Defining Free Speech for Ideological Advantage
The controversy over University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill's vile remarks about the victims of the attacks of the September 11th terrorists attacks nicely illustrates the manner in which the far left has redefined the concept of free speech. Freedom of speech, as conceived by the Founding Fathers, simply prohibits the government from arresting and prosecuting individuals voicing unpopular opinions. It does not, and has never meant, that unpopular speech must be provided a platform. Nor that people must associate with people whose speech they find loathsome. The Founding Fathers hoped to prevent the stifling of dissent common in Europe where any slight of king or country could put one in a dungeon, or worse. Successive generations of America jurists have expanded the concept to comprise a broader definition of "speech." This, in general, has been a positive evolution, removing government oversight and control from many areas of private life.
In the post-war period, however, the left has tried to transmute freedom of speech into freedom from consequences, arguing that employers have no right to fire employees who embrace radical causes, or that university professors - always leftist - have the unmitigated right to call for all sorts of mayhem without ever endangering their mostly state-paid salaries.
Even worse, those who defend radicals like Ward Churchill insist that such people must be provided a platform from which to pontificate in the name of "diversity." No value judgment may be leveled against offensive rhetoric (so long as it emanates from a leftist perspective) since all points of view are equally valid and deserve a hearing. In its online blog, Armavirumque, the New Criterion's editors argue against this dangerous nonsense:
In the post-war period, however, the left has tried to transmute freedom of speech into freedom from consequences, arguing that employers have no right to fire employees who embrace radical causes, or that university professors - always leftist - have the unmitigated right to call for all sorts of mayhem without ever endangering their mostly state-paid salaries.
Even worse, those who defend radicals like Ward Churchill insist that such people must be provided a platform from which to pontificate in the name of "diversity." No value judgment may be leveled against offensive rhetoric (so long as it emanates from a leftist perspective) since all points of view are equally valid and deserve a hearing. In its online blog, Armavirumque, the New Criterion's editors argue against this dangerous nonsense:
It is a telling fact that this point meets widespread resistance today. Invoking the principle of free speech, many people of good will see nothing wrong--everything right--with providing a platform for those who (for example) deny the Holocaust. But this liberal sentiment plays directly into the hands of the Holocaust deniers. As Professor Lipstadt observes, "Unable to make the distinction between genuine historiography and the deniers' purely ideological exercise, those who see the issue in this light are important assets in the deniers' attempt to confuse the matter." As has so often been the case, the well-intentioned efforts of liberal apologists help create an atmosphere of legitimacy and tolerance for movements whose goal is to destroy those institutions and attitudes that guarantee liberal tolerance in the first place.