Joe HonickJoe Honick

You could get the idea from listening to all the crapola from extremists of the right AND the left that people really care about something called “free speech”….so long as it’s the speech they agree with, of course.

There should be no question about the violence that seems to erupt on various campuses and appears to treat what’s called “conservative” as if it will infect the water as well as the air.

On the one hand, there is some question as to whether the violence might be manufactured to make a point of some kind; that is, promoted in the same way presidential candidate Trump claimed to defile his rallies. On the other hand, there is no excuse whatsoever for any kind of violence, no matter who’s protesting whom.

That said, we need to understand the hypocrisy of all the folks like FOX loudmouth Hannity who scream their defense of free speech by accusing others who don’t like speakers of the Ann Coulter ilk of denying her Constitutional rights. And, in a way, he could be right, not just right of center!

But just what do all those “free speech” warriors actually mean?

Floyd Abrams, for example, in his book “The Soul of the First Amendment,” points out what many of us who’ve studied the history of journalism have known for years: the same conservatives screaming for “free speech” today were preceded by their forebears who not only censored news and events throughout much of the first half of the 1900’s but continued to slant information in favor of some interesting people like Hitler and Mussolini as well in the 1930s.

As a collector of old news magazines, I have found significant “spreads” on those guys even in LIFE issues right up to around 1940. Certainly, media published by the McCormicks, Hearsts and others did the Nazis little harm while making sure we knew the damage the Communists were doing.

Just as editorially hypocritical were the Daily Worker publishers, of course.

Back to today, if those who demand so loudly the rights of free speech without the slightest controls would also scream for the same unfettered rights for Nazis, Communists, Socialists and Anarchists, it would make for some fascinating campus and TV show biz.

You see, the reality is in the actively slanted and censored media of the 1930s, Nazis were quite welcome on the campuses of the finest Ivy League Universities, a fact well documented in a book titled “Third Reich in the Ivory Tower..subtitled: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses” by Professor Stephen H. Norwood.

Not only were the Nazis freely welcomed, they were permitted to offer scholarships to students to come see the “new” Germany that Hitler was making “great” again, sans any visits to concentration camps or other “interesting” sites of course. Regrettably, even today, there remain more than a few campuses where racism and anti-Semitism have been clearly revealed.

Hypocritically, or perhaps not energetically, neither President Trump nor his predecessors (plural) have done much to stanch such situations.

So, we return to the present loud demands for “free speech.”

To be sure, whoever may be fomenting violence against left OR right-wing speakers, they are neither liberal nor conservative. The fomenters are simply extremists who merit no classification as ethically related to political affiliation.

So, it is time for aforementioned loudmouths like Hannity or newsletter publisher Ben Shapiro to stop calling protestors “Fascists,” unless, that is, these phonies are also willing to support the freedoms of egregious purveyors of Nazism, Communism and even Anarchy….or maybe even racists like the KKK.

After all, the United States Supreme Court did permit the rights of the neo-Nazi Party in Skokie, IL, as late as 1978 to march in Chicago.

Reality is that the nation is stuck in a long variety of contradictions when it comes to free expression precisely at a time many of those waving the American flag to claim their patriotism find the Constitution a powerful vehicle to defend their hypocrisy and extremism in all directions.

Perhaps, as I tried to say in my query as to whether we are losing a whole generation, some method or obligation for a minimum of a year’s national service through military or even non-military effort could help develop a more positive sense among our newer generations of what American principles are supposed to be about, however late the effort.

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Joseph J. Honick is an international consultant to business and government and writes for many publications. He can be reached at [email protected]