Thread by @fawfulfan

THREAD:

There are no shortage of reasons why the conservative moment is full of shit complaining about “free speech” on college campuses.

1/ First, obviously, there’s the fact that the right to speech begins and ends with govt retaliation. Protesting another’s speech is speech.

2/ And there’s the fact conservatives speak on college campuses ALL THE TIME without incident. My school had Scalia give 2013 commencement.

3/ And there’s the fact these same conservatives have no problem with Trump trying to get athletes fired for protesting police brutality.

4/ But as someone who spent a plurality of his life in suburban Texas and has family in rural, red America, here’s what bothers me most.

5/ When was the last time conservatives tolerated *any* diversity or debate in the small towns and exurbs where they dominate? Like, ever?

6/ Now, my family in TX are wonderful people, including the Republicans. And there actually is plenty of political diversity in that family.

7/ But when I visit them up in Wichita Falls — an extremely red town, and hometown of our notoriously obnoxious and sadistic governor...

8/ ...what strikes me is how closed and culturally uniform that community is. I think many of those folks have never even *met* a Democrat.

9/ Their bookstores have no liberal books. They hold gun shows where people put up signs on their stalls comparing Dems to terrorists.

10/ The day that town invites, say, Sen. Al Franken, or Maddow, to talk is the day