Daily Archives: May 9, 2017

Two hundred and forty-one years since Americas birth and 226 years since the adoption of the Bill of Rights protecting our freedom of speech, Americans seem to be confused about what free speech actually means. We need a refresher course in what is not free speech, and what it is that speech is free from.

As a free society, we must protect speech in the public square. Thats why the Westboro Church lunatics are accompanied by a sizable police force when they protest military funerals. It is our job as a society to permit speech, even and especially speech we find repugnant, and to protect the speaker from violent reactions to that speech. Additionally, speakers must not face repercussions from the government for what they say. If Donald Trump doesnt like it when Saturday Night Live makes fun of him, he can tweet about it. He cant send a police force to arrest Alec Baldwin.

This does not, however, mean that speech comes without consequences. If Westboro Church leader Fred Phelps applied for a job at your company, you would be fully within your rights to turn him down because he is a vile, hateful person whom you do not wish to employ. This general distinction has been difficult for people to grasp in the wake of several recent high-profile incidents.

Last week, Tomi Lahren settled a lawsuit with her previous employer, the conservative network The Blaze. Lahren was fired after an appearance on The View in which she told the audience that she was pro-choice. She had previously proclaimed herself pro-life; her position on abortion is one that matters to both her audience and her (now former) employer. Speaking to Joy Behar and other View co-hosts, she explained:

Im pro-choice, and heres why: I am a constitutional yknow, someone that loves the Constitution....I cant sit here and be a hypocrite and say Im for limited government, but I think the government should decide what women do with their bodies.

Of course, her viewers at The Blaze also consider themselves constitutionals (if that were a real word), believe in limited government, and yet are pro-life. She called her own audience hypocrites and then she was fired for it.

Milo Yiannopoulos lost his book deal and resigned from Breitbart when he was criticized for comments he made on a podcast about his sexual relationship, as a teen, with an older man, saying that he did not consider himself a victim at the time. Yes, bad things will happen to your career if you say, as Milo did, that some of the most important...life-affirming, important shaping relationships very often [are] between younger boys and older men. Upon learning of the comments, which some listeners interpreted as a defense of pedophilia, the Conservative Political Action Conference disinvited Milo as a speaker. This was not a violation of free-speech rights, because a private group is perfectly entitled to invite only people whose views it endorses.

This is entirely different from what happened at UC Berkeley, which said it would be unable to physically protect Ann Coulter if she accepted the invitation from the College Republicans to speak there. As with the Fred Phelps example, physically protecting the speaker is vital to protecting free speech, which is why the College Republicans filed a lawsuit against the school after Coulters lecture was derailed by the threat of violence. Disinviting someone from speaking at your private organization after he says something you consider outside the bounds of normal discourse does not violate your right to free speech.

A few weeks ago, Salons Matthew Rozsa rebuking the Right for imposing social penalties on its members for expressing controversial opinions. Citing the Lahren and Yiannopoulos incidents, Rozsa called conservatives special snowflakes and quoted Ken Paulson, president of the First Amendment Center, as saying:

The First Amendment protects insightful ideas, but also stupid, insensitive, hateful, and deeply offensive speech. Theres no cherry-picking the right to speak.

Rozsa is conflating social penalties, for which the First Amendment offers zero protection, with freedom of speech. Hes not alone in his confusion.

Colin Kaepernick took a knee on the field during the National Anthem at his National Football League football games last year. Some people hailed him as a hero; others turned off their televisions when he was on. Much was written about whether Kaepernick had a constitutional right to sit out the Anthem. The answer is that of course he did. But the NFL wants to be Americas organization, playing Americas favorite sport patriotism is woven right in. Kaepernick wore T-shirts emblazoned with depictions of Fidel Castro: It wasnt the right image for his employer. For the upcoming football season, Kaepernick remains unsigned.

Writing in USA Today recently, Christine Brennan argued that an unsigned Colin Kaepernick was bad for the NFL. Maybe so. She asked why there are successful NFL players who have a history of violence while no one wants to hire Kaepernick. Her point here is valid: The NFL should be rooting out players with a history of assault. But Brennan went further: To fail to acknowledge and even celebrate that what Kaepernick did was his right as a U.S. citizen is to ignore one of the reasons the United States is the great and free nation that it is. Yes, Kaepernick has a right to say and do what he pleases. The police are not going to come to his door, and no one is going to force him to his feet for the National Anthem. This is indeed part of what makes America a great and free nation.

But Colin Kaepernick is not good enough as a football player to be the type of distraction that he was. Other football players became distractions in a similar way. Terrell Owens put on a show everywhere he went, and teams grew tired of it. No one owes Kaepernick a job. Thats not a violation of freedom of speech; thats business. Kaepernick has signaled he plans to stand for the National Anthem this year should he get signed to a team. Smart.

Business wont always lean against talent. Stephen Colbert aimed what some saw as a homophobic slur at President Trump last week and he still has his job. Its not freedom of speech that is protecting him; CBS is entirely within its rights to fire him for misrepresenting the network or being out of synch with its brand. The fact that his bosses havent fired him or publicly reprimanded him in any way shows that they approve of or at least are not bothered by his comments.

The lesson is this: Say what you want if your boss is on board, but dont blame the First Amendment if your boss is not.

