Tuesday in the Washington Post, a curious thing happened; a contributing writer for the national newspaper actually argued against conservatives' right to the First Amendment, seemingly not understanding her own right to print that opinion is protected by that same amendment.
Professor Jennifer Delton’s arduous piece,“When Free Speech Becomes a Political Weapon,” in a nutshell, attacked the right, and “alt right,” for “using” free speech as a “weapon” to advance their unwelcome ideologies, which she says “subvert our democracy.”
In the ensuing jumbling argument she advances, she defines free speech as something it is not, and makes unsubstantiated claims that the right is trying to “undermine democracy” so their rights should no longer be protected.
Delton started off by fretting that universities are now in a bind, because the right has taken the concept of free speech hostage. She claimed the right has malicious intentions for hosting conservative speakers because they’re trying to “bait” liberal institutions by “weaponizing the concepts of free speech”:
Here’s the dilemma college presidents face in the fall: Either uphold free speech on campus and risk violent counterprotests, or ban conservative provocateurs and confirm the “freedom of speech” crisis on campuses. Either way their institution’s legitimacy is undermined. This impossible dilemma is no accident. It has been part of a strategy, deployed first by conservatives and perfected by the alt-right…..
The second thing we know about the alt-right is that its provocateurs seek to bait liberal institutions by weaponizing the concept of free speech, which is an issue that divides the liberal left. It is true that higher education has brought much of this on itself through the extreme policing of speech and tolerance of student protesters who shut down speakers with whom they disagree. But that doesn’t diminish the extent to which the alt-right and conservatives are using “free speech” to attack and destroy colleges and universities, which have long promoted different variations of the internationalist, secular, cosmopolitan, multicultural liberalism that marks the thinking of educated elites of both parties.
Delton then claimed that college presidents need to “figure out” whether the First Amendment protects “conservatives’ right” to free speech because it “creates political spectacle and instigates violence.” Sounds like Delton neededto read the First Amendment again because she clearly doesn’t understand it. The courts have shown a high standard of what speech they deem qualifies as “threatening violence” and simply voicing a different viewpoint from another person does not meet that standard by a long shot. On top of that, at the majority of these protests between the “alt right” and “alt left” it is the “alt left” who shows up in hoods, with weapons and the intention to commit violence. She makes a further mistake by conflating “conservatives” with the “alt right.”
Delton goes on to make an argument that this started when “New Deal” Democrats censored communists’ free speech rights. She cites Philosopher Sidney Hook’s reasoning for allegedly restricting their free speech as follows, and suggests that maybe this is the same kind of reasoning we can use today to limit the right’s free speech:
Philosopher Sidney Hook hinged his argument about speech on the distinction between the free flow of ideas, which the First Amendment protected, and actions, which it did not. He said liberals had no problem with communists’ ideas, which they were free to expound upon and disseminate. The problem lay in their organized actions, which involved “all sorts of stratagems, maneuvers, and illegal methods, evasions and subterfuges” developed by Lenin to subvert democracy….
She then made a huge leap to contend that holding a rally is the same thing as communist members funded by Russia secretly organizing to subvert the United States:
Subsequent liberals (and most of my professors) condemned these anticommunist liberals for opening the door to McCarthyism and Cold War militarism. But given our current political moment and the threat posed by the actions of alt-right provocateurs, Schlesinger’s and Hook’s arguments may bear revisiting. Both worried that liberals’ commitment to the absoluteness of rights made them unable to confront an enemy that didn’t share that commitment. Both understood that the CPUSA, like the alt-right, was engaged in a struggle to destroy the cultural and political legitimacy of western democratic liberalism. And both understood that First Amendment absolutism was a luxury that only a stable, peaceable society could afford. I can’t help but think that even William F. Buckley would have agreed with this.
If you thought comparing a fringe minority of backwards, white supremacists to an actual threat from a foreign entity was as absurd as she could get, she had more crazy claims up her sleeve. She goes on to say the KKK was just a “marginal fringe group” in the 1970s, but today it’s “on the rise.” However, the tiny numbers that actually show up to these white supremacist events, doesn’t support that notion.
She then argued that the “liberal establishment” and “mainstream media” were still “intact” and “stable” in the ‘70s, but now our society is being “threatened” by the KKK, so that requires their constitutionally protected rights to be taken away:
It was one thing to defend the Ku Klux Klan’s right to march in Skokie, Ill. in 1977, when the liberal establishment and mainstream media were still intact and the KKK was a marginal fringe group. The KKK was offensive, but neither its actions nor its ideas posed a threat to the political or social order, which was stable. The situation is different today, with an erratic President Trump in the White House, elites in disarray and white nationalism on the rise. In this situation, and against this foe, it may be worth remembering that our constitutional rights are not unchanging abstract principles, but, as Hook and Schlesinger argued, always evaluated in terms of their consequences for society at any given historical moment.
Delton ended her insane rant against the First Amendment by echoing her earlier censure of liberal academia for “allowing” the right to commandeer free speech rights by allowing students to shutdown speakers they disagree with:
One reason the right has been able to so effectively exploit “free speech” is because campuses have become places where the free exchange of ideas has been curbed by peer pressure, self-policing and a self-righteous call-out culture, as described by Jonathan Haidt, Jonathan Chait and Mark Lilla. Until university presidents offer real leadership in reconciling the liberal critique of “identity politics” with a new generation of diverse students, faculty and staff for whom such politics represent progress, they will be unable to protect their institutions from conservative attacks.
This kind of argument is disturbing coming from a college professor, who should know better. The courts have always ruled that hate speech is protected speech. It seems the left’s impeachment hysteria has moved on to attacking constitutional rights of anyone they disagree with.
