Degradation of Freedom of speech
 

http://www.rrstar.com/localnews/your...520-4814.shtml


Both sides make a good point, but a fundamental freedom was disrupted at the commencement. When you interrupt someone else from voicing their opinion there is no longer freedom.

Commencement is about "the real world" because that's what college is supposed to have prepared us for so I do not see a problem with this topic at a commencement ceremony.

an anti-war speech is not really the appropriate place at a commencement speech. A topic concerning the challenges facing the kids ahead would have been far more appropriate.

I disagree. It is a very appropriate topic. He was brought in for who he is and what he's done, name writing book about war.

Would it have been OK with those who were upset if he'd been pro war? Your damn right it would have been.

It is an academic institution. It should be the home of critical thinking and therefore open to different opinions.

It sounds like many in that audience acted like spoiled children and reflected just how little they learned in their school of "higher" education...

Maybe it's not the best topic for a commencement speech, but the crowd are a bunch of idiots.

"His microphone was unplugged within three minutes."
I love when people refuse to hear things that bother them. Quick, can't let the kids hear anti-American sentiment! Might start thinking for themselves.
Daval, with all due respect, speeches about "the challenges ahead" are played out and always the same. "College President Paul Pribbenow is rethinking the wisdom of such controversial topics at future commencements. " Now that school will always have sanitized, dull speakers who speak in support of popular opinion and say the same boring things for fear of having their microphone pulled.

A speech about the current events is not relevant? Besides, with the war, terrorism and feverish patriotism I think it is a very appropriate topic, and it affects everyone. Mostly the graduates who are going into a "weak" economy and a unstable international environment.

This person chose to speak his mind and the least the "graduates" could do was hear his point of view. Instead they chose to act with their biases and ignorance. What good is democracy when we do not even attempt to practice it.

should've thought of that when they invited him

The confusion here is thinking that "Free Speech" means you can go anywhere at anytime and say anything.

You cannot.

First of all he was invited and offered a speaking slot. He didn't get up there and yell "Fire". Besides, being against popluar opinion is not "saying anything".

So should the first amendment not protect political speech? Should a citizien of a country not be critical of his country, and not be concerned about the direction it's going?

I can't put it more succintly than Lebell did.

So I won't.

If someone is invited to give a commencement speech, they are expected to do just that. "Commencement" means "a beginning" and to launch into political rhetoric, be it anti-war or pro-war or pro-life or anti-gay, is hardly that. So, in response, the crowd booed him off the stage -- how is that less a show of freedom of speech than him criticizing national policy at a graduation?

If a fundamentalist Christian had gotten up on stage and was telling the crowd that their sins were going to cause them to burn in hell for eternity along with the Arabs and Asians, he/she would also most likely be booed off and have their mic cut. But, because they're Christian and not a New York Times reporter, there would be no one here to defend them.

"Freedom of Speech" has been reduced to a card in the deck of those who have no other way to defend their beliefs, just as race has. If someone doesn't want to hear your speil for any reason, they are attacking your Freedom of Speech (or, if you're not white or gay, they're racists/homophobes/bigots too!). Freedom of Speech goes two ways -- you can say what you want, and I can close my door in your face, boo, or otherwise show my lack of support. You would think that after Michael Moore got the response that he did at the Academy Awards (I was surprised that he wasn't held up on high), people would learn that they need to think before they speak.

double post, nm.

You're right, he was invited. But he should have had the common sense to make a speech that could be appreciated by most if not all his audience, e.g. parents, students and teachers.

He did not.

Instead he chose to make a political speech to a captive audience.

Non-sequiter. This was not a forum for him to make whatever statement he felt like making. You're again confusing the right to question with the right to do it wherever and whenever you want.

Everyone point at the mod that double-posted, and giggle!

I'm running out of patience with this.
The college invited him to come speak at commencement. He's a respected reporter for one of the most liberal papers in the world, with a track record of being against the war. They gave him free reign to give a speech on the topic of his choice. He chose to speak against the war. That's his fucking right, and the first amendment be damned, it's in the implied contract between the speaker and the college. If they didn't want to listen they could have gotten up and walked away. But I'm god damn sick of the new movement in America to shout down anyone who speaks against the government's policies. The reason people like Michael Moore, Tim Robbins and Chris Hedges speak where they do is there is very little objective reporting these days. It is en vogue to kowtow to the President and wave the flag in the face of those who raise embarassing questions. So take your faux indignation at the man's audacity to actually speak his mind and beat it.

