Princeton Student: Conservatives Don’t Really Believe in Free Speech
“it is actually a calculated political move”
Ryan Born, the student who wrote this op-ed for The Princetonian, doesn’t even seem to believe that free speech applies to conservatives.
Speech is free
It seems that, nowadays, cries for “free speech” ring from campus to campus. The term has become quite famous and quite popular. Perhaps it owes its popularity to how vague it is. It generally comes from conservatives in response to some sort of censoring of ideas. In its own way, “free speech” has become conservatives’ rhetorical weapon of choice, defended by right-leaning groups and thinkers both on and off campus. Recently, Professor John Londregan and some of his fellows wrote a letter calling for an end to the “shared and pervasive reality of growing hostility to free expression on college campuses across the country and around the world.” But what exactly is free expression, or “free speech?”
Conservatives would have you believe that their insistence on free speech is related to a desire for intellectual diversity and openness of discussion. When conservatives appeal to “free speech,” it is actually a calculated political move, designed to open up avenues of political discourse while shaming others from moving in active political opposition. I argue that when conservatives resort to this move, they can be safely ignored, as they are appealing to a right that does not exist. In my belief, when conservative ideas are opposed, there is no right that is being infringed.
We must begin with a fact: speech is intensely political. Speech is biased, opinionated. Anything we say, anything we don’t say, has political content and weighs on the scale of politics. Be aware then, that a call for “free speech” is as political as all speech is, because it reflects an opinion of what speech ought to be.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
I always assumed one needed to be intelligent to be accepted as a student at the university level. Who knew?
Apparently Princeton no longer teaches Miltons Aereopagitica or Mill’s On Liberty.
comments at the article are now closed…
i wonder why? there were only two of them, but neither complimentary.
and he’s a Junior philosophy major? i wonder if he’s ever going to learn how to think logically.
“I argue that when conservatives resort to this move, they can be safely ignored, as they are appealing to a right that does not exist. In my belief, when conservative ideas are opposed, there is no right that is being infringed.”
In other words, “Shut up,” he argued.
“When conservatives appeal to “free speech,” it is actually a calculated political move, designed to open up avenues of political discourse while shaming others from moving in active political opposition.”
The shame occurs when the liberal can’t offer any cogent argument for his political position.
Well, this is PoMo 101, isn’t it: to assume that no one actually has any principles, but that all speech reflects only relationships of power?
The Left is all about “flee speech” … they flee from speech they think they will disagree with or that might, oh, actually make points they can’t refute.