It’s the right of the people to shut down speakers.
Sunsara Taylor
Co-founder of Refuse Fascism
September 13, 2017
UC Berkeley free speech in spotlight over super-tight security plans
[No. It is not a “the right of the people”. It is a conspiracy to infringe the of rights others and it is a felony which under some conditions, some plausible in the current context, are punishable by death. It is my hope that any such crimes are vigorously prosecuted, and severely punished.—Joe]
The article’s author raises the question “How left must a speaker be to avoid causing a riot in Berkeley?” Thanks to Nancy Pelosi, we have some idea of the answer: “to the left of Nancy Pelosi.”
People shutting down speakers is not a right, but the heckler’s veto does have a long history worldwide. But your use of violence to stop the speech of others means the speaker’s arguments are most likely better than any you can command. This is beside the point when the violence starts, however.
The left has always asserted a “right” to coercive power. It’s the main point which separates the authoritarian systems from the American system. The left is thus decidedly anti-American.
Examples abound;
The second amendment, say the authoritarians, is a “collective right”, meaning you can’t have guns but the state can use guns to disarm you.
Essentially they’re now saying that the first amendment is a collective right, meaning you can’t speak freely and they can use force to shut you up.
Their founding tenets oppose individual choice. They don’t trust you to make your own business decisions, to hire the right people, etc., they don’t trust you to spend your own money, to educate your own children, they don’t trust you to buy the right vehicle, they don’t trust you with guns, and so on and on and on. Neither can they afford to trust you to vote.
Eventually, as in Venezuela, they get around to taking the vote away from you. That process is already well under way in the U.S., and it will continue as long as our extreme tolerance for authoritarianism lasts. The left will say they’re protecting democracy, that the choice of the people is a collective one, meaning they’ll make the choices for you. Thus we will end up with The People’s Republic of America which will decay into mass starvation and active purges just like all the others. And, just like all the other classic, utterly predictable failures, we will have brought it upon ourselves by tolerating and appeasing the shitheads.
We love authority too much to remember our principles.
“Yeah yeah yeah; principles. Principles are fine and all, but LOOK at the beautiful authority and all the beautiful things “WE” can do with it…”
And thus civilizations die, as ours surely will.
“taking the vote away from you … is already well under way in the U.S.” — exactly. That is the reason for the push to having illegals vote, which is the reason for the fight against voter ID.
The people have the right to refuse to attend, to ask pointed questions when/if the floor is opened for questions, and/or to engage in their own speech on their own time to make counterpoints (note: this does NOT mean disrupting others’ speech or blocking the path in/out of the venue. It does NOT mean violence. It CAN mean peaceful protest/assembly, e.g. holding signs outside, that does not disrupt or prevent others from attending).
I don’t understand why this is so difficult for some people to understand.
Then again, I can remember a time when people would host/attend speeches (and also read books) BECAUSE the speakers were controversial, if only to see what all the fuss was about and to hear it from the horse’s mouth, as it were. Apparently those were the last days of that ethos.
“I don’t understand why this is so difficult for some people to understand.”
The answer is that you’re starting from the wrong premise. This isn’t a case of misunderstanding. This is a case of evil people who want to impose their own brand of dictatorship, including thought dictatorship, on everyone else. And we’re standing in the way, with our insistence on such notions as freedom of speech and individual liberty.
Their goal is a government of the form run by Hitler or Stalin or Mao. “The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.” — Leon Trotsky, 1937