October 16, 2006
Thugs and Free Speech III Posted by Fredric Smoler at 08:00 AM EST John Steele Gordon writes, “I asked for an instance where a right-wing mob prevented someone from speaking, and he [Josh Zeitz] gives an instance where GOP Hill staffers interrupted, but did not prevent, vote counting. (I hasten to add that I do not remember the details of the incident and I am not about to concede that Mr. Zeitz has correctly described what happened. But the details are not relevant as, by Mr. Zeitz’s own admission, no speech was prevented.)” I was going to blog on this same incident, but Josh beat me to the punch. Unlike Mr. Gordon, I do remember the details of this incident, and Mr. Gordon is mistaken, because the GOP staffers did interrupt the count. Shutting it down was indeed the plan: The count was about to be moved to another room, at which point Representative John Sweeney (R., N.Y) told his mob, “Shut it down.” Those words were reported by Paul Gigot, who was in the room with GOP operatives, in his Wall Street Journal column, and this affray was also reported in the Journal’s news pages, as well as all around the country. I quote the Wall Street Journal to preempt any impulse of Mr. Gordon’s to invoke liberal press bias as an explanation for the reporting. This was an ugly incident, at least as ugly as any threat of political violence on college campus, which quite correctly offends Mr. Gordon. As Mr. Gordon may recall, those votes were never officially counted. A notorious 5-4 decision by the US Supreme Court prevented the votes from being counted, with every Republican appointee voting to overrule the Florida court that had ordered the count to proceed. So a right-wing mob did prevent speech, if you think voting is political speech. Perhaps Mr. Gordon will argue that it is not. Maybe he’ll claim that whereas “Vote for Jones” is speech, and it is monstrous to prevent it, merely voting for Jones is something smaller, against which the threat of violence can be made with no great harm done.
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