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.