We’re going to ramble on for quite a bit in this one, so bear with us. We haven’t done a thorough Fisking in a while, but this spew surely deserved one.

We can’t say it often enough: Free speech is either free or it isn’t. There are no “grades” of free speech, in spite of the furious attempts of ignorant gasbags like this one to make it so (link thanks to LC flesh99):

Pretend that you are among the 1 percent of black students at UCSD.

Oh how we love “arguments” that start out with a hypothetical and then uses it to bolster the case of whatever nonsense follows. Don’t bother us with real life examples, right? All too often, this is simply because no real life examples outrageous enough to support the writer’s case exist. But hey, if reality doesn’t fit your argument, make up one of your own. That’s how the “Reality Based Community” came about. It’s based on “reality”, but it isn’t quite the same thing, to say the very least.

As you walk to class one Thursday, a white girl casually hands you a newspaper displaying, on its front page, a sloppy caricature of two thick-lipped black girls eating watermelon in slave garb while masturbating each other.

Ian S. Port, who wrote this garbage, clearly needs psychiatric help. Urgently.

Next to them, a black man in gangsta gear holds two pistols to the head of a man who appears to be standing behind a cash register. Above the picture runs a headline reading: “Cocked: A lifestyle rag for nappy Niggas and Hos to spend welfare money on.” Ridiculing your race as being overly fond of fried chicken and handgun violence, this imaginary publication argues that blacks should “be sent back to Africa where they can kill each other and save our tax dollars.”

More importantly, this imaginary publication doesn’t exist, which makes His Majesty (and anybody else with more than two brain cells to rub together) wonder what the everloving fuck the point is, other than the rather obvious one on top of Mr. Port’s head.

But let’s play along with Mr. Port’s sick fantasies for a second, shall we?

If I were the black person in this piece of pathetic, made-for-TV incident, I’d tell the stupid racist bitch to stuff her pathetic rag where the sun doesn’t shine and, should she be idiotic enough to persist in pushing her garbage on me, I’d demonstrate to her how it’s done. Literally. After having folded it up until it was all corners.

If I were a spectator to the incident, I’d cheer loudly and buy the black student a drink in hopes that he’d grant me the honor of allowing me to repeat the demonstration to her.

And, to clarify, this would be contingent upon her insisting on foisting her fighting words upon me. If she were to say “oh well” and leave me alone, I’d leave the stupid slut to fester in her own ignorance. It’d be a much more painful punishment anyway.

Those who oppose banning intolerant statements within the university decry limiting free speech just because it hurts people’s feelings. The First Amendment, they argue, cannot be limited for making others feel bad.

And it can’t. If it could, the Founders would have included language to allow for it. The moment you turn “free speech shall not be abridged” into “free speech shall not be abridged unless it hurts somebody’s feelings” you leave yourself wide open to madness. The very second you do so, you’ll have interest groups from all walks of life claiming that this, that and the other “hurts their feelings” and should, therefore, be outlawed. This, of course, forces government to decide what feelings can be legitimately hurt and what feelings can’t.

And that’s when Free Speech dies.

Free speech is utterly worthless as a concept if only pre-approved speech is “free”. It takes absolutely no effort to approve of speech that you agree with, any mouthbreathing moron can do that (which is why liberals are so enamored of it and seek to violently oppress all other kinds of speech). Speech is only truly free when you’re free to say stuff that others find positively outrageously offensive. Yes, dear liberal trolls, that INCLUDES the right to make “art” depicting a crucifix submerged in urine.

But, as the above example illustrates, the kinds of statements that speech codes should prohibit — if they were allowed under the rules of a university such as UCSD — do much more than merely hurt people’s feelings. Whites and other members of general majority groups cannot fully comprehend the violence of these statements, because they are necessarily ignorant of the context in which they are received.

Sure. It’s a black thing, we wouldn’t understand. As whites, we have absolutely no idea as to what it feels like to be insulted, living as we do in protected lives where nobody anywhere, for any reason, EVER challenge our beliefs or ridicule our opinions and looks.

Now tell us which imaginary planet it is that you live on, Mr. Port. What color is the sky there?

I get offended all the time by others’ free speech, but that’s MY fucking problem. I can only get offended if I ALLOW myself to get offended. My feelings are perfectly safe until I ALLOW them to get hurt. Sure, it sucks, and I dearly wish that I lived in a world where nobody ever ridiculed my religion, made fun of the way I look, pissed on the flag of the nation that I love with all my heart or called me nasty names. Well no, I don’t, I’d have nothing to ridicule and mock in return, but even somebody as cosmically clueless as you should be able to get my drift.

As a matter of fact, you just insulted me grievously by suggesting that I’m a pampered, privileged, ignorant ass who could never truly comprehend the anguish of others, which is why I’ve decided to be less than gracious in my reply. You asked for it, and I’m responding to your perfectly legitimate (if laughably moronic) exercise of free speech by throwing more free speech right back in your piteously pathetic, condescending face.

