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Title: Donald Trump Is a Greater Threat to Free Speech Than the Campus Left
Source:
Reason
URL Source: http://reason.com/blog/2016/12/02/d ... mp-is-a-greater-threat-to-free
Published: Dec 2, 2016
Author: Robby Soave
Post Date: 2016-12-03 12:07:30 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 5475
Comments: 11
President-Elect Donald Trump recently tweeted that people who burn the American flag should be put in jail or even lose their American citizenship. This ignorant, despicable statement should make a plain truth even more obvious: Trump will not defend free speech from the forces of censorship—he represents the forces of censorship. Over at National Review, Katherine Timpf wonders who is "worse" for free speech: Trump or "campus snowflakes"? Her article implies that Trump may well be worse. "No doubt, a lot of people voted for Donald Trump because they wanted to put a stop to the 'safe space' culture that's running rampant on college campuses across the country," she writes. "I'm just not so sure he's the man to do it." I'll go a step further: we can be pretty sure. Trump is as thin-skinned and easily-offended as the most delicate leftist student activist—safe spaces and all. But at least the social justice left is largely confined to college campuses. Trump, on the other hand, is in control of the entire federal government. We know that Trump thinks people who speak out against him or say things he doesn't like should be punished. He has routinely threatened to jail journalists for doing their jobs. He wants to use the powers of the presidency to make it easier for him to sue his critics out of business. Everyone who sincerely thought Trump would destroy political correctness and restore the primacy of the First Amendment was deluding themselves. He has never cared about anyone's right to speak, unless he happened to like the speaker. Trump is an embodiment of the antithesis of free speech: if he does not agree with what you say, he may challenge your right to say it. Yes, a President Hillary Clinton would have been just as bad on free speech. Yes, Clinton has gone to even greater lengths to prohibit flag burning. Yes, Clinton thinks her political opponents shouldn't be able to make a movie that criticizes her. She won't be president, and that's great. It's a win for the First Amendment. But Trump will be president, and that's still a loss. It means libertarians and conservatives who support unfettered free speech have a responsibility to denounce him at least as vehemently as they denounce the campus left. Trump's flag-burning comments fit a pattern of disrespect for the First Amendment.
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#2. To: Deckard (#0)
Our speech has been censored by the Left for the better part of the generation. The Left has set the rules of what is "acceptable" and what is "not acceptable", and what speech has "consequences" - both career and legal. The Left has lost power. Now the Right determines what the boundaries of speech are. The Right has different views of what and where the limits lie. Some aspects of speech that the Left oppresses, such as religious speech, will be much more open and free under the Right. Other aspects of speech that the Left celebrates, such as flag burning, will be suppressed by the Right. Elections have consequences. The Left has always known that, which is why they cheat so much. They failed to govern successfully, so they have lost power. Now it's the Right's turn. We'll see whether or not the Right can resist the urge to become oppressive and incompetent, like the Left has been. That the Left panics at everything the Right says is very much like the Right bleeding out the eyes at everything the Left says about religion. In the past few years we've seen Clinton Derangement Syndrome, Bush Derangement Syndrome and Obama Derangement Syndrome, as childish people of the Left and the Right, respectively, lose their faculty of adult reasoning and just start to scream like little fat girls having hissy fits because they don't LIKE the guy in charge. Now it's the Left's turn to have Trump Derangement Syndrome - TDS. And yes, TDS will indeed be quite tedious for the next several years. They'll scream, and the county will move on.
Hooray! Now it's our turn! Yeah I guess censorship of speech is OK as long as it's "our side" doing it. Trump cultists are the new Bush-Bots.
Flag burning ain't speech.
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#5. To: Vicomte13 (#2)
Our speech has been censored by the Left for the better part of the generation.
#6. To: Deckard (#5)
I guess censorship of speech
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