May 14, 2020
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
The End of Free
Speech? That’s the New Agenda
Friends,
I pass on
to you today a new article that I have had published in Chronicles (on the magazine’s Web site). Since the Framing of the
American Constitution there has been a debate over the nature and meaning of
the First Amendment. Generally, citizens have enjoyed the right to speak their
minds (or write) what they believed, as long as those expressions did not
violate defined community standards of decency or morality, urge active
participation in the overthrow of the government, or defame publicly (and falsely)
another citizen so as to damage or destroy his reputation or good character.
These
precisions are far more detailed and complex in law and jurisprudence, but this
overall summary, as codified by 2oo years of practice and judicial polity has
been something of a constitutional bedrock for Americans. We know that if we
publish an article or make a speech critiquing a certain viewpoint or
criticizing the person who publicly espouses that viewpoint, that we may do so
if we do so properly.
Thus, I
may blast away at political candidate X who advocates universal healthcare for
all, I may suggest that he is ignorant, a crazy socialist, a senile politician
who should stay at home. I may even question whether in the distant past he
would have assaulted in one way or another young ladies...at least ask the
question. I may do all this, but I cannot assert without any hint of proof that
he is a rapist or abuser, which charges, not based on evidence, would damage or
destroy his reputation.
Admittedly,
such accusations and any resultant court proceedings tend to be difficult
things; slander and defamation of character are extremely hard to prove, and
usually require proof that the person engaged in defamation acted willfully, with
the intent to do real harm and severe damage to his target.
That may
be the reason such proceedings are rare, especially these days when it seems
that the American nation is full of millions of Twitter users who take to the
Internet to savage not just the ideas of opponents, but their character and
reputations. The standards of defamation or slander have, it seems, broadened
in our day.
But,
nevertheless, the essential right of citizens to express differing views on a
wide variety of topics has been considered sacrosanct, at least until recently.
And that
brings me to the growing current on college campuses and stated with increasing
frequency in Mainstream Media: certain people because of who they are, because they are white or male or Southern or
conservative, don’t enjoy or at least should not have the rights of free
speech, that they should be banned from speaking on university campuses,
forbidden from taking to Twitter or Facebook—because others, those “woke”
social justice warriors find what they say or simply who they are to be offensive.
Indeed, this new template boldly asserts that speech which opposes the advances
and propositions of progressivists is, ipso
facto, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, or homophobic, and thus by
definition, must be proscribed and banned.
With
growing respectability this narrative of curtailing views considered en dehors de tout debat—outside of all
debate—has emerged with force in recent years.
But then,
under this new template who then decides, who determines which views are now
acceptable and which persons will have the right to express such views? College
administrators? The supposedly aggrieved students on campus, themselves? In far
too many cases, it has been the highly-organized social justice warriors on
campus (and their friends off campus) who have taken matters into their own
hands. Opposition in any form to the progressivist agenda is shouted down, that
is, when a cowardly administrator does not forbid it because of fear of a
campus riot (or that it might somehow infringe upon a minority “safe space” or
cause mental “hurt” and “pain” to students who realize that someone might be on
the same campus as they and with differing views!).
Our state
governments, boards of trustees and governors for our colleges and
universities, and most directly, college administrators are all guilty in
abetting this—the rise of a kind of rigid and brutal totalitarianism, right in
our midst, that in fact destroys the genuine educational experience and the
essential liberty that must exist not only on university campuses, but in
society at large, if this nation survive.
Already
we have seen what failure has produced. More of this will surely be fatal to
the country.
*********
Here is
my Chronicles essay:
CHRONICLES May 13, 2020
Free Speech and
the End of the Old Rules
By Boyd Cathey
Free speech, open inquiry, and serious academic
discussion are now being construed as the fruits of racism, white supremacy,
sexism, or homophobia in my state of North Carolina. Differing points of view,
once the hallmark of our college education system, are now routinely
suppressed, and increasingly by professors and pusillanimous administrators at
our universities.
A case in point in my neck of the woods is the message
conveyed by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s officially
sponsored conference, “Finding Expression in Contested Public Spaces.” This gathering was held on Oct. 24 and 25, 2019 for the
benefit of students and the public alike. The two-day program opened with
keynote remarks by Dr. Eric King Watts, associate professor at UNC’s Chapel
Hill campus, whose presentation was titled “Tribalism, Voicelessness, and the
Problem of Free Speech.”
