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This is a curious article, with false premises and ironies aplenty.
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Montana State University students say they want to protect free speech, even for unpopular views. (Unpopular? Is this the standard for free speech?)
“I don’t particularly like what ‘angry Bible man’ has to say” when the preacher makes an annual visit to the Bozeman campus to harangue students (harangue: a scolding or a long or intense verbal attack; diatribe. 2. a long, passionate, and vehement speech, especially one delivered before a public gathering. 3. any long, pompous speech or writing of a tediously hortatory or didactic nature; sermonizing lecture or discourse. We see here that the reporter is injecting commentary by pejoratively describing a street preacher. It is out of place to do so in a news article.)
— but still he should be allowed to speak, says philosophy student Mike Dembek. (Mr. Dembek uses the word "allowed." This makes me wonder who he thinks should not be allowed to speak, and who has the power to make such determinations.)
Free speech, Dembek said, protected the rights of women suffragists, Vietnam War protestors and black civil rights advocates to make their voices heard.
He was one of three student panelists discussing free speech rights on Tuesday, as part of MSU’s recognition of Constitution Day.
Caitlin Borgman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, led the discussion. It was sponsored by the political science, history and philosophy departments and Renne Library, and attended by about 30 students and professors in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Building.
“Campuses exist to have robust speech,” Borgman said. (Do they existing to teach students, by any chance?)
Nationally, free speech rights have sparked heated controversy, from the University of California at Berkeley to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
At Berkeley, the liberal campus (Editorial descriptor.)
has spent about $1.4 million for security for three right-wing speakers, (Another editorial descriptor.)
and ended up canceling appearances by Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos when left-wing anarchists rioted. (The reporter seems to love to label people. But at least she is balanced. Typically reporters will label conservatives but not liberals.)
Those speakers now are scheduled to return to Berkeley for Free Speech Week, along with Steve Bannon, ex-chief strategist for President Donald Trump.
Right-wing commentators say they’re revealing the hypocrisy of left-leaning universities when they won’t allow unpopular views on campus. (Just to interpret this poorly written sentence, substitute the word "they" with "universities.
And by the way, we are not dealing with "unpopular views." Conservative views are mainstream views, with 36% of Americans identifying themselves as conservative versus 25% liberal.)
Defending the First Amendment rights — freedom of speech, of religion, of the press, of assembly and the right to petition the government — are core values of the ACLU, Borgman said. Free speech is “a very American idea,” she said, that is part of “what makes us a strong nation and a free nation.”
Yet defending free speech often means defending very unpopular ideas. (This is the third time the reported has mentioned "unpopular" speech, as if everything not liberal is unpopular.)
“Speech that doesn’t offend needs no protection,” said Franke Wilmer, political science department head. (This is false. All speech needs protection.)
High schools and colleges struggle to balance free speech rights with students’ safety, Borgman said. (They only struggle because they are reluctant to take action against violent leftist protesters. Probably because they sympathize with them.)
She pointed to two instances last year when Montana high school students brought Confederate flags to school. In Livingston, Park High banned the flag after its only black student enrolled and a white student displayed a large Confederate flag in his truck, saying he didn’t like black people. (That is, speech is apparently no longer protectable if it is offensive. That is, "unpopular."
The ACLU is a hypocrite.)
In Polson, a couple of white students were asked to take off T-shirts with Confederate flags and pro-Trump, white power slogans, because they were seen as targeting the school’s Native American students and making them unsafe. (Once again, there is no right to be offensive, in the ACLU's view.)
Borgman said the ACLU is representing Native American students at MSU-Northern, alleging discrimination before the Montana Human Rights Bureau. Sweetgrass Society students last year painted “#NoDAPL,” protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, on campus steps where student groups were allowed to put messages, and the college had it painted over. (Is this all one subject? I've read it a couple of times and can't tell if the college students are the same people as the Sweetgrass Society students. What exactly are they suing for? Did they paint the sign? Is painting something over the problem?)
Last month, the ACLU supported the Native American caucus of the Legislature when it called for the removal of a fountain in a Helena city park, dedicated to Confederate soldiers. It was removed in the wake of protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, led by neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists, who objected to removing a Confederate monument. The protests ended in the death of a woman counter-protester. (How exactly is removing an item of free speech defending free speech?)
In Helena about 20 people protested removing the fountain, some waving Confederate flags.
“That’s fine,” Borgman said. “That’s constitutionally protected.” (Oh, I get it. The protesters a free to protest the suppression of speech. The ACLU seems to draw their lines in very strange places.)
MSU student April Francis pointed out that Berkeley students protesting in the 1964 Free Speech Movement were fighting for the right to engage in political debate and activities, then banned on campus. (I wonder if there was any mention of the irony of Berkeley now suppressing speech?)
Francis repeated a famous quote, often attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” If unpopular views are not heard publicly, but are just pushed further underground, she said, they just become “more hateful.”
