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Hillarysworld -> All things Hillary -> What Ann Coulter and Hillary Clinton have in common (Boston.com 4/1/10)
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TOPIC: What Ann Coulter and Hillary Clinton have in common (Boston.com 4/1/10)
Jen the Michigander


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What Ann Coulter and Hillary Clinton have in common (Boston.com 4/1/10)
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http://boston.com/community/blogs/on_liberty/2010/04/what_ann_coulter_and_hillary_clinton_have_in_common.html

What do Ann Coulter and Hillary Clinton have in common? These doyennes from opposite ends of the American political spectrum both have been in the news defending freedom of speech.

Coulter, a right-wing polemicist, was kept off the stage at the University of Ottawa in Canada last week by protestors who effectively used a "heckler's veto" to keep Coulter from speaking after she made ignorant and offensive remarks about Muslims.

Given Coulter's stated commitment to free speech, you'd think she and her friends over at FOX television would applaud the recent move by Secretary of State Clinton to lift a Bush administration-imposed ban on two renowned scholars who were kept out of the U.S. because of their political views. Instead, Fox & Friends objected when one of those scholars -- noted South African political scientist Adam Habib -- was invited to speak at Harvard Law School yesterday.

Professor Habib had trained in the U.S. and was a frequent visitor to the U.S. He was part of a high-ranking delegation scheduled to meet with officials at the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control, the World Bank, Columbia University and the Gates Foundation, among others, when he was instead detained for seven hours at JFK airport and thereafter denied a visa to enter the U.S. Professor Ramadan had been offered a job as a professor at Notre Dame when the Bush administration revoked his visa. Although Bush administration officials later accused Professor Ramadan of having once given money to a Swiss charity that, years later, the U.S. government put on a terrorist watch list, the State Department now concedes that neither Professor Ramadan nor Professor Habib were ever true terrorist threats.

To the contrary, both professors are outspoken critics of terrorism. They also have made statements critical of the U.S. invasion of Iraq (a position also espoused by President Obama during the last presidential campaign), and that seems to be the main reason they were excluded from our shores.

Simply put: these scholars were turned away so that we, the American people, couldn't hear what they have to say in person.

It's called "ideological exclusion." And it's a practice you find in dictatorships like Iran and Zimbabwe -- and in the less noble moments of American history as well.

The list of people kept out of the United States under policies of ideological exclusion reads like a veritable "Who's Who" of people most of us would like to meet: South African leader Nelson Mandela, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, poet Pablo Neruda, and authors Graham Greene, Doris Lessing, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to name just a few.

By wiping out the ideological exclusion orders against scholars like Professors Habib and Ramadan, Secretary of State Clinton demonstrates our nation's willingness to air all views -- including dissenting political views. It's a fundamental principle of American freedom that Anthony Lewis so eloquently defends in his must-read book, "Freedom for the Thoughts We Hate." As a next step, the Obama Administration should announce that it categorically rejects the practice of ideological exclusion as a violation of freedom of speech in all cases.

Let the American people hear what Professors Habib and Ramadan and others like them have to say -- in person. If Ann Coulter comes to Harvard, we should let her speak as well. And when we disagree, let us do so face to face.

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Hillarysmygirl16


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It seems that people who epouse free speech or often the ones who want to stop someone from speaking.

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Sanders


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Hillarysmygirl16 wrote:

It seems that people who epouse free speech or often the ones who want to stop someone from speaking.

So true.  Quite sad.

 



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Hillarysmygirl16


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I personally hate the word "******" but I would defend to the death someone's right to say that.  Yes its a horrible word and I don't have a problem educating people to get rid of that word but taking measures to stop this from happening is not right and yes it violates our rights. 
I have to go down and work on my dinner I am at work. 

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freespirit


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As much as I hate seeing someone as vile and objectionable as Ann Colter compared to Hillary in any way, I think this article is spot on. But, the truth is most of the narrow minded folks at Fox would find fault with anything Hillary did. She could personally rescue a paraplegic from a burning building and they would accuse her of being a bleeding heart who felt that government should take care of the public. If she cried at the sight of a tragic occurrence, they would spin it as weakness. If she didn't cry, they would accuse her of being unfeeling and cold. More than ANY OTHER DEM, Hillary and Bill are and have always been slammed by FOX. The only very brief exception was during the 2008 primary, when they did treat her with a measure of respect - and that was only to boost their own ratings, using the deplorable treatment of Hillary by MSM (rather than FOX for a change) to illustrate the bias of MSM toward Obama.

As HMG stated, free speech should be protected whether we agree with the speech or the speaker. Ann Colter has the right to spread the garbage that comes out of her mouth - even when she accused the group of 9/11 widows of promoting an investigation of the handling of the tragedy solely in order to remain in the spot light and gain more public attention. MSM on the other hand, has a responsibility to report the truth - not the truth as they would like to interpret it. FOX likes to accuse CNN of being biased toward Obama - and rightly so. But, to do so while representing themselves as "fair and balanced" is the height of hypocrisy. The slogan for both FOX and CNN should be - All bull sh**, all the time.

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