‘It Is Not Free Speech To Silence Others’: Judge Kyle Duncan Speaks Out About Mob Crashing His Stanford Law School Talk | Eastern NC Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is John Rigolizzo.

    Federal judge Kyle Duncan spoke about the recent debacle he suffered during a talk at Stanford University.

    The University of Notre Dame's Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government hosted a lecture from Duncan Friday. The speech was about his lecture at Stanford Law School earlier this month, when he was shouted down by students and an administrator. Duncan spoke about the consequences and ramifications of free speech that the Stanford debacle highlighted.

    "The importance of today's event I think really needs no explanation," Notre Dame professor Philip Munoz said while introducing Duncan. "What happened two weeks ago at Stanford Law School raises fundamental questions about free speech and our liberal democracy and how healthy our free speech culture is ... especially at our nation's elite schools." Munoz also noted that members of the Stanford Federalist Society were watching the lecture virtually.

    Duncan began his talk by praising the enduring tradition of free speech, including student protests. "[America is] a great country, where you can harshly criticize federal judges and nothing bad will happen to you," he said. "You might even get praised or promoted. ... The students at Stanford and other elite law schools swim in an ocean of free speech."

    "But make no mistake, what went on in that classroom on March the ninth had nothing to do with our proud American tradition of free speech," Duncan noted. "It was rather a parody of it."

    "It is not free speech to silence others because you hate them," Duncan continued. "It is not free speech to jeer and heckle a speaker who has been invited to your school so that he can't deliver a talk. It is not free speech to form a mob and hurl taunts and threats that aren't worthy of being written on the wall of a public toilet. It is not free speech to pretend to be harmed by words or ideas you disagree with, and then use that feigned harm as a license to deny a speaker the most rudimentary forms of civility."

    Duncan rebuked the idea that the hecklers were engaging in "counter speech," or participating in the "marketplace of ideas."

    "Counter speech means offering a reasoned response to an argument," he said. "It doesn't mean screaming 'Shut up, you scum we hate you,' at a distance of 12 feet. ... The marketplace of ideas describes a free and fair competition among opposing arguments, with the most compelling one, we hope, emerging on the top. What transpired at Stanford was no marketplace. It was more like a flash mob on a shoplifting spree."

    Duncan said the mob had no intention of engaging with his ideas. "[T]he mob had no interest in my talk at all," the judge remarked. "They were there to heckle and to cheer and to shame. Let's say the quiet part out loud: The mob came to target me because they hate my work and my ideas."

    The protest had nothing to do with free speech, he concluded. "It had everything to do with intimidation. And to be clear, not intimidating me. I'm not intimidated by this. I'm a life-tenured judge. I'm going to go back to my court and keep writing opinions. No, the target of the intimidation was the protesters' fellow students."

poll#164

It has been far too many years since the Woke theology interlaced its canons within the fabric of the Indoctrination Realm, so it is nigh time to ask: Does this Representative Republic continue, as a functioning society of a self-governed people, by contending with the unusual, self absorbed dictates of the Woke, and their vast array of Victimhood scenarios?

  Yes, the Religion of Woke must continue; there are so many groups of underprivileged, underserved, a direct result of unrelenting Inequity; they deserve everything.

  No; the Woke fools must be toppled from their self-anointed pedestal; a functioning society of a good Constitutional people cannot withstand this level of "existential" favoritism as it exists now.

  I just observe; with this thoughtful observation: What will happen "when the Vikings are breeching our walls;" how do the Woke react?

848 total vote(s)     What's your Opinion?

poll#169

Considering how abjectly corrupt and civilly abusive the Left has become regarding the corrosive effect of their elected leaders; their entrenched and ruling bureaucracy; employing their failed Education Industry as Indoctrinators; their collusive private sector operators, such as the terminally discredited Legacy Media and Big Tech censorship of Free Speech: What will be the best course forward for hardworking Middle Americans, including the Patriot Class?

  Withdraw from society, go underground and plan for a resurgence when it is feasible to do so.

  Work within the confines of better policy by the People's government, once good sense and sanity is restored in the electorate at large, to achieve such.

  Are you a crazy, nut-job Insurrectionist? Everything is perfect within our plan to achieve our intended goals for the Socialist Left.

  Secession to form a true Constitutional Republic.

439 total vote(s)     What's your Opinion?