READ MORE: Progressives Eat One of Their Own in the Latest Campus Controversy Free Speech Is Killing Free Speech The Road to Yales Free-Speech Crisis

Karol Markowicz is a columnist at the New York Post.

Originally posted here:
What Free Speech Isn't - National Review

AP

BY: Cameron Cawthorne May 9, 2017 12:16 pm

The Fund for American Studies (TFAS)on May 1 released a new national surveyshowingover 90 percent of millennials support freedom of speech and religion freedom.

The surveyfound that 93 percent of millennials support religious freedom and 92 percent support free speech.

"The media keeps showing us images of violent protests on college campuses, young Americans being angry and disruptive, but the truth is that millennials support religious and social freedoms more than non-millennials," TFAS President Roger Ream said."There's a vast, silent majority of millennials who embrace these freedoms and those are the young men and women we are seeing in our programs."

The Support for Freedom Index wasanational study and thefirst of its kind conducted for TFAS by WPA intelligence to measure how Americans define freedom and whether they support "more" or "less" government interference in their daily lives, according to TFAS.

Millennials (ages 18-34) represent the best indication of how the next generation views freedom and the implication for future public policy. They predominantly believe that "more government" is necessary to protect freedoms. But they also believe the government should be safeguarding freedom more so than guaranteeing security:

Almost 6 out of 10 millennials would choose liberty (60%) over security (40%) as opposed to individuals age 55-64 who are evenly split in their support for security (49%) and liberty (51%)

54% of millennials support "more government" over "less government" (40%) as opposed to non-millennials who support "less government" (51%) over "more government" (45%)

The study also explored the difference between political parties by looking at their attitudes toward liberty and security.

Republicans support security (57%) over liberty (43%) Democrats support liberty (64%) over security (36%) Independents support security (60%) over liberty (40%)

"When you take a comparative look at conservative and Republican ideologies toward freedom, you would expect a lot of overlap. One of the surprising findings of this survey is that Republicans favor an active government approach which prioritizes security over individual liberties," Ream said.

"This may explain some of the resonance for President Trump's message in the GOP primaries, resonance that many, at the time, didn't fully grasp," he continued. "Conservatives were more supportive of a passive government which prioritizes liberty over security concerns."

The study also determined that there was a disconnect between "a general support for freedom and support for freedom on specific economic issues." Certainitems emphasize the complexity of the free market in unexpected demographics, especially the conservatives and Republicans, according the survey.

A majority of Republicans (61%) and Conservatives (57%) believe that the government should regulate oil companies to keep gas prices at reasonable levels

A majority of Republicans (74%) and Conservatives (71%) believe that the government should prevent drug companies from increasing the prices of life-saving drugs

A majority of Republicans (71%) and Conservatives (70%) support tariffs on goods that Americans buy from overseas

"This is due in part to a failure on the part of traditional education to teach economics and the media to explain economics to the average American," Ream said. "The Fund for American Studies was formed to bridge that gap, and provide an educational foundation which teaches economics and emphasizes the importance of all aspects of freedom."

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Survey: 9 Out of 10 Millennials Support Free Speech, Religious Freedom - Washington Free Beacon

Not surprisingly, last weeks multiple posts about the racists who attend games at Bostons Fenway Park brought out the commenters who view these sorts of things as assaults on free speech.

Theyre probably racist too, a study released last week from the University of Kansas says.

When people make appeals to democratic principles like freedom of speech they dont always represent a genuine interest in that principle, Mark H. White, a graduate student in psychology, and co-author of the study said in a news release. We think of principles as ideas we use to guide behavior in our everyday lives. Our data show something different that we tend to make up our mind on something based on our attitudes in this case, racial attitudes and then decide that the principle is relevant or irrelevant. People do whatever best fits their pre-existing attitudes.

In other words, if youre racist, you do what you can to justify your racism without acknowledging your racism.

We look at people who defend anothers racist speech for example, defending someone who got fired for going into a racist rant at work with a free speech argument, said co-author Christian Crandall, professor of psychology at KU. What do we know about people making this argument? The correlation between using the free speech defense and peoples own racial prejudice is pretty high. Its racists defending racists.

You might think that, Maybe people who defend this racist speech are just big fans of free speech, that theyre principled supporters of freedom, Crandall said. Well, no. We give them a news article with the same speech aimed at police and prejudice scores are completely uncorrelated with defending speech aimed at police and also uncorrelated with snarky speech aimed at customers at a coffee shop, but with no racial content.

In their experiments, the pair tested several scenarios with their subjects and found that how they felt about the principle of free speech depended less on an embrace of the Constitution, and more about how they felt about the subject of the speech.

It isnt so much that these controversies make prejudiced people feel bad about themselves; instead, it seems to be driven partially by prejudiced people feeling like they are not free to live how they want to live and say what they want to say they feel as if their freedom is under attack, he said.

The freedom to be a racist, for example.

Bob Collins has been with Minnesota Public Radio since 1992, emigrating to Minnesota from Massachusetts. He was senior editor of news in the 90s, ran MPRs political unit, created the MPR News regional website, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started the two most popular blogs in the history of MPR and every day laments that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.

NewsCut is a blog featuring observations about the news. It provides a forum for an online discussion and debate about events that might not typically make the front page. NewsCut posts are not news stories but reflections , observations, and debate.

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When 'free speech' is a cover for racism | NewsCut | Minnesota ... - Minnesota Public Radio News (blog)