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‘Free Speech’ A Right-Wing Rallying Cry
This would be fine, of course, were they, in fact, in favor of free speech. But, as they scream “free speech” to the world, they’re busy censoring textbooks and banning books from libraries, and complaining about “cancel culture” when the rest of us react to things said and done by today’s right wing. What they actually want, it turns out, is a country in which “we (the right wing) can say what we want (true or false, hateful or not), without adverse consequences of any sort, and you (everyone else) must conform what you say to our requirements (so we never have to be exposed to content we do not want to see/hear/read).” No, it’s not “free speech” by any rational meaning of the term, but there it is.
So it was not a surprise to read Patricia Michl’s exhortation for “free speech” in the Dec./Jan. Bar News. It soon becomes clear that this is not a cry for stopping censorship; rather, it’s a cry for no blowback from the rest of us to the speech/actions of the right: “Consider the censorship attempts that are presently afoot: fact checking that leads to canceling and de-platforming people and ideas, heckling and cancellation of speakers on college campuses, attempts to criminalize certain topics as ‘hate speech,’ online shadow banning and filing defamation lawsuits to silence one’s opponents.” Tellingly, Ms. Michl neglects to call out efforts throughout red America to whitewash (pun intended) America’s shameful legacy (to this day) of slavery and racism; she doesn’t seem the least bit concerned by book-banning or censoring textbooks to remove “distasteful” (read “embarrassing” or actual scientific) content; and other methods used by the right to tamp down on actual free speech aren’t mentioned. Yes, she really does demonize fact-checking; astonishing, isn’t it?
One would have hoped that a lawyer would have a better understanding of what “freedom of speech” actually means, and what it doesn’t. But I suppose that politics trump reality, all too often, in today’s America. Alas.
Mark de Regt, Redmond
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