Kadath has summed up this side of the argument quite will and I agree completely.

Kadath,

You can run out of patience, but don't do it on the board.

:D


seretogis,

:p

I know, Lebell. My post originally read "...and shove it" but I realized that was not an appropriate sentiment. So I'm going to watch some Family Guy and laugh this off for a while.

He didn't choose very well, as is obvious by the response to his speech. A commencement is not for his benefit, it's for those who are graduating. As is typical, he put himself above those he was speaking to.

Which amendment is the one stating that he shall not be booed off the stage if his opinions are not shared by his audience? It's not the first. :)

It's their graduation, not his. Yes, the new administration made the mistake of inviting him, but that mistake was made up for in three short minutes.

Oh please. First, it's not a "new movement" for Americans to be patriotic. Secondly, Hedges is a reporter, and obviously he is not very objective. It's a shame that there is little objective reporting, but don't redefine the word "objective" to mean "doesn't-agree-with-me".

Kadath,

Good plan, Family Guy rocks (although I prefer King of the Hill).

Seretogis,

Please watch personal comments. I'll let you edit out that last one or I can do it for you.

Thank you :)

Sorry about that, I edited it out after re-reading it. :o

I found a interview this author did with a news radio:

This is the only thing I'm going to bother responding to. There's a very important and clear difference between patriotism and vociferous obedience to the administration's policies. I love America. I distrust my current government. So don't accuse Hedges (and, coincidentally, me by implication) of being unpatriotic. Loving your country means wanting the best for it, and that means considering everything with the best interests of the nation in mind, not just nodding along placidly.

Thanks to Simple_Min for the article. I think it illustrates the fact that the college should have (and likely did) know what they were getting when they hired Hedges. They just didn't know what the crowd would do, and I certainly can't blame them. I try to have a little faith in mankind from time to time myself.

run hippy run:D

boo-fucking-hoo

I'm not saying that to offend anyone else here, but a one sided interview where the author whines about how bad he was treated when he was just trying to enlighten the ignorant masses strikes me as more than a little patronizing.

The speech was an interesting read, but lousy material for a commencement.

In the same vein, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was picked to give the commencement at George Mason despite protest from the faculty and students.

http://www.redandblack.com/vnews/dis...mplate=default


Here’s a quote from a graduate at the ceremony

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwash...on/5885718.htm

Chris Hedges did a poor job transitioning from hot political controversy to an actual commencement speech message and in the process pissed off a “significant minority” of graduates. Rather than realize his mistake, he'll probably just continue to look down on them.

Here comes a transcript of teh speech in whole. It's a good read if you're pro-globalization and think that America is a nation of war-mongering bullies that no one likes. Otherwise, it falls quite short. As far as commencement speeches go, it is completely inappropriate for a graduation.

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http://www.rrstar.com/localnews/your...esspeech.shtml
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Text of the Rockford College graduation speech by Chris Hedges

I want to speak to you today about war and empire.

Killing, or at least the worst of it, is over in Iraq. Although blood will continue to spill -- theirs and ours -- be prepared for this. For we are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige, power, and security. But this will come later as our empire expands and in all this we become pariahs, tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. Isolation always impairs judgment and we are very isolated now.

We have forfeited the good will, the empathy the world felt for us after 9-11. We have folded in on ourselves, we have severely weakened the delicate international coalitions and alliances that are vital in maintaining and promoting peace and we are part now of a dubious troika in the war against terror with Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon, two leaders who do not shrink in Palestine or Chechnya from carrying out acts of gratuitous and senseless acts of violence. We have become the company we keep.

