A good example of the tactic discussed below is a whiny article up at the "Alliance Defending Freedom" website bawling about the Southern Poverty Law Center and Judy Shepherd (the mother of Matthew Shepherd and a advocate of LGBT equality) calling it a hate group.
But the irony is that the incendiary labels that Ms. Shepard and SPLC toss about can result in yet more violence. A prime example is what happened to Family Research Council (FRC) soon after SPLC labeled it a hate group. Floyd Lee Corkins stormed FRC’s building intending to kill many innocent people, and after his arrest, he revealed that SPLC inspired his rampage. Similarly, the mob that attacked author and speaker Charles Murray at Middlebury College cited SPLC’s defamatory accusations against him in a threatening letter to the college. It thus appears that trumpeting baseless allegations of hate might not be the best way to eliminate it after all.
It's apparent that a lot of the reason that right-wing student groups sponsor hate speakers is to provoke a reaction which can then be whined about on the basis of a violation of freedom. Notice that they are blaming the SPLC and Judy Shepherd for this when they are merely opposing the proponents of inequality. They want to shut down people calling their advocacy of hate what it is. Or to imbed that kind of narrative in the media, something the right wing has generally had no problem doing.
The thinking about the relationship of equality to freedom and to the common good had better start taking hold among advocates of egalitarian democracy because this kind of gaming into account because the enemies of equality claiming violations of their freedoms, of taking advantage of the habit of uncritically considering any "freedom" as good is an effective tool. Mix in feelings of resentment and claims of being wronged and you've got the ingredients for a later day beer hall putsch which, under our idiotic election laws and the free to lie corporate media, is what the Trump installation was.
I will note, off hand, that their "A" logo reminds me of nothing so much of the "A" logo many atheists use. Ironic, that.
Also, I have no qualms about telling the truth, that William F. Buckly was a fascist as was his brother James, the "Buckley" in Buckley vs. Valeo, the most incredible redistribution of "freedom" in history. That ruling, making money speech, effectively gave the rich a proportion of speech and, so, freedom of speech, especially through the media where you've got to buy it, and, so, left the rest of us with a smaller portion of speech. By commodifying speech, monetarily, the court redistributed it proportionally. With the full support and approval of the free-speech, free-press industry on behalf of fascists. Clean-fingered, genteel fascists have been some of the most effective in our country, though their period seems to be giving way to the skin-head, uniformed and lynch mob stage of fascist devolution. Those dopes always figure they can harness them.
Freedom can be a very dangerous slogan, but so can equality. Especially when persons want to impose their views of the latter on others. Vonnegut offers a fun and funny reminder of this taken to absurd extremes in his "Harrison Bergeron."
ReplyDeleteOn a more serious note, I am reminded of the fate of Robespierre. Change doesn't guarantee equality nor freedom. And when I read about groups that insist on silencing the latter to get the former but refuse to answer the complications that arise from the messy dross of reality, I worry that they're not as much part of the problem as the solution.
Thus what I said about all of those things, equality, freedom and the common good existing in tension with each other. I think in the United States our history shows that the unequal freedom has been far more a danger than the equality or the common good.
DeleteBut we've never really had the amount of equality nor the public push for more, regardless of the residue it leaves, as we have currently. There should, ideally, be a balance, but most people aren't willing to even discuss issues any longer. Hell, maybe they never were. But there is something frustrating that arises from being lectured about biology (a subject I minored in at university) by people who are just regurgitating what they heard from Bill Nye. When those type of people start voting, I get worried.
ReplyDelete