Free speech on campus: Shepherd, Peterson, and sticks and stones
Canada, like most other countries, does not have as robust a free speech tradition as we do in the US. They also have hate speech laws, which we (so far) have not passed here, although many universities have codes against hate speech.
If you think I’m overstating the difference between the US and most other countries of the world on the rules about hate speech, just take a look. Many people around the world no doubt think that’s an example of our barbarity; I happen to think it’s an example of our historical devotion to liberty (part of American exceptionalism), and one that is increasingly under threat.
But liberty is always under threat, and that threat often arrives in the guise of “helping” people. In the case of hate speech, banning it is with the ostensible goal of smoothing ruffled feathers and comforting the distressed (or preventing their distress in the first place).
It always seemed to me that a few ruffled feathers—or many ruffled feathers—was the price we paid for liberty, and that we should (and must) willingly pay it to retain our liberty. I felt that way back when I was a liberal Democrat (see this post, from which the following excerpt comes; it describes an incident that happened to me in the early 1990s):
The [anti-free speech] trend was already quite highly developed and deeply entrenched at the time, much to my surprise, even though it had escaped my notice till I returned to campus life.
But I discovered it when the young women in an undergraduate class I was required to take for my Master’s””a class which, being in the social sciences, consisted almost entirely of women””were virtually all in favor of a definition of actionable offensive speech that went something like this: “speech that offends any person in the subjective sense, rather than speech that is in fact objectively offensive.” In vain I stood up in front of the 100-or-so students, most of them around twenty years younger than I, to ask what the limits of this might be, to suggest that it was wrong to allow the most sensitive among us to dictate what was unacceptable, and to speak up for free speech in general. I was met with uncomprehending stares and impatient dismissal, a fossil in my own time.
I realized that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Not one person appeared to agree with me, or if they did they weren’t saying so publicly or privately. And the professor, a woman just a couple of years younger than I, was clearly on their side. I have never forgotten it, and although at the time I didn’t put it in a political left/right context (that came later), I realized it was a frightening development and it made me feel very, very uneasy and quite alone.
It was a foretaste of things to come, both politically and personally. And even then (nearly thirty years ago) it was already quite well established at the university level.
Yesterday I put up a video of Lindsay Shepherd declaring goodbye to being on the left due to the anti-free-speech attacks on her. Shepherd is in her early twenties, so she wasn’t even conceived when I had that moment of truth in my class (appropriately enough, it was a class in Human Sexuality) so long ago. But she’s learning; she’s learning, and she’s teaching, too, by her example. It’s probably not the teaching she was expecting to be doing when she signed up as graduate student and teaching assistent at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada.
If you don’t know Shepherd’s story, you can get up to speed on it here (the article is long, but fascinating). Suffice to say she got into a pack of trouble for merely showing a few minutes of a Jordan Peterson video (as one view among many that she showed) in which he took a stand for free speech and the right to not call transgendered people by their preferred pronouns. Since then, she has publicized her case and become quite famous.
In that article I just linked, I found some good demonstrations of the two basic opposing points of view on free speech. The first comes from Shepherd’s supervisor Nathan Rambukkana, during an interview with her that she recorded:
When Rambukkana brings up the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and suggests Shepherd created an unsafe learning environment, she starts to cry. “I’m sorry I’m crying,” she says. “I’m stressed out because this to me is so wrong, so wrong.”
Shepherd asks who she’s targeted in all this. Joel tells her “trans folks.”
“By telling them ideas that are really out there? Telling them that? By telling them? Really?” Shepherd asks.
“It’s not just telling them. In legitimizing this as a valid perspective…,” Rambukkana starts, before Shepherd cuts in, saying: “In a university, all perspectives are valid.”
Rambukkana replies: “That’s not necessarily true, Lindsay.”
Rambukkana talks about Peterson’s popularity among the alt-right community, and at one point says that playing a clip of the University of Toronto professor, without giving any context for the students, “is like neutrally playing a speech by Hitler.”
To me, the heart of the matter is the phrase “unsafe learning environment.” Obviously, learning environments must be “safe” in the sense of “safe from physical harm” (or as safe as reasonably possible, knowing that absolute safety will never be achieved). To do this, we have building codes and the like, and campus security guards. These are all reasonable and customary standards, although even those are sometimes in dispute (for example, should students and/or teachers be allowed to carry guns on campus?).
