[A] round of applause, please (though perhaps with one muffled palm) for the folks at the Vermont Workers’ Center.
If nothing else, they knew enough to admit they had made a mistake.
Monday morning, the Workers’ Center, a small but vigorous leftish pressure group, withdrew its petition urging the Flynn Theater to cancel Donald Trump’s Thursday campaign event, which the center had described as “an affront to our values as residents of Burlington.”
Whatever they may be.
The muffled palm is in order because – in the manner of political activists everywhere – the Workers’ Center statement was not, shall we say, notably forthright. It said the center was withdrawing its petition “related to Donald Trump’s upcoming visit to Burlington.”
But it wasn’t just “related to.” It was against, and it suggested that those who agree let the Flynn know they might no longer contribute to it.
That this threat bordered on impotence (Workers’ Center supporters and Flynn donors are not overlapping constituencies) made it no less objectionable.
Still, whether for the most honorable motive (they knew they were wrong) or the less (they saw they were looking bad) the Workers’ Center leaders ended up doing the right thing.
In the meanwhile, this whole Trump-at-the-Flynn contretemps, in which the Workers’ Center leaders were neither the first nor the only liberals to express their dismay, has exposed a flaw in the political discussion. Maybe it’s because the schools stopped teaching civics a few decades ago, but for one reason or another, too many people in Vermont seem not to understand a few basics.
Stuff like freedom of speech, the United States Constitution, democracy, all that jazz.
Oh yes, and politics. Even when it is in their own interest to do so, too many Vermonters don’t understand politics, how it works and how necessary it is because of freedom of speech, the United States Constitution, democracy, all that jazz.
This time, don’t blame Donald Trump. Not that Trump has not otherwise displayed ignorance about freedom of speech et al., not to mention just where some people applauded the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But in this case, he has not contributed to the confusion.
Instead, as is true elsewhere in America, his antagonists have, and so have the antagonists of his antagonists.
Thus Sen. Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, the level-headed minority leader of the state Senate, correctly denounced the Workers’ Center while also making it clear that he was no Trump supporter (nor is any leading Vermont Republican).
But Benning went too far when he called the Workers’ Center petition “just as deplorable a bullying and intimidations tactic as (its protest of) Governor Shumlin’s address to the legislature last January.”
No, it wasn’t.
The Workers’ Center has never been sufficiently condemned for invading the House Chamber and disrupting Gov. Peter Shumlin’s inauguration last year. That demonstration managed to be both anti-democratic and anti-republican. Neither a republic nor a democracy can thrive – perhaps even survive – if legislators are physically intimidated in their chambers and the orderly processes of democratic governments are invaded by mobs.
That was, as Benning called it, a “bullying tactic,” and the fact that the would-be bullies were too feeble (both individually and in numbers) to make their bullying effective really doesn’t matter. What they did was a step (however tiny) toward totalitarianism.
But their petition was not. It was wrong. It was foolish. But in circulating it, the Workers’ Center leaders were exercising their constitutional rights.
The Workers’ Center is not the government. The First Amendment does not apply to it. The amendment limits only what governments may do, not what individuals or organizations may do. The Constitution is not relevant to this discussion.
Besides, the Workers’ Center cannot stop anybody from speaking. Had it not withdrawn the petition, and had the Flynn cancelled the Trump speech (and vigorous applause with no palms muffled for Flynn executive director John Killacky for never considering that step), Trump could have spoken elsewhere – across the street in City Hall Park, chilly though it might be this time of year, or in a public auditorium, where the First Amendment would apply.
Even suggesting that people withhold future contributions from the Flynn is constitutionally protected free speech. That’s why individuals and organizations on both the left and the right (and probably even a few in the center) regularly call for boycotts.
When inspired by what companies or countries are actually doing – going to war, abusing workers, animals or children – boycotts may make sense. When used to repress expression, they do not, no matter how repugnant the expression being repressed.
A society can’t remain free if people pursue all their rights of self-expression, to the point of limiting the actual ability (even if not the theoretical right) of others to express themselves. Living in a free, democratic, society requires a bit of self-abnegation; if everybody pushes his or her rights so far that others can’t be heard, the society is no longer free.
As Charles C. Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, said in his most recent column (it was in Sunday’s Burlington Free Press), “the Constitution is necessary, but not sufficient to ensure freedom.” Freedom requires civility as well as legal protection.
Or to put it another way, limiting your use of the letter of the First Amendment, which permits you to threaten to impoverish the theater that schedules a speaker you find repugnant, is more consistent with the spirit of the First Amendment.
It’s also the shrewder political strategy. Trying to stop someone from being heard suggests you fear what the person will say, you lack confidence in being able to refute what is said. Just from the perspective of smart political tactics, the best course for those who find Trump contemptible is certainly not to try to stop him from speaking, nor to interrupt him, nor even to march in front of the theater in protest.
The best course would be to ignore the entire event.
That course has not been followed. And in this turmoil, however trifling it might be, the political winner is already clear: Donald Trump.
