With friends like these, free speech needs no enemies                            

by
DC Larson


"Whoever told you you only had to hear what didn't upset you?"
- Bill Maher

In the past couple of weeks, I've considered the state of free speech in contemporary culture.

My main focus was on liberals' enthusiasm in seeking to shut down displeasing voices. Those campaigns are less commented on, I found. Besides, liberals are generally thought to be open to debate.

How misleading assumptions can be.

Earlier this year, Maher rightly blasted Islamic intolerance and repression, including the stifling of open expression. Opponents immediately sought the comedian's disinvitation from an announced Berkeley College speaking engagement.

““The irony of the Berkeley situation" Maher shot back, "is I thought campuses were places where free speech was championed. And one of my problems with Islam is that they are not big on free speech–which so offended the Muslims at Berkeley, they wanted to ban my speech.

You know, I’m a liberal," he continued. "My message is: be a liberal. Find out what liberalism means and join up. Liberalism certainly should not mean squelching free speech...I would just say to all liberals: we should own the First Amendment the way the right-wingers own the Second.”

Other planned university speakers against whom organized 'disinvitation' efforts have been mounted include Hirsi Ali and George Will. It has become rather routine for ideologically motivated audiences to  shout down such controversial speakers as do appear. 

Then, too, there are the ongoing "Flush Rush" and "Ban Bossy" campaigns. The former would oust from his talk radio position an often disagreeable (by calculation, doubtless) right wing blowhard.

(How many times have we heard of citizens denied work during the McCarthy Era because of their political/cultural opinions?)

The latter is endorsed by Beyonce, Jane Lynch, Emma Watson, and the Girl Scouts, among other celebrity and corporate entities. Its goal is to force a change in the way we all speak. So much for individual freedom. 

And so there looms today an emerging illiberal attitude, a self-righteous intolerance that maintains quashing bad speech rather than disproving it with good is a legitimate step toward establishing social justice.

But make no mistake. The House of Justice cannot be erected with the tyrant's tools. 

It's a natural fact                                                                                    

by
DC Larson


Ooh look-a there ain't she pretty! 
Ooh look at her ain't that chick a beauty!
I like-a the dress, I like-a the hose,
I like-a the hat, get a load-a that pose!

"Ooh! Look-a there! Ain't she pretty!"
- Clarence Todd, Carmen Lombardo


Frequently quoted is Emma Goldman's clever admonition: "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution!"

In the same spirit of hefting high the banner of fun-in-the-midst-of-seriousness, I would tweak Goldman's phrase: If I can't girl-watch, I don't want to be part of your 'progress.'

Some today are of the bent that any reference to attractiveness or sexuality, regardless of complimentary nature, is demeaning. An act of hostility. 

The advocacy site StopSexualHarrassment.org endorses a definition of harrassment that groups mere "looks" with obvious potential offenses: “By looks, words, and gestures, the man asserts his right to intrude on the women’s attention, defining her as a sexual object, and forcing her to interact with him.”- Micaela di Leonardo, author of “Political Economy of Street Harassment” (1981).

(All that, by 'looking?')

To the cause-fraught minds advocating such twaddle, each innocent and benign compliment
equals 'hate-speech.' A wink is tantamount to a rape. (Think I'm exaggerating? 'Stare rape' is a phrase in present vogue among the grimly self-righteous.)

Two purported examples of girl-admiring men as victimizers tuned up in recent headlines. 

* The viral video "10 hours walking in New York City as a woman" captured street harrassment. 
  Producers showed their bias and undid the endeavor's soundness by packing innocent 
  salutations under the harrassment umbrella. 

* A second viral video, "Drunk girl in public" portrayed calculating men seeking to take advantage of a 
  damsel in distress on LA's Hollywood Boulevard.

That harrassment abounds is a reality whose end cannot come quickly enough. (It hardly needs to be contrived.) But to associate appreciative notice with caveman crudity overlooks that the two are adversaries and not confederates. 

Respectful regard has never been the fellow of predation. The two entertain distinct ambitions. 

Each apparently damning video was soon exposed as misrepresentative-by-design. Media sources as diverse as Slate and the Huffington Post were critical. And at least some actors who'd participated admitted the falseness.

All facets of a woman should be esteemed -- no one to the slighting of another. Natural abilities, studied and honed qualities such as intellect, integrity, philosophical character, and professional accomplishment are to be acknowledged and respected. 

And so is beauty. It's a natural fact - and one I quite like!

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