The censure and perhaps the rage of much of the world, certainly one-fifth of the world's population which is Muslim, most of whom I'll remind you are not Arab, is upon us. Look today at the 14 people killed last night in several explosions in Casablanca. And this rage in a world where almost 50 percent of the planet struggles on less than two dollars a day will see us targeted. Terrorism will become a way of life, and when we are attacked we will, like our allies Putin and Sharon, lash out with greater fury. The circle of violence is a death spiral; no one escapes. We are spinning at a speed that we may not be able to hold. As we revel in our military prowess -- the sophistication of our military hardware and technology, for this is what most of the press coverage consisted of in Iraq -- we lose sight of the fact that just because we have the capacity to wage war it does not give us the right to wage war. This capacity has doomed empires in the past.

"Modern western civilization may perish," the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr warned, "because it falsely worshiped technology as a final good."

The real injustices, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the brutal and corrupt dictatorships we fund in the Middle East, will mean that we will not rid the extremists who hate us with bombs. Indeed we will swell their ranks. Once you master people by force you depend on force for control. In your isolation you begin to make mistakes.

Fear engenders cruelty; cruelty, fear, insanity, and then paralysis. In the center of Dante's circle the damned remained motionless. We have blundered into a nation we know little about and are caught between bitter rivalries and competing ethnic groups and leaders we do not understand. We are trying to transplant a modern system of politics invented in Europe characterized, among other things, by the division of earth into independent secular states based on national citizenship in a land where the belief in a secular civil government is an alien creed. Iraq was a cesspool for the British when they occupied it in 1917; it will be a cesspool for us as well. The curfews, the armed clashes with angry crowds that leave scores of Iraqi dead, the military governor, the Christian Evangelical groups who are being allowed to follow on the heels of our occupying troops to try and teach Muslims about Jesus.

Hedges stops speaking because of a disturbance in the audience. Rockford College President Paul Pribbenow takes the microphone.

"My friends, one of the wonders of a liberal arts college is its ability and its deeply held commitment to academic freedom and the decision to listen to each other's opinions. (Crowd Cheers) If you wish to protest the speaker's remarks, I ask that you do it in silence, as some of you are doing in the back. That is perfectly appropriate but he has the right to offer his opinion here and we would like him to continue his remarks. (Fog Horn Blows, some cheer).

The occupation of the oil fields, the notion of the Kurds and the Shiites will listen to the demands of a centralized government in Baghdad, the same Kurds and Shiites who died by the tens of thousands in defiance of Sadaam Hussein, a man who happily butchered all of those who challenged him, and this ethnic rivalry has not gone away. The looting of Baghdad, or let me say the looting of Baghdad with the exception of the oil ministry and the interior ministry -- the only two ministries we bothered protecting -- is self immolation.

As someone who knows Iraq, speaks Arabic, and spent seven years in the Middle East, if the Iraqis believe rightly or wrongly that we come only for oil and occupation, that will begin a long bloody war of attrition; it is how they drove the British out and remember that, when the Israelis invaded southern Lebanon in 1982, they were greeted by the dispossessed Shiites as liberators. But within a few months, when the Shiites saw that the Israelis had come not as liberators but occupiers, they began to kill them. It was Israel who created Hezbollah and was Hezbollah that pushed Israel out of Southern Lebanon.

As William Butler Yeats wrote in "Meditations in Times Of Civil War," "We had fed the heart on fantasies / the hearts grown brutal from the fair."

This is a war of liberation in Iraq, but it is a war now of liberation by Iraqis from American occupation. And if you watch closely what is happening in Iraq, if you can see it through the abysmal coverage, you can see it in the lashing out of the terrorist death squads, the murder of Shiite leaders in mosques, and the assassination of our young soldiers in the streets. It is one that will soon be joined by Islamic radicals and we are far less secure today than we were before we bumbled into Iraq.

We will pay for this, but what saddens me most is that those who will by and large pay the highest price are poor kids from Mississippi or Alabama or Texas who could not get a decent job or health insurance and joined the army because it was all we offered them. For war in the end is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians, and of idealists by cynics. Read Antigone, when the king imposes his will without listening to those he rules or Thucydides' history. Read how Athens' expanding empire saw it become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. How the tyranny the Athenian leadership imposed on others it finally imposed on itself.

This, Thucydides wrote, is what doomed Athenian democracy; Athens destroyed itself. For the instrument of empire is war and war is a poison, a poison which at times we must ingest just as a cancer patient must ingest a poison to survive. But if we do not understand the poison of war -- if we do not understand how deadly that poison is -- it can kill us just as surely as the disease.

