No one waxes more indignantly over perceived infringements of their freedom of speech than media personalities and academics.<\/p>\n
My thesis: Media figures and academics, taken as media figures and academics,<\/em> may not have a right to speak as they do much, and even most, of the time.<\/p>\n Journalists, and the rest of us, assume that without freedom of speech, journalists would be incapable of enacting their role as \u201cwatchdogs\u201d of the powerful. Academics, on the other hand, claim that in the absence of freedom of speech, they wouldn\u2019t be able to engage, and engage their students, in the disinterested pursuit of truth and knowledge.<\/p>\n Notice something here: the freedom of speech prized by those in the media and their academic counterparts is not some abstract value.\u00a0 Rather, it derives its value from the purpose(s) that it serves.\u00a0 In the case of journalists, the purpose that invests freedom of speech with its value is that of safeguarding the liberties of citizens against abuses of (government) power. In the case of academics, free speech serves the purpose of pursuing and transmitting truth and knowledge.<\/p>\n What this implies is that the journalist\u2019s and the academic\u2019s freedom of speech is good only insofar as they are using it for the sake of their professions\u2019 respective ends.\u00a0 But what happens when they are not<\/em> serving those ends?<\/p>\n I submit that when the gatekeepers of civilization no longer exercise their speech for the purposes for which civilization granted them that freedom, then that speech is no longer free.\u00a0 It is no longer protected.<\/p>\n To be sure, as citizens, <\/em>journalists and academics should have the same free speech rights as everyone else.\u00a0 Furthermore, as has already been said, insofar as they faithfully serve the purposes of their disciplines, society should indeed continue to bless them with the freedom of speech to do so.<\/p>\n Yet when media figures and academics betray their mission, when they stray beyond the boundaries of their vocations, then they have forfeited that right to freedom of speech.<\/p>\n For example, among the benefits to which the employee of a certain corporation is entitled is that of a free <\/em>education: his employer will pay for him to attend college, if he so chooses. This right to a free education, though, is not unqualified.<\/p>\n First, if he decides to go to school, he does not <\/em>have the right to pursue any old thing that he likes.\u00a0 Rather, employees of this corporation only have the right to enroll in those courses that will enable them to better further the purpose of the corporation that they serve.\u00a0 Second, if he betrays his corporation and is subsequently terminated, he will lose not just this right, but every other right (benefit) supplied by his former employer.<\/p>\n This analogy is instructive for two reasons.\u00a0 Just as the employee\u2019s right to a free education isn\u2019t free, journalists\u2019 and academics\u2019 right to free speech comes at a cost.\u00a0 In both instances, the right in question is contingent upon faithful service to the larger enterprise for the sake of which it has been granted.\u00a0 Moreover, in both instances, when the right-holder has failed to contribute to the enterprise to which he made a commitment in the first place, he forsakes that right.<\/p>\n Can anyone seriously doubt that, with relatively few exceptions, the so-called \u201cmainstream media\u201d has long ago turned itself into the bane-stream <\/em>media?\u00a0 Self-styled journalists have displayed none of the skepticism toward Big Government that is essential to a free press for a free people.\u00a0 Just the opposite is the case.\u00a0 Of our two national parties, there is a reason why the party of the Jack Ass has earned for itself a reputation for being the most ardent champion of ever larger government.\u00a0 Yet this is just the party for which the media unfailingly runs interference.\u00a0 And at no time has this been truer than today, when media personalities have abused their free speech privileges to abet the agenda ofAmerica\u2019s \u201cfirst black president.\u201d<\/p>\n As journalists,<\/em> they do not have the right to use their speech for these ends. They are not free to speak thus.<\/p>\n Academia is just as politicized an environment\u2014just as much a bastion of leftist ideology\u2014if not more so, than that of the contemporary media.\u00a0\u00a0 Yet, in theory, the academic\u2019s freedom is even more narrowly constrained than that of the journalist\u2019s.\u00a0 The academic is entrusted with the obligation to further truth and knowledge in his field of expertise. <\/em>However, many academics are consumed with an animus toward the very civilization from which they derive what freedom they have.\u00a0 It is this animus in turn that provokes them to radically challenge the very notions of truth and knowledge.<\/p>\n Isn\u2019t this the biggest betrayal of the academy\u2019s historical mission?<\/p>\n In all fairness, there are plenty of academics who, while leftists, reject this post-modernist drivel. Still, even they do not resist the impulse to interject into their courses all manner of political <\/em>speech that is not, or should not, be protected under the guise of academic freedom.\u00a0 This ideological language of theirs not infrequently falls outside of their discipline.\u00a0 As such, as academics, <\/em>they are not free to use it.<\/p>\n It may be impossible to do anything much in the way of legal remedies about these betrayals of the journalist\u2019s and the academic\u2019s respective missions. For the time being, it is more important that we begin to take notice of what these missions are\u2014and how their right to free speech relates to them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No one waxes more indignantly over perceived infringements of their freedom of speech than media personalities and academics. My thesis: Media figures and academics, taken as media figures and academics, may not have a right to speak as they do much, and even most, of the time. Journalists, and the rest of us, assume that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n