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Why Leftism Can Never Truly Support the Concept of Free Speech

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Commentators keep on pointing out examples of the Left’s antagonism toward free speech as if this were inconsistent with its first principles. It’s not. Leftism cannot be for free speech. Why? Because of what political philosopher Eric Voegelin recognized as the Gnostic character of its first principles.

Speech depends on the one-to-one correspondence between external realities and communicable concepts. Speech is reality’s witness and herald. What happens when you deny the fabric of external reality, as Gnosticism does? Or when, as leftism believes, objective reality is the projection of psychic and systemic forces by retrograde powers? . . .

Philosophically, Gnosticism sees speech as the tool by which demiurgic powers establish their corrupt systems, institutions, and social arrangements. We might think we’re just reflecting the binary reality of the sexes when we use the pronouns “he” or “she.” In reality, we’re stooges of that oppressive demiurge entrenching his tyranny, the sex binary.

All speech suffers the same judgment. It’s all about entrenching the existing power structures evolved over time through the distillation of human experience embodied in tradition. A white male cannot speak beyond the prison cell of his whiteness, maleness, and property ownership. Letters are fetters. His every word projects a cosmic architecture favorable to his own power quest. Language can only be his linguistic rape of those without power. All this, of course, he knows nothing about, because he’s un-woke.

Gnostics were the first to reduce all perceived reality to a network of power relationships. Archon is Greek for “power.” One is born under the influence of these power systems — his family system, his local culture and nation state, his religion, the various economic and social systems of his society — and from birth his mind marinates in the language propping up these systems. It’s like the Gnostic Carpocratians claiming “mine” and “thine” lock one in the delusion of private property. (Read more from “Why Leftism Can Never Truly Support the Concept of Free Speech” HERE)

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Leftist Site Runs INSANE Piece Bashing Defenders of Free Speech

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. . .In a bizarre piece lamenting a new coalition of “far-right” figures rallying around the right to freedom of expression, journalist James Poulter pouts: The “far-right” is “uniting to defend their right to spout bulls*** to whoever will listen.” . . .

Of course, even if these “far-right” figures, or anyone else for that matter, wanted to spread subjectively-deemed “racist garbage,” that, too, should be protected from government censorship and punishment if you actually believe in freedom of expression. A wild concept, I know.

Poulter goes on to identify Tommy Robinson, Martin Sellner, Brittany Pettibone, and Lauren Southern as the “far-right” subjects of his scorn. For their controversial speech, Sellner and Pettibone were deported from the U.K. and Southern was stopped from entering the country under the Terrorism Act. Robinson subsequently held a rally in celebration of free speech at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park.

After acknowledging these instances and the stream of censorship occurring on college campuses, Poulter mocks the notion that freedom of speech is under attack at all.

“All of these incidents, combined with the disruption of some talks at universities, have convinced the far-right that their right to free speech is under attack. Robinson even released a video claiming, in characteristically understated manner, that he ‘won’t be around for much longer,'” he writes. (Read more from “Leftist Site Runs INSANE Piece Bashing Defenders of Free Speech” HERE)

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Police Tell Student Activists Their ‘Free Speech’ Is Scaring Other Students

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In yet another test of the U.S. Constitution’s protected freedom of speech, the Constitution Club at Southern Illinois University (SIU) inflated a giant beach ball and asked students to come by, grab a sharpie, and write whatever they felt like writing on the ball.

The students’ free speech rights exercise was quickly interrupted by campus police who informed the club members they had received complaints about the ball and the group would need to stop their activities.

According to Campus Reform, the reason SIU chose to attempt to stop the demonstration was that campus police said the students did not go through the proper channels to be able to hold the demonstration:

Executive Director of University Marketing and Communications Doug McIlhagga telling Campus Reform that the activists were in violation of the university’s policy “governing freedom of expression and demonstration activities.”

“The demonstrators didn’t follow the proper University procedure for a public forum by going through the Vice Chancellor of Administration’s Office for approval,” he elaborated. “We normally get the ‘Request For Use Of The Designated Public Forum’ form. However in this particular instance, we did not.”

Ultimately, the group was allowed to continue with their free speech demonstration but not before having to make contact with campus police to explain their actions. The SIU police did not appear to want to interrupt what the group was doing but were under marching orders from their superiors.

“This is not considered like a public place,” one campus police officer told the students. “Right now, we’re going to have to put the ball away … it’s freaking a lot of people out … people are reporting that they’re scared of the beach ball, and what’s going on here.”

