We Seem to Be Re-Learning Free Speech Principles From Scratch
And at a VERY slow rate
Watching the United States — the home of the First Amendment — struggle to respond to student protests has been like watching Albert Einstein struggle to complete the “get Grimace to the fries” maze on the back of a Happy Meal. How did we get here? How did things devolve so badly that pretty-straight-forward free speech issues are treated like unsolvable puzzles? I’m one of those highly punchable “it’s complicated” dweebs, but for once, I’m singing a different tune: This is actually not that complicated. As political issues go, determining which rights protesters do and don’t have is basically a layup. The fact that we are not only missing that metaphorical layup, but also having our pants fall down, soiling ourselves, and yelling “Mommy, help!” as the ball clanks off the bottom of the rim demonstrates how badly our institutional knowledge of free speech has degraded.
The first important principle is that in America, you’re allowed to say offensive and dumb stuff. Some protesters have, without a doubt, taken “offensive” and “dumb” to bold new horizons. I wrote last week about how the written down and frequently reiterated position of some of the main protest groups is that Israel has no right to exist (the main group at Columbia put that idea in writing again on Monday). If you’re looking for offensive speech, these protests have got you covered: They are to horrific statements what Hickory Farms is to smoked cheese in baskets.
Unfortunately, this has caused much of our discussion to focus on the mostly irrelevant question of whether the protesters are antisemitic. Conservative media is full of protesters saying terrible things — how long before Fox News just makes a show called Get A Load Of This Clown with Some Mean Blonde Lady?1 Apologists on the left have responded by explaining why, for example, the mob throwing stuff at Jewish students while yelling “Zionists aren’t welcome on campus!” is actually making a nuanced point about West Bank settlements. It’s the same Racism Gotcha Game that we’ve been playing for years, but the roles are reversed: The left is on the defensive, and the right is trying to tie the worst statements by the worst people to all protesters, fancy pants universities, and — in their dream scenario — Joe Biden.