Our reader V the K linked this report about Sandra Fluke’s distaste for opposing points of view:
As a student at Cornell and treasurer of a pro-choice organization at the school, Sandra Fluke, helped shut down a pro-life speech on Cornell’s campus by counter protesting. She argued that a pro-life organization at Cornell was about “manipulating [students’] emotions” with misleading statistics about abortion.
So, if this organization offered misleading statistics, why then didn’t Ms. Fluke take it upon herself to demonstrate their inaccuracy and argue the merits of her own position? If this story is true [and it appears it may not be*], this woman is not much interested in debating ideas, but in preventing the airing of views with which she disagrees.
In this, she has much in common with her ideological confrères in the Occupy Movement.
Just over a week ago, “unruly Occupy students at American University in Washington, D.C., shouted down Republican governor Jan Brewer of Arizona on Friday, forcing her to flee the room with aid from security guards.” H/t: Instapundit.
This week, they disrupted “a panel discussion [at AIPAC] led by Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami, FL led a discussion about Stopping Iran: Can the West End Iran’s Nuclear Drive?”
In the fall of 1964, liberal students at the University of California/Berkeley launched the “Free Speech Movement”; they wanted to end the school policy preventing student groups from operating “on campus if they engaged in any kind of off-campus politics, whether electoral, protest or even oratorical.” Now, liberal students want to prevent their ideological adversaries from expressing their views.
They times, they are a-changing.
*FROM THE COMMENTS: Reader Rick67, a graduate of Cornell writes:
I really hate to defend(?) Fluke but I’d like to see some confirmation of the latter version. Have followed the link and it doesn’t go any farther than “this is what happened” without specifics.
I cannot wait to see Cinesnatch, rusty, and Levi come rushing in to tell us there’s nothing wrong with namecalling, insults, or personal attacks on people with whom they disagree and that anything of the sort is not trying to shut people up. 🙂
Again, Rick67’s brilliant insight:
This is also why liberals like these are dangerous. They can justify anything — arson, violence, and murder — against anyone who they believe in their disordered minds stands in the way of their glorious socialist empire.
Jim Geraghty nails it. (h/t Instapundit)
Once again, scratch a leftist, find a fascist.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Maher should apologize.
Oops. The above was meant for another post.
I was president of Cornell Coalition for Life between 1987-1989. When I read the quote by Fluke in Cornell Daily Sun – for some screwy reason this whole kerfuffle which quite frankly is a giant squirrel suddenly got personal.
I followed the link. I have seen 2 versions of this incident at Cornell. One calls it a “counter-protest” of a pro-life display at Ho Hall (?!? must be new – don’t remember that one). Another says the group “shut down” a pro-life speaker.
I really hate to defend(?) Fluke but I’d like to see some confirmation of the latter version. Have followed the link and it doesn’t go any farther than “this is what happened” without specifics.
At first I thought “oh wait I remember this”. In 1992? 93? the Coalition had James Bopp come to campus to speak and a group of people who are all about “freedom of choice” stormed the lecture hall, mobbed the speaker and Coalition president (close friend of mine – a woman by the way), and shut it down. A few were arrested(!) on misdemeanor charges which were dropped. I think the Coalition was later handed a bill by police. I hadn’t been involved in pro-life activism since graduation (was sick of the whole issue) but was furious that people could do this and get away with it.
Then did the math and realized this was before Fluke was a student there. Right?
Don’t get me wrong. I think she’s dishonest, hypocritical, and this whole thing is a coordinated and staged tempest in a teapot designed to silence the opposition and distract the masses. And yes the quote alone shows her outrage was clearly that another point of view was being expressed at all. Ironically she doesn’t want women choosing elective abortion to know just what they’re aborting.
Don’t know why North Dallas Thirty keeps quoting me. He says it way better! I try to think the best of people, “do not judge” and all that. But since 2008 it has been gradually clear and suddenly intensely clear (y = x^2 clear) that too many leftists really *don’t* have any consistent principles other than Achieve the Goal at Any Cost. My eyes are being opened to what the left is really like and it ain’t pretty.
The modern Democrat Party has been infested with Communists; call them out as such & watch them run away like a vampire runs back in his coffin to get away from the sunrise.
I dubbed her the 30 year old occupier…
http://ladyliberty1885.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/the-morning-links-special-edition-the-30-year-old-occupier/
Shutting down opponents’ speech is increasingly a part of the left-liberal’s mindset. This is one of the reasons I have identified them as fascists.
(Larger, but related reasons to identify left-liberals as fascists are (1) their worship of Big Government as the solution to everything, including giving meaning to their lives; (2) fascism’s historical roots in the left wing, i.e., in non-religious socialism.)
Here’s an anecdote. Several people at my last job were hardcore lefties, and they loved to bring up Fox News completely out of the blue, and go on about it. I’m not convinced that Fox is as conservative-biased as they loved to claim, but I’d say: even if it was, how does that make it any different from MSNBC? I’d almost always get the following multi-step reaction:
1) The leftie looking at me dumbfounded, like a deer in the headlights.
2) The leftie sputtering something like, “Well, certain viewpoints should be restricted!” “Only good viewpoints should be reported!” “The government should ban news organizations that say things that aren’t true!”
3) The leftie changing the subject, before I could remind them about something called the United States Constitution.
There’s only one problem with that, Sebastian: at some point they have succeeded in convincing a lot of people that communism isn’t a bad thing. The evidence ranges from the popularity of t-shirts adorned with the image of a murderous, marxist thug on college campuses, to a Christmas tree ornament on the White House Christmas Tree with Andy Warhol’s “Mao” graphic, [insert your example here], etc. Sadly, the word “communist’ just isn’t the pejorative it used to—and still SHOUlD—be.
