I’ve got a new piece at Cato noting that an important plank of American political consensus over the past century — that it’s wrong to disrupt and shout down your opponents’ speeches and events — seems to be on the verge of collapsing. An obvious parallel, of course, is to the speech-intolerant “shut-’em-down” culture on many American campuses; but the actions of Black Lives Matter supporters in taking over microphones and blockading freeways have also played an important role.
I begin the piece with the story of a speech I attended at a Federalist Society event last Friday at which Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) was shouted down by a squad of disrupters sent, incredibly, by the (c)(4) affiliate of a major think tank in Washington, the Center for American Progress:
Today at @SenOrrinHatch's SCOTUS book event, we said #DoYourJob and vote on on a SCOTUS nominee. They didn't listen. https://t.co/L2oArOrOdU
— Generation Progress (@genprogress) March 11, 2016
(“Today at @SenOrrinHatch’s SCOTUS book event, we said #DoYourJob and vote on on a SCOTUS nominee. They didn’t listen.”)
To which @thomasehopson replied:
@walterolson @SenOrrinHatch @genprogress "They didn't listen" is eerily totalitarian.
— Thomas Hopson (@thomasehopson) March 11, 2016
More thoughts on shoutdowns and organized heckling as a tactic: Ed Krayewski; Eugene Volokh on the legality/illegality of disrupting events and of some responses to disruption. And: while left-on-right disruption appears to have been more common in recent years, note also this coverage of the equally objectionable other way round, from an Austin town hall on ObamaCare. Plus, Marc Thiessen: disrupters go after Trump rallies in well-organized groups. Yet a “responsible leader tries to calm a volatile situation.”
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[…] side on the Supreme Court vacancy. It does not argue the untenable position (so popular among the email-blast progressivism crowd) that the Senate has a constitutional duty to vote, but says the no-hearings-no-votes stance goes […]