That is how it’s done, you sick Stalinist thought police wannabe.

Oh, and I should probably add that, were I black, I would consider your suggestion that my feelings were too preciously fragile to withstand the torment of ignorant white trash and their simian babble an even worse insult.

Consider your imaginary black identity. As one of the least-represented minorities on campus, you spend most of your day around students who look differently from you.

Oh the horror! As an immigrant from a tiny little nation that most people can’t even place correctly on a map, I spend ALL THE TIME around people who are different from me and who, understandably I must admit, respond to me talking in my native language by wondering if I have a throat infection. Yet somehow I don’t feel excluded, harrassed, downtrodden or victimized. I’m just different, hooray for that, and, besides, the people that I like to associate with don’t give two good flips about WHAT I am, they only care about WHO I am, which is good enough for me. As a matter of fact, that’s more than just good enough, it’s perfect.

The ones who don’t feel that way can, in my opinion, go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. They don’t matter to me any more than yesterday’s dinner.

Not only does skin color make you stand out, but your life experiences vary greatly from those you share a classroom with — few know anything of racism first-hand, or understand in real terms the struggle you may have undertaken for the right to show up at UCSD today.

Oh sure. The horrid, unfathomable struggle of making it past the race quotas that prioritize you above everybody else because of your skin color, the unending purgatory of having risen above the rest enough to make it to college, something that only blacks, according to the incredibly racist Mr. Port, have any familiarity with. Because, as we all know, all whites are automatically born with a silver spoon and a full college scholarship whereas all blacks are born in the ghetto.

Isn’t it funny how it’s only us conservative “racists” who ever talk about how we’re all HUMAN as opposed to automatically categorizing people by skin color?

I’m one of those “privileged” whiteys who apparently never had to struggle for a single thing in my life. Nevermind that my mother, bless her heart, worked her butt off to support me as a single parent for the longest time, nevermind that we never belonged to what would even be considered middle class, nevermind that I was the first kid in my family to ever go to university through sheer stubbornness, hard work and loving support from home when I should, by rights, have been a miserable failure (at least if you believe government statistics), I’m the privileged one here who wouldn’t “understand” what it means to be starting from nothing with the odds against you.

Fuck the odds. You are what you make yourself to be, and if you really want to, there’s not a damn thing in the world that can stop you, no matter what your skin color or background. Sure, it’d be easier if you’d been born to a family fortune, but no amount of money in the trust fund can make up for your failings in the character department as so many of the pampered little morons infesting our campuses show us on a daily basis.

And that has absolutely NOTHING to do with ethnicity.

If anybody had suggested that I needed special treatment because I was the only child of a single mother from a working class background, I’d have fucking well kicked their nads so hard that they’d have had to swallow to get them back down where they belonged.

But I digress, as I am wont to do.

Back to Mr. Port’s idiotic diatribe against free speech:

So when you see that newspaper, it’s not merely offensive. It assaults and ridicules every aspect of your identity, from the way you look to the cultural heritage that defines you in every way you know. Then the newspaper says that you don’t have a place here, that your culture and that of your family and friends is fundamentally inferior and unworthy of existence.

We note again that Mr. Port’s imaginary newspaper is just that: Imaginary. We also note that this imaginary newspaper is about as likely to wipe out your culture, you yourself or put you on a ship bound for Africa as Dhimmi Carter is of developing a mild case of patriotism.

Carry on:

While I generated this imaginary example in a deliberate effort to shock,

Not to mention perpetuating your own stereotypes and sick fantasies about black lesbian schoolgirls masturbating…

…publications trumpeting similarly intolerant views are, as any Koala reader knows, well established on this campus. In 2003, the Koala printed its now-notorious “Jizzlam” issue, which viciously mocked Islam, inciting outrage among campus Muslims and physically violent backlash against Koala members.

And this is the Koala members’ fault exactly how? Did they dress up in Muslim garb and beat up themselves? Well, why don’t we blame the victim? “They asked for it” and, as we all know, the best thing that a free and democratic society can do is to respond to sectarian violence by caving in to the perpetrators’ demands by outlawing the speech that “made them” beat up people.

There’s another problem with “speech codes.” They automatically lead to permitting offense against people who aren’t likely to set fire to the offender while outlawing offensive speech directed at Neanderthals that do. This is called “rewarding and encouraging violence”, and it’s frankly no surprise to me that a racist twit like Mr. Port would be all in favor of it.

Statements of violence like these, which single out specific social groups for public humiliation and assault, are not part of the marketplace of ideas that universities should promote — in fact, they directly inhibit the school’s role as a host for reasoned, informed and intelligent debate.

Oh G-d, this is fucking rich!

A bunch of perpetually seething member of the “Religion of Peace (My Ass)” lashed out violently against a bunch of writers as a result of friggin’ WORDS, yet it is their statements on paper that are “violent.”

And what better way of promoting “reasoned, informed and intelligent debate” than to disallow statements unfavorable towards violent assmonkeys?

