Some hates are more equal than others
The Volokh Conspiracy and the Foundation For Individual Rights in Education take on (here and here) what Eugene Volokh calls Tufts University's decision to punish a student newspaper for blasphemy against Islam. The National Review weighs in.
This is particularly interesting because a few days ago, the Democratic Daily argued that the federal hate crimes bill, in which certain motives were aggravating circumstances in criminal acts, was First Amendment neutral.
... his legislation clearly provides for protection of all First Amendment activity that is protected in the Constitution. This is about violent crimes not thought. This is not about religious freedom being impinged upon; this is about individuals suffering from society’s neglect while organized hate groups act against them.
While that might be technically true, the entire debate over "hate crimes" has a larger political context. One might expect CAIR to reject hate crimes legislation because of the effect it might have on Islamic teachings on gays, lesbians and Jews, for example, but they welcomed it. "The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today congratulated the US House of Representatives on its passage of the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act." I think this is because there is an expectation that some attitudes are likely to be regarded hate crimes than others. In the case of the Tufts student newspaper article for example, one wonders whether the result would have been different had the target of the satire been the Church of the Latter Day Saints.
Part of the problem I think, is that the meaning of the "hate crime" rule will be parsed by dominant cultural compiler. The words "hate" provide the data, but the semantics of it were provided, in this case by Tufts University. And the danger in assuming that social attitudes will stay the same is that they don't; and "hate" may some day come to mean things which this generation never intended. It is ironic that when some of the 60s generation grew to maturity they became everything they hated.
posted by wretchardthecat at 5/11/2007 04:36:00 PM
20 Comments:
This article has
___bigotry
___stupidity
___censorship
___stupidity
___bigotry
It just doesn’t get better than this. And it’s European.
Vegas run by gays and Jews, says magician
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Oh baby give some of that old time Sharia! Cannot wait for the Caliphate...
Where do we get fitted for the Dhimmi clothes? Can I choose the color of the identifying mark?
Smack down…the idea that there exists something called Moderate Islam.
test
Hate Crimes...man if we cannot fight the idea of Islam we are well and truly screwed. And that is exactly why CAIR is so happy to see that dumb law be brought up by the Dhimmicrats.
One more thing to be sick about...
One of these days we are going to have to ge pissed off and do something about the left then do something about our budding Islamic Overlords. And no that doesnt only mean the Saudis...it means any country harboring terrorists. Exactly like what Bush first started out saying.
Test positive...
In re "Some hates": Bullying institutions, fringe-left politicos, femmers and associated ethnic, racial, gender-bending conspiracists uniformly take refuge in smarmy collectivist duckspeak that absolves them from responsibility for the libel and slander to which their degraded rhetoric constantly defaults.
For myself, I will publicly comment on any topic, about anyone or anything, at any time. For example, calling Islamic torturers and murderers for what they are is indeed "hate speech": We hate Mullahdom's torturers and murderers, and craven wretches in academia or elsewhere are welcome to bleat piteously like lambs to slaughter-- rid of them, this world would be a better place.
Batiste Fired
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DJs Fired
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This is disgusting, Tufts should be ashamed. They will not be able to shutdown anywhere near enough of the ever-growing millions of voices exposing the truth of violent Jihad.
Eventually I believe, there will be more legal eagles, lawyers and judges, willing to fight this and stand up to this and bring it more out into the open. Come and get us you Communist Multicultural fascists, after you go after the preaching of extreme Islam as a hate crime.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
don't criticize religion
none should ever reform
just let them get worse
.
"It is ironic that when some of the 60s generation grew to maturity they became everything they hated."
Leftist idiots?
Maybe, I'm being naive, but I would think the ACLU would be all over this.
It is sadly amusing in way, that the left in their usual fashion cast anyone who doesn't agree with them as being part of some "hate" group.
And Vegas is run by the Mormons.
If Vegas is run by morons, they are highly successful morons. And what is to be said for the millions of visitors who make the morons so highly successful?
I'm not sure you're trying to be clever or just misread what I wrote. Mormons, not morons. As to the morons who make the Mormons rich, that's a whole other story.
Funny (or is it scary) the role reversal here: its the Right (so to speak) who are using the Unlimited Free Speech defense in the Tuft's case, with the Left arguing that the limits of free speech don't extend to things that offend THEIR religion (anything that is anti-Christian, anti-family, anti-US, etc.)
The free speech protections of the American Constitution logically make sense only where there is a tacit agreement that any politcal arrangements put in place are revocable. Communists, Muslims, and other unrevocable totalitarians are NOT permissable (perhaps they can be tolerated, as long as they remain relatively harmless, peacable and small minorities) since we would expect them to remove these very protections (and many others) from the Constitution should they rise to power.
