Republicans Are the "Free Speech" Party Until It's Time To Talk About American History

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

When the news of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter came through, Republicans treated the announcement like it was Christmas Day. Finally, someone was willing to take a stand to elevate the chorus of their repressed voices – even though they have multiple platforms to voice them unchecked, like Fox News, Parlor, and Truth Social.

Musk said the following at a TED conference a day after submitting his bid to buy the social platform, “If in doubt, let the speech exist,” he said. “If it’s a gray area, I would say, let the tweet exist. But obviously, in the case where there’s perhaps a lot of controversy, you would not necessarily want to promote that tweet.”

Isn’t it ironic that speech should be allowed “to exist on a social media platform,’’ when all over the country, Republican state legislators are banning race and slavery discussions in schools, books referring to LBGTQ and non-binary identifying people, and talk of what they deem “divisive concepts.”

Republicans are ok with fighting tooth and nail over the First Amendment until it’s time to discuss the continued shortcomings of American history and how it’s affected marginalized people. Instead, they would enjoy their rosy outlook of the red, white, and blue and not have to look back at the atrocities committed to learning from them. Twitter is only a tiny symptom of that–while the platform has its own troubles in dealing with harassment, it’s been a place where movements like the George Floyd protests and Egypt’s 2011 Revolution have grown. Republicans see that power and, like everything else, want to dilute it as much as possible.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/republicans-free-speech-party-until-151000373.html

[Igel]

1. I know conservatives and fundie Xians.

They *cannot* say a number of things in their classrooms. They teach high school.

Once comes close to being in trouble--year after year students complained about his being "pro-Trump," but at no point did he ever treat any student with an opposing view with condescension. So he slid. Partly because of another teacher. The first teacher teaches sociology to seniors, and this comes up only in a few units on peer pressure and such.

You walk into another teacher's room--she teaches US history--and you see political posters from the last century or so. It's only a few minutes later you realize that Roosevelt I and II, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama are presented in a positive, glowing light--even the HRC campaign poster. Then you realize that Hoover, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and II are caricatured. Not that there's a political bias in the environment the high-school juniors walk into on day 1.

And yet that teacher *also* has to toe the same line.

The First Amendment simply doesn't apply to public school teachers. Period. We teachers are agents of the state and *must* be viewpoint neutral, except as the state decides otherwise. The creationist has to teach evolution in the same way--or with the same effect--as the die-hard evolutionist. The former has to present the evidence and the conclusion in line with science. The latter evolutionist has to allow open debate of alternative opinions and views without being dismissive and condescending. (In my experience, the creationists do a far better job of upholding this, much less sneering and near-ridicule. As I've said before, my high-school girlfriend got the top grade on the evolution test in our biology class, and when most students got it wrong was asked to explain evolution. She did so, was thanked, and sat down. *She* was an old-Earth creationist. The teacher was convinced otherwise, but simply didn't notice all the "the theory says" and "the evidence introduced in support is" statements. She didn't believe, but could learn what the theory entailed. That's all that's required--not belief, but knowledge of the theory. That's what I tell my students when I have to teach evolution--not that it's higher truth, but "here's the evidence, here's how it fits together, and given the scientific method, here's the conclusion." Creationists have objected and I tell them that the scientific method requires observation, not apodictic utterances from a higher source--Xian or Muslim or Hindu. I don't use the word "apodictic," of course. I note that there are Muslim and Hindu creationists, or at least anti-evolutionists. At the end of the day, both sets of students think I'm on their side. It's a win. But I don't require belief. I'm not a preacher. )