Free Speech Week: Yes, it is Necessary

The folks in the Southern United States have had a rough couple of weeks.  Residents of Texas and Louisiana had to evacuate their homes as Hurricane Harvey dumped feet of rain on their states.  About a week later, residents of Florida had to deal with the wrath of Hurricane Irma; whose storm surge caused massive flooding in parts of the nation’s third most populous state.  Hundreds of thousands of people in Florida have yet to have their power restored.  Both hurricanes cost billions of dollars in damage.  It certainly didn’t help that liberals suggested that people deserved the wrath of hurricanes because their states voted for President Trump in last year’s Presidential Election. 

 

In the minds of the snowflakes at Berkeley, they will have to deal with something far worse than a natural disaster next week:  Free Speech Week. These people probably take trigger warnings more seriously than hurricane warnings.  Brittany Pettibone posted this picture on her Twitter page, which accurately sums up how today’s leftists feel about the issue of free speech.  The words on the picture read “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words are triggering and require Federal regulation.”  The poor snowflakes at Berkeley already had to endure a preview of coming attractions with a speech from Ben Shapiro last week.  Many of the event’s protesters held up signs calling Ben Shapiro a Nazi.  That statement comes across as quite laughable when you consider the fact that he is Jewish; he even wore a yarmulke during his speech.  He used his platform to deliver a series of knockout blows to Antifa, calling them “anarchist, communist pieces of garbage” and “pathetic, lying, stupid jackasses.”  It looks like Ben Shapiro really knows how to melt the snowflakes!   

 

To paraphrase a popular 1970s song, they ain’t seen nothing yet.  The Berkeley Campus will host Free Speech Week, a collaboration between Former Breitbart Senior Editor Milo Yiannopoulos and The Berkeley Patriot, which begins on Sunday and lasts through Wednesday.  Free Speech Week might not seem necessary until you consider the fact that a recent Brookings study found that a plurality of US undergraduates believe that the First Amendment does not protect “hate speech.”   Milo has promised to donate $250,000 to help cover the costs of the events; which may end up costing more than $1 million as a result of all the additional police presence that will try to prevent violent clashes between Antifa and the people who want to attend the events next week.  A total of nine events will take place.  A majority of these events will take place outside on the “Savio Steps”, named in honor of Mario Savio; a pioneer of the 1960s free speech movement that today’s liberals appear to have no interest in preserving. 

 

Each day of “Free Speech Week” will have its own theme.  You can check out the full speaker list here.  This list, presented to the UC Berkeley Administration, differs slightly from the list posted on the event’s website; which lists Ann Coulter and Steve Bannon as speakers while the list provided to the UC Berkeley Administration does not. The website also features a “Wall of Shame”, listing liberals who refused invitations to participate in debates during Free Speech Week; including most of the co-hosts of “The View.”        

 

Free Speech will kick off on Sunday, which has been designated “Feminism Awareness Day.”  Sunday’s speakers will debate “the impact of feminism on free expression” and whether or not feminism has had a positive impact on freedom, women, and society.  In my personal opinion, feminism has not had a positive impact on freedom, women, and society.  I happen to agree with Milo’s proclamation that #Feminismiscancer.      

 

“Zuck 2020”, the theme of Monday’s events, appears to reference Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s rumored 2020 Presidential bid.  Recently, Facebook and other Silicon-Valley based platforms have faced allegations of censorship from conservatives.  Monday’s events will discuss whether free speech can “survive under the progressive leftist monoculture of Silicon Valley, where CEOs decide what websites survive.” Monday’s speakers include University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson and Software Engineer James Damore.  Earlier this summer, Peterson found himself locked out of his Google Account for violating the company’s terms of service.  Google later reinstated his account after the news of his shutdown spread on social media but failed to provide their motivation for shutting down his account in the first place.  Peterson has angered the Chief Elders of the left by refusing to use gender-neutral pronouns.  Damore recently lost his job at Google because he dared to publish a memo questioning the merits of Google’s diversity policy. 

 

Tuesday’s events will focus on “Islamic Peace and Tolerance.”  Tuesday’s speakers will debate whether or not Islam is compatible with Western Civilization; a debate many of America’s elites seem unwilling to engage in.  For one of Tuesday’s events, Milo Yiannopoulos will conduct an interview with Erik Prince, Pamela Geller and David Horowitz. Pamela Geller serves as the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative; which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a hate group.  Two years ago, Geller outraged liberals when she held an event in Garland, Texas showing exhibitions of offensive cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.  This event happened less than four months after the Charlie Hebdo attack, where radical Islamic terrorists opened fire on a French satirical newspaper in retaliation for their depictions of Muhammad.  I guess Allah’s soldiers don’t have a sense of humor.  While two Islamic terrorists showed up at Geller’s event to try and cause a repeat of the Charlie Hebdo attack, a brave police officer shot and wounded the two jihadists before they had a chance to carry out their act of terror. Not surprisingly, ISIS, one of the strongest opponents of free speech, proudly claimed responsibility for the attack.      

 

Free Speech Week will come to a close on Wednesday, which has been given the theme “Mario Savio is Dead.” Wednesday’s events will include “lectures on the nature of modern higher education” and ask whether America’s universities have abandoned their traditional roles of “teaching critical thinking and expanding worldviews” in favor of “cramming students full of politically correct noise.”  Mario Savio passed away more than two decades ago but the Free Speech Movement he worked so hard to help create during his time as a student at Berkeley appears to have followed him to the grave.  Free Speech Week will conclude with the presentation of the First Annual Mario Savio Award for Free Speech.  Milo will present this award to an individual who has “done the most for free speech over the course of the last year.”       

 

People who find these speakers offensive absolutely have the right to protest.  Unfortunately, many people see the words “protest” and “riot” as synonyms.  The heightened police presence at Ben Shapiro’s event last week seems to indicate that Berkeley Police have learned their lesson from the chaos that took place on February 1, the day that all hell broke loose because Milo was scheduled to speak there.  I hope and pray that Free Speech Week will allow the exchange of ideas without the use of violence.