Trump slips and slides; the real US tyrants strike
With every passing week, those who predicted the tyranny of Donald Trump look sillier. Blocked by the courts, frustrated by Congress, assailed by the press, under mounting pressure from a special counsel, and reduced to re-enacting The Apprentice within the White House, the president has passed from tyranny to trumpery to tomfoolery with the speed of a fat man stepping on a banana skin.
So does that mean we can all stop worrying about tyranny in America? No. For the worst thing about the Trump presidency is that its failure risks opening the door for the equal and opposite but much more ruthless populism of the left. Call me an unreconstructed Cold Warrior, but I find its tyranny far more alarming — and likely.
With few exceptions, American conservatives — even flag-of-convenience Republicans such as Trump — respect the constitution . Read it and you’ll see there’s nothing in that document that prohibits building walls along the border or raising tariffs on Chinese imports.
The modern American left, by contrast, thirsts to get rid of one of the most fundamental protections that the constitution enshrines: free speech. The first amendment bars Congress from “prohibiting the free exercise thereof [of religion]; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble”.
If you want to see where those fundamental freedoms are currently under attack in America, you will have to leave Washington and accompany me to some institutions where you might expect free expression to be revered.
Almost every month this year has seen at least one assault on free speech on a college campus. In February the University of California, Berkeley, cancelled a talk by Milo Yiannopoulos, the British alt-right journalist and provocateur, after a violent protest. You may say that Yiannopoulos is an unserious publicity-seeker who welcomed the furore . But the same cannot be said of my old friend Charles Murray, a conservative social scientist and pillar of the American Enterprise Institute, whose book Coming Apart so brilliantly anatomised the social origins of Trumpism.
In March students at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he had been invited to speak, shouted Murray down. When he and his faculty host, Allison Stanger, moved to another room, protesters set off fire alarms. When speaker and host left the building, the protesters pushed and shoved them. Stanger suffered concussion after someone grabbed her by the hair and twisted her neck.
In April a speech at Claremont McKenna College in California by the conservative writer Heather MacDonald had to be live-streamed when protesters blocked access to the auditorium. Berkeley struck again that same month, cancelling a speech by the pro-Trump journalist Ann Coulter because of “security concerns”.
In each of these cases, the target has been on the political right. This probably does not surprise you as most US universities now have something close to a left-wing monoculture. However, there are exceptions.
Bret Weinstein, a biology professor at Evergreen State College in Washington state, always thought of himself as “deeply progressive”. In May, however, it was his turn to fall victim to the unfree speech vigilantes. Weinstein refused to acquiesce when “white students, staff and faculty” were “invited to leave campus” for a day because (in the words of the Evergreen student newspaper) “students of colour ” had “voiced concern over feeling as if they are unwelcome on campus, following the 2016 election”. Weinstein objected, saying this racially targeted “invitation” was “an act of oppression in and of itself”.
In response, a group of about 50 students shrilly accused him of “supporting white supremacy”. The college police, under orders from Evergreen’s president, told Weinstein they could not guarantee his safety. When he held his biology class in a public park, the names of the students who attended were put online, with photographs.
No one could accuse Richard Dawkins of being right-wing. Among my academic friends, he is second only to Simon Schama when it comes to anti-Trump tweets. Yet last month it was Dawkins’s turn to be silenced. A public radio station in — you guessed it — Berkeley cancelled a discussion of his latest book because (in the words of a spokesman) “he has said things that I know have hurt people”, a misleading allusion to the atheist Dawkins’s forthright criticism of Islam, which — along with all religions — he regards as irrational. The station’s general manager declared: “We believe that it is our free speech right not to participate with anyone who uses hateful or hurtful language against a community that is already under attack.”
These are weasel words similar to those published in The New York Times in April by Ulrich Baer, a professor of comparative literature at New York University who also glories in the title of “vice-provost for faculty, arts, humanities and diversity”. “The idea of freedom of speech,” he wrote, “does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks. It means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate in discourse as fully recognised members of that community . . . Freedom of expression is not an unchanging absolute . . . it requires the vigilant and continuing examination of its parameters.”
Sorry, mate. Freedom of expression is an unchanging absolute and, as a free speech absolutist, I am here a) to defend to the death your right to publish such drivel and b) to explain to as many people as possible why it is so dangerous.
Freedom is rarely killed off by people chanting “Down with freedom!” It is killed off by people claiming that the greater good / the general will / the community / the proletariat requires “examination of the parameters” (or some such cant phrase) of individual liberty. If the criterion for censorship is that nobody’s feelings can be hurt, we are finished as a free society.
Where such arguments lead is just a long-haul flight away. The regime of Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela used to be the toast of such darlings of the American left as Naomi Klein, whose 2007 book The Shock Doctrine praised it as “a zone of relative economic calm and predictability” in a world of marauding free-market economists. Today (as was foreseeable 10 years back) Venezuela is in a state of economic collapse, its opposition leaders are in jail and its constitution is about to be rewritten to keep the Chavista dictatorship in power.
Mark my words, while I can still publish them with impunity: the real tyrants, when they come, will be for diversity ( except of opinion) and against hate speech (except their own).
Niall Ferguson is a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trump-slips-and-slides-the-real-us-tyrants-strike-qhx0w2g27
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The new left sounds a lot like the old left.
Anarchism means destroying the forces that seek to keep us on our knees, as much as it means finding your friends, lovers, families and communities to have each others’ backs, with unbounded rage and joy. The riot that spills into the streets with dancing and laughter, the potluck that leaves everyone fed, the social center filled with books and ideas, the friendships based in affinity and unconditional solidarity, the window smashed to let in the light from outside.
