Posted by David Bernstein:
How Hate Speech Rules Backfired
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_11_12-2006_11_18.shtml#1163475865
[1]on Canadian Jews:
Benjamin Netanyahu and Daniel Pipes cannot equally freely, or
fearlessly, speak at any progressive, multicultural, Canadian
campus. No pro-Zionist can. But just about every self-serving
anti-Zionist demagogue and Israel-demonizing progressive ideologue
can. Hate is whatever those with the power to disrupt, destroy, and
silence, say it is. And so, only the Jewish voice is a campus
security concern. Hate censorship has been hijacked. A shelter
against illegitimate promotion of hate has been turned into a sword
against legitimate exercise of Jewish voice.
How could it be otherwise? Censorship is force not talk. It is not
about demonstration of right, but an exercise in might. Might is a
double edged sword. In the end, the sharper edge, as is the nature
of might, belongs to the more belligerent, or the more popular, not
the more tolerant or the more civil. The popular have sympathy. The
belligerent have force. The tolerant, and civil, have only words.
By legitimating hate censorship, Jews have robbed themselves of
rights to their own words and armed those of their intolerant
adversaries.
References
1. http://www.jewishmag.com/107mag/freespeech/freespeech.htm
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