Sunday, February 27, 2005

Progressivism and Free Speech for All

By Kim Petersen

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Posted 02/27 | Add a Comment

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  1. I don’t think the problem is limited to right wingers clamping down on liberals.  It works the opposite way as well.  The most obvious example these days is the treatment Larry Summers of Harvard is receiving.

    Here is a good starting point to discuss free speech problems in Canada:

    http://www.townhall.com/columnists/johnleo/jl20040412.shtml

    It raises some very good points, especially about the lack of Constitutional protection for free speech in Canada.  John Leo is a stauch conservative, but also an extremely outspoken advocate of free speech.  I can’t think of anyone else who writes and speaks about the issue more frequently.

    The real problem these days is that people all over the political spectrum have taken to the courts and legislature to stifle opponents.  On college campuses, people no longer merely object to those who disagree with them.  They fight to have them fired.  It’s all very unhealthy.

    Posted by me from here  on  02/27  at  10:53 AM

  2. I think that the free speech issues around the Zundel case are made correctly here. Unfortunately, there is a certain naivete that was also on display in Alan Cabal’s article on Zundel that appeared in the print edition of Counterpunch a while back. There is no need to take Zundel’s pacifist and “intellectual curiosity” professions at face value. He is a neo-Nazi plain and simple. However, he has the right to say whatever he wants on and off the internet. We should oppose these deportation moves and we should also expose the hypocrisy of Germany’s “hate speech” laws. If you read my review of “Downfall”, you’ll see how prestigious German historians tried to present their own “revisionist” case for Hitler in the mid 1980s. If Zundel should be prosecuted, so should they. In reality, anybody can say anything they want as long as they do not get involved in violent acts. It is clear that Zundel did not.

    Posted by Louis Proyect from NYC  on  02/27  at  01:12 PM

  3. The disturbing case of Ward Churchill has me asking a question I ought not ask, but somehow feel compelled.  The NCAA has an arcane, complicated, often brainless set of rules regarding recruitment and pampering of college athletes.  The rules require major universities to hire folks just to deal with compliance.  I hate bureaucracies like that. Read More . . .

    Posted by Bill Hennessy from Wildwood, MO  on  02/27  at  04:01 PM

  4. Martin Luther would have been deported back to Germany if he had lived in Canada.

    Ward Churchill isn’t getting any rest these days and the press keeps hounding him.

    Ernst Zundel hasn’t harmed anybody, but he gets hung out to dry.

    Sigmund Freud loved Germany and its culture.  He was forced to leave Austria and his four sisters died in German concentration camps.

    The more things change, the more they stay the same.

    Posted by MDPB from  on  03/02  at  09:42 PM

  5. http://www.nypress.com/18/9/news&columns/krassner.cfm

    The link to the Ward Churchill story.

    Posted by MDPB from  on  03/02  at  09:52 PM
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