Not for the first time there seems to be a confusion about free speech in this country.
It’s strange because this country has the best free speech rights of any country in the world. In their wisdom the Founders literally addressed this question first.
So why do I say there is still such confusion about it? Because every day we see the inability of people to understand the difference between three things in particular.
The first is that free speech includes the right to say things that other people do not like. Yes — it even includes the right to be a total jackass. There is no law against this.
But the second thing is that if you do behave like a jackass then people also have the right to say that this is what you are.
For years the woke left gave us all an enormous amount of amusement via their inability to distinguish between these things.
The third thing that many people are now confused about is the difference between speech and violence.
Purple-haired maniacs said “If you misgender me you are literally committing violence against me and genociding me.”
Words are violence, they insisted. When many of those same people spent the summer of 2020 encouraging or excusing violence we then learned that violence wasn’t violence.
All of which amply showed up their upside-down ideology. In fact it was at moments like this that people not only grew to despise the woke ideology. It was the moment when people saw through it.
Now that the right is in charge there are, perhaps inevitably, people who want to play the same tricks back against the left.
There was a classic example this week when Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) spoke at a banquet in Los Angeles.
Crockett is not one of our most eloquent representatives. During her remarks she started rambling about “these hot ass Texas streets, honey.”
She went on to say: “You all know we have Governor Hot Wheels down there. Come on now. And the only thing hot about him is that he is a hot ass mess, honey. So um yes, yes yes.”
I have tried to tidy up the transcript to make Rep. Crockett sound better than she did.
The trouble she walked into was that she was obviously trying to get some laughs at the expense of Texas Governor Greg Abbott. And Governor Abbott is, of course, in a wheelchair.
The crowd of lovely caring people in LA seemed to like Crockett’s riff and whooped, gasped and laughed.
But some conservatives smelled blood. Suddenly there were condemnations everywhere. Parts of the right effectively tried to “cancel” Crockett for her remark.
That seems to me to be a mistake. Republicans and others on the right do not need to suddenly come over all sensitive and prim and humorless like the woke left.
Complaining about people being “ableist” and every other “ism” and “ist” is what the woke-ies did when they had the bully podium. And it would be not just a tactical but a moral mistake for the right to mirror the tactic. Not least because it failed.
Which isn’t to say that people can’t say what they think of Rep. Crockett. Personally, after watching her remarks I’d say that if anyone is “a hot ass mess” it is Rep. Crockett.
But that’s the thing. If Crockett and her audience want to laugh at people in wheelchairs, then they can. The rest of us can make our judgements about them accordingly.
All this gets especially messy because at the same time that portions of the right want to effect outrage at things which are essentially unimportant, the left is trying to focus on a much more important free-speech battle.
They believe that if someone supports a radical terrorist group or comes to the United States and tries to cause civil unrest or vandalism that they should somehow be protected by the First Amendment.
In recent days and weeks even some esteemed conservative writers have backed up this position.
As well as the case of Mahmoud Khalil, there is now also the case of Rumeysa Ozturk. Like Khalil, this person came into the US claiming to be a student. She came in on a student visa.
The Turkish-born student has now been detained. She seems — like Khalil — to have made a fundamental misunderstanding about what it means to come to the US as a student.
First of all she — like him — is not protected by the same laws that would protect an American citizen. She was not born in this country, is not a citizen of this country and was — in fact — a guest in this country.
But the left — and some on the right — are gearing up to make her their latest “free-speech martyr.” Yet even free speech for American citizens stop at the moment that you support the harassment of American students.
It stops at the moment that you encourage and engage in acts of vandalism and violence on American college campuses — among other places. And it stops when you support foreign and domestic terrorist movements.
As Marco Rubio said yesterday, there is no reason why any country in the world should invite people into it whose intent is to cause civil strife. What country would invite people in and then reward them for trying to cause trouble in their host country?
As Rubio said of the Ozturk case: “We gave you a visa to study and earn a degree — not to become a social activist tearing up our campuses. If you use your visa to do that, we’ll take it away. And I encourage every country to do the same.”
Senator Josh Hawley managed to hold the sane eminently sensible line yesterday when he berated people claiming that assaulting campus police and smashing up buildings is “protected speech.” It isn’t.
Words are not violence. Violence is violence. The woke left never liked to remember this. But conservatives shouldn’t forget it either.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