We have lost touch with the essence of war. Following our defeat in Vietnam we became a better nation. We were humbled, even humiliated. We asked questions about ourselves we had not asked before.

We were forced to see ourselves as others saw us and the sight was not always a pretty one. We were forced to confront our own capacity for a atrocity -- for evil -- and in this we understood not only war but more about ourselves. But that humility is gone.

War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press -- remember in wartime the press is always part of the problem -- have turned war into a vast video arcade came. Its very essence -- death -- is hidden from public view.

There was no more candor in the Persian Gulf War or the War in Afghanistan or the War in Iraq than there was in Vietnam. But in the age of live feeds and satellite television, the state and the military have perfected the appearance of candor.

Because we no longer understand war, we no longer understand that it can all go horribly wrong. We no longer understand that war begins by calling for the annihilation of others but ends if we do not know when to make or maintain peace with self-annihilation. We flirt, given the potency of modern weapons, with our own destruction.

The seduction of war is insidious because so much of what we are told about it is true -- it does create a feeling of comradeship which obliterates our alienation and makes us, for perhaps the only time of our life, feel we belong.

War allows us to rise above our small stations in life; we find nobility in a cause and feelings of selflessness and even bliss. And at a time of soaring deficits and financial scandals and the very deterioration of our domestic fabric, war is a fine diversion. War for those who enter into combat has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it the lust of the eye and warns believers against it. War gives us a distorted sense of self; it gives us meaning.

(A man in the audience says: "Can I say a few words here?" Hedges: Yeah, when I finish.)

Once in war, the conflict obliterates the past and the future all is one heady intoxicating present. You feel every heartbeat in war, colors are brighter, your mind races ahead of itself. (Confusion, microphone problems, etc.) We feel in wartime comradeship. (Boos) We confuse this with friendship, with love. There are those who will insist that the comradeship of war is love -- the exotic glow that makes us in war feel as one people, one entity, is real, but this is part of war's intoxication.

Think back on the days after the attacks on 9-11. Suddenly we no longer felt alone; we connected with strangers, even with people we did not like. We felt we belonged, that we were somehow wrapped in the embrace of the nation, the community; in short, we no longer felt alienated.

As this feeling dissipated in the weeks after the attack, there was a kind of nostalgia for its warm glow and wartime always brings with it this comradeship, which is the opposite of friendship. Friends are predetermined; friendship takes place between men and women who possess an intellectual and emotional affinity for each other. But comradeship -- that ecstatic bliss that comes with belonging to the crowd in wartime -- is within our reach. We can all have comrades.

The danger of the external threat that comes when we have an enemy does not create friendship; it creates comradeship. And those in wartime are deceived about what they are undergoing. And this is why once the threat is over, once war ends, comrades again become strangers to us. This is why after war we fall into despair.

In friendship there is a deepening of our sense of self. We become, through the friend, more aware of who we are and what we are about; we find ourselves in the eyes of the friend. Friends probe and question and challenge each other to make each of us more complete; with comradeship, the kind that comes to us in patriotic fervor, there is a suppression of self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-possession. Comrades lose their identities in wartime for the collective rush of a common cause -- a common purpose. In comradeship there are no demands on the self. This is part of its appeal and one of the reasons we miss it and seek to recreate it. Comradeship allows us to escape the demands on the self that is part of friendship.

In wartime when we feel threatened, we no longer face death alone but as a group, and this makes death easier to bear. We ennoble self-sacrifice for the other, for the comrade; in short we begin to worship death. And this is what the god of war demands of us.

Think finally of what it means to die for a friend. It is deliberate and painful; there is no ecstasy. For friends, dying is hard and bitter. The dialogue they have and cherish will perhaps never be recreated. Friends do not, the way comrades do, love death and sacrifice. To friends, the prospect of death is frightening. And this is why friendship or, let me say love, is the most potent enemy of war. Thank you.

(Boos cheers, shouts, fog horns and the like)

I'm for freedom of speech.
The people who shouted and interrupted his dull diatribe were exercising theirs.
I'm for freedom of expression.
The guy who pulled the mike plug was exercising his.

