By Rich Lowry
Friday, April 28, 2017
Because the California National Guard couldn’t be
mobilized in time, Ann Coulter had to withdraw from giving a speech at
Berkeley.
If you take it seriously, that’s the import of UC
Berkeley’s decision to do everything it could to keep the conservative
provocateur from speaking on campus over safety concerns.
“If somebody brings weapons, there’s no way to block off
the site, or to screen them,” the chancellor of the university said of
Coulter’s plan to go ahead and speak at an open-air forum after the school
canceled a scheduled talk.
The administrator made it sound as if Coulter would have
been about as safe at Berkeley as she would have been addressing a meeting of
MS-13 — and he might have been right.
We have entered a new, much less metaphorical phase of
the campus-speech wars. We’re beyond hissing, or disinviting. We’re no longer
talking about the heckler’s veto, but the
masked-thugs-who-will-burn-trash-cans-and-assault-you-and-your-entourage veto.
Coulter is a rhetorical bomb thrower, which is an
entirely different thing than being a real bomb thrower. Coulter has never
tried to shout down a speaker she doesn’t like. She hasn’t thrown rocks at
cops. She isn’t an arsonist. She offers up provocations that she gamely defends
in almost any setting with arguments that people are free to accept, or reject,
or attempt to correct.
In other words, in the Berkeley context, she’s the
liberal. She believes in the efficacy of reason and in the free exchange of ideas.
Her enemies do not.
Indeed, the budding fascism that progressives feared in
the Trump years is upon us, although not in the form they expected. It is
represented by the black-clad shock troops of the “antifa” movement who are
violent and intolerant, and easily could be mistaken for the street fighters of
the extreme Right in 1930s Europe. That they call themselves anti-fascist
speaks to a colossal lack of self-awareness.
It is incumbent on all responsible progressives to reject
this movement, and — just as important — the broader effort to suppress
controversial speech. This is why former Democratic National Committee chairman
Howard Dean’s comments about hate speech not being protected by the First
Amendment were so alarming. In Dean’s defense, he had no idea what he was
talking about, but he was effectively making himself the respectable voice of
the rock throwers.
Dean’s view was that “Berkeley is within its rights to
make the decision that it puts their campus in danger if they have her there.”
This justification, advanced by the school itself, is profoundly wrongheaded.
It is an inherently discriminatory standard, since the
Berkeley College Republicans aren’t given to smashing windows and throwing
things when an extreme lefty shows up on campus, which is a near-daily
occurrence.
It would deny Coulter something she has a right to do
(speak her mind on the campus of a public university) in reaction to agitators
doing things they don’t have a right to do (destroy property, among other acts
of mayhem).
It would suppress an intellectual threat, i.e., a
dissenting viewpoint, and reward a physical threat. This is perverse.
For now there is a consensus in favor of free speech in
the country that is especially entrenched in the judiciary. The anti-fa and
other agitators aren’t going to change that anytime soon. But they could
effectively make it too burdensome for certain speakers to show up on campus,
and over time more Democrats like Dean could rationalize this fact by arguing
that so-called hate speech doesn’t deserve First Amendment protection.
So, it isn’t enough for schools like UC Berkeley to say
that they value free speech, yet do nothing to punish disrupters and throw up
their hands at the task of providing security for controversial speakers. If
everyone else gets safe space at UC Berkeley, Coulter deserves one. If the
anti-fa are willing to attack free speech through illegal force, the
authorities should be willing to defend it by lawful force.
Heck, if necessary, call out the National Guard.
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