At SFSU, Burn US Flag = Protected Speech; Step on Hamas Flag = Inciting Violence

Parent Cafe
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<p>My mistake. The administration did act after the demonstration described above. Against one of the cornered Jewish students!
<a href=“http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12354[/url]”>http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12354&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Refugees from totalitarian regimes seem to have the best grip on the freedom that this country offers. Twenty years ago I worked with several sons of refugees from Castro’s Cuba. Their families treasured freedom and recognized the threats that are always being posed to that freedom.</p>

<p>SFSU was home to loopy radicals when I was in college nearly 40 years ago. Still loopy, just a different crowd now.</p>

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<p>JHS: Cool! A Constitutional law scholar! I’ve always wanted to know one of those because I’m always having these questions I can only guess at and no one else I know can answer. Good to know you.</p>

<p>2dsdad: I’ve always thought of issues that pit two groups against each other as having three dimensions. The first is principle. The second is power. The third is history, or context.</p>

<p>Let’s take an extreme example just to illustrate my point. It’s Germany in 1938. A Jew posts a banner proclaiming all Aryan Germans to be murderers and rapists. A member of the SS posts a banner making the same claims about the Jews.</p>

<p>The principle is the same. In both cases, the statement is racist. Not all Germans are murderers and rapists. Not all Jews are murderers and rapists. Still, the law of probability makes it a virtual certainty that some unknown percentage of Aryan Germans fit the accusation, and some unknown percentage of Jews fit the accusation.</p>

<p>What’s not the same is power. The Jew who posted the banner would have had only a tiny amount of power. Basically, all he could have done was commit an individual violent act. The member of the SS, on the other hand, has the power to literally incarcerate, rape, kill, torture, etc. large numbers of Jews.</p>

<p>Now, that was an extreme example. I am not comparing this situation to pre-war Nazi Germany. I simply wanted to illustrate the point that, while the principle is the same, the power differential is not. In the example I just used, an Aryan German might be offended, but probably not frightened. A Jew would be very frightened, and for very good reason.</p>

<p>A third dimension is history. Multiply the power differential by a history of violence or other oppression by one group towards another, and the fear and intimidation factor is multiplied.</p>

<p>So, all statements are not the same in effect, even if they are the same in principle.</p>

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<p>But in this case, I don’t think the argument can be made that the College Republicans had the upper hand in the power dept. They are by far a minority view on campus. The incident in question can be found on YouTube, and it shows a handful of College Republicans on a stage, but they are surrounded by other students who are attempting to shout them down. It is pretty clear that the majority of people on campus do not share their views. If you google around a bit, it seems like there are many more incidents like the one 2sdad describes regarding the Jewish students. And the OPs original post pales in comparision to those incidents.</p>

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<p>Vango:</p>

<p>As I’ve said, I think what they did is protected by free speech. </p>

<p>There are different kinds of power. For instance, a white kid is walking in a heavily AA and economically depressed area of a major city. He sees a group of AA kids who start to scream racial epithets at him. That white kid has every right to be scared, because he is in a situation where he has little or no protection and others have situational and virtually unlimited power. Reverse that and put a black kid in a white neighborhood and you get the same effect, but with a twist. In some places, the black kid can’t even be sure that local law enforcement, should they show up, will protect him.</p>

<p>I was merely trying to illustrate that there is more to ANY situation of this sort than principle, only.</p>