Equivalently, in the days when Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann were at those 2 networks respectively, they’d bring up Beck out of the blue, and I’d say, OK, how is that any different from Keith Olbermann? Same reaction.
Also, ILC, there’s one thing to point outL: the leftist/Obama Party definition of true is based solely on whether or not it advances the leftist narrative.
As Levi has stated here, it is all right for Obama to lie if it advances the cause of “progressivism” and socialism. It is all right for liberals to manipulate experimental data if done to promote AGW. It is all right for Obama Party Congresspersons to deliberately provide ridiculous assumptions if it causes a bill to score better. It is all right for CBS News to fake a memo about Bush’s Guard service. Everything is considered right, just, and truthful if it advances the narrative, and false if it does not.
Hence the problem. Liberals think Fox News always lies because it reports information that is less than favorable to Barack Obama and the Obama Party and also information that is favorable to the Republican Party. Liberals think MSNBC never lies because it always reports information that is less than favorable about Republicans and never reports anything unfavorable about Obama Party members.
This is where you start to realize that liberals are fascists. Seriously. They believe that organizations that report less than favorable information about the Obama Party should be banned, and that organizations that report only favorable things about the Obama Party should be provided public funding and support. They oppose any research into global warming that does not produce the proof they like, any research into breast cancer/abortion links that comes out less than positive, and any outside analysis of government finances that shows their policies as less than perfect.
In short, leftists do not believe the Constitution should be obeyed if it impedes their progress towards socialism and the silencing of all dissent.
When I was in high school, a liberal schoolteacher (who was a good guy in many ways, RIP) would tell the story of polls where people were asked if they believed a person should be able to say anything, worship any God, etc. In other words, the U.S. Constitution put into practice.
Supposedly, majorities of people would say no. The teacher would be quite smug as he told the story, implying that of course liberals would have given the ‘right’ answers; it was the stupid American conservative sheeple who opposed the Constitution in practice.
I think he was right, up to that last part. Or maybe times changed, I don’t know. But when I look around me as an adult today, it’s the stupid American *left-liberal* sheeple who most often oppose the Constitution being put into practice.
From the article:
Does she? As Rick67 said, there are no links in the Am Pros to corroborate this assertion. But lets take this story at face value and mark it as true. Isn’t it her right to protest? Who among us doesn’t support the Tea Party staging a counter protest against the Occupy What-Ever-It-Is. And it’s not like she was the one who decided to shut the anti-abortion protest down, that would be the decision of either the school, or the speakers entourage….
Oh, I just noticed the author of the piece is Jeff Lord. Not exactly the most accurate source of information out there.
@sonicfrog – You took my simple question (can we get confirmation of exactly what happened?) and made too much out of it. If we mob your speaker and event organizer – surround you, shout, physically hem you in – then don’t give me this pablum about how no no we didn’t actually shut you down, it was the school, or the organizer. Horse manure. We made it impossible for you to hold your event, we clearly shut you down, we actively prevented you from exercising free speech.
The question is only, Is this what happened? or was it a “simple” counter-protest outside the lecture hall/display/whatever? I asked the question without knowing the answer. I would add that no matter what happened on the occasion being described, it’s clear to me that Fluke objects to another point of view being expressed at all. The Cornell Coalition for Life *not once* attempted to shut down or disrupt a “pro-choice” speaker or event. Even when we counter-protested (which we did a couple times) it was quiet, and “here’s another point of view” rather than challenging their right to express their views. Sonicfrog fails to draw the appropriate distinction between “shutting down” and simple counter-protest.
Rick, I don’t disagree, but we should wait for the real story and confirmation there of before we pass any judgement. This is exactly how the Breitbart / Sherrod thing backfired – everyone decided to comment on the story before all the facts were known.
When it comes to political reporting of any kind, my rule is to verify before trusting.
Obviously, ND30, you find nothing wrong with it, as you’ve proven time and time again.
@sonicfrog – That’s a very fair point. Nicely put.
So?
Again:
To be criticized by you as uncivil or untruthful, Cinesnatch, is meaningless. It doesn’t have anything to do with truthfulness or civility; it only means that I am standing in your way and you want to shut me up.
People recognize that. As Rick67 brilliantly put it, you are operating off no objective principle, no reciprocal rule of civility, or anything fixed and unchanging; you are simply making it up as you go, creating ad hoc standards one day that you discard the next.
Why? Power. You want other people shut up, and you want other ideas and perspectives silenced. You want no challenge to your pronouncements, and you want nothing that would ever indicate that your understanding was incorrect or that you lack the necessary facts to make your statements.
Agreed.
Meanwhile, I think we need to bring forward the best example out there of the Fluke/Obama Party mindset.
Which, of course, has the full support of Cinesnatch.
So the question should be asked: if they want redistribution of wealth, suppression of religion, elimination of dissent from the public square and media, a guaranteed job, guaranteed housing, and free health care, why don’t Obama, Sandra Fluke, Levi, and Cinesnatch move to Cuba?
Or even better: do you think Cinesnatch ever asked his parents WHY they fled the Eastern Bloc, where their country constitutions explicitly stated that they were entitled to housing, jobs, health care, and food, religion was explicitly suppressed, the media only repeated the approved Party line, dissent was immediately quelled and punished appropriately, and wealth/corporations were abolished and redistributed — only for him to repeat the process?
The lust for power blinds people to the obvious.
Although, NDT, that is crediting him with quite an ambition. Probably true in Levi’s case, Fluke’s, Obama’s, Pelosi’s, etc.; but I think that in Cinesnatch’s case, it’s something smaller, more just a lust for attention.