Category: Free Speech
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‘Quickies’ on Free Speech from my Facebook Page
Dissent is not hate. If I dissent from your VIEWS, it does not follow that I hate YOU. Can a contemporary 'liberal' distinguish between a person and the proposition he asserts? If he can, but he doesn't, then he ought to be morally condemned. Don't make Dennis Prager's mistake of saying that the…
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Deplatforming
Deplatforming is the new book burning. Who is is the Nazi now?
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What do Mario Savio and President Trump Have in Common?
Both struck a blow for free speech. Here: "He took a hard punch in the face for all of us.” With these words, President Donald Trump transformed Hayden Williams, the young conservative campus activist who was viciously punched in the face at UC Berkeley last month, from a victim to conservative folk hero. Trump went…
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Ideology at Odds with Open Inquiry
(Cross-posted at my FB page where comments are allowed.) You will recall how Galileo got in trouble with the Inquisition. But now the Roman Catholic Church is a spent force culturally speaking and, under the 'leadership' of Bergoglio, is busy accommodating itself to the Left, which is now the arbiter of what is 'correct' and…
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Free Speech and Open Inquiry Under Attack at Major Universities
In September 2016, one of the living giants of Christian scholarship, the Oxford emeritus philosopher Richard Swinburne, gave an address to the Midwest Society of Christian Philosophers, in the US. He spoke about Christian sexual ethics. In an aside — meaning this wasn’t the main topic of his talk — he affirmed the orthodox Christian…
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The Decline and Fall of the American Civil Liberties Union
An account of how it came about. I have heard it said that classical liberalism is unstable, and that in the fullness of time it collapses into hard leftism. A case in point. Future historians will have to reconstruct exactly how and why the tipping point has been reached, but the ACLU's actions over the…
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Toleration Extremism: Notes on John Stuart Mill
Should absolutely all speech be tolerated? I return a negative verdict at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.
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Is President Trump Mounting an Assault on the Fourth Estate?
Obviously not. He is merely punching back at the contemptible pseudo-journalists, feculent with crypto-commie bias, who head up the lamestream media outlets. When leftists accuse us of something you can be sure that they are doing that very thing. Call it political projection. The greatest threats to free speech at the present time emanate from…
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Alan Dershowitz, Thomas Nagel, and David Benatar
What do these three have in common besides uncommon intellectual penetration and the courage to speak and write publicly on controversial topics? Each has been viciously attacked by ideologues. Dershowitz and Nagel have been attacked from the Left and Benatar from the Right and the Left. It is all over for the West if we…
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ACLU Wavers on Free Speech
Here: Leadership would probably like the ACLU to remain a pro-First Amendment organization, but they would also like to remain in good standing with their progressive allies. Unfortunately, young progressives are increasingly hostile to free speech, which they view as synonymous with racist hate speech. Speech that impugns marginalized persons is not speech at all,…
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Kevin Williamson and John Derbyshire
The Atlantic's firing of Kevin Williamson elicited howls of protest from National Review writers. But then I remembered Derbyshire's Defenestration of a few years ago. Methinks there should be less howling and more examination of conscience among the boy-tie boys. The Left is inimical to free speech and open inquiry. They are deeply and diversely…
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On Being Prudent in a Post-Consensus, No-Trust Society
The young especially need to be very careful about what they say and to whom they say it. The U. S. is becoming the S. U. To be on the safe side, never associate with leftists. (This is good advice even for leftists since they are famous for turning on their own for the 'sin'…
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The Southern Poverty Law Center
These people seem incapable of distinguishing between reasoned dissent and hate speech. They themselves are vicious left-wing hate-mongers, as witness their attacks on Christina Hoff Sommers and Aayan Hirsi Ali. Here is yet another argument for gun rights. People this willfully vicious and irrational will stop at nothing. Related articles Telford: Down with Women’s Studies
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Amy Wax on Free Speech
I am afraid Professor Wax does not appreciate what she is up against. She writes, It is well documented that American universities today, more than ever before, are dominated by academics on the left end of the political spectrum. How should these academics handle opinions that depart, even quite sharply, from their “politically correct” views?…
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Who Will Hire You?
Time was when leftist termites were found mainly in government, the media, schools and universities, Hollywood, and the churches, Now they have come to infest huge corporations that control the flow of information. The times they are a'changin.' Here is another reason why the libertarian notion of a minimal 'night watchman state' is untenable. The…