In Ann Coulter’s Speech Battle, Signs That Conservatives Are Emboldened

Without uttering a word to students at the University of California, Berkeley, Ann Coulter on Wednesday made herself the latest cause célèbre in the rapidly escalating effort by conservatives to fight liberals on what was once the left’s moral high ground over free speech on campus.

In Ann Coulter’s Speech Battle, Signs That Conservatives Are Emboldened 27speech-1online-sub-master768

In Ann Coulter’s Speech Battle, Signs That Conservatives Are Emboldened 27speech-1online-sub-master768

Ms. Coulter, the acid-penned conservative writer, canceled a planned appearance on Thursday after the political organizations that invited her rescinded their support over fears of violence. “It’s a sad day for free speech,” she said.
But across the country, conservatives like her are eagerly throwing themselves into volatile situations like the one in Berkeley, emboldened by a backlash over what many Americans see as excessive political correctness, a president who has gleefully taken up their fight, and liberals they accuse of trying to censor any idea they disagree with.
The situation adds up to a striking reversal in the culture wars, with the left now often demanding that offensive content be excised from public discourse and those who promote it boycotted and shunned.

Berkeley has again become a symbolic flash point. The university was not just the cradle of the Free Speech Movement but also the site of a violent 1969 crackdown that delighted many protest-weary Americans when Ronald Reagan, then California’s governor, ordered the National Guard to move in on student demonstrators.
The broader point that conservatives now say they are making resonates far beyond academia, and in many ways echoes some of the most bitter undercurrents of the 2016 presidential election.
President Trump’s victory was, to many of his supporters, a defiant uprising against what they saw as a cultural and political elite that told them their values were wrong and their beliefs bigoted. And Mr. Trump, who has routinely used racially charged controversies and social movements like Black Lives Matter to his political benefit, has leapt to their defense, ready to fan the flames.
When Berkeley administrators canceled an appearance by the professional right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos in February after riots broke out, Mr. Trump questioned on Twitter whether the university should have its federal funding revoked.
Even some liberals say the heavy-handedness by university administrators and students is only reinforcing conservatives’ suspicions, which the left insists are overblown for maximum political potency.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described democratic socialist, this week scolded anyone who would shut out Ms. Coulter. “What are you afraid of — her ideas?” he asked.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/us/politics/ann-coulter-university-of-california-berkeley.html?_r=0

In Ann Coulter’s Speech Battle, Signs That Conservatives Are Emboldened

In Ann Coulter’s Speech Battle, Signs That Conservatives Are Emboldened

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