But physical harm has now become conflated with “mere words”:
Matte [a historian teaching in the Sexual Diversity Studies program at the University of Toronto] responds [to Jordan Peterson]: “I don’t care about your language use. I care about the safety of people being harmed. [”¦] I want people to be aware that trans and gender diverse communities””and especially people of colour””are being targeted and threatened physically.
But if someone is being attacked physically, there is an enormous body of law that deals with those issues, and transgendered people are no different than anyone else in that respect and can avail themselves of the appropriate laws. Whatever happened to the old child’s adage: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”? The distinction had meaning in my childhood, and it should still have meaning now, but to the anti-free-speech forces there is hardly any difference between the two (although they want the freedom for themselves to call their opponents “Hitler”).
Note, also, that in that Matte quote he says he doesn’t care about Peterson’s “language use.” Ah, but it’s not “language use”—it’s freedom of speech. And in fact, it’s the Mattes of the world who care very much about “language use,” and who would limit freedom of speech in order to protect the feelings of protected groups.
This is the counter-argument, one I support:
…the so-called Chicago Principles of Free Speech, a guideline from the University of Chicago, that states “it is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”
I’m pleased that any university in America still sees it that way. I would further state to students that if they want to silence or ban speech on campus that merely hurts or offends them, they’re not yet ready for college. If they want to be treated as adults they need to act as adults, and if they want to enter the marketplace of ideas they need to learn to marshal arguments to counter speech they don’t like rather than expecting the world to protect them from even hearing it.
This is a fundamental issue. We learn through speech, we can barely think without speaking and consequent hearing. It is through speech that we test ideas, our own and others. Humans are not so weak that we need to worry about offending someone with words. Free speech is the most important right in the Constitution, for without it, we have no others.
At least both the president of the university and the professor, Nathan Rambukkana, have written apologies to her.
An excerpt from the president’s apology:
An excerpt from the professor’s apology:
As to the girl who was broadsided, its easy to change sides when its that overt your side went over the line and made you a Kulak in a town with none! [We will await Hogg, for at some point, unless fed his orthodoxy, he is going to hit a third rail that matters to his own side, the only side that can really bite him]
.
Just campus?
.
On January 17, 2017, the MP for the Essonne, then a candidate for the presidential election, tweeted the following words: “In 2016 the socialists compensated for the decline in birth rate by the migratory invasion. “The [Great] Population Replacement is [happening] now!”
he was reported to authorities by the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism. The prosecution describes the €5,000 ($6,136) fine as “a first and, I hope, last warning.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
but then again, does campus include the schools that come before college too?
[If only people could read other languages like their own and then see what was so alien wasn’t, isn’t]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Working on a campus is not much fun…
[and like 1932 everyone is looking the other way, its building steam without opposition from the same kind of fear, and some even think it has nothing to do with them…………… ]
A smattering of whats going on…
-=-
The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse is looking to hire a licensed psychologist to specialize in providing counseling to students who have experienced “microaggressions” and “bias incidents.” The counselor will “especially” tend to “students from historically marginalized populations,” and will have “priority in addressing the mental health needs of students of color.”
Santa Clara University residence hall is using a Snow White-themed display to encourage students to “S-Know your Whiteness.” The display admonishes white students to “understand your privilege” so that they can use their “power to advocate” to call out “microaggressions.”
…events, sponsored by the Columbia University Apartheid Divest student group, will be held in university facilities from April 9 to April 11, and will feature three panels: “On The Palestine Exception,” “White Supremacy in Academia,” and “Academic Antifascism.”
-=-=-=-=-
The influence of these socially constructed categories is felt today in the underrepresentation of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in STEM fields and medicine as well as in the erasure of their many contributions to these fields throughout history.
-=-
Don’t get me started on people with disabilities and their treatment in academia!!