At issue is whether or not a university campus, a public facility, is, in fact, private property or public property. If it is public property, then the group should not be compelled to go through any channels of approval. Instead, the group is subjected to what some consider an arbitrary process, which attempts to secure the outside approval of a third party (in this case, the Director of University Marketing and Communications) to get the blessing for what the Constitution already allows.

It is not the first time a group on campus has been accosted by police for attempting to assert their free speech rights. As TFTP reported last January, several college students were arrested for passing out pocket-sized copies of the U.S. Constitution and signing students up for membership in their conservative student organization. The incident occurred at Kellogg Community College in Battle Creek, Michigan, and involved members of Young Americans for Liberty who were arrested on Sept. 20, 2015, and charged with trespassing.

Brandon Withers and Michelle Gregoire were arrested and spent nearly 7 hours in jail for their unapproved distribution of the U.S. Constitution and for allegedly attempting to recruit others to their club. The “offenses” resulted in demands the students remove themselves from campus property. The students refused to leave and were arrested by campus police and charged with trespassing.

According to The Washington Times, Scottsdale, Arizona-based “Alliance Defending Freedom,” a nonprofit legal organization that “advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith,” filed a lawsuit on their behalf Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. Senior ADF counsel Casey Mattox issued a statement wherein ADF claims their clients’ constitutional rights supersede any unlawful school rules denying them such freedoms.

Kellogg Community College had established several rules regarding the exercise of free speech and has established a free speech zone. Additionally, the distribution of materials, according to the college, must be approved first by the department known as Student Life. In other words, the exercise of students’ first amendment rights according to the U.S. Constitution is regulated by the public school’s Student Life department. And the school defines free speech as “solicitation,” another activity which must be pre-approved.

(For more from the author of “Police Tell Student Activists Their ‘Free Speech’ Is Scaring Other Students” please click HERE)

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Berkeley Didn’t Birth ‘Free Speech’ but Seems Intent to Bury It

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Demosthenes, the Athenian rhetorician and champion of liberty, pointed out around 355 B.C. that residents of Athens were free to praise Sparta’s regime, but Spartans were banned from praising Athens.

In 1689, the British passed a law guaranteeing freedom of speech in Parliament. A century later, French revolutionaries incorporated into law the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which established free speech as a universal right. Two years later, the Americans ratified the First Amendment, which guarantees that the state shall not infringe on the right to free speech. Roughly a century and half later, in 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which says, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression….”

I mention all of this because every time I read or hear about the pathetic state of affairs at the University of California, Berkeley — where conservative speakers and rabble-rousers alike are banned from speaking lest they be assaulted by a mob — journalists and other commentators insist on pointing out the irony that this is all happening “where the Free Speech Movement was born.”

Yes, I know there was a thing called the Free Speech Movement. And, yes, its members and leaders talked a good deal about free speech.

But the movement for free speech is thousands of years old and runs like a deep river across the landscape of Western Civilization. (Read more from “Berkeley Didn’t Birth ‘Free Speech’ but Seems Intent to Bury It” HERE)

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When Protesters Knock Holes in the Free Speech Bus, They Knock Holes in the Truth About Sexuality

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My situation was familiar enough: I was waiting for a bus. My circumstances were somewhat unique, though, because I’d been waiting several days.

I was waiting for the “#FreeSpeechBus.” It’s a project of the National Organization for Marriage, along with CitizenGO and the International Organization for the Family. This bus is hard to miss: It’s bright orange, emblazoned with a message calculated to garner attention. Figures of a girl and boy, marked “XX” and “XY,” stand beside the words, “Boys are boys […] Girls are girls … and always will be. It’s biology.”

Aiming to spark renewed discussion over the rush toward transgender rights, the bus launched two Thursdays ago in Manhattan with a small press event. That afternoon, the trip came screeching to a halt. Figuratively, that is: for the bus was parked, when protesters spray-painted the sides with graffiti messages about “trans liberation,” and smashed holes in its windows with a hammer.

Buzzfeed Gets It Wrong

Though little noted Thursday morning, the bus quickly made headlines following the attack. Buzzfeed proclaimed, “This Bus Is On A Road Trip To Convince You That Transgender People Aren’t Real.”

Now, as the representative quoted in that piece, I can surmise the basis for this spurious charge. Asked whether we believe a “trans woman” is a woman, I answered, “No. We believe if you were born a man, you’re a man.” I stand by that. I object, though, to the claim in the headline. The article itself reveals the unfair inference: for I am also cited saying transgender people suffer a disorder. I stand by this as well.

