A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF PROGRESSIVE FREE SPEECH ILLOGIC:  A writer in the Guardian exemplifies muddled progressive thinking about the meaning and value of free speech:

The American university system is currently the battleground for what looks to be our next great culture war: free speech versus political correctness. On one side are the ever-harrumphing Reasonable White Men, such as New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, who fretted extravagantly over “political correctness” in an interview with National Public Radio: “I would define PC as a new ideology that is completely intolerant of dissent on issues relating to race and gender. So, it’s an illiberal kind of politics that does not grant any political legitimacy to criticism on identity issues. So, even if it’s made in response to legitimate racism and legitimate sexism that people have every right to be concerned about, it shuts down democratic politics in a way that we should be concerned about.”

The other side – which is not really a “side” at all so much as a vast, multifarious crowd of marginalised people all advocating for their own humanity with varying degrees of success and silliness – includes trauma survivors requesting trigger warnings, feminists criticising rape jokes, people of colour trying to explain cultural appropriation to white people who think the earth is their toy chest, and black students sick of universities gobbling their tuition money but treating them like dangerous interlopers. . . .

After setting up her false dichotomy between “ever-harrumphing Reasonable White Men” and “a vast, multifarious crowd of marginalised people all advocating for their own humanity,” the writer then draws a (predictable) false conclusion:

But here is the thing: white students parading around campus in blackface is itself a silencing tactic. Telling rape victims that they’re “coddled” is a silencing tactic. Teaching marginalised people that their concerns will always be imperiously dismissed, always subordinated to some decontextualised free-speech absolutism is a silencing tactic.

Framing student protests as bratty “political correctness gone mad” makes campuses a hostile environment for everyone except for students who have no need to protest. . . If you’re genuinely concerned about “free speech”, take a step back and look at what’s actually happening here: a bunch of college students, on the cusp of finding their voices, being publicly berated by high-profile writers in national publications because they don’t like what they have to say. Are you sure you know who’s silencing whom?

So basically, her argument is this: If individuals–mostly “white students”–express their disagreement with the views of the “marginalised people” (who may well come from very privileged backgrounds, but that doesn’t matter of course)–is a “silencing tactic” that is antithetical to free speech. She believes, in other words, that it is imperative to silence some speech so that others’ voices may be heard.

The writer has obviously not been schooled on the Constitution’s First Amendment, which is grounded in the theory that a robust–even offensive–marketplace of ideas is necessary to individual liberty and the quest for truth. But then again, I’m certain the writer does not care much for the pesky Constitution, which is precisely why her perspective is so dangerous.

UPDATE:  Just to be clear: the writer of this Guardian piece is an American journalist, not British.

UPDATE: C. Bradley Thompson points me to an open letter he and some colleagues at Clemson recently penned to Clemson students, pledging their opposition to any unconstitutional attempts by the university to suppress free speech, including speech that makes others uncomfortable. We need more faculty like this, but I won’t hold my breath.