{"id":353349,"date":"2018-03-22T13:51:55","date_gmt":"2018-03-22T12:51:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/tolerance-cuts-both-ways-freedom-for-the-speech-we-hate\/"},"modified":"2018-03-22T13:51:55","modified_gmt":"2018-03-22T12:51:55","slug":"tolerance-cuts-both-ways-freedom-for-the-speech-we-hate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/tolerance-cuts-both-ways-freedom-for-the-speech-we-hate\/","title":{"rendered":"Tolerance Cuts Both Ways: Freedom for the Speech We Hate"},"content":{"rendered":"

by John W. Whitehead \/ March 22nd, 2018<\/p>\n

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Those who created this country chose freedom. With all of its dangers. And do you know the riskiest part of that choice they made? They actually believed that we could be trusted to make up our own minds in the whirl of differing ideas. That we could be trusted to remain free, even when there were very, very seductive voices \u2013 taking advantage of our freedom of speech \u2013 who were trying to turn this country into the kind of place where the government could tell you what you can and cannot do.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Nat Hentoff, The Day They Came to Arrest the Book, <\/em>1983.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Tolerance cuts both ways.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t an easy pill to swallow, I know, but that\u2019s the way free speech works, especially when it comes to tolerating speech that we hate.<\/p>\n

The most controversial issues of our day\u2014gay rights, abortion, race, religion, sexuality, political correctness, police brutality, et al<\/em>\u2014have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom of speech but only when it favors the views and positions they support.<\/p>\n

\u201cFree speech for me but not for thee<\/a>\u201d is how my good friend and free speech purist Nat Hentoff used to sum up this double standard.<\/p>\n

This haphazard approach to the First Amendment has so muddied the waters that even First Amendment scholars are finding it hard to navigate at times.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really not that hard.<\/p>\n

The First Amendment affirms the right of the people to speak freely, worship freely, peaceably assemble, petition the…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by John W. Whitehead \/ March 22nd, 2018 Those who created this country chose freedom. With all of its dangers. And do you know the riskiest part of that choice they made? They actually believed that we could be trusted to make up our own minds in the whirl of differing ideas. That we could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2525,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-353349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2525"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}