Buzzfeed thinks I deny the “reality” of a class of people because I think they have a disorder. By “reality” they mean a group who must be approved as they are. Of course I believe transgendered people are real. I believe they are due respect and kindness. But I have to reject the notion that a person with male genitalia and a Y chromosome who “identifies” as a woman is, in fact, a woman. That’s what upsets Buzzfeed.

Another point Buzzfeed misconstrued is one of the tour’s key goals. I expressed a hope that people would speak up — to business owners, bosses, public officials — when they feel uncomfortable with persons of the opposite sex using their locker rooms or other intimate facility. I wasn’t calling for a witch hunt, nor declaring open season for bullying.

Compassion For All

I had been asked why we don’t hear many complaints in places where transgender “bathroom bills” have been implemented. I opined that this might have to do with the fact that people are afraid to speak up.

When one is labelled a “hater” or “bigot” for daring to disagree with the trans agenda, it’s small wonder more people don’t complain. As it happens, though, plenty do complain: We just don’t hear about it.

Take, for example, the lawsuit filed last week in Pennsylvania. A high school boy, uncomfortable undressing in front of a female peer who is now allowed to use the boys’ locker-room, approached the administration. They told him to “act natural.” His parents — the school hadn’t told them about the policy, by the way — received the same airy dismissal when they complained.

The Pennsylvania case indicates another aspect of the stilted reporting on our big orange bus. Generally, the press treats our campaign as lacking compassion. But we do have compassion: we just ask it for all involved.

We are compassionate toward those suffering gender dysphoria. But we are also compassionate to that boy in Pennsylvania and the many, many people like him. His concerns — his feelings, privacy, his body image, his struggles through the turbulent time of puberty — are ignored. He doesn’t matter. He is closed-minded and should lighten up, we are told. His needs are brushed aside in favor of his biologically female peer invading his privacy.

She Doesn’t Count Either

The problem’s even worse when a man invades women’s spaces. Here may be a woman suffering trauma: who, because of past victimization from a sexually violent man has a hard enough time disrobing in front of her peers — even in front of a mirror! — who has every right to be uncomfortable with the status quo progressio.

But she doesn’t count either. She, too, is labeled hateful and bigoted if she complains. She, too, should just lighten up. That man isn’t hurting her, we are told — by those who evidently have no idea how trauma works. Yes, in fact, he is.

After a few days, the #FreeSpeechBus got back on its route, and I was aboard. I hope that the advocates of tolerance don’t respond again to an idea with which they disagree by striking it with a hammer. My greater hope is that the bus and its message won’t be missed: because it is a message of simple truth about biology, and of compassion for those whose voices have been lost in this debate. (For more from the author of “When Protesters Knock Holes in the Free Speech Bus, They Knock Holes in the Truth About Sexuality” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Artists’ Free Speech Rights at Stake in Washington Florist Case

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An African-American marketer should not be forced to create an advertising campaign for a white supremacist group. Nor should a Muslim graphic designer be required to develop a webpage promoting Jewish teachings, or a Democrat freelance writer be ordered to draft political speeches for Republicans.

Most agree with this, but Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson apparently does not.

Through his advocacy, he is trying to construct a real-life dystopia in which these and similar professionals will be forced to create expressive materials—like advertising campaigns and webpages—to promote, and even celebrate, ideas that violate their convictions.

The most recent evidence of this came when the Washington Supreme Court heard arguments in Ferguson’s case against Barronelle Stutzman.

Stutzman is a 72-year-old floral artist who serves everyone in her community, regardless of their race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation. But because of her deeply held religious beliefs about marriage, she cannot custom design floral arrangements to celebrate a same-sex wedding.

So while she has been glad to serve Rob Ingersoll—a gay man—for nearly a decade, she could not use her artistic expression to celebrate his nuptials.

To Ferguson, this sort of conscientious objection is, well, legally objectionable.

Some who oppose Stutzman’s desire to peacefully live out her convictions argue that designing floral arrangements is not art or constitutionally protected expression.

That argument—which ignores the many U.S. Supreme Court cases that so broadly define expression that even nude dancing is considered constitutionally protected—is not Ferguson’s. He admitted that Stutzman’s floral design work is “a form of expression,” and that “arranging these flowers is no less speech than writing a poem celebrating a particular message.”

So Ferguson’s position is that if an artist makes a living through her expression, she must accept all requests to create expression, regardless of whether she considers some messages deeply offensive. Or she must be punished.

We know this because one of the justices asked Ferguson whether constitutional principles of free expression ever protect a business owner who is accused of violating a so-called nondiscrimination law. And he said that they would not.