Nor can you ask if the people that teach that kind of thing also use it in hiring, firing, etc… or what methodologies they use to get that result…
Excuse me, I have a puzzle to go work on now that I am stressed…
[half joke]
timed out..
one last point. The people are being slowly divided into two camps if one pays attention like Germany of that period. Each side fought to define the reality for the people that then oddly enough was two views of the same thing (which we have lost that knowledge mostly with broken families and no family histories any more), their posters were the same, even slogans too, and they even worked together (in the beginning). but eventually, they reduced the alternatives till there were only two camps. there was no neutral middle, nor was there a outside position one could find harbor in.
how could people let this happen (post war)?
who would speak out now? soon when its common knowledge what not standing for X means, then what? who wants to be the punching bag in a street fight?
just remember that they are constructing a “weltanschauung” which later will not be turned by argument because why? “ it refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs forming a global description through which an individual, group or culture watches and interprets the world and interacts with it. says the reference books…
they also say not far after:
core worldview beliefs are often deeply rooted, and so are only rarely reflected on by individuals, and are brought to the surface only in moments of crises of faith
A worldview can be expressed as the “fundamental cognitive, affective, and evaluative presuppositions a group of people make about the nature of things, and which they use to order their lives.”
anyway.. thats what the books say..
-=-=-=-
here are the 11 steps to understanding which the newer books say:
As Peterson said, eventually intersectionality will divide everything up until once again, the most oppressed is the individual the 1 against the all.
Ann:
Yes, it’s nice that they apologized. But I suspect it was only because she had the guts (and ability) to make it public and because public opinion went firmly against them.
2 Pastors went to jail in Oz for simply reading unredacted translations of the Koran to their congregations. Anti-villification laws here obviously mean you can’t tell the truth about what someone else writes in their own book. Section 18C…sheesh!
John Guilfoyle:
Wow, that’s terrible. Do you have a link?
Don’t know if this is the same case, but here’s a link to an article about one that was settled by mediation — “Church and Islamic council bury hatchet”; an excerpt:
I disagree very strongly with Snyder vs. Phelps, the supreme court decision that decided in favor of Westboro Baptist Church. There is a point at which speech is so egregious it becomes a provocation to violence. All civilized societies put limits on behavior, such as banning public nudity, public sex, etc. We wouldn’t call these actions protected speech, and as well we shouldn’t allow the outrageous behavior of disrupting and provoking grieving families by calling it protected speech. There is a give and take in rights. Libel and slander laws and laws relating to public decency, are limits placed on absolute freedom. Without them we have anarchy.
Neo—It was a long time ago…right after we first moved here…
https://www.theage.com.au/news/national/pastors-vow-to-go-to-jail-on-hate-case/2005/06/22/1119321792033.html
Since then Pastor Nalliah has gone fairly rogue in his “anti-many things” stance…but back in the day he & his off-sider Daniel Scot made a real case for free speech & lost.
Section 18C is searchable & there’s a wealth of verbiage spilled about it…but under any other name it’s a restriction of free speech that only is used here to protect Islam…and other darlings of the left.
Don’t even get me started on the same-sex marriage debacle here…not as bad as the Supremes unilateral fiat in the US…but darn close.
“When Rambukkana brings up the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and suggests Shepherd created an unsafe learning environment, she starts to cry. “I’m sorry I’m crying,” she says. “I’m stressed out because this to me is so wrong, so wrong.”
Shepherd asks who she’s targeted in all this. Joel tells her “trans folks.”
“By telling them ideas that are really out there? Telling them that? By telling them? Really?” Shepherd asks.
“It’s not just telling them. In legitimizing this as a valid perspective…,” Rambukkana starts, before Shepherd cuts in, saying: “In a university, all perspectives are valid.”
Rambukkana replies: “That’s not necessarily true, Lindsay.”
Rambukkana talks about Peterson’s popularity among the alt-right community, and at one point says that playing a clip of the University of Toronto professor, without giving any context for the students, “is like neutrally playing a speech by Hitler.” Shepherd’s supervisor Nathan Rambukkana
“To me, the heart of the matter is the phrase “unsafe learning environment.” neo
IMO, the heart of the matter is the phrase “In legitimizing this as a valid perspective”
Rambukkana is seeking to delegitimatize as invalid any POV contrary to the Left’s declared perspective. Rambukkana is parroting the Left’s justification for declaring a POV to be invalid when its expression creates an “unsafe learning environment.”
She then doubles down by declaring that invalid perspectives are comparable to Hitler’s racist rantings. The unspoken subtext being that no rational, well meaning person would give even a moments consideration to such evil rantings. And that allowing the spread of such speech is thus… criminal.
“IMO, the heart of the matter is the phrase “In legitimizing this as a valid perspective”
Rambukkana is seeking to delegitimatize as invalid any POV contrary to the Left’s declared perspective.”
