Liberty
stcynic | April 22, 2006I have been effusively praising the president of Northern Kentucky University, Jim Votruba, for his understanding of the true nature of free speech and the way he handled the situation where a teacher led her students in destroying an anti-abortion display on that campus. But FIRE, which is rapidly becoming an indispensible organization at fighting for freedom on college campuses, points out that NKU still has a vague and highly problematic speech code, bad enough that FIRE has given them a "red light" rating in that regard. I'll post a long excerpt from their post on the subject below the…
stcynic | April 16, 2006Wow, this English professor who destroyed the anti-abortion display with a bunch of her students is quite a piece of work. In addition to her ridiculous statement that destroying the display was an exercise in free speech, how about this statement:
"Any violence perpetrated against that silly display was minor compared to how I felt when I saw it. Some of my students felt the same way, just outraged," Jacobsen said.
As if someone's outrage is the sole factor in determining whether one can destroy someone else's property. If you feel really mad when you pass by a church, can you stop and knock…
stcynic | April 14, 2006Thanks to Nick Matzke for finding this story about the situation at Northern Kentucky University, where an English professor led a group of students in destroying a perfectly legal anti-abortion display on the campus there. The story includes a picture of the professor tearing apart the display's main sign and shows all the crosses broken apart on the ground. The police say they're investigating it as felony theft and vandalism and I think they're absolutely right. It doesn't matter how offensive they found the display and it doesn't matter that the teacher felt "violated" by it. They had no…
stcynic | April 14, 2006Via David Bernstein at the Volokh Conspiracy comes this story about a college president who really gets it when it comes to free speech. A student group at Northern Kentucky University put up a display of hundreds of crosses on campus as a way to protest abortion, which they oppose. A professor at the school, British literature teacher Sally Jacobsen, actually encourages one of her classes to go out and destroy the display and they go and dump 400 crosses in the garbage. The professor, to say the least, is a bit confused about the meaning of free speech:
During a break in class, Jacobsen said…
stcynic | April 13, 2006Last night's South Park episode, as usual, contained a premise that was brilliant satire on multiple levels at the same time. First of all, they actually helped promote a show on another network, by having Kyle convince the head of the FOX network that he should show an episode of the Family Guy that includes a scene with Muhammed in it. Not an insulting scene, not a mocking scene, a totally innocuous scene where Muhammed hands something to the Family Guy.
Kyle tells the FOX executive, ""You can't do what he wants just because he's the one threatening you with violence...Yes, people can get…
stcynic | April 12, 2006I just realized I've neglected to discuss last week's stunning statement from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that he could not rule out President Bush authorizing the warranteless wiretapping of purely domestic calls in the US. This shouldn't really be a shock to anyone, as it is the logical next step in the administration's perception of its own powers as essentially limitless. If the administration believes that it has the inherent authority to arbitrarily suspend habeas corpus in specific cases as it sees fit and hold an American citizen indefinitely without filing charges against them…
stcynic | April 10, 2006The LA Times has a horribly shallow article with the headline "Chrisitans sue for right not to tolerate policies". The article discusses a suit against Georgia Tech's hate speech code and then lumps in a vast range of policies, some private and some public, from hate speech codes to anti-discrimination laws to diversity training workships.
Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she's a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.
Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable…
stcynic | April 1, 2006Eugene Volokh has been covering the controversy over NYU ordering the Objectivist Club not to show the famous Danish caricatures during a panel discussion about the Danish caricatures. Here's a link to all of his posts on the subject. Perhaps most importantly, he cites NYU's own policies that were clearly violated by their actions in this situation:
A. Commitment and Responsibilities of the University. New York University is committed to maintaining an environment where open, vigorous debate and speech can occur. This commitment entails encouraging and assisting University organizations that…
stcynic | March 30, 2006Yet another example of caving in to threats of violence from Islamic radicals:
Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries.
I'm beginning to think that many Americans don't really believe in free speech, and we know that the rest of the world doesn't care much about it. They believe in free speech as long as it's convenient or as long as it doesn't offend a protected group. There are people who want to destroy our right to speak…
stcynic | March 30, 2006It has been astonishing to me how so many member of the two American insitutions that should most vociferously speak out in favor of the free exchange of ideas - the universities and the media - have shrunk in the face of violent extremism and refused to show the infamous 12 Danish caricatures. It's one of the biggest stories in the world right now and it should be the subject of much discussion in both venues, yet most American news outlets have not bothered to show the caricatures so their readers or viewers can see what the controversy is about, and many universities have prohibited…
stcynic | March 29, 2006I cross posted my essay about Alan Keyes and his hypocrisy to Positive Liberty and just got a hilarious response from some wingnut named John Houk. I didn't want my regular readers to miss out on it, or the response to it. It's well worth the trip, trust me.
stcynic | March 29, 2006The Afghani Christian man, Abdul Rahman, who was just released from jail after charges of apostasy were dropped against him, has been granted amnesty by Italy. Why not by the US? Your guess is as good as mine. With the whackos threatening to kill him anyway, the US military should have taken the man into protective custody, flew him to the US and given him amnesty. But Italy granted amnesty and the Afghani parliament - you know, the government we set up, the one that relies on our protection in order to exist - is demanding that the man be prevented from leaving the country.
