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Jim Marlowe's avatar

Excellent work. I had to read it twice because I couldn't find a reference to "A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick." I suppose that allusion was too obvious. But you are playing the role of Thomas Becket nicely.

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Ken White's avatar

I’ve thought for a long time that the sentiment “a defense of the right to say something shouldn’t include a criticism of saying it” to be philosophically, morally, and legally incoherent. Why they hell shouldn't I? I'm exercising my free speech. I'm saying what I think. I'm also clearly modeling the concept that you don't have to agree with speech to defend it. The norm that you should prissily refrain from calling an asshole an asshole when you explain why being an asshole is protected is inexplicable and even cowardly, in my view. It's also terrible strategy for convincing people of the virtues of free expression as social and legal policy. "Don't use official power to censor people who say awful things" is already a tough sell. "Also, don't be too critical when you point out the speech is protected" seems almost calculated to make new generations think that free speech is disingenuous bullshit.

I'm going to keep calling out situations -- like this one -- where very unpopular speech is also very clearly protected. There is no plausible excuse for the school's actions here. But I'm also going to keep saying what I think about the speech, to continue to model that supporting free speech doesn't mean giving up your own or abandoning moral and philosophical judgment.

And then there's this pure applesauce:

"Two exceptions were Popehat and Leiter Reports, which dared to defend the legality of his actions, but only with a big helping of moral condemnation to show that they don’t really approve of free speech that much and would like to apply social pressure to stop their fellow lefty from embarassing them."

This assessment of my character is more a confession of yours. I do "really" approve of free speech "that" much. I've devoted much of my career to it and a substantial part of my extracurricular pontificating to it. I just don't share the fatuous conceit that supporting someone's right to be an asshole requires me not to call them an asshole. Nonsense.

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