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posted by martyb on Wednesday October 18 2017, @09:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-if-nobody-showed-up? dept.

Governor Rick Scott (R) has declared a state of emergency in the county where the University of Florida lay, due to a planned speech by Richard Spencer. According to NPR:

When Hurricane Irma was bearing down on Florida last month, Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency. On Monday, he did the same thing in Alachua County, ahead of a speech by white nationalist Richard Spencer at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

"We live in a country where everyone has the right to voice their opinion, however, we have zero tolerance for violence and public safety is always our number one priority," Scott said in a statement. "This executive order is an additional step to ensure that the University of Florida and the entire community is prepared so everyone can stay safe."

"I find that the threat of a potential emergency is imminent," Scott declared in his executive order, noting that Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell had requested the state's assistance. The order will make it easier for various agencies to coordinate a security plan for Thursday's speech at the university.

[...] No campus group invited Spencer to speak, and the university is not hosting or sponsoring the event. Spencer's group, the National Policy Institute, is paying the university $10,564 for facility rental and security.

And it looks like it could get expensive:

The speech and accompanying protests are also a major expense: The university as well as state and local agencies expect to spend more than $500,000 to provide additional security.

And the University of Florida can't demand that Spencer pay the full cost of protecting him, because of a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement.

In that decision, the university explains, "the Court clarified that the government cannot assess a security fee on the speaker based upon the costs of controlling the reaction of potential hostile onlookers or protestors," under legal doctrine known as the "heckler's veto."

Well, that is the cost of free speech in a free country.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 18 2017, @10:26PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 18 2017, @10:26PM (#584195)

    A man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions.... He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer--because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @09:40AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @09:40AM (#584447)

    YES! very good point! Umberto Eco's # 12 on the fascism list:

    12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist
    transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which
    implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual
    habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-
    Fascist hero tends to play with weapons -- doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.

    Good that you used the words "surrender" and "conquer", to stress your point.

    • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday October 19 2017, @06:47PM (1 child)

      by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday October 19 2017, @06:47PM (#584728) Journal

      Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons -- doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.

      Hence the fascist tendency of the ammosexual. Eco was a great philosopher, and a not half-bad fiction writer!

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 20 2017, @02:23AM

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Friday October 20 2017, @02:23AM (#585062) Homepage Journal

        Wow, that was some quality bullshit you just spouted there. Gun owners are the least authoritarian people in the nation. You know how you can tell? They have all those guns and nobody has shot you for polluting the gene pool yet.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.