Washington Post endorses censorship.

When did the left stop believing in free speech?

Bizarre.

Here is another perspective on the essay, which is behind a paywall.

//Tuesday in the Washington Post, a curious thing happened; a contributing writer for the national newspaper actually argued against conservatives' right to the First Amendment, seemingly not understanding her own right to print that opinion is protected by that same amendment.

Professor Jennifer Delton’s arduous piece,“When Free Speech Becomes a Political Weapon,” in a nutshell, attacked the right, and “alt right,” for “using” free speech as a “weapon” to advance their unwelcome ideologies, which she says “subvert our democracy.”

In the ensuing jumbling argument she advances, she defines free speech as something it is not, and makes unsubstantiated claims that the right is trying to “undermine democracy” so their rights should no longer be protected.

Delton started off by fretting that universities are now in a bind, because the right has taken the concept of free speech hostage. She claimed the right has malicious intentions for hosting conservative speakers because they’re trying to “bait” liberal institutions by “weaponizing the concepts of free speech”:

Here’s the dilemma college presidents face in the fall: Either uphold free speech on campus and risk violent counterprotests, or ban conservative provocateurs and confirm the “freedom of speech” crisis on campuses. Either way their institution’s legitimacy is undermined. This impossible dilemma is no accident. It has been part of a strategy, deployed first by conservatives and perfected by the alt-right…..

The second thing we know about the alt-right is that its provocateurs seek to bait liberal institutions by weaponizing the concept of free speech, which is an issue that divides the liberal left. It is true that higher education has brought much of this on itself through the extreme policing of speech and tolerance of student protesters who shut down speakers with whom they disagree. But that doesn’t diminish the extent to which the alt-right and conservatives are using “free speech” to attack and destroy colleges and universities, which have long promoted different variations of the internationalist, secular, cosmopolitan, multicultural liberalism that marks the thinking of educated elites of both parties.
Delton then claimed that college presidents need to “figure out” whether the First Amendment protects “conservatives’ right” to free speech because it “creates political spectacle and instigates violence.” Sounds like Delton neededto read the First Amendment again because she clearly doesn’t understand it. The courts have shown a high standard of what speech they deem qualifies as “threatening violence” and simply voicing a different viewpoint from another person does not meet that standard by a long shot. On top of that, at the majority of these protests between the “alt right” and “alt left” it is the “alt left” who shows up in hoods, with weapons and the intention to commit violence. She makes a further mistake by conflating “conservatives” with the “alt right.”//