ACLU: Shouting down Tancredo amounted to censorship
The foot stomping and window smashing didn’t help either.
Correction: make that grassroots foot stomping and window smashing. This was supposedly a spontaneous demonstration against racist thought.
Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in North Carolina, said the protesters’ actions amounted to “de facto censorship.” She had seen video of Tancredo’s appearance on YouTube.
“This is disturbing,” she said. “That video is chilling.”
Rudinger said Tancredo has the right to express his views against mass immigration, just as students at N.C. State had the right to paint racist remarks against President Barack Obama on the campus Free Expression Tunnel on Election Day last fall.
She was doing so well, until the mandatory mention of N.C State’s racist graffiti on Election Day! If we must remember that–as we well should–we should also remember what became of those student actions. There were mass protests against the graffiti. There were student apologies. There were “smart people” in the university system proposing hate crime advisory panels and additional diversity training for students. Will they propose the same here?
Let me think for a long minute. . . hmm. Nope.
A random, spontaneous act of racist graffiti by four students in a room specifically appropriated for, um, graffiti requires a top-down public soul cleansing with everyone having to take some bitter panaceas.
A coordinated, physically violent attack on free expression by a former politician invited to speak is just an anomaly for which no one will ever have to apologize.
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