Editor’s note: This commentary is by John Klar, a Vermont grass-fed beef and sheep farmer, and an attorney and pastor who lives in Westfield.
[I] am appalled that liberal voices justifying violence are now being “tolerated.” When I attended a KKK rally in the 1970s (to oppose the KKK), I was simultaneously acknowledging, however grudgingly, their right to think — and speak — ignorantly. When people burn the American flag (almost always liberals), I have spoken for their right to do so. But now the left has been showing just how intolerant — and profoundly ignorant — it has become. (I use these strong words while it is still permitted for me to do so …)
I say ignorant, because this is ignorance. A speaking engagement in March at Middlebury College by writer Charles Murray was disrupted, and Murray and others were attacked physically — and many liberal college students are defending this! I do not support Charles Murray’s ideas, but I fully support his right to express them. But some Middlebury students, and apparently some faculty, “felt” that it was their right to oppose him to the point of physical disruption. Gavin McInnes was similarly blocked at NYU; Milo Yiannopoulos at Berkeley. A planned event at Berkeley with Ann Coulter for April 27 was cancelled, due to concerns that the rioting, arson, and physical assaults committed at the Yiannopoulos event might be repeated. There, protesters attacked others with flag poles, bicycle locks, and pepper spray.
The problem here is enormous: When college students don’t understand the Bill of Rights, and violate the principles thereof, they threaten us all. They are doing a fine job utterly discrediting themselves and their views, which will push many Americans to the right. But, they are desecrating everything about our nation’s freedoms in the process, and inviting retaliation, which I expect they will find. Then, they will employ that retaliation as justification for further escalation, and soon they will be bombing events in the name of “free speech.”
The flag is a symbol, of a body of freedoms. When it is publicly burned as a political protest, those freedoms are demonstrated and the power of the flag — its ideas, not its cloth fabric — is held high. The Confederate flag is now taking on power: By prohibiting its display, people tarnish the Stars and Stripes. The display of the Confederate flag is a freedom — it means what the person displaying it means (rebellion, opposition to authority are possibilities; as is racism), and is not limited by what those offended by it “feel.” So in this environment, the “freedom” to display the Confederate flag is a demonstration of the right to free speech. It is becoming the symbol that was once the stars and stripes.
I do not endorse, or even agree with, any of the speakers being blocked at these events. That is not the point — as I say, I have always supported the freedom of both left and right to the liberty of free speech.
The argument of the criminal protesters (and make no mistake, they are ignorant criminals) is that they are justified in using violence and physical intimidation to oppose hate speech — that they are defending themselves. As stated in a recent Wellesley College editorial, “hostility may be warranted” against people who are “given the resources to learn” yet “refuse to adapt their beliefs.” The absurd rationale is that others who are told what to think (“given the resources to learn”) but do not agree with you (“refuse to adapt their beliefs”), then hostility is “warranted.” Violence is warranted.
If the rest of us were to embrace this pathetic irrationality, we would promptly inflict violence on these students. They are privileged to be attending an American institution, so clearly they have been provided “the resources to learn.” But they haven’t learned at all what the Bill of Rights means, and if they “refuse to adapt their beliefs” they should be dosed with their own medicine: intolerant physical assault.
I do not endorse, or even agree with, any of the speakers being blocked at these events. That is not the point — as I say, I have always supported the freedom of both left and right to the liberty of free speech. Some will argue that the First Amendment applies only to government prohibitions of free speech: and they are partly right. Because the government can act by failing to protect freedoms too — like if the police stood by while Martin Luther King was brutally beaten during a protest. But more importantly, the government may not infringe protected free speech — it is supposed to curtail unprotected criminality.
This is exactly the distinction our Supreme Court has drawn — speech which is “unprotected” may be (in fact is) illegal. This includes stealing others’ rights to speech (copyright infringement); child pornography (New York v Ferber, 1982); obscenity (Miller v California, 1973); and false statements of fact (Gertz v Robert Welch, Inc, 1974). But other prominent and long-standing categories of speech that are not protected are incitement (“advocacy of the use of force … directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,” Brandenburg v Ohio, 1969; Schenck v United States, 1919) and fighting words (“personally abusive words that tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace,” Chaplinsky v New Hampshire, 1942). It should be noted that Brandenburg specifically permits the KKK to speak; and Texas v Johnson (1989) protected flag burning. This law is long settled.
We must defend our long and well-documented tradition of freedom of speech, of respecting others’ right to their opinions even where one does not respect the opinion itself. The cloth of our flags can be burned. But these protests tear at the very fabric of what it is to be an American, and these rifts must be mended and rectified or the whole shebang will collapse into disorder, as escalating voices of incivility become increasing antes in a violent game of Texas Hold ’em. Do the protesters wish to grant President Trump the power to declare martial law? Because that’s exactly where this will lead: They are shredding our constitutional freedoms.
The rationalization to commit violence against others is an old and dangerous one. It has recently been espoused in a Middlebury College editorial, and appears to be defended by a cadre of Middlebury professors. Much of this was correctly prophesied in Allan Bloom’s exquisite book “The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students” (1987, with foreword by Saul Bellow). We must not tolerate intolerance, even if it comes from the hypocritical left who parade themselves as tolerant enforced by violence. We must stand up for the Bill of Rights and defend those rights, for all — we must not tolerate physical violence and intimidation hiding under the guise of “free speech.”
