Paul Frantizek
Jul 10, 2017 · 2 min read

FYI, my post wasn’t directed at you. Just saying…

That said, your point makes no sense — the post you linked to was in reference to Trump responding to direct attacks against him in the course of a political campaign, not attacks against a guest invited to speak on a university campus. Of course a candidate for public office is going to respond to attacks against him or his proposals — that’s kind of the whole point of a political campaign in a democracy.

It’s a pretty invidious premise implicit in that comparison, essentially proposing a Soviet-style politicization of all speech, no matter what the stated purpose of the forum. Do you really believe that anyone who speaks publicly at, say, an event run by a student organization or a lecture at a book club ought to be treated like a candidate running for public office? To my way of thinking that goes against not only the right to free expression, but also the idea of free association in a voluntary civil society. This from earlier in the thread raised a good point:

On a closed platform, like the one given by universities, where a speaker is invited, rather than coming of his own accord, you cannot demand that you get the same treatment or else you disrupt that person talk. The university or the group inviting the speaker have no obligation to give you the same platform.

A group inviting a speaker is a voluntary association and they are acting entirely within their rights by inviting whomever they wish to speak to them — after all, it’s their group.

I imagine that you disagree with all of that though…

    Paul Frantizek

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