April 13th, 2007

First amendment: my friend and my enemy

By Anthony Marek

There were two types of protesters at the NYU College Republicans’ panel on illegal immigration this past Monday: first, there was the goofball socialist that held up posterboard with colorful accusations “like fascist,” squawked “si se puede,” and boldly turned their backs on Chris Simcox when he spoke.

Then there was the type who only “cheered internally at every ‘fuck you’” and who transcended this whole pedestrian argument by declaring Simcox unfit to contribute to academic discussion. The latter are an elusive breed; thus far I have only identified Mike Devlin and Una Hardester, a self-described “mild-mannered human rights activist,” as members.

I really liked Mike’s column, but maybe I was just relieved that a sympathizer of Enrique Morones was backing up his position in the English language. I exaggerate, but still, the column was good. That didn’t, however, change its status as a more eloquent way of opposing Simcox’s right to speak, and that’s where I take issue.

I follow the line of reasoning, although it’s probably not the first time a liberal thought a conservative didn’t contribute to academic discussion. Yeah, it’s a university, and all, but I’m fairly certain that academic discussion — whatever that means — is not a prerequisite for the unequivocal right to speak.

I can’t get inside Simcox’s head, and I really, really don’t want to. All I know is that he wasn’t screaming “Kill the goddamn Mexicans!” from that podium. Were that the case, I’d slap the duct tape on him myself.

Una Hardester was disillusioned by the “extreme right versus the extreme left.” Maybe the extreme right was there that night; I certainly didn’t see it, but I think it’s pretty telling about the state of academia that to simply advocate the enforcement of minimal national security laws that are already on the books is to hold a hard-line conservative stance. Some even say it’s racist, classist, and so forth.

Who knows what the Minutemen really want? Do they want to round up illegals in Iowa and deport them? Nobody knows. Except for Mike, who decided that since a commenter posted it, the Minuteman Project must be all for it.

As a follow-up to Matt Rosenberg’s excellent rebuke of Seattle’s self-loathing whites who seem to believe in some perverted new original sin, let’s go to the videotape for some real freedom of fuckin’ speech:

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Opinion, That's What He Said. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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