This is a curious article, with false premises and ironies aplenty.
-----------------------
Montana State University students say they want to protect free speech, even for unpopular views. (Unpopular? Is this the standard for free speech?)
“I don’t particularly like what ‘angry Bible man’ has to say” when the preacher makes an annual visit to the Bozeman campus to harangue students (harangue: a scolding or a long or intense verbal attack; diatribe. 2. a long, passionate, and vehement speech, especially one delivered before a public gathering. 3. any long, pompous speech or writing of a tediously hortatory or didactic nature; sermonizing lecture or discourse. We see here that the reporter is injecting commentary by pejoratively describing a street preacher. It is out of place to do so in a news article.)
— but still he should be allowed to speak, says philosophy student Mike Dembek. (Mr. Dembek uses the word "allowed." This makes me wonder who he thinks should not be allowed to speak, and who has the power to make such determinations.)
Free speech, Dembek said, protected the rights of women suffragists, Vietnam War protestors and black civil rights advocates to make their voices heard.
He was one of three student panelists discussing free speech rights on Tuesday, as part of MSU’s recognition of Constitution Day.
Caitlin Borgman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, led the discussion. It was sponsored by the political science, history and philosophy departments and Renne Library, and attended by about 30 students and professors in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Building.
“Campuses exist to have robust speech,” Borgman said. (Do they existing to teach students, by any chance?)
Nationally, free speech rights have sparked heated controversy, from the University of California at Berkeley to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
At Berkeley, the liberal campus (Editorial descriptor.)
has spent about $1.4 million for security for three right-wing speakers, (Another editorial descriptor.)
and ended up canceling appearances by Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos when left-wing anarchists rioted. (The reporter seems to love to label people. But at least she is balanced. Typically reporters will label conservatives but not liberals.)
Those speakers now are scheduled to return to Berkeley for Free Speech Week, along with Steve Bannon, ex-chief strategist for President Donald Trump.
Right-wing commentators say they’re revealing the hypocrisy of left-leaning universities when they won’t allow unpopular views on campus. (Just to interpret this poorly written sentence, substitute the word "they" with "universities.
And by the way, we are not dealing with "unpopular views." Conservative views are mainstream views, with 36% of Americans identifying themselves as conservative versus 25% liberal.)
Defending the First Amendment rights — freedom of speech, of religion, of the press, of assembly and the right to petition the government — are core values of the ACLU, Borgman said. Free speech is “a very American idea,” she said, that is part of “what makes us a strong nation and a free nation.”
Yet defending free speech often means defending very unpopular ideas. (This is the third time the reported has mentioned "unpopular" speech, as if everything not liberal is unpopular.)
“Speech that doesn’t offend needs no protection,” said Franke Wilmer, political science department head. (This is false. All speech needs protection.)
High schools and colleges struggle to balance free speech rights with students’ safety, Borgman said. (They only struggle because they are reluctant to take action against violent leftist protesters. Probably because they sympathize with them.)
She pointed to two instances last year when Montana high school students brought Confederate flags to school. In Livingston, Park High banned the flag after its only black student enrolled and a white student displayed a large Confederate flag in his truck, saying he didn’t like black people. (That is, speech is apparently no longer protectable if it is offensive. That is, "unpopular."
The ACLU is a hypocrite.)
In Polson, a couple of white students were asked to take off T-shirts with Confederate flags and pro-Trump, white power slogans, because they were seen as targeting the school’s Native American students and making them unsafe. (Once again, there is no right to be offensive, in the ACLU's view.)
Borgman said the ACLU is representing Native American students at MSU-Northern, alleging discrimination before the Montana Human Rights Bureau. Sweetgrass Society students last year painted “#NoDAPL,” protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, on campus steps where student groups were allowed to put messages, and the college had it painted over. (Is this all one subject? I've read it a couple of times and can't tell if the college students are the same people as the Sweetgrass Society students. What exactly are they suing for? Did they paint the sign? Is painting something over the problem?)
Last month, the ACLU supported the Native American caucus of the Legislature when it called for the removal of a fountain in a Helena city park, dedicated to Confederate soldiers. It was removed in the wake of protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, led by neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists, who objected to removing a Confederate monument. The protests ended in the death of a woman counter-protester. (How exactly is removing an item of free speech defending free speech?)
In Helena about 20 people protested removing the fountain, some waving Confederate flags.
“That’s fine,” Borgman said. “That’s constitutionally protected.” (Oh, I get it. The protesters a free to protest the suppression of speech. The ACLU seems to draw their lines in very strange places.)
MSU student April Francis pointed out that Berkeley students protesting in the 1964 Free Speech Movement were fighting for the right to engage in political debate and activities, then banned on campus. (I wonder if there was any mention of the irony of Berkeley now suppressing speech?)
Francis repeated a famous quote, often attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” If unpopular views are not heard publicly, but are just pushed further underground, she said, they just become “more hateful.”
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