In a world full of alienation and apathy, anarchists are willing to act in accordance with their ideas. Anarchists are those who would set fire to a bulldozer or a new luxury home rather than let a forest be cut down, who would rather hear the sound of shattering glass than a politician’s speech. Deserting and disobeying all the rules written against us, by squatting and stealing for our survival, and rejecting the roles we’re assigned, as good worker, good student, good citizen, good woman or man. Rewriting the usual endings; by supporting prisoners rather than letting them disappear in isolation, by beating up rapists and homophobes rather than suffering their violence, by creating forms of love that only strengthen us rather than containing and limiting us. Taking control over our surroundings by painting graffiti on the walls or occupying space and planting gardens. By arming ourselves with the ability to create a new world and destroy the one that has been imposed on us.
The left has historically been very good at destroying societies and has been a complete failure at building societies.
utopian and dystopian one is real, the other imaginary.The differences are significant.
USA will never be anarchist. That it could be is an incredibly silly assertion.
USA will never be anarchist
Has someone made that claim?
Anyone who believed that turning this huge left leaning country to he right without opposition, protests, and blood shed were native.
3,000.000 more of the few million that did vote actually voted to continue turning left.
A fact that is Ignored.
Anyone who believed that turning this huge left leaning country
Reality stands vehemently opposed, in a sharp contrast and rebuttal to your opinion.
OK well the country should have kept going the way it was then eh ?
With every passing week, those who predicted the tyranny of Donald Trump
I never thought he was going to impose tyranny , he's too incompetent. I thought he would be a constant liar and asshole that would create chaos , unsettle the confidence in their country of millions of people, and embarrass the shit out the United States Of America. On those counts he's been pretty much what I thought. He does not deserve to be in office for one more second.
I never thought he was going to impose tyranny , he's too incompetent.
Please tell that to your hysterical brethren
at least i am not ideologically required to agree with or approve of him.
For the worst thing about the Trump presidency is that its failure risks opening the door for the equal and opposite but much more ruthless populism of the left.
This is Niall Ferguson!
He lists the dramatic failures of the Trump Administration... and then says the Democrats would be worse... without providing any proof.
But hey! Trust him... he's Niall Ferguson!
Far right intellectuals are the worst ! lol.
Far right intellectuals
Defined as "all those to the right of Joe Stalin"? (LOL)
Have you ever used the words "far left intellectuals" in a comment?
For good reason there aren't any.
Why do you seed an article about anarchsim overtaking America? It is just silly. Niall Ferguson butters his bread that way but the rest of us dont have to.
Why do you seed an article about anarchsim overtaking America?
I didn't, I posted a comment from an anarchism site, accompanying the seed.
I found it while looking around Antifa's sites. Often claimed as the 'good guys" in politically motivated violence.
I found it while looking around Antifa's sites.
There's an "Antifa" site? Hmm. I suppose that might have been some good info to post on the article published asking what "antifa: really is.
There's an "Antifa" site?
Many of them. Do you think Antifa communicate with carrier pigeons?
Start reading, follow links. I started here over a year ago.
Twitter also has links to follow
Do you know what a search engine is ?
"Far right intellectuals"
In my world that's an oxymoron, I believe ALL "Far" folks are at least half nuts and the further "far" they are the more nuts they are.
And. I tend to not to put much credence in insane people.
Insane people are those who think Niall Ferguson is "far right."
Your opinion is important, Sean...
Bob, its the duty of the literate to correct the ignorant. Unfortunately, you keep me busy.
and then says the Democrats would be worse... without providing any proof.
Perhaps you just didn't read that far? You, I believe, mentioned that before to me as problematic.
Did you maybe become flustered, at politicly incorrect ideas upsetting your ideological equilibrium?
politicly incorrect
I meant exactly the opposite. Ferguson is perfectly politically correct... by alt-right standards.
by alt-right standards.
In what way is he a white surpremist Bob? That is the definition of alt-right found at wiki.
or is everybody who disagrees with you a would be nazi?
My definition of alt-right is the post-reality right that has pretty much laminated traditional conservatism.
is everybody who disagrees with you a would be nazi?
I said nothing of the kind. Are you feeling hypersensitive?
Are you feeling hypersensitive?
Moral preening and virtue signaling now combined with backhanded accusations, f-ing hilarious keep being you Bob, please (LOL)
I really do get a kick out of it!!! NO, I mean it!
Every time you put words in my mouth, I will smack you.
I will smack you.
Love "trumps" hate (LOL)
Interesting. I just want to ask: Does anyone, besides me, think Donald Trump is like Idi Amin?
Quote from the article:
Sorry, mate. Freedom of expression is an unchanging absolute and, as a free speech absolutist, I am here a) to defend to the death your right to publish such drivel and b) to explain to as many people as possible why it is so dangerous.
Nope. The author, Niall F., is here to defend and promote HATE SPEECH not freedom of speech. There's a big BIG difference in the two.
HATE SPEECH not freedom of speech.
Learn about the meaning of free speech
First Amendment Demonstration of Free Speech and Freedom of Religion by an American burning the Koran, the Bible, the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and U.S. flag
Ferguson is spot on. Take away the self created drama and Trump's been an ordinary President. He's followed the Court prohibitions, even when they've been spectacularly wrong. He's allowed Congress to stymie his initiatives. In fact, the only illegal thing he's done as President is continue to pay Obamacare subsidy payments to insurance companies without authorization from Congress.
The real danger to our system comes from the left wing judiciary, who've shredded precedent and overstepped their constitutional role in their zeal to continue fighting Trump. The idea that the same action can be Constitutional if President A undertook it but not if President B did is as pernicious as assault on the Rule of Law as anything seen in decades.