{"id":32758,"date":"2018-03-24T10:06:54","date_gmt":"2018-03-24T15:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32758"},"modified":"2018-03-24T10:07:06","modified_gmt":"2018-03-24T15:07:06","slug":"tolerance-cuts-both-ways-freedom-for-the-speech-we-hate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32758","title":{"rendered":"Tolerance Cuts Both Ways: Freedom for the Speech We Hate"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rutherford.org\/publications_resources\/john_whiteheads_commentary\/tolerance_cuts_both_ways_freedom_for_the_speech_we_hate_short\">Tolerance Cuts Both Ways: Freedom for the Speech We Hate<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Tolerance cuts both ways.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t an easy pill to swallow, I know, but that\u2019s the way free speech works, especially when it comes to tolerating speech that we hate.<\/p>\n<p>The most controversial issues of our day\u2014gay rights, abortion, race, religion, sexuality, political correctness, police brutality, et al.\u2014have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom of speech but only when it favors the views and positions they support.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/1992-10-28\/news\/vw-718_1_free-speech\">Free speech for me but not for thee<\/a>\u201d is how my good friend and free speech purist Nat Hentoff used to sum up this double standard.<\/p>\n<p>This haphazard approach to the First Amendment has so muddied the waters that even First Amendment scholars are finding it hard to navigate at times.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s really not that hard.<\/p>\n<p>The First Amendment affirms the right of the people to speak freely, worship freely, peaceably assemble, petition the government for a redress of grievances, and have a free press.<\/p>\n<p>Nowhere in the First Amendment does it permit the government to limit speech in order to avoid causing offense, hurting someone\u2019s feelings, safeguarding government secrets, protecting government officials, insulating judges from undue influence, discouraging bullying, penalizing hateful ideas and actions, eliminating terrorism, combatting prejudice and intolerance, and the like.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, in the war being waged between free speech purists who believe that free speech is an inalienable right and those who believe that free speech is a mere privilege to be granted only under certain conditions, the censors are winning.<\/p>\n<p>We have entered into an egotistical, insulated, narcissistic era in which free speech has become regulated speech: to be celebrated when it reflects the values of the majority and tolerated otherwise, unless it moves so far beyond our political, religious and socio-economic comfort zones as to be rendered dangerous and unacceptable.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, President Trump\u2014who has been accused of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/a-brief-history-of-donald-trumps-mixed-messages-on-freedom-of-speech\/2017\/09\/28\/dd44160c-a3b6-11e7-ade1-76d061d56efa_story.html\">using his very public platform to belittle and mock his critics and enemies while attempting to muzzle those who might speak out against him<\/a>\u2014may be the perfect poster child for this age of intolerance.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tolerance Cuts Both Ways: Freedom for the Speech We Hate Tolerance cuts both ways. This isn\u2019t an easy pill to swallow, I know, but that\u2019s the way free speech works, especially when it comes to tolerating speech that we hate. The most controversial issues of our day\u2014gay rights, abortion, race, religion, sexuality, political correctness, police [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2703,3166,13197,6300,16701],"class_list":["post-32758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-free-speech","tag-intolerance","tag-john-w-whitehead","tag-the-rutherford-institute","tag-tolerance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32759,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32758\/revisions\/32759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}