Setting the tenor for the conference, Professor
Watts attempted to “contextualize” the concept of free speech historically and
in terms of its effect on race and gender:
“In particular, freedom of speech is
conceptualized and found in documents as a universal human capacity and right
requiring legislative and judicial protections, but this late-18th-century
idealism obscures the manner in which freedom of speech is always already
implicated in racism,” Watts said. He identified the idea of race as a biotrope
(a living, constantly developing piece of language that’s represented by
different words), and free speech as instrumental in the social construction of
race.
“The very idea of freedom, postulated in
universalist terms in the 19th century, and serving as the ontological
structure for the First Amendment, doesn’t allow the black,” Watts said. “This
exclusion is not legal, nor paralegal; it is brokered by the psychic structure
and pseudoscience responding to the biopower imperatives of racism.”
It seems the very concept and reality of free
speech is corrupted irretrievably by racism. Free speech supposedly both serves
and furthers a racist agenda.
Watts, who may have rightly assumed that most of
his audience agreed, concluded:
“Put bluntly, the left is not really intolerant
of conservative values. Indeed, many of us here probably wish for the good old
days when we just had to deal with the neocons,” Watts added. “Rather, the left
is intolerant of racism, homophobism, xenophobism, and misogyny.”
Branson Inscore of the John William Pope Foundation
reported that “most speakers at
the free speech conference promoted the idea of restricting free speech to
ensure space for ‘marginalized’ or ‘oppressed’ voices.”
What we are witnessing on college campuses makes
absolute sense, given its own twisted logic. Although the left’s template
posits equality as a goal, the implementation of its vision requires the
throttling of dissent and the end of free speech as we have known it.
The evidence comes from the multiple attempts to
stifle opposing viewpoints on campuses and increasingly in the public square.
Non-“woke” personalities—cabinet secretaries, writers, and others—have been
singled out and harassed in restaurants, in their places of employment, or at
home—as happened to Fox News host Tucker Carlson in November. Literally
hundreds of Trump supporters and conservatives have been assaulted by leftist
mobs. Between March 1, 2016 and July 5, 2018, Breitbart.com counted 70 acts of violence and harassment against non-woke dissenters. The conference at the
University of North Carolina at Greensboro showed to what extent the Left,
particularly its academic representatives, equate the expansion of equality
with the suppression of unwanted views.
A few years ago—in the heat of the 2016
presidential race—I met the daughter of longtime friends. She was a college
sophomore at a nearby university. Her parents had forewarned her that I was
voting for Trump and that I wrote essays that suggested as much. After
some few pleasantries, she lit into me, and what followed was the acidic
exchange:
The Student: “Mom
tells me you support Trump? Is that right?”
Me: “Yes, I do, and I have written about him and the election.”
The Student: “How can you possibly support, much less vote for that racist white supremacist?”
Me: “I don’t believe he is what you call him—his program is to tear off the mask of the managerial administrative state. That needs to be done; we are losing our liberties.”
The Student: “Trump is a fascist, and needs to be stopped. Men like him have no place running for office. What they say and preach must be stopped. They should be prohibited from running. They don’t have a right to say those things because it’s racist and sexist.”
Me: “Yes, I do, and I have written about him and the election.”
The Student: “How can you possibly support, much less vote for that racist white supremacist?”
Me: “I don’t believe he is what you call him—his program is to tear off the mask of the managerial administrative state. That needs to be done; we are losing our liberties.”
The Student: “Trump is a fascist, and needs to be stopped. Men like him have no place running for office. What they say and preach must be stopped. They should be prohibited from running. They don’t have a right to say those things because it’s racist and sexist.”
And finally, as the conversation was getting
beyond the bounds of good manners, my interrogator concluded: “Well, at least
you’re old and people like you—old white males—will die off soon and be
replaced by my generation and lots of people of color, brown and black people.”
At that point, the conversation ended abruptly.
But the message was clear: people like me had no right to “free speech.”
And now, reflecting on that exchange—which in a
few phrases typifies the thinking of millions of regular people and not just
students—the meaning of Professor Watts’ words becomes obvious: deviations from
the new template will not be tolerated. Those of us who object will be labeled
racists, homophobes, xenophobes and misogynists, and our speech restricted and
banned. Old methods of playing by the rules of civil discourse no longer apply.
“Woke” social justice warriors, their professors, much of Hollywood and the
media, have declared war on us.
Thank you!
ReplyDeleteThis article is a good analysis of the problem we are facing. I am afraid the media and progressives will continue in this direction until there will be violence. The alternative is a peaceful surrender of all we hold dear.
ReplyDelete