GB – This.
The Other Chuck:
I agree that Westboro BC is utterly offensive and abominable. However, I don’t disagree with the ruling.
I would agree with you if they had been directly harassing the family. But this was the situation:
I would support a local law to keep them further away. But I don’t think their speech should be banned. I think we should be very careful about banning speech just because it is offensive.
Note also that the family only saw the placards, etc., because the TV station broadcast it. Maybe TV stations should voluntarily refuse to cover such demonstrations and stop giving them publicity.
Note also that the Court ruled 8-1. So the conservatives and the liberals agreed on this.
Neo:
The particulars of Snyder allowed the Supreme Court to vindicate the outrageous actions of Westboro Baptist and the Phelps family. Since the case wasn’t about prior restraint it didn’t directly rule for or against free speech. What it did permit was the continuing infliction of pain directed at innocent third parties under the guise of free speech without the remedy of monetary or other legal recourse.
In his dissent, Justice Alito said:
Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case.
He also noted that the father of the soldier was not a public figure, but simply a parent who wanted to bury his son in peace, and that he suffered “severe and lasting emotional injury” as a result of the church’s “malevolent verbal attack.”
In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims.
I agree with Alito.
neo-neocon Says:
April 6th, 2018 at 6:40 pm
Ann:
Yes, it’s nice that they apologized. But I suspect it was only because she had the guts (and ability) to make it public and because public opinion went firmly against them.
* * *
They are all basically cowards, and will turn like a weather-vane. See also the businesses that assiduously virtue signal their stances until the buying public pushes back (Chik-fil-a, NRA, etc.)
The administrators in this event were attempting to go the same way as all the prior cases we know so well, but Shepherd was strong enough to push back, and got support early so that she wasn’t alone (much like James Damore) — that seems to be a key to “winning” these fights.
I just finished reading a set of posts at Quillette that were very enlightening about the mob mentality being expressed in academia.
http://quillette.com/2018/03/02/academic-mob-fatal-toll/
This one demonstrates how far the rot has extended (not that The Atlantic is that far from The Academy).
http://quillette.com/2018/04/06/kevin-williamson-jeffrey-goldberg-victimhood-culture/
I always wondered why Brendan Eich allowed himself to be railroaded out of his own company so quickly, for such a small offense, but after reading this I understand that he is just smarter than most of us, and knew there was no point in fighting the mob.
http://www.academicwomenforjustice.org/downloads/gentle-genocide.pdf
Artfldgr Says:
April 6th, 2018 at 6:39 pm
The people are being slowly divided into two camps if one pays attention like Germany of that period. …but eventually, they reduced the alternatives till there were only two camps. there was no neutral middle, nor was there a outside position one could find harbor in.
how could people let this happen (post war)?
who would speak out now? soon when its common knowledge what not standing for X means, then what? who wants to be the punching bag in a street fight?
* * *
Indeed, that seems to be what the Left is trying to do in all of these “safe space” controversies.
As Geoffrey pointed out, “Rambukkana is seeking to delegitimatize as invalid any POV contrary to the Left’s declared perspective.”
I too live in Australia and am US citizen and I think the comparisons of one part of the English speaking world being better or worse off regarding free speech can easily be falsely comforting. Compare Jordan Peterson’ or Lindsay Shepherd’s experience to that of US professor Laura Kipnis in her battles with Title XIX. Both Peterson and Shepherd would have been silenced under Title XIX and would have been prevented from speaking about it publicly which is further cause for sanction under Title XIX and for which they could have been fired. Canada and Australia have some very lousy, hateful, (I’m restraining myself) hate speech laws but you can fight back publicly as both Peterson and Shepherd did. Shepherd in particular would have lost her jTA ob for outing her Marxist tormentors. Mark Steyn fought back successfully against Canadian hate speech laws(he got them repealed) precisely because the fight was not in a secret court. Title XIX functions like a secret court and finds people guilty of dastardly deeds like looking at someone the wrong way in a way similar to what we are learning to call ‘process’ crimes. As a long time expatriate I have reluctantly come to see the US as in some ways a legal tyranny that the inmates fail to notice. I have had to endure endless America bashing from the left and none of it has ever convinced me that the US was an evil country – as it’s own self loathing left so deeply believes. The US legal system has been increasingly perverted to use any means – fair or foul – to get people. You are watching this process being used against the sitting president, but it is the standard operating procedure used by much of the US legal system. Sorry my fellow Americans, but is a systemic problem. This Youtube of Conrad Black and Mark Steyn is the first outside criticism of the US that has made me feel real shame. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjuzjvwVqOU&t=74s
Lorenz Gude:
I agree that Title IX has become a dangerous weapon under the rules in place during the Obama administration, but Kipnis certainly seems to have spoken and written quite a bit about her ordeal (see this). What’s more, as that article states, “Though she [Kipnis] didn’t honor the confidentiality of university investigations, Northwestern recognized that confidentiality is a request rather than a requirement in its sexual-misconduct policy.” So she was not silenced.
