to speak. But once that invitation is given, she has every right to speak and they have every right to listen. And the campus left, for their part, has every right to protest. But not to shut the event down, not to riot, and not to assault professors.
  - Goladus 9y ago
    So, here's the deal about Colbert. The left-wing has been attacking the employment and incomes of ideological opponents with impunity for several years now. Sometimes, often even, it's just a hapless nobody and done to make an example out of the target. The left has consistently ignored anyone trying to point this out, and indeed will usually turn on that person and make them the next target. So, conservatives, young ones mostly, decided to start fighting fire with fire and using their own unorthodox and questionably virtuous tactics to attack their political opponents. It's important to realize, though, that the aims are different. The left has been collecting scalps to intimidate and control. The right is using those same tactics to create chaos and disorder in enemy ranks. It's unlikely that anyone really expects CBS to terminate their contract with Colbert, although I'm sure if that happened they'd find it hilarious and satisfying. But so long as the left-wing media is occupied defending their own (Colbert, in this case) then they'll have less time and energy to spend making life miserable for conservatives. Plus they'll have to make arguments against the very tactics they've been using. I'm not happy with this particular turn of events. But the media had 8 years of a popular liberal-progressive president to practice tolerance, encourage a diversity of viewpoints, and defend freedom of speech for anyone other than themselves. To take the moral high ground and restore trust across political lines that has been slowly eroding for the last couple of decades. They did not, in fact did the opposite, and so I can't find it in me to condemn the conservatives for something like #FireColbert.
justin66 9y ago
> it's just a publicly funded school that you attend, and you express your dislike with violence You've got an inaccurate picture of what the average (or even the exceptional) UC Berkeley student is like. When you see a nut standing on something that's on fire wearing a bandana on TV, you probably should just go ahead and assume that's not somebody between classes. Sometimes it is, but that is an open campus right in the middle of Berkeley, right next to Oakland...
- kolbe 9y ago
  you're right that the 95th percentile Berkeley student is likely nonviolent. but my characterization of the student body as a group of entitled people who think that being given the opportunity to consume education at Berkeley somehow endows them with ownership of it is a belief that permeates that whole place.

nyolfen 9y ago

ah, the 'in theory'/'in practice' distinction

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ctdonath 9y ago

It's a big campus. Just because you don't want someone to speak doesn't mean someone else shouldn't (thru threat of violence) exercise their "speech & association" right to invite the speaker & listen.

carsongross 9y ago

There's a big difference between just not wanting and threatening violence against.

factsaresacred 9y ago

And there's an even bigger difference between 'just not wanting someone to speak on your campus' and physically obstructing the ability of someone to speak on your campus. The rise of the latter is why this matters.

justin66 9y ago
There's a distinction between the everyday students, who might not want Coulter on their campus (who would?) but aren't going to do anything about it, and the violent anarchists who come in to cause trouble. The latter group very much wants Coulter to be there.
- cmdrfred 9y ago
  If Berkeley police weren't told to stand down some of the violent anarchists would have been arrested and this distinction would have been proven.

Goladus 9y ago

There's a big difference between being anti-free speech and just not wanting someone to speak on your campus Technically true. But it's not hard to see that the motivations of the people hostile to these speakers are completely antithetical to free speech. Whether they are conscious of this or not is less clear. In most cases, I suspect it's more a case that their ideology has so dominated their thinking that free speech just isn't something they think about. I will note that I have seen slogans that directly attack free speech, however ("No Free speech for hate speech" or something like that)