Category: Free Speech
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Islam is a Radical Threat to Free Speech
Diana West: It’s important to realize sharia’s prohibition of criticism of Islam is basic Islam: There is nothing “radical” about it. Indeed, it is this basic Islamic censorship that is at the crux of why Islam itself — not “Islamism,” not “radical Islam,” not “Islamists,” but Islam — is an existential threat to the survival…
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Regulating Political Speech
A good article by John Stossel. Punch line: It is shameful that leftists let their hatred of corporations lead them to throw free speech under the bus. There is a smarter way to get corporate money out of politics: Shrink the state. If government has fewer favors to sell, citizens will spend less money trying…
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A Prime Instance of Political Correctness: The Blackballing of Nat Hentoff
Nat Hentoff is a civil libertarian and a liberal in an older and respectable sense of the term. He thinks for himself and follows the arguments and evidence where they lead. So what do contemporary politically correct liberals do? They attack him. His coming out against abortion particularly infuriated them. Mark Judge comments: Hentoff's liberal friends…
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First John Derbyshire, then Naomi Riley
John Fund in Censoring Naomi Riley comments on the latter's dismissal by the The Chronicle of Higher Education: Earlier this week, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the trade paper for faculty members and administrators in universities, fired Naomi Schaefer Riley, a paid blogger for its website. Her crime? She had the courage to respond to…
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Chris Hedges on Pornography
Yesterday I said that there are some decent liberals. Having listened to a good chunk of a three-hour C-SPAN 2 interview with Chris Hedges this morning, I would say he is a good example of one. On some issues he agrees with conservatives, pornography being one of them. Both liberals and libertarians have to lot…
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On Toleration: With a Little Help from Kolakowski
1. Toleration is the touchstone of classical liberalism, and there is no denying its value. Our doxastic predicament requires it of us. We have beliefs galore but precious little knowledge, especially as regards the large and enduring questions. Lacking knowledge, we must inquire. For that we need freedom of inquiry, and a social and political…
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Toleration Extremism: Notes on John Stuart Mill
Here are two passages from Chapter Two of John Stuart Mill's magnificent On Liberty (emphases added): But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.…
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The Bigger the Government, the More to Fight Over: The NPR Case
An excellent illustration of this truth is the current brouhaha over the defunding of National Public Radio (NPR). Why is time and money being wasted debating this? The short answer is that government has assumed a function that is obviously inessential to it and arguably illegitimate. If government stuck to its essential tasks, one of…
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National Public Radio Needs Your Support!
If you like NPR programming, as I like some of it, write them a check! Just don't demand that they receive taxpayer support. At least not now. We are in fiscal crisis, and budgetary cuts must be made. If such inessentials as NPR, PBS, NEH and NEA cannot be defunded, where will the cuts be…
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Sponsorship and Censorship
Lefties often conflate lack of sponsorship with censorship when it suits them. It is not that they are too dense to grasp the distinction, but that they willfully ignore it for their ideological purposes. If a government agency refuses to sponsor your art project, it does not follow that you are being censored. To censor…
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Speech and Guns
How should we deal with offensive speech? As a first resort, with more speech, better, truer, more responsible speech. Censorship cannot be ruled out, but it must be a last resort. We should respond similarly to the misuse of firearms. Banning firearms is no solution since (i) bans have no effect on criminals who, in…
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Legality and Propriety: What One Has a Right to Do is Not Always Right to Do
What do the following have in common: Flag burning, Koran burning, suspending a crucifix in urine and calling it art, building a mosque near Ground Zero, calling a black person 'nigger,' affixing a 'Fuck Your Honor Student' bumpersticker on your car? They are all offensive, but they are all legal. Flag burning. If you steal my…
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Soul Food
People are generally aware of the importance of good nutrition, physical exercise and all things health-related. They understand that what they put into their bodies affects their physical health. Underappreciated is a truth just as, if not more important: that what one puts into one's mind affects one's mental and spiritual health. The soul has…
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Free Speech and the Fairness Doctrine
(Written 29 July 2007) Philip Terzian gets it right in his piece Radio Free America: Revival of the Fairness Doctrine is not intended to facilitate "both sides of the story" but to shut down conservative talk radio. Why? Because efforts to invent a successful left-wing Limbaugh have consistently failed, and what Jim Hightower, Mario Cuomo,…