In addition, Title IX guidelines have been changed under Trump.
In the United States there is already a law against hate speech, specifically when expressed during an attack.
In brief if I merely say “I hate identity group Z” then I don’t go to jail. But if in the process of attacking a person from identity group Z and concurrently, and possibly not even concurrently, say “I hate identity group Z” I would be charged with an additional crime beyond the attack, a hate crime.
Thus you have a statement legal under the principle of free speech become a crime in conjunction with an attack.
Hating identity group Z would provide the motivation of the attack and perhaps make conviction easier but should it be a separate and additional crime which can add to the penalties of the basic crime. I say no.
Cycle Cyril:
No, there is not a law against hate speech in the US, even for a person being charged with a hate crime.
A hate crime is solely an act that is already a crime (see this for the elements of a hate crime). The crime the person is charged with under the hate crime statutes is not an additional crime “beyond the attack.” It is the attack itself (that is already a criminal attack), charged under a different statute.
I happen to be against hate crime laws; I think the regular criminal laws are sufficient. But hate crime laws in the US do not prosecute an additional criminal act; it just is a different statute defining (and penalizing) the same act differently. The speech involved is not a crime at all.
John Guilfoyle Says:
April 6th, 2018 at 10:55 pm
“IMO, the heart of the matter is the phrase “In legitimizing this as a valid perspective”
Rambukkana is seeking to delegitimatize as invalid any POV contrary to the Left’s declared perspective.”
GB — This.
It’s not much different in kind from people who don’t find it legitimate that those like me use nicknames for Trum.
The reaction isn’t as strong, but they utilize the same principles and well, just wait until later as it will grow stronger with this Red vs Blue craze.
Cycle Cyril Says:
April 7th, 2018 at 7:29 am
In the United States there is already a law against hate speech, specifically when expressed during an attack.
There may be one in California, but I cannot recall. If there isn’t, Canada certainly has it.
Did Rambukkana or the president resign?
No?
They have NOT really apologized.
Apology is when you resign. No resign, no apology.
Those are the rules from the Democrats. I don’t like them, but they’re like that, and Reps & conservatives need to use the same rules against the Dems that the Dems use – until Dems change the rules back.
No double standards.
To me, Canadians, and most other liberals, are idiots.
There was a time when the notions of blacks or women having full rights, or the idea of interracial sex, much less marriages, or… much more recently, gay and trans ANYTHING, was considered by many to be “offensive”.
Suppose those offended by these notions had had the power to shut down arguments in favor of those things?
Where would these ideas be, NOW?
If it isn’t direct and overt threats, as in “I’m going to kill you right now!!” then it has no business being restricted BY LAW.
Suppose those offended by these notions had had the power to shut down arguments in favor of those things?
OBloodyHell: Comrade, I refer you to H. Marcuse’s landmark essay, “Repressive Tolerance”:
_________________________________________________
[Repressive] tolerance is extended to policies, conditions, and modes of behavior which should not be tolerated because they are impeding, if not destroying, the chances of creating an existence without fear and misery…
http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetolerance.htm
_________________________________________________
You see, it’s quite simple. Tolerance of the Wrong Things gets in the way of the Right Things, therefore such tolerance is repressive and must not be tolerated.
Eyes on the prize!
huxley wrote (quoting Herbert Marcuse):
[Repressive] tolerance is extended to policies, conditions, and modes of behavior which should not be tolerated because they are impeding, if not destroying, the chances of creating an existence without fear and misery…
That’s interesting, because implementation of “repressive tolerance” would would impede, if not destroy, “the chances of creating an existence without fear and misery…”
A self-negating concept.
Sorry for the delay but I was at a family celebration.
