Free Speech - really? - Granite Grok

Free Speech – really?

Erin at Critical Mass makes the following observation:

SUNY rewrites First Amendment
 As a public university, SUNY Binghamton is required to uphold the First Amendment rights of students–which it acknowledges:
 "The tradition at Binghamton, a public university, is that the full exercise of First Amendment rights is encouraged and protected,"
So far so good, that I can see…. 
states the Student Handbook. But SUNY administrators are not content to stop there. They go on to inform students that the First Amendment is actually a speech code, one that uniquely suits the university’s specific ends:
"The expectation is that these rights are practiced with respect and responsibility, and with the recognition that abusing the rights of any one person or group ultimately endangers the rights of all. Obscene speech or conduct–that which appeals to prurient interests, is patently offensive, and lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value–is not protected by the First Amendment."
One wonders what the courts would have to say of this patently self-serving misrepresentation of students’ rights. Speech codes usually at least have the virtue of being obviously recognizable as speech codes. In this instance, a public university has presented its speech code in the worst possible faith, as a reasonable explanation of the First Amendment.

Again, I wonder about what is taught at our institutions of higher learning, and those that teach there.  Copies of the Bill of Rights abound – the Internet is replete with copies and analysis.  At no time have I ever read a copy of the First Amendment that ever put limits on what free speech is. 

I may not like what you say, and visa versa for a multitude of any kind of reason, but neither of us can abridge that privilege of American citizenship. Yes, I agree with SUNY that one should practice and use their rights with responsibility.  But I disagree that any abuse of a single person’s rights endangers those of the rest of us.  There is no scaling, no "bar" as to how nice, good, artful, inciteful, insightful, knowledgeable, stupid, idiotic, witty, witless any kind of set of words are.

And these folks are not the only ones that wish to redefine what Free Speech is:   

I read at length a lot of accounts of what happened at Columbia University when Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minuteman project (the group that monitors the border and calls the Border Patrol).  I’m not going to get into all the details, but suffice it to say that there were a bunch of folks that not disagreed with him, but denied him the ability to speak at an event sponsored by Columbia University’s Columbia College Republicans. 

This abstract from Michelle Malkin caught my eye (BOLDED is my emphasis:

The moonbats at NYC Indymedia are crowing and the mob is now trying to play victim:

The following short statement was put together collectively after the event by the audience members who had climbed up onto the stage:

We celebrate free speech: for that reason we allowed the Minutemen to speak, and for that same reason we peacefully occupied the stage and spoke ourselves. Our peaceful protest was violently attacked by members of the College Republicans and their supporters, who are the very same people who invited the Minutemen to our campus in the first place. The Minutemen are not a legitimate voice in the debate on immigration. They are a racist, armed militia who have declared open hunting season on immigrants, causing countless hate crimes and over 3000 deaths on the border. Why should exploitative corporations have free passes between nations, but individual people not? No human being is illegal.

Such a triumph for rational discourse and liberal education.

In that short paragraph, a thesis could be constructed.

"We celebrate free speech" – I watch the video.  Contrasting that  with the above words is an utterly amazing example of the lying through your teeth bravado.  Here, "celebrate" effectively means "when we speak, we celebrate" – not so much for others.

I also was so tickled by the phrase "we allowed" – it was just soooo big of you to allow someone who holds opposite ideas of your own to speak at the grand length of what, 10 seconds?  Yes indeed – celebrating free speech for all!  While Mr. Gilchrist was certainly able to keep speaking while these "students" rushed the stage, his capability to be heard was all but nil (especially when security hustled him off stage).

Peaceful would have been to allow Mr. Gilchrist to finish his speech and then wait and in a decorous manner, state their objections or ask their questions.  Essentially, they silenced him with their screeches and intimidative actions.

Celebrating free speech would be to allow Mr. Gilchrist to have his say – instead, they decided that they had the absolute right to censor his speech.  They have raised themselves up above the law and the Constitution in a "just because".

Yet, they would be among the first to cry out if others try to silence them. 

The Rule of Law is just that –  one should follow the law even if you disagree with it.  You do not break it just because you don’t like it at any particular time.  Yet, more and more, we see incidents here and abroad that those that seemingly take the law into their own hands never seem to recieve the punishment that the law warrants.

The lesson?  It seems to hold with adults as it does with little, immature kids – break the rules, get the consequence.  It is only when the consequences are of no consequence that the little brats stay so self-centered and full of themselves that they become big brats – rules and laws are for others only.

These are the dangerous ones….and we just let them slide…. 

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