Yeah, speeches that espouse views one disagrees with always fall quite short, don't they. An open mind, willingness to listen to ideas that you disagree with, even if only to affirm your own point of view...well, it might be something to try. No thoughts on my last response?
I'm for selective support of freedoms. I'm for hypocrisy. I'm for separate but equal. I'm for the government being the final and correct word on what is art and what is smut. I'm for a culture that discourages speaking out against popular opinion. I'm for conformity. I'm for Amerika, land of the free range and the home of security in numbers.

What the hell. Is this whole place going crazy?

You do not have the right to prevent my right to speak. Same applies in the other direction.

Censoring someone's speech is not equivalent to me exercising my freedom of speech. It is being a jackass, a disturbance and a supressor.

There was (according to the writer) time to debate and discuss in a civil and democratic fashion the topics where you would have the freedom of speech...and if someone or I interrupted you then we are out of line because we are inhibiting your right to speak.

Many of you voice your opinions that this is inappropriate topic to speak about. I disagree. This topic is what's been going on in the world for the past 2 years and will go on indefinetly. This is the world these "graduates" are entering.

seretogis, about the christian comment:

There is a understood seperation of religion from public (funded by the state) schools. So, why would anyone defend that, except fundamental zealots.

In my book they were being rude and childish, which is their right I suppose. Shouting down and pulling plugs on an invited guest speaker is plain rude and disrespectful. I would be ashamed at my kids if they pulled a stunt like that, no matter what the subject or who the speaker.

No, not really. As a commencement speech it is horrible and completely inappropriate for the occasion. As a speech itself it was nothing but whimpering about how evil the US was, and indirect suggestions of how we should allow our actions to be dictated by others. I don't like to read or hear whimpering.

Well, considering the fact that you ignored 90% of my response and chose only to nitpick word choice in one sentence, I decided that it wasn't worthwhile.

unless a person is talking in length about exceptionally vulgar ideals (torture, extreeme expletives or rape or hate or some such) then there is no reason for anyone to act as childishly as these people did.

i am both amazed and disgusted at the extreeme ammount of whiney little bitches America has created.

i'd never be invited for sheer reason no one knows me, but if I WERE I would have to turn the invitation down, i fear.

I'll never be a 'guest' to people who do not want me for me. its wrong.

"You do not have the right to prevent my right to speak. Same applies in the other direction. "

You must have seen several occasions where audience members shouted at the President of the United States during speeches he made this year.

His responses were typically of this sort:
"Freedom of speech is what makes Anerica great," etc...

note: if they didn't have the "right" to do what they did they would have been arrested.

Freedom of Speech works in many ways - not all of which you agree with.

How is that freedom of speech?

Why does our president call something freedom of speech when clearly someone or something is hindering his own speech.

art: I strongly disagree with one statement. (I thought I posted this but guess i forgot last night)

the guy who unplugged her took a very bold step to silence her. to cut free speach away from another human is not free speach and is a form of intolerant nazism.

what he did was wrong. he silenced someone. censorship cannot be right and never shall be.

Simple_Min,
Answering with my personal opinion, I'd say if I were giving a speech and you interrupted me I would consider that your freedom of speech.

It would be then in my court how I would handle the interruption.

If I handled it well, we could have a dialog - which is, IMO, better than a speech any day.

If you simply drowned out my ability to speak I would consider the point made in my favor and relinquish the podium.

The point that would have been made is that the person who interrupted rudely is an idiot. I'd be satisfied with that and go make a speech somewhere else if I still felt the need to make speeches.

I'm not really interested in "rights" or laws about this. I see freedom of speech as something I posses as a power. My ability to wield that power is secured by no one but myself.

I know you probably couldn't run a country this way. Running a country is not my job.

WhoaitsZ,
If the person who unplugged the mike represented the institution, you bet I'm all behind his pulling the plug.

If he wasn't then I'd consider it an interesting action and let the law sort it out.

ARTelevision...

Well, personal opinions don't hold too well in the legality of the law and on this subject, I'm afraid, we will never agree upon. Any chance the supreme court could interpret for us what it should be? I wonder if there are any judgements on this matter.