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Notes -
Texas Governor Abbott signs law attempting to ban free speech at universities whenever the speech criticizes Israel in certain ways (described below).
The Executive Order requires all universities to —
Review and update free speech policies to address the sharp rise in antisemitic speech and acts on university campuses and establish appropriate punishments, including expulsion from the institution.
Ensure that these policies are being enforced on campuses and that groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Committee and Students for Justice in Palestine are disciplined for violating these policies.
Include the definition of antisemitism, adopted by the State of Texas in Section 448.001 of the Texas Government Code, in university free speech policies to guide university personnel and students on what constitutes antisemitic speech.
Section 448.001 reads
And this definition includes (among other things) —
Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis
Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
These examples are intentionally ambiguous and can be weaponized by politicians or the judiciary against critics. The first example simply bans anyone from criticizing Israel in the same way that Israel routinely criticize others, by comparing them to Nazis. This cuts off a whole spectrum of political comparisons from ever applying to Israel. The second example could imply that you are antisemitic if you criticize Israel for things without also criticizing other nations in the same breath, however culturally and politically distant the nation. The third implies that an ethnostate cannot be considered racist if it is Jewish. The fourth implies that no one — not a single politician who is Jewish — can be accused of being more loyal to his self-defined homeland than America.
IMO this is a clear affront to freedom of speech. I find it embarrassing that any conservative in America would sign a law like this. The ambiguity is dangerous because it could be used by biased politicians or judges in its broadest application. While I don’t think it’s good public rhetoric to compare Israel to Nazis, that should be legal because (1) Nazis are everyone’s go-to villains, (2) Israel was recently the subject of an ICJ inquiry regarding genocide, (3) ethnonations should be extra scrutinized for genocide, (4) ethnonations with a history of genocide (Kitos War) and who fondly remember their nation previously committing genocide in their Holy Text should be super extra scrutinized for potential genocidal acts. The holocaust, like it or not, has no actual relevance to the current conduct of the Israeli regime. In real life, multigenerational ethnic groups do not swear off the same violence that their grandparents were victims of. So comparisons are fair game, if usually in bad taste.
You know, the folks that take umbrage with this (outside of a few truly principled libertarian types) were probably completely fine with the speech banning here, they just disagree on the targets. Free speech absolutism on campus sailed probably a century or so ago. The Obama Administration helpfully defined "sexual harassment" banned for the purposes of Title IX to include "unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature" including "verbal conduct". Democrats were completely on board with these rulings at the time, and similar ones about racial slurs. But now that Republicans are passing rules that students can't cheer "gas the Jews" (or, admittedly, several more modest phrases that still advocate for ethnic cleansing) and remain in good standing, that is clearly a bridge too far.
I'm not sure anyone is really being principled here, which as someone with centrist-to-principled-libertarian views is rather frustrating.
I tire of this parenthetical being deployed to avoid grappling with legitimate calls to defend liberty. Yes, it's clearly not the prime value for some of the bigger ideological movements today. But it's deployed because it still carries weight and its call should be answered regardless of what slime blows the horn.
Honor cannot be dispensed with, and treating the dishonorable as honorable is not itself honorable.
Quite to the contrary: an honorable man treats all people with honor, even those who are dishonorable. If you do anything less then you aren't honorable, you're just nicer to people you like.
Honor demands the dishonorable be dishonored. A oathbreaker's word should not be trusted, for instance. There are disadvantages to acting with honor; these can be outweighed by the advantages of being treated as if one is honorable, but only if those advantages exist. If honor requires the dishonorable be treated with honor, honor is self-defeating.
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Would you like to look at some real-world examples? Because I think there's no shortage of people modifying their interactions on the basis or absence of honor in their counterparties. One easy example would be the concept of "Magdeburg Quarter", and its analogues throughout the history of warfare.
You don't have to like someone to consider them honorable. In fact, the entire point of honor is to separate personal feelings from behavior.
I'm sure you can find lots of examples of people who claimed to be honorable and did that. But those people were not, in fact, honorable. They showed it by not acting honorable.
Honor is like principles: if you only uphold it when it's convenient for you, then you don't actually have it. It's the times when it bites one in the ass where you see who is actually honorable/principled versus who merely claims to be.
Whether they acted honorably or not is the dispute we are currently engaging in. Denying quarter to those who have denied it to others is not reducible to a "convenience"; there are no shortage of situations where simply letting the dishonorable behavior of others slide would absolutely be more convinient.
Certainly. Nevertheless, there remains a distinction between treating others with honor, and treating the dishonorable as though they were honorable. Honor is not a synonym of "nice". It can in fact be extremely convinient to pretend that people are honorable when they are obviously not, but doing so remains dishonorable.
Principles and Honor are about rules, and rules require enforcement. There must be an answer to the question "what follows?"
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This combined with an easy excuse to find the outgroup dishonorable allows you quite a convenient relationship with when you are bound by honor.
I do not concede that my "excuses" are "easy". We've had a decade of widespread attacks on freedom of speech, including popular public repudiation of the concept's core validity. The principles free speech proponents claim, and which many of us wholeheartedly accepted and acted upon in good faith for decades, were swept aside in an instant when they obstructed Progressive ideology. That action requires a response.
Free speech was supposed to be for all of us. It observably failed in that mission. If you are willing to accept one side censoring its opponents without being censored in turn, I am more than willing to operate under those rules provided I get to be the censor you favor. If you want to argue that we should cooperate to secure free speech for everyone, I note that I am part of "everyone", and eagerly await the lifting of the censorship against myself and my allies. If you want to help the people censoring me to not be censored in turn, with no actual plan for ending their own censorship, I am going to oppose you, because this is a conflict and you appear to have picked a side.
And before that your faction was the defectors from my perspective, do not claim this high ground, you've not paid the cost when it was dear. You being the conservatives it's not important to me whether you, @FCfromSSC were one of those principled libertarians. It's enough that you'd oppose us now on the side of those who opposed us then.
I am not.
Ground has been reclaimed. We feast wantonly in the valley of twitter. How much of a mistake it would have been to give control to twitter over to the bureaucrats in order to spite the social justice crowd only for them to cement control forever through the deep state.
If it must be so, but should my side lost the ratchet will turn and it will be your own doing.
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