Displaying items by tag: free speech

Comedians have always played a unique role in western society. Armed with humor and wit, it is their job to push the envelope, holding a mirror up to society and speaking truth to power. 

On Oct. 5, former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen testified before the U.S. Senate, decrying her former employer's "destructive impact" and warning that "without action, divisive and extremist behaviors we see today are only the beginning."

WILMINGTON — Describing a culture of silencing conservative voices at UNCW, one trustee was driven to quit last week with an openly critical post of Seahawk nation on Facebook. Former UNCW Board of Trustees member Woody White revealed what he sees as a troubling trend in treatment of conservative faculty and students.

As an academic dean of library services for the past 40 years, I think I have a good eye for what constitutes censorship. Cancel culture, a new term for an old and deadly form of silencing your enemies has recently shown its ugly face and has unmistakably assumed the role of free speech bullies. Not since the McCarthy Era have we seen such proscription of speech, and it appears to be unrelenting. The eagerness with which these new speech bullies seek to prohibit ideas is now ubiquitous, and the desire to cancel scores of individuals from Washington State to, well, the heart of the reddest of Red States, Rock Hill, South Carolina, where I live, is raging.

"If [Donald] Trump and [Bernie] Sanders take the same position on Big Tech censorship," David Catron writes at The American Spectator, "the issue deserves serious attention."

The average American can be forgiven for assuming that he or she can freely criticize the government and government personnel without fear of being sued by the government for libel or slander.

Prince Harry seems to have been born with few talents aside from putting his foot in his mouth.

In 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court held, in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, that students don't "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." Schools may only prohibit, censor, or punish student speech which would "materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school."

Before they vote to make online impersonation a crime, state senators should chew the fat with Jim Ardis.

Some North Carolina lawmakers want public activism at government meetings to be a high-stakes affair with the threat of arrest hanging in the balance.