Saturday, November 10, 2018

Left-Wing Hate Speech Toward Mitchell Langbert's Blog I

I have previously discussed the decline in campus civility in light of increasing left-wing hate, intolerance, calls for censorship and repeal of the First Amendment.  The bizarre combination of millennials' often-violent protest against others and their often-self-pitying anxiety about their own feelings has been discussed by Lukianoff and Haidt in their recent book Coddling of the American Mind  

Many millennials lack writing, mathematical, and linear thinking skills. Most lack civics and history education. Few have read the classics of the liberal tradition--Locke, Montesquieu, Hume, Smith, Mill.   As a result, a majority is unfamiliar with the origins of the First Amendment, the history of speech codes in early modernity, or of the use of speech codes by Joseph McCarthy and Alexander Mitchell Palmer. As well, they often lack an understanding of how the US government works and what the Constitution says.  The same may be said of American journalists, who are increasingly a dumbed-down, irrelevant brood. 

Two radical Brooklyn College student-journalists, Jasmine Peralta and Danielle Kogan, recently wrote a piece in one of the campus news outlets in which they present a fellow student's opinions about my remarks but do not present my response. Peralta and Kogan quote a fellow radical student, whom they identify merely as Club Coordinator of the Puerto Rican Alliance Rivera, at length. 

Rivera says:  

I feel that any professor who makes anyone else feel threatened is a threat to me because I, as a student leader have to represent the members of my organization and of the organizations that I stand by in solidarity.

Rivera doesn't consider that his calls for censorship may make those who disagree feel threatened.  The young radical goes on to express the curious opinion--prevalent among campus diversity officers, campus administrators, and the fake-news media--that since the college campus is all inclusive, views with which the hate-filled campus lynch mob disagrees should be excluded. 

Rivera continues:

It’s supposed to be a campus that’s all-inclusive. It’s one of the most diverse campuses in the nation….for a professor to make statements about those types of students that alludes to sexual assault implies that all men are rapist and make sexual assault victims feel totally unsafe here on the Brooklyn College campus is unacceptable. 

 As I have previously blogged, the concept of hate speech is vacuous. Indeed, the left frequently engages in hate speech, and Jasmine Peralta, Danielle Kogan, and Club Coordinator of the Puerto Rican Alliance Rivera are not exceptions. Rivera is filled with hate. He or she wishes to exclude anyone who disagrees with his or her definition of hate speech, and he or she will pull no punches in expressing this opinion.  Peralta and Kogan agree, and they will not hesitate to write one-sided articles to prove it.

Peralta, Kogan, and Rivera apparently have not read the Constitution, the case law that has evolved concerning the First Amendment on campus, or any of the works of liberalism that led to the Lockean consensus that has, until the millennial generation and the concomitant dumbing down of American journalism, been America's common ground.  Indeed, they seem to be aware that law concerning the Constitution evolves through a stare decisis process, or that there are courts that adjudicate questions of this kind.  

No comments: