I am setting up this blog to address a number of technical and legal issues that, over the long run, can affect the freedom of media newbies like me to speak freely on the Internet and other low-cost media that have developed in the past ten years.
Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!
Universities set dangerous precedent in cancelling conservative speakers out of fear for causing others to become targets
“We’re not willing to risk anyone’s safety”. Susan Svrluga writes in the Washington Post
about the University of North Carolina’s (UNC) recent refusal to allow a “white
nationalist” (Richard Spencer) to speak on campus. That story links to an earlier Metro Section
story today about the dilemma universities face when controversial speakers,
especially conservatives, want to hold “free speech” rallies.
Campus Reformreports that Milo Yiannopoulos will
spend hundreds of thousands on security for his proposed rally at
Berkeley. Has he made that much from “Dangerous”? It’s not that easy to do this with
self-publishing. I know because I do
this myself with the “Do Ask Do Tell” series.
All of this highlights an metastasizing problem: schools and companies fear liability if they
allow a “controversial” party a voice on campus and combative elements (like Antifa)
harm their customers. It’s a new kind of
liability, for “causing” others to be targeted over a political issue when the
property owner knows the speaker has a combative or militant adversary. It’s a sort of hostage taking, or heckler’s
veto.
This concept could spread quickly. Would landlords be
liable for letting a controversial figure live in the building? And what is controversial? I understand that the KKK is unacceptable to
most people (more or less like ISIS).
But, in fact, most of Milo Yiannopoulos’s writings (if you bother to
read them) are actually rather reasonable;
he simply attacks individual dependency on “identity politics” and “intersectionality”. True, Milo goes over the top with some of his
antics and hyperbole (his video on hazing), which I personally take as just
that but which some minorities don’t find funny. But then protesters turned on
libertarian writer Charles Murray, for his willingness to talk about biology
and race, in the past. Where does it
stop?
All of this hooks up to the concept of “implicit
content” (previous post) and “gratuitous publication” (designed to attract
attention or cause emotional provocation without a paying customer to carry its
risk).
Then there is the bizarre AP story of Sarah Palin’s
lawsuit against the New York Times for defamation for blaming her for “political
incitement” before the Virginia baseball field shooting by a left-wing
extremist, thrown out of court, but the concept is Milo-dangerous (Bloomberg). The New York Times published an excerpt from
the Judge’s ruling.
Update: Aug 31 Now Ryerson University in Toronto has cancelled a free-speech event out of security concerns, as in this story. James Turk wrote a guest blog post for Rick Sincere, here. The left chants "this shit stops now ... either you're with us or against us."
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