Afghan lawmakers…
stcynic | March 27, 2006Alan Keyes has a column at the Worldnutdaily about the Afghani man targeted for the death penalty for converting to Christianity. It sounds very much like something I might write on the subject of liberty and the need to protect it not only from dictators but from democratic majorities as well. I'll put a long quote from his column and my reaction below the fold:
The principle of democracy is majority rule. Does anyone deny that the overwhelming majority of Afghanistan's population is Muslim? It is also likely that a majority of the Afghan population supports the decision to bring charges…
stcynic | March 20, 2006I've never been an anti-UN guy. I've always had a realistic view of the UN as an organization that can be effective at things like small scale peacekeeping operations, refugee aid and moderating minor conflicts between nations. When it comes to major conflicts between the world's powers, the UN is terribly ineffective because it was designed to be - the world's great powers all have permanent veto power over the security council, so they can prevent any action they choose. So when I've heard the often-fevered anti-UN rhetoric from the right, I've pretty much laughed it off as more paranoid…
stcynic | March 7, 2006How's this for appeasement:
Franco Frattini, the European Union commissioner for justice, freedom and security, revealed the idea for a code of conduct in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. Mr Frattini, a former Italian foreign minister, said the EU faced the "very real problem" of trying to reconcile "two fundamental freedoms, the freedom of expression and the freedom of religion".
Millions of European Muslims felt "humiliated" by the publication of cartoons of Mohammed, he added, calling on journalists and media chiefs to accept that "the exercising of a right is always the assumption…
stcynic | March 6, 2006From the December 19, 2005 issue of National Review, in an article on "How to increase liberty in America", Bork goes Orwell on us. Jacob Sollum has the money quote:
"Liberty in America can be enhanced by reinstating, legislatively, restraints upon the direction of our culture and morality," writes the former appeals court judge, now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Censorship as an enhancement of liberty may seem paradoxical. Yet it should be obvious, to all but dogmatic First Amendment absolutists, that people forced to live in an increasingly brutalized culture are…
stcynic | March 1, 2006A group of writers and dissidents have issued a joint manifesto called Together facing the new totalitarianism, which has been published, appropriately, in the same Denmark newspaper that published the caricatures which have caused much violence around the world. The signers include Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasreen, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and several others whose lives are in constant danger from the fatwas issued by radical Islamist clerics. I will publish the full text of this manifesto, with which I agree fully, below the fold:
After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now…
stcynic | February 25, 2006Cathy Seipp has an interesting essay in the LA Times about a visit to City Lights, the legendary San Francisco book store and why, despite its long history of proudly promoting banned books, they refuse to carry Oriana Fallaci's The Force of Reason:
So, although my friend is no fan of Ward Churchill, the faux Indian and discredited professor who notoriously called 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns," he didn't really mind seeing piles of Churchill's books prominently displayed on a table as he walked in.
However it did occur to him that perhaps the long-delayed translation of Oriana Fallaci's new…
stcynic | February 23, 2006At the risk of being called arrogant for daring to tell another country what they should and shouldn't do (not that I really care, mind you - if it's arrogant to insist that liberty be protected everywhere at all times, then I'm proudly arrogant), here's yet another instance of our European allies throwing away free speech:
A German court on Thursday convicted a businessman of insulting Islam by printing the word "Koran" on toilet paper and offering it to mosques.
The 61-year-old man, identified only as Manfred van H., was given a one-year jail sentence, suspended for five years, and ordered…
stcynic | February 23, 2006For those who think that the whole Muhammed cartoon issue is just a European issue, let me give some examples of how the zeal to repress anything that someone might find offensive is spreading to American colleges. FIRE is reporting on a number of controversies, the latest of which is a student at the University of Chicago who faces possible expulsion from the dorms there for putting up a commentary about the controversy on his dorm room door with a sketch of Mohammed and the text Mo' Mohammed, Mo' Problems. He was forced to take it down and to apologize to a student who complained, but still…