Shouldn't the Right be claiming here that Islam, since it rejects both the rights of free speech AND freedom of religion, is Unconstitional and therefore excluded from the protections of the Constitution?
If the text of the Tufts student paper's ad had been part of an Islam 101 class at Tufts, would the administration have censured the teacher?
BTW, do smokers, (non-celebrity) SUV drivers, hetero couples(!) with more than two children, non-recyclers, et. al., have recourse to the provisions of the "hate" crimes bill?
I’ve always considered the term “hate crime” to be redundant. To cause harm to someone whether physically or emotionally is hateful by definition, it doesn’t make sense to me to elevate one motivation over another. One is just as equally dead, whether the perpetrator did out of malice for some special category of victim or for money. To extend this term to speech is just another example of elites creating a right not to be offended. What is truly terrifying is that this kind of extension can be used to shut down sites such as this, and perhaps throw you in jail. Especially, if the UN gets its hands on ICANN.
To my mind, this tendency of the left to elevate some groups at the expense of another is a legacy of Romanticism – the Noble Savage, Gaia, et al and post Colonial guilt. How else to explain giving Islam a pass at the expense of Western Civilization and Christianity.
"Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in a way of feeling." Baudelaire.
I must be right because it makes me feel better about myself.
gdude said: ” BTW, do smokers, (non-celebrity) SUV drivers, hetero couples(!) with more than two children, non-recyclers, et. al., have recourse to the provisions of the "hate" crimes bill?”
All offensive people (shoot I belong in all those groups except I have one kid!).
It does not take a rocket scientist to notice the conflict between those who govern our institutions using political correctness as their guiding light and that of society's fundamentally predominant concern of protecting human life.
In fact there is assuredly a radical reversal in the way those who've risen to the top of society's institutions have gone about, ostensibly, protecting its members.
Of significant note is that which used to be called constructive criticism wound up in the cross-hairs of the heads of our institutions.
Here we have institutional dunderheads (at best) protecting some groups, and allegedly the wider public, by censoring information about the rotten record of the complainant group's dangerous fellow travelers.
Essentially the institution that is Tufts University cares more about the offended feelings of its current pet group than it does for the safety of the individuals that keep Tufts in business: its students.
It is coincidental that I published only yesterday The Need to Place Political Correctness in the Crosshairs that was prompted by the misguidedness of another institution, MLB, which cares far more about deflecting criticism of the behaviors of its players that it does about its players being saved from the consequences of that same behavior.
The bigger point I made was how really dangerous political correctness is, and that it's best stopped before it goes too far. This story about Tufts appears to be pushing the threat even deeper.
I take it for granted that my readers understand how cuckoos proliferate. What I have observed is we have had laid into our cultural nest the cuckoo we have come to know as Political Correctness.
Since PC firt appeared, that cuckoo has been killing off nearly every humane inclination to redirect a fellow human being from off a path leading to disaster. And that goes for our society's path as well.
Nearly every time I see a story about the Left's outrage for some questionable group, and usually at the expense of one or two lone individuals, I can't help but recall this other poignant observation.
One of the sources of the inhuman "strength" of the Left is its refusal to acknowledge the existence of anything smaller than a mass noun. Rhetorical service to the people, masses, workers, peasants; the poor and the downtrodden are objects worthy of the Left; but love, pity and sorrow for individuals is sentiment beneath contempt. -- Wretchard Easy to Be Hard, Easy to Be Cold
pascal fervor,
Thanks for the link to your site.
"Rhetorical service to the people, masses, workers, peasants; the poor and the downtrodden are objects worthy of the Left"
These are abrastractions to someone of that mindset. There is never a face that is applied to those terms.
I suppose one who thinks that way, would assume that because I'm a person and I think this (insert doctrinaire statement here), the "masses" must think it also. It's simply narcissism.
You're welcome Allen.
And yes, Chavo. Wretchard has written a good number of bon mots. When he wrote that he really nailed the illness that infects the Left and all those it misleads. I obviously have found it to be one of his most memorable.
Well done Richard!
Are there any lawyers on this blob? If so, perhaps one of them can enlightne me. How can a university, by what looks like admnistrative fiat, trump state and federal law? University speech codes are un-Constitutional on their face. How is that they still stand? Have they never been challenged?
Politcal correctness seems based on a radically subjective view of the human experience: we are what we feel. When everything is subjective, others cease to have their own, independent existance and can be handled in whatever way feels good at the moment.
Or am I just another left-brained, evolutionary dead-end?
Looks like TPS "spoke Truth to Power" and Power is having a hard time of it.
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