Further highlighting his extreme views, Ferguson went so far as to say that Stutzman could not “do the wedding flowers for heterosexual couples and have another employee handle it for same-sex folks.”

So it’s not enough for, say, an LGBT business owner who designs shirts for a gay pride festival to have her employee design shirts for the group protesting the festival. She must actually do it herself. Are we really to believe that American law, rightly understood, is such a conscience-crushing steamroller?

We’re not talking about business owners refusing to provide someone a mundane, unexpressive product—like a meal or a box of laundry detergent—because they dislike that person’s race, religious, or sexual orientation. We’re talking about compelling people to use their artistic talents to create messages or actively participate in expressive events that they cannot in good conscience support.

Imagine that you’re a black citizen living in America, that you worked hard to build a profitable marketing company, and that you’ve developed successful advertising campaigns for various black community groups. Now suppose that a white supremacist organization asks you to develop a similar campaign for their local chapter.

You, of course, are happy to do work for white customers, but understandably will not create advertisements that promote a group whose goals conflict with your identity as a black man or woman. You are obviously not rejecting a customer based on race. You are opting not to promote an idea you reject.

Yet Ferguson, it seems, would have you create that speech, your conscience be damned. You “voluntarily” entered into business, he would say; now you must accept the “consequences” of the law as he sees it.

Capitulate or close your business. Never mind that your family would lose its only means of financial support. You should’ve thought of that, so his argument goes, before pursuing your career aspirations.

Or put yourself in the shoes of a Muslim who immigrated to the United States to avoid religious persecution and who later earned a degree in graphic design and started a small business.

After seeing your best work online, a Jewish group asks you to create its website, which will include a page explaining why Jewish Old Testament teachings are correct and Islamic teachings are wrong. Unable to broadcast messages that conflict with the heart of what you believe, you refer the organization to another company.

If you do business in Washington, you better keep an eye on your mailbox because, assuming that we can take Ferguson at his word, you’ll be hearing from him soon.

It doesn’t matter how much you’ve overcome to get to where you are or how much this lawsuit will devastate your new business. Accommodation for your conscience has no place in Ferguson’s world.

But Ferguson is simply mistaken about the law. The U.S. Supreme Court has long recognized that the First Amendment prohibits the government from forcing citizens to express (or help communicate) messages that they find objectionable.

The government cannot force an individual to be an “instrument for fostering public adherence to an ideological point of view he finds unacceptable.”

Our nation’s highest court clearly affirmed that principle when it unanimously found that the state of Massachusetts could not force an organization to include the message of an advocacy group in its parade. Neither, then, can the state of Washington compel expressive professionals to create speeches that they don’t want to support.

But unless the Washington Supreme Court sets Ferguson straight, all who create expression in the marketplace have ample cause for concern, whether you’re a floral artist with conservative Christian views about marriage or an LGBT promotional printer who doesn’t want to create materials that criticize same-sex marriage.

That’s why this issue—freedom for expressive professionals—should cross partisan and ideological lines. No one—Republican, Democrat, conservative, or liberal—should want to live in the world that Ferguson is trying to create. (For more from the author of “Artists’ Free Speech Rights at Stake in Washington Florist Case” please click HERE)

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Watch: Free Speech Petitioners Told They’ll Be ‘Locked up’ at College

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h97.1.140_edit_0Several students at the College of DuPage were told to cease or be “locked up” Friday as they attempted to collect signatures for a petition urging the school to improve its free speech policies.

The two students, along with an advisor from Turning Point USA who was helping them organize a chapter at DuPage, were on campus inviting passersby to sign up for the club and/or sign the petition—and were also distributing pocket Constitutions and non-partisan flyers stating the “America is a free speech zone”—when they were approached by campus police.

Joseph Enders, a student at the college, told Campus Reform that he has been attempting to start a TPUSA club for some time, but has had difficulty meeting the school’s requirements for an official student organization. For its part, the College recounts instructing him on the process for starting a new club, but says it has never received the necessary documents from him.

“I’ve had some problems starting the club,” he said. “They told us that we need three members and a full-time faculty advisor, but they wouldn’t let us clipboard.” Enders also claims he has had difficulty finding a willing faculty advisor, primarily due to the need for a full-time advisor, and called the political science department “very liberal.”

