By: Douglas Bower
Just how can you know when Free Speech has gone awry, gone South, taken a detour from the life of America? 1. Free Speech is no more when…you can be accused and prosecuted for discrimination … "even
Just how can you know when Free Speech has gone awry, gone South, taken a detour from the life of America?
1. Free Speech is no more when…you can be accused and prosecuted for “discrimination”… "even if there was no intent ... to harass or demean another."[1]
2. Free Speech is no more when…”a student who argues an unpopular position in class such as 'affirmative action is racist because it discriminates against white men' or 'gay marriage is against Biblical teachings'”,[2] is punished.
3. Free Speech is no more when…”you can be punished because someone “felt” offended.”[3]
4. Free Speech is no more when…”Objective discrimination or intent to harm does not need to be present.”[4]
5. Free Speech is no more when…”someone who responds in private e-mail to an unsolicited university announcement that promoted a lesbian movie. He made the "mistake" of asking to be unsubscribed due to religious objections”[5] is punished.
6. Free Speech is no more when…” you engage in sexually suggestive staring" and "inappropriately directed laughter"[6] and are punished for it.
7. Free Speech is no more when…You call your local cable company to complain about poor service, or whatever, and someone decides to punish you by changing your billing name to “Bitch Dog”. This happened to LaChania Govan of Chicago for complaining to her cable company.[7]
8. Free Speech is no more when…as the editor of a scientific publication, you allow a scholarly work on the “Intelligent Design” theory, written by a credible scientist, to be published for peer review, and your life is made a living hell as the result. RICHARD STEINBERG, FEDERAL SCIENTIST AND EDITOR was brutally criticized for doing just that.
“However, a number of outside groups and individuals began writing e-mails, letters of protests, phoning the museum, phoning my employer, demanding my ouster for this. Apparently, there was an unstated rule that you do not accept a manuscript for peer review that counters Darwinism, or seriously counters Darwinism. And furthermore, I was a gatekeeper. I allowed the paper to be peer reviewed and furthermore, I committed the terribly sin of allowing it to be published. And so the retaliation that followed took the form of the spreading of misinformation, such that, you know, my degrees were in religion and philosophy, not in science, that there was actually no peer review, that I had accepted money under the table.”[8]-- RICHARD STEINBERG
For some time now, I have been racking my brain trying for figure out just why Americans, so-called and self-proclaimed champions for Free Speech and Expression, seem to feel it necessary to punish others for exercising that right.
I live in an International community in Guanajuato, Mexico, where I encounter people from all over the world. I get the impression that Europeans who come here, and of course the Mexicans I know, have a better, more solid grasp of the democratic concept of Free Speech than Americans.
So, what is wrong in America these days? What is going on?
In an article entitled, Why Americans Don’t Care about Free Speech, the author says this:
“This too is not a new problem. I highly recommend Leonard W. Levy's Emergence of a Free Press, which uncompromisingly examines the hypocritical conditions in which the American system of freedom of expression was born. Freedom of speech was resolutely claimed during Colonial times, but its advocates saw it as a means to attainment of their goals, not an end in itself, as they proved by smashing the presses of pro-British printers during the revolution and by prosecuting royalists and other adversaries under the Alien and Sedition acts afterwards. Benjamin Franklin, whose own brother had faced prosecution under the colonial government for printing revolutionary opinions, declared himself completely comfortable after independence with the common law of seditious libel, which allowed the new government to prosecute its adversaries for their ideas. Levy wrote, "The American people simply did not believe or understand that freedom of thought and expression means equal freedom for the other person, especially the one with hated ideas”. And neither do they today.”[9]
There you have it! What do you think of that?
[1] Will Colleges Respect Your Child's Rights? Wednesday, August 24, 2005 By Wendy McElroy
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid
[6] Ibid
[7] Woman Gets Cable Bill With Derogatory Name Associated Press http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050818/ap_on_fe_st/nasty_bill
[8] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166831,00.html
[9] http://www.spectacle.org/597/why.html
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