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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.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 18 2017, @11:08PM (7 children)
To piss you off? It's interesting that there's elements of the far left who insist on "protesting" these events. Traditionally, we've simply mocked ethno-nationalists and their ilk to defeat them. The far-left is completely incapable of doing that because their views are also insane.
Any liberal who does not disagree with Mr Spencer is illiberal, his political views are odious. Any liberal who doesn't defend his right to speak is illiberal and any liberal who supports the far left attempting to shut him down is illiberal. I use the word "liberal" here, not in the partisan sense but in the sense of the core founding principles of western democracies. Liberalism doesn't mean letting others trample you or going along to get along. It means taking responsibility to secure your personal freedom (classical liberalism) and only then can you work within the rule of law to extend those freedoms to others (social liberalism).
Concepts like the tyranny of the majority have been turned on their head by identity politics, we now have a situation where minorities are becoming tyrants. That needs addressing and we should all condemn divisive identity politics and collectivism. Only individuals can rightly condemn both the authoritarian views of the alt-right and the authoritarian actions of the alt-left. It's not a partisan issue, these opposing collectives are both consist entirely of illiberal turds.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @02:56AM (6 children)
You need to stop consuming Lamestream Media or any source that uses "left" to mean "non-Republican".
"Right" mean "Capitalist".
"Left" means "Anti-Capitalist".
If you have a reference to anyone at any of these rallies referring to economic ownership models, that would be interesting.
I haven't come across that.
...and there is no "Far Left" in the USA.
The Left was crushed in the Palmer Raids/The Red Purge after WWI and McCarthyism/The Cold War after WWII.
.
Now, on an axis of the political palate [politicalcompass.org] that is 90 degrees from the Economic axis is the Civil Liberties axis.
At one edge is Apartheid South Africa and the monarchy of Saudi Arabia; at the other edge is a Hippie commune.
(Do note that The Reds and The Blues are BOTH on the Right-hand side of the economic divide.)
THAT up/down axis is the one where the White Supremacists/Misogynists are at one extreme, wanting -some- people to have lesser rights.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @05:19AM (2 children)
Do you live in the USA? Are there not hundreds of thousands of far leftists in the USA and candidates that make it onto some ballots every 4 years?
Define "no".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @11:56AM
If so, they're very good at hiding.
My experience is that it's extremely difficult to find someone who gives any thought to going to a workplace where he -doesn't- spend his day making the absentee idle Ownership Class richer--while being treated like a disposable rag.
...let alone someone who wants the gov't to take control of ALL private property at gunpoint.
make it onto some ballots
Name 2 such candidates.
Extra points if you link to their "Far Left" platforms.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 19 2017, @12:37PM
There are about five far left people remaining in the United States. They're the ones that publish that ridiculous Socialist Worker paper they show up and pass out at every protest, no matter what the theme of the protest is.
You would have a lot more luck claiming far left politics are a force in France, or Italy. In America it's quasi-extinct.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 19 2017, @01:37PM (2 children)
You are mistaken. In the US, we define whatever we want defined, however we want to. In the US, people who want to destroy the US define themselves as "left". And, people who want to preserve the American Way of Life define themselves as "right".
Maybe you learned about the Brits calling us "Yankees", before and during our Revolutionary War. The term was derogatory, or belittling at least. We took that term, and made it our own. Words don't mean what the world presumes them to mean. Word mean whatever we say they mean. That is as American as hot dogs, baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @07:01PM
Nope not bothering with a detailed response, just "Runaway is an idiot" is all that your two paragraphs really said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @10:52PM
...easily summarized in 2 words: Murderous greed.
Recommended reading: Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States".
(Not sugar-coated nonsense, like all my textbooks were.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]