Most of Friday’s altercation was caught on video and shared with Campus Reform. The video begins with the conversation already in progress, as the group is questioning the officer about why they are not allowed to do what they are doing. (Read more from “Free Speech Petitioners Told They’ll Be ‘Locked up’ at College” HERE)

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Democrats Working Overtime to Criminalize Dissent

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Photo Credit: Drew Angerer / Getty Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Dissent is the lowest form of crime. If you are a drone in the hive of the Left, it is possible — easy, in fact — to believe both of those things at the same time.

Free speech just won an important victory in a federal courtroom, though it is shameful that the case ever even had to go to court. Ohio had enacted a plainly unconstitutional law that empowered a government panel to determine whether criticisms offered in political advertisements were sufficiently true to be permitted in the public discourse. Those who have followed the IRS scandal, the Travis County, Texas, prosecutorial scandals, or Harry Reid’s recent effort to repeal the First Amendment will not be surprised that this measure was used as a political weapon against a conservative group, in this case the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List. SBA List criticized a Democratic House member for having voted for the so-called Affordable Care Act (ACA), noting that the law will implicate American taxpayers in the funding of abortions, an entanglement previously minimized through measures such as the Hyde Amendment. Despite the fact that the ACA regime would, among other things, permit federal subsidies for abortion-funding insurance plans, the Ohio Inquisition ruled the ad impermissible, and banned it.

So much for free speech.

Fortunately, an Obama appointee whose ability to read the letter of the law had not been utterly drummed out of him ruled that the Ohio Inquisition obviously violated longstanding free-speech protections, the First Amendment notable among them. Last week, a similar case in Minnesota came to a similar conclusion.

Read more from this story HERE.

Union’s Free Spending Raised Free Speech Concerns at Issue in Court Case

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Photo Credit: Flickr Creative CommonsUnion leaders based in Chicago racked up more than $13,000 in hotel charges to attend President Obama’s second inauguration and more than $6,000 to purchase booze for a Christmas party the month before.

If the bosses of the Service Employees International Union plan to continue spending in that fashion, though, they may have to find some new sources of cash to cover expenses such as the $1.1 million in travel their Indiana-Illinois health care unit logged in fiscal 2013. The SEIU no longer can force home-based personal care assistants to pay dues-like fees to the union.

That’s because Pamela Harris, an Illinois mother who provides health care services to her disabled son prevailed yesterday in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that challenged compulsory union dues as unconstitutional under the First and 14th amendments.

The case, in which justices decided 5-4 in Harris’s favor, is known as Harris v. Quinn. Harris and six of the other seven plaintiffs provide care for disabled family members in Illinois. They are paid under the state’s Medicaid program but are hired by the patients they serve.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Democrats’ Free-Speech Hypocrisy

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Photo Credit: The Daily Beast
Last week, the war on the First Amendment entered a new phase when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced his support for S.J. Res. 19, a proposed constitutional amendment designed to “advance the fundamental principle of political equality for all, and to protect the integrity of the legislative and electoral processes.” The intent of the proposed amendment is to empower the Congress and the States to limit all categories of campaign-related spending and contributions and overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, which held independent political expenditures by businesses and unions alike to be protected by the First Amendment.

In plain English that’s called censorship. It’s also called hypocrisy, as many of the proposed amendment’s supporters—and most of its likely opponents—take a situational stance on the First Amendment.

More often than not, politicians think free speech is a fine thing so long as you agree with them. What do I mean? Well, in 2006 the then-Republican-controlled Senate failed by a single vote to move forward a proposed constitutional amendment that would have given Congress the legal authority to ban flag “desecration.” Fortunately, the Constitution mandates that a proposed amendment obtain the backing of two-thirds of both the House and Senate before it can be sent to the States for ratification, and the flag-burning amendment garnered only 66 of the 67 votes it needed.

But here’s the thing. Back then, many of the same folks who would stifle free speech if it comes in the form of money—but not in kind, as in the form of a favorable New York Times editorial—had no problem saying that it was constitutionally OK to put Old Glory to the test by putting it to the torch. The roster of Senate Democrats suffering from First Amendment schizophrenia includes former constitutional law professor and Senator Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and senior Senate Democrats Barbara Boxer, Tom Harkin, Barbara Mikulski, Patty Murray, Chuck Schumer, and Ron Wyden—who rightly took the position that free speech should not be diluted in the name of some greater good, hurt feelings, or offended sensibilities…

So when Democrats decry money in politics are they really being serious, or are they just posturing? One thing’s for certain, money isn’t leaving politics anytime soon. As long as government is around, and politicians need their palms greased, money will be there as well. Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans alike will drape themselves in the Constitution and the flag, except when it gets in their way.

Read more from this story HERE.