According to its initial assessment, the University of Michigan thought that freedom of speech did not include screening the Oscar-nominated movie, "American Sniper," because a group of Muslim students preposterously claimed that the showing would create an "unsafe" environment. I blogged about it here. After a public outcry -- and only after -- did University administrators decide the movie could be shown after all.
But free speech is not entirely moribund. It lives on in the form of rioting, and, worse, the official invitation to riot.
Harken unto these words from the mayor of Baltimore, whose city, as I type, is becoming engulfed in an anti-police riot. (I'm taking this story, not from any "right wing" source, but from CBS News in Baltimore):
I made it very clear that I work with the police and instructed them to do everything that they could to make sure that the protesters were able to exercise their right to free speech," [Mayor] Rawlings-Blake said. "It's a very delicate balancing act. Because while we try to make sure that they were protected from the cars and other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.
Q: What happens when a city invites a riot in the name of "free speech"?
A: It gets a riot. Whether it gets any speech, I don't know.
This is what it has come to.
The mayor of a major city orders that the police "create space" for "those who wished to destroy" because that is what is needed "to make sure that the protesters were able to exercise their right to free speech."
We need to understand what's actually going on here. It's not that the mayor doesn't understand that free speech has never been thought to include acts of violence. I doubt anyone who's been to college fails to understand that.
It's that "free speech" is being enlisted by a certain kind of thinking -- the kind that prevails in, for example, Ann Arbor and Baltimore -- to suppress actual speech and empower physical attacks on the police, plus destruction of property at will.
Nor will it stop with property destruction. MSN News is now reporting that, "Seven officers injured, one unresponsive in Baltimore riot."
And it gets better: The "free speech" crowd has but two hours to wait for nightfall.
For the First Amendment, however, night has already fallen.
Once again, we are far too delicate about what is going on here. This Mayor greenlighted violence against cops and other innocent people and doesn't care a whit about the consequences to real people. In her view, African-American violence is justified in this case and too bad for all the innocent people.
Nailed it. I just hope no one gets killed tonight. Baltimore is an hour and ten minutes from my house.