Most hate crime legislation carries an “enhanced” penalty for the offense. If you want an enhanced penalty enhance the penalty but do not have different penalties for same offense in the law. I am not opposed to a judge having the ability to determine the exact sentencing (most criminal penalties are ranges) based on the circumstances of the crime and the motivation.
But the potential for a second charge is real. Not too long ago George Zimmerman after his acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin was at risk of being charged in Federal court of essentially the same charge as he was subject to in state court with the added “enhancement” of a hate crime. This would have most likely been brought up under the Matthew Shepard Bill (Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009).
While there are some provisions to prevent double jeopardy under this bill it is a thin reed and depends, as too much in our bloated government, on the good graces of personnel who are anonymous and immune to any argument.
Zimmerman lucked out, in my opinion, due to the publicity of his case and the ‘in your face facts’ which the media tried to literally cover up (his head injuries).
Thus I think that the potential for double jeopardy of someone acquitted of a crime in a state court and then charged in Federal court for the same offense but as a hate crime is great and should be eliminated.
Hire traitors, live under tyranny. Duh.
For reasons I can’t understand, throughout my life, organizations–like universities—have hired people who simply don’t believe in the organization’s goals to run them.
“few minutes of a Jordan Peterson video (as one view among many that she showed) in which he took a stand for free speech and the right to not call transgendered people by their preferred pronouns”
IIRC, his POV is not to be *compelled* to use the ‘personal pronoun of the day’ by the Star Chambers of the Human Rights Commisions. Compulsion is the issue.
Sonny Wayze is right that the view of Dr. Peterson is not to be compelled to use third gender or other gender pronouns. Compelled by the government or even the university. It is interesting that he does use and will use conventional pronouns like “he” or “she” with actual transsexual people who are in the process medically, legally and socially or who have completed the process — of changing their sex. What he objects to is the compelled use of new fangled and outright weird pronouns like “ze”, “x/x/x/” and of course the notorious “they”. Many of these are used by people who have never done anything medically at all to change their sex or alter their biological sex and who never intend to Being “non-binary” is the rage now in some circles and many of these folks are apparently, anti-transition or medical transition.
Peterson has gotten a lot of support from people who have done medical transition. They write him to tell him that they are afraid of being lumped in with the nut brigade of “they” folks that is very leftist and highly politicized and has nothing to do with their lives. I am one of these people — of course. One of the trans people now not necessarily as much “trans” as “truscum”. That’s the term for people who do medical transition among the anti-binary crowd. Yes, weird! I am watching this new parade with some fascination and shock. There are even people who claim that “trans” now no longer means people who do medical transition since we are “binary” but — I have to say that is a fringe group. There are others who claim that having gender dysphoria is a “privilege” and that you don’t need gender dysphoria to be transgender. So again, traditional transsexual folks are marginalized. Total insanity has not yet been established but it is going in that direction. Yes it is getting weirder out there from my observation.
But that’s digressing from the core issue of free speech here. I have been following this free speech/hate speech controversy like you Neo for at least a decade now and it is one of the main things that took me outside the left. The problem is getting better and not worse. The good news is that many privately believe in free speech. Though liberty is a fragile thing.
Liberty Wolf:
Yes, free speech is definitely the issue for Peterson, and for me.
It’s interesting that Orwell was well aware, when he coined Newspeak, of the important of language and governmentally compelled and/or prohibited speech.
The number of terms has been proliferating, hasn’t it? It is indeed getting pretty weird.
It’s been said so many times in so many different ways:
“Sticks and stones…” that the mind is numb – but still people are unable to grasp its meaning.
You want to call me, what in in your mind is, an epithet – go ahead – I don’t care. I’m comfortable and confident in my own skin; I know who I am and what I’m capable of.
The problem arises, however, when speech becomes a harbinger to future, usually violent, actions.
You don’t want me a member of your golf club: fine, I’ll build my own.
You don’t want to accept me in your school: fine, I’ll find one that will allow me to matriculate or I’ll self-educate.
You want to prevent me from earning a living (Berufsbeamtengesetz): not so fine; I’m leaving before I find myself in a work/re-education camp.
It became obvious during the last century that the restrictions on freedom of speech, no matter how well-intentioned, lead to further restrictions on other freedoms.
Hateful/inciteful speech, with freedom to rebut without fear of reprisal, is essential to the healthy functioning of our country.