by Hans Bader on October 29, 2012
Earlier, I wrote about how the U.S. government had scapegoated free speech for the terrorist attacks in Libya, claiming that the attacks were an outgrowth of “spontaneous” protests over an obscure, amateurishly-produced film in the U.S. that depicted Mohammed negatively — when in fact, there were no protests at all against the video that day in Benghazi, the city in Libya where the U.S. consulate was attacked. (The attack was by terrorists with ties to Al Qaeda, not protesters of any kind.)
As I have explained in The Washington Post and elsewhere, the Obama administration has sought to restrict free speech on the grounds that it constitutes, or incites, discrimination. That would severely undermine freedom of speech, because a vast array of speech; employment, land use-, housing-, or factory-location decisions; and exercises of freedom of association, can be depicted as being intentionally or unintentionally discriminatory (i.e., “disparate impact”) by government officials (and also because wackos can claim that even perfectly legitimate speech incited them to commit wrongdoing). To Read More.....
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