Free speech under President Obama?

While I personally have no intention of voting for McCain-Palin, here is an unusually substantive column by Richard Lowry that could move undecided conservatives in that direction. As Lowry writes, the Obama camp’s orchestrated moves to prevent its critics such as Stanley Kurtz from speaking on radio, plus liberals’ unabashed throwing aside of their vaunted devotion to free speech in order to suppress the speech of conservatives (plus, I would add, the criminalization of “hate-speech” through the entire Western world outside the U.S., which the U.S. left seeks to emulate), leads to the conclusion that if Obama becomes president,

Little Keith Olbermanns will surely be burrowed throughout his executive branch, eager to chill the speech of the “worst people in the world.”

In short, under an Obama administration, expect a major campaign to erect an “anti-hate-speech” regime similar to that which exists in other, un-free, Western countries. Of course, given our First Amendment, Europe- and Canada-type speech codes are precluded here. But the left will push the suppression of non-liberal speech as far as they can.

My view is still: Bring It On! Better that the left attempt to silence conservatives now, when whites (and virtually all conservatives are whites) make up 66 percent of the U.S. population and, if sufficiently roused, will have the power to defeat the attempt along with the whole nation-destroying agenda of which it is a part, than for the left to make such an attempt later, when the country will have become much more Third World and leftist and the First Amendment will probably just be rolled over.

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A. Zarkov writes:

Let’s be realistic. An Obama presidency could radically shift the makeup of the Supreme Court. There is virtually nothing an activist court can’t do under the concept of the “living constitution.” We could easily get a “hate speech is not free speech” decision that would allow all levels of government to curtail free expression. If you want a model for this, look at campus speech codes even at state colleges and universities. To some degree we already have speech restrictions in the form of workplace rules. Rules that seek to prevent the creating of a “hostile work environment” by allowing the promulgation of non content-neutral restrictions on expression. Even at government facilities.

Recently James Curtis, an employee at the Department of Public Works in Buffalo, N.Y., was arrested for putting a “whites only” sign on a drinking fountain as a joke. Curtis pleaded not guilty to second-degree aggravated harassment, which normally is a misdemeanor. But city police, who filed the charge Friday, categorized it as a racially motivated hate crime, which bumps up the charge to a Class E felony. Of course Curtis exercised extremely poor judgment and he could certainly be fired for his prank, but charging him with a felony for something that’s obviously symbolic expression really puts us the on the road to “hate speech is not free speech.” Once we get there, the government will be able to criminalize speech in much the way they do in Canada, the UK and Europe. Ultimately what constitutes “hate speech” will become so elastic that the First Amendment will go down the drain.

Think about this as you watch the election of Obama.

Van Wijk writes:

Several years ago there was a leaflet campaign in several neighborhoods in my area. The leaflets urged white women to stay away from black men and gave several examples of the negative consequences of such relationships. Every example given was quite accurate and the language used was methodical and matter-of-fact.

This campaign made the front page the day after it began. The police (who, of course, were immediately called by the good liberals who found leaflets at their front doors) stated that a white supremacist group was responsible. Although the term “hate crime” came up often in the story from the mouths of both police and citizens, in the end they had to admit that no crime had been committed.

Two things about the story struck me as at once amusing and chilling. First, that the cops, in true cop form, were obviously very aggravated that they couldn’t arrest someone for what they considered a heinous crime. I got the distinct impression that they were being vigorously restrained by their chain of command, and that they considered this restraint to be unjust. Their own inclination was to go and pay a long visit to the “white supremacists” responsible. Second, the citizens who called the police all wore expressions of dark fear and hatred, as if the leaflets had been as bad as a physical assault on them. They left no doubt in my mind what their stand on free speech was, so long as that speech was non-liberal. Given enough power, people like this and their enforcers-with-badges would create a blatant tyranny in no time.

MG writes:

A. Zarkov writes:

Let’s be realistic. An Obama presidency could radically shift the makeup of the Supreme Court. There is virtually nothing an activist court can’t do under the concept of the “living constitution.”

But Congress can—and occasionally does, exclude some things from judicial review. For example, the first Bailout law draft excluded actions of the Treasury Secretary from judicial review. I don’t know if it has changed in the final version.

If we ever will have a runaway Supreme Court, a determined Congress could stop them in their tracks by setting parallel court system, by defunding them, etc.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 05, 2008 08:55 AM | Send