llurch@stanford.edu (Rich Graves) writes:
Incidentally, [don't college speech codes] belong in the past tense? Stanford hardly lifted a finger to defend the Grey Amendment, which was designed and widely regarded to be the most carefully tailored speech code around. I don't know of any universities that have tried to enact a speech code since. The attempt would be futile. (Background: Grey applied only to "fighting words" directed at individuals. It was fine, under the [overturned] Stanford policy [which I voted against], to create a "hostile environment" by screaming hostile verbiage at nobody in particular; but you couldn't say the same thing to someone's face.)
The mere lack of enforcement of an unjust law does not justify the continued extancy of that law. That very "dead letter" law can be fired up at any time to harass critics of the university's anti-racist administration. Some examples of dangerous dead letter laws: * Abortion Most people presume that abortion is legal in the USA, wrong. Most states make abortion very illegal, our whole abortion freedom as currently exists rests entirely on a few federal court decisions. If the previous Supreme Court decisions are overturned, most states will suddenly start enforcing their fascist anti-abortion laws. * Hate Crime Denmark used to be presumed by racists to be the only country in Europe where racism was legal. Denmark's anti-racist laws were not enforced in ages. Yet, the anti-racist laws sprung into action to persecute Gerhard Lauck, an American Nazi who desired to move to Denmark on the account of a provocateur that his organization would not be harrassed in Denmark. Mr. Lauck was deported to Germany where he was sentenced to four years in prison to the outrage of professional anti-racists of the "moderation" of his punishment for merely speaking in pro-Nazi terms in Germany, where politics that challenge the ruling order is strictly illegal. * Racism In Other Countries Racist politics are explicitly illegal in every "white country" in the world except, so far, the USA. The mere lack of enforcement in many of the countries such as South Africa, Canada, Denmark, Russian Federation, Malaysia, Australia, etc., does not exonerate that country from the charge of censorship as political intrigue. * "We Will Take Power" A lot of fake anti-censorship activists insist they are for free speech in the sense of allowing such political purposes as "we don't like your policies and we want you to change," but desiring to make illegal such political goals as "we don't like your power and we're going to try to take it away from you." Yet there is no purpose, no purpose whatsoever in political speech, if there is no threat allowed to the ruling order expressed in idealogical terms and organizational forms. Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and all the nationalist founders of the American nation would approve of radicals organizing and expressing their goals of seizing power legally, or if denied the means of a republic for succession, illegally. * Unfree Nations Germany is an example of a nation that prohibits any type of Nazi political party. Therefore, Germany is not a free country, not an honest republic, in fact, less free even than Wilhelmian Germany in allowing radical parties to challenge the power structure. -- I marvel at the resilience of the white people. Their best characteristic is their desire to learn. No other people has such an obsession with the intellect.