The Carleton Students for Liberty up in Canada recently installed a free-speech wall at their university, but it didn't last long:
Go figure. So liberty is only compatible with, what, expressions of love? Maybe Carleton should create a Ministry of Love; I hear those things are great.By Tuesday morning the wall was gone, destroyed in an act of “forceful resistance,” by seventh-year human rights student Arun Smith.
“In organizing the ‘free speech wall,’ the Students for Liberty have forgotten that liberty requires liberation, and this liberation is prevented by providing space … for the expression of hate,” he wrote in a 600-word Facebook post in which he identified himself as an anti-homophobia campaigner.
But wait, there's more:
Expression on the wall was not entirely free, of course.
If the Free Speech Wall had suddenly been wallpapered with swastikas and racial slurs, university officials could have ordered it removed as a contravention of the University’s policies against discrimination.
To recap: (a) liberation requires the suppression of dissident opinions, and (b) anti-discrimination policies require...discrimination!
Ah, the old Ministry of Love.
ReplyDeleteThis is quite disturbing, actually. I would hate to see-- I would shiver in pain and sadness, actually-- if I saw swastikas and racial slurs. Does no one remember the power of an OPPOSING viewpoint, as opposed to suppression of the offending remarks or images? One must surely believe that the power of darkness is stronger than the power of light if the knee-jerk response is always just "SUPPRESS IT! GET RID OF IT!"