I love this country, I love it so much I’d happily lay down my life for it, but I’m forever grateful that I never attended one of her institutes of higher “learning”, because they’re all fucking morons.

While contrarian provocation is certainly a valid tool for intellectual stimulation, verbal assault interferes with the ability of students to concentrate academically and function as productive members of their community.

“Verbal assault?”

And this week’s prize for Idiotarian Newspeak goes to… Drumroll… Ian Port.

If you’d ever bothered to open an actual book and read it, you festering pustule on the brain of humanity, you might be familiar with the saying “sticks and stones may break my bones…”

Universities intent on maintaining a relaxed, productive intellectual environment therefore have an obligation to draw a line defining statements of social intolerance as being outside of the bounds of appropriate conduct.

A “relaxed, productive intellectual environment” of groupthink where no potentially offensive deviations from the societally accepted norm are allowed. “Hey, Socrates, here’s your hemlock.” Galileo’s persecutors would be proud of you, Mr. Port. The rest of us, on the other hand, would rather not go back to the Dark Ages.

Defining certain words or arguments as unacceptably violent, harassing or hateful not only halts the rights of people to use them, it gives rulemakers power to determine what others can and cannot say — but, importantly, only in certain situations.

“Certain situations” defined by our “betters” in government, of course. Congratulations. You’ve just suggested that we throw out centuries of enlightenment and provocative thought in favor of an oppressive Gulag of conformity. Granted, you’re several centuries too late to be considered “progressive”, but still.

Yes, by all means let establish committees to define what thoughts and speech are “acceptable” and then sit back in wonder as, gradually, everything becomes illegal.

Seeing the need for free speech codes in the university environment is not equivalent to believing that the First Amendment is fundamentally flawed — it’s only understanding that certain environments foster an intellectual creativity too valuable to let it be threatened by bigoted spew from the ignoble basement of human social thought.

As opposed to your Enlightened Penthouse Apartment of Thought Police™.

Thanks, but no thanks. We’ll take door number two behind which you don’t have to seek approval from officials to speak your mind.

We already tried your model. It was called the Dark Ages or, to use a more contemporary example, China.

While issues of black/white equality rarely cull the kind of open intolerance students nowadays reserve for gays and Muslims, no violent expression is more acceptable than any other. Conservative Christians have recently been trying out the argument that campus tolerance codes limit their right to free expression by defining their religious beliefs as intolerant toward homosexuality. The key difference, they say, between racial intolerance (which they decry) and their perspective is that sexual orientation is voluntary, while ethnicity is not.

Saying “homosexuality is wrong” is “violence.”

Got it.

Conservative activists correctly point out that equating homosexuality with race puts evangelical Christians in the same bin as racists — and it scares the heck out of them.

Speaking only for myself, I’d like to point out to you that the one thing I’m not is “scared.”

Annoyed, yes. Insulted, yes.

“Scared?”

You give yourself far too much credit, as is all too often the case with morons suffering from delusions of adequacy.

But whether or not their beliefs are as morally reprehensible as racism, they are similar to racism in that they assert a basic inferiority of a fundamental aspect of others’ identities.

“Whether or not the argument has merit or not, I’m still right.”

It is a great pity that superior minds like His Majesty’s can find no more worthy opponents than you to hone his skills upon. It’s like arriving at the gym in anticipation of a good workout, only to discover that all the weights have gone and have been replaced by two styrofoam cups.

These kinds of assertions threaten the function and freedom of the university to such an extent that the First Amendment should be limited to mute them within that precious context.

Fortunately for you, the Constitution allows for just that. All you have to do is to get an Amendment to Limit Free Speech past the legislature.

Good luck.

The argument of the American Civil Liberties Union and others that limiting the speech of some limits it for everyone only applies in this case if campus authorities go out of bounds and interpret the code to limit more than viciously intolerant, identity-assaulting statements.

“Identity-assaulting statements?”

“Your Honor, I was brutally assaulted with a pointed identity-threatening statement!”

“Case dismissed.”

Oh, and I’m fantastically comforted by your claim that the argument will only apply if “campus authorities go out of bounds” because, Heaven knows, that will NEVER happen.

Criticism, even that informed by cultural differences, should not be limited unless it directly and cruelly challenges the basic rights of others to exist as they please.

In other words, free speech should only be limited if the exercise thereof criticizes the basic “rights” of others to engage in whatever behavior they damn well please.

Heil Hitler.

Limiting free speech must never be taken lightly.

It mustn’t be done. Period.

But members of the community with more mainstream identities cannot fully comprehend the devastation of having one’s social identity publicly deprecated in what is intended to be a relaxed, creative environment. As unsettling as they may be to Americans accustomed to free expression, speech codes help secure a university community where so many viewpoints and lifestyles must productively co-exist.

Unless some unnamed authority decides that the viewpoints in question could hurt the feelings of others, of course.

Yep, that’ll ensure free thought alright.

Fascist pig moron.

Thatisall.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 21st, 2006 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Academia Asshattery, Idiotarians. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.