[Peace-discuss] Freedom of speech in CA (not in IL)

[C. G. Estabrook]

Let a hundred flowers bloom, as Clement of Alexandria said.

When I was young and kicking around various universities, I thought
that, if I founded a university, I'd begin with a restaurant.  It would
look rather like Rick's in Casablanca, and discussion would be the
principal activity.  (I'm not as adventurous as Aristotle, who walked
around for his university.)  As it prospered (and it would), I'd add a
library (classics and periodicals) --- this was before the internet --
and only then (perhaps) a classroom.

But of course I was thinking of education in Aristotle's terms -- the
goal of which is happiness, the development of human qualities which can
only be done in common, that is to say politically. (Permit me to
recommend the book of a friend: Herbert McCabe, The Good Life.)

Instead -- and the reason my view of a university as Duffy's Tavern
won't work -- we have a parody education presided over by a malign god,
described by a poet (since the poets -- celebrated by Aristotle, banned
by Plato -- always get there first):

	...But jealous of our god of dreams,
	His common-sense in secret schemes
	      To rule the heart;
	Unable to invent the lyre,
	Creates with simulated fire
	     Official art.

	And when he occupies a college,
	Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge;
	     He pays particular
	Attention to Commercial Thought,
	Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport,
	     In his curricula...

	--W. H. Auden, "Under Which Lyre"


John W. wrote:
>> At 08:04 PM 12/28/2007, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>> 
>>> The moral right to free speech (among other rights) is broader
>>> than that allowed for in existing law.  That's what the authors
>>> of the Bill of Rights decided when they insisted that rights
>>> there enumerated be added before ratifying the 1787 constitution.
>>> We obviously should be working to expand those rights, not
>>> limiting in the interests of the rich. --CGE
>> 
>> As usual I was speaking in more pragmatic terms, Carl, while you
>> are given to eternal idealism.
>> 
>> It always amuses me how those who are not in power want to base
>> their policy arguments on moral grounds, which to them are
>> eminently sound and utterly beyond criticism of any sort, but which
>> to others are of dubious validity and perhaps even quite mad.
>> 
>> The policy decisions made by those who are actually in power are 
>> almost never made on the basis of serious moral considerations,
>> though they may be cloaked in the rhetoric of morality for purposes
>> of rationalization or palatability to the masses.
>> 
>> But you'll have to excuse me, Carl, for I am currently in the
>> process of being schooled by Naomi Klein in her book "The Shock
>> Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism".  It is one of those
>> books of which it can be said that, having read it, one can never
>> look at the world in quite the same way again.  For Milton Friedman
>> and his "Chicago Boys" at the U. of Chicago's Dept, of Economics,
>> private property and "free-market" capitalism was and still is the
>> very epitome of morality, and the heavy-handed brutality required
>> to implement it is quite beside the point, hardly worthy of mention
>> or notice.
>> 
>> Ah, but I am venturing rather far afield.  Suppose that you, Carl,
>> for all your moral purity, somehow came into possession of a very 
>> well-patronized and lucrative Outback Restaurant.  Would you
>> encourage me, in the interests of the free speech which you hold so
>> dear, to come into your restaurant for the purpose of proselytizing
>> your patrons on the virtues of fundamentalist Christianity or of
>> veganism? Would you approve of a Supreme Court decision that
>> required you to do so?
>> 
>> John again