More on Free Speech and Moron Free Speech
Columbia University, New York City, Statue: The Thinker (Photo: Beyond My Ken, Creative Commons)
There are two reasons I felt I should enter the current free speech discussion. One, to vent a bit, as usual. And two, even though many know constitutional law better than I do, too many people still don’t get the simplest aspects of the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause. So, the more voices the better because you never know if you’ll be the one to connect the dots for someone.
Even if you’re not a constitutional scholar (which I am not), some of them have tragically shown either they don’t understand (doubtful), they don’t want to understand (possible), or they oppose free speech that disagrees with their narrative (Bingo!).
The Left insists on camouflaging this campus pro-Hamas, hate-the-Jews-fest as a free speech issue. It’s not. It’s a criminal actions issue. Ironically, the Left has infamously pursued a pogrom against free speech, especially in recent years—cancel culture. On the contrary, the Right routinely defends free speech even if they strongly disagree with it. Regardless, much of what the pro-Hamas useful idiots are doing on campuses does not resemble free speech.
And “useful idiots” is accurate. One, now infamous, hyperbolic pro-Hamas moron, whined to the media that if Columbia wouldn’t provide the occupiers who’d broken into Hamilton Hall “humanitarian aid,” they might starve to death.
When speaking about free speech rights exemptions, we often hear the stupid refrain, “You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater.” Yes, stupid. How do I know it’s stupid? Among other things, because FJB just said again it recently.
For example, you can yell fire in a crowed theater—if it’s on fire! Proponents of this mischaracterization of what Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, leave words crucial to the context out.
Holmes actually said, “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic” [emphasis added]. The words “falsely” and “causing a panic,” add the necessary context to his analogy. Otherwise, it is not an example of a free speech exception.
The thing is, the Left uses this stupid, inaccurate, reference to abridge the Right’s speech. But they argue that the Left’s violence is “free speech” but simultaneously argue the Right’s free speech is violence. Forget constitutional scholars, they are constitutional alchemists.
Here’s a case-in-point from Arizona State University. According to Timothy H.J. Nerozzi
at FOX News, police arrested 72 students, following their alleged participation in an illegal pro-Hamas encampment. Twenty of the students suspended for violating ASU policy (and the law) filed a motion in court to have their suspensions lifted. They claim, “the suspensions violate their First Amendment rights.”
Really? So, what was the “speech” they were suspended for? Criminal Trespass. Last I checked, illegally trespassing does not qualify as free speech. And there should be consequences to their bad acts. Nerozzi wrote, “Students and faculty have demanded the university drop any charges against the protesters with ongoing demonstrations since the arrests.”
These “demonstrators,” who likely all believe the J6 dust up was an “insurrection,” also believe they can break the law, as long as it’s for “their cause” of the day. Like Marlon Brando’s character, Johnny, in The Wild One says, when asked, “Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” He answered, “What’ve you got?”
Just like these radical leftists today. What are they protesting for or against? What’ve you got? Well, aside from pro-Hamas, there’s capitalism, colonialism, global cooling; global warming, climate change, the depleting ozone layer; green energy, beef production, veganism; religion, abortion, child sexual mutilation; self-defense/guns, cancel culture, free tuition; free food, free housing, free medical care—free Tibet (okay, that last one is valid), etc.
As needs to happen more these days, “A judge in Arizona has denied a motion that would have lifted the suspension of twenty students arrested last week amid anti-Israel protests.” They need to finally understand, there are consequences for their voluntary bad actions.
Would these administrators, faculty, and students support pro-KKK, peaceful protesters on campus for even the span of one heartbeat? We all know the answer to that. But because they are anti-Israel and anti-American, it’s just fine.
Worse than simply crimes, the pro-Hamas pretenders are also committing serious civil rights violations along with the property damage, restricting freedom of movement, and assaults. And calling for a true genocide (with chants like “from the river to the sea…”), historically, foreshadows crimes against humanity.
I can only wonder how many of these ignorant young folks will recoil with shame later (or sooner) in life when they realize the ugliness they participated in. How different are they from Nazi Brownshirts in 1930’s Germany? Not much, it seems. Although, it does seem that many of them are, as a parody song on Gutfeld on the FOX News Channel described, “whiney little bitches!”
Still, Gina Dimuro at allthatsinteresting.com wrote an article about the Brownshirts titled: “The Sturmabteilung: Hitler’s Unofficial Army of Thugs.” She wrote, “Literally ‘Storm Unit,’ the SA was once a group of specialized troops under Imperial Germany [WWI] — until Hitler assembled them en masse to intimidate his political opponents.”
Aren’t the Democrat militias, Antifa/BLM-cop-haters and (the newest “cause”) the pro-Hamas Jew-haters, while not exactly the equivalent of Nazi stormtroopers, still a modern-day FJB Democrats’ “unofficial army of thugs?”
Let me paraphrase myself from above: These thugs block sidewalks and roadways, illegally occupy private and public property, cause property damage, burglarize buildings, assault and prevent Jewish students from freely moving on campus. This is not an all-inclusive list of crimes done across our nation by these, um…, Democrats’ “unofficial army of thugs.”
To not clamp down on the anti-Semitism against Jewish students, especially after the atrocities committed in southern Israel on Oct. 7th, is appalling.
Hamas gunmen storming kibbutz in southern Israel.jpg (CCTV footage, Public Domain, Wikimedia)
The Nazi movement didn’t begin by shooting and killing Jews (and other undesirables). After all, the Nazi Party formed in 1923 and didn’t gain political power until 1932. I encourage everyone to read the Nazi anti-Jewish timeline of oppression at JewishVirtualLibrary.org. We all know about the later atrocities but just focus on the early stuff, and you’ll get my point about what’s happening right now.
For example, the motto of the Nazi Party publication Der Stürmer was “The Jews are our misfortune.” Anti-Semitic? Sure. But it seems relatively tame compared with today’s euphemistic chant, “from the river to the sea,” which implicitly calls for another Jewish genocide.
Nazi Brownshirts, 1930 Germany (Photo: Unknown, Creative Commons)
JewishVirtualLibrary.org shows that, by April 1st, 1933, the Nazi government was prohibiting Jewish students from attending schools and universities. For me, this immediately recalled the current pro-Hamas demonstrators not allowing Jewish students to access places on campus they have every right to go. Does anyone think if these pro-Hamas radicals had their way, they wouldn’t totally exclude Jews from campus? Of course, they would.
But worse, I thought about the professors protecting the anti-Israel demonstrators, and the administrators deactivating Jewish Columbia University professors’ credentials to access campus. And what about pro-Hamas “Brownshirts” at UCLA denying a Jewish student access to his campus?
His concerned mother reportedly called the university police. A dispatcher suggested she tell her son to “use another entrance.” When the student’s mother said she couldn’t believe the university was tolerating the demonstrators’ anti-Jewish crimes, the dispatcher chaffed at the accusation that they were “tolerating” the behavior. What would you call it?
Anti-Israel “Day of Resistance,” Columbus, Ohio (only 5 days after the Hamas slaughter in Israel) (Photo: Becker1999, Creative Commons)
One student, Eli Tsives, was articulate and passionate in his confrontation, as reported by Jewish Journal, with these latter-day Nazis trying to keep him from entering campus at the main entrance (symbolic of control). Later, Tsives took to Instagram, giving a spine-tingling speech he made against the pro-Hamas goons and in support of Israel and the Jewish people.
Tsives said, “Unlike the Pro-Hamas protestors, we actually have respect for our law enforcement officers who risk their own lives just to keep us safe.”
In response to these alleged abuses, many captured on video, UCLA’s president issued a statement, in part, saying they’d deploy more security. However, there are myriad reports from Jewish students across the country, that universities have instructed their security or police officers not to intervene. I’ve seen video showing some officers failing to act even to assaults—as if ordered not to act.
Everyone knows Edmond Burke’s old adage about evil prevailing when good men do nothing. That may apply to “good men and women,” but what about those cowards running today’s college campuses who’ve tolerated (supported) to some degree, this blatant, anti-Semitic bullshit?
I encourage everyone to at least skim through the Jewish Virtual Library timeline and ask yourself if this new Marx-Dem Party would do some of what the Nazis did if they were given half a chance. So much of the timeline shouts out to us from history not to repeat it.