You Can Look at the Menu But You Just Can’t Eat
June 26th, 2012 - 10:28 am
Sandra Fluke — remember her? — has a few things to say about free speech. She’s against it:
… there are distinctions between one’s ability to express an opinion versus one’s ability to use F.C.C.-regulated airwaves to do so, and also one’s ability to engage in speech versus one’s ability to engage in slander.
You can say whatever you like, so long as nobody can hear you. Reminds me of President Obama’s Keystone XL plan, where you can build the pipeline, so long as it doesn’t reach the oil.
Progressivism has become dependent on its victims’ ignorance. Which goes a long way towards explaining why they’ve taken over the public schools, and fight so viciously against vouchers.
Gee, a censorious lefty?
I’m SHOCKED!
Abolish the FCC’s regulation of everything except frequency allocation (and dramatically reduce that), problem solved.
(I mean, she’s right about actual slander, though I suspect her use of the term might not exactly comport with the legal one.
But slander and libel and the like aren’t exactly the same as “stuff the FCC was granted power to regulate most of a century ago for unrelated and mostly archaic practical reasons”…)
Scratch a liberal and you’ll find a Stalinist underneath every time.
I remember having a conversation with a British leftist (Labour Party) about the nature of political debate. It went like this:
Her: “I’m all for political debate, it’s how we can find truth through the dialectic.”
Me: “Yeah, me too. I like having a plethora of voices in the media from all sides.”
Her: “But that means Fox News! I hate them, and they should be banned!”
Me: “Didn’t you just call for debate? Wouldn’t that be censorship and the forced shutdown of a viewpoint you don’t like for the sake of vanity politics?”
Her: “Well, yeah…I guess.”
And then she shut up when it dawned on her that she’s actually a totalitarian in a skirt.
What do Lefties mean when they decry “hate speech”… simply any speech that THEY hate.
“there are distinctions between one’s ability to express an opinion versus one’s ability to use F.C.C.-regulated airwaves to do so”
No, there is not. Freedom of speech means the government (like the FCC) cannot stop you from speaking out. By contrast, I, as a private citizen, may refuse to give you a platform, as long as it is my platform.
Fluke was just engaging in sophistry. I think she, like other Leftists, knows what freedom of speech means. They just hate the concept, because it gets in their way, which is, of course, the purpose of it.
They cannot just come out and say that the opposition are all poopyheads and should not be allowed to talk. A big part of the reason for that is all the screaming they did back when they were less mainstream, when they were the lunatic fringe. They did not want to get shut down themselves. “Censorship!”, they cried. After decades of that as a founding principle, and because it is a tool they still need, they cannot call for censorship themselves, however much they desire it. So, they engage in sophistry. “It’s not really censorship.”
Freedom of speech is a shield which defends both ways.
Has this 30-year old woman managed to figure out how to get to CVS for some “protection”? Unsuccessful 14-year old boys have managed to do this for almost a century without much problem.Suspect they may have more sex before 30 than Ms. Fluke has and some even marry and attain gainful employment before 3o, but I digress. Ms. Fluke needs the power and Treasury of the federal government. to so accomplish this difficult situation. Some cities like New York even give condoms away. And this is someone Obama describes as a role model for his daughters. If my sons are still unproductive nonworking whiny professional students at 30 I will hit either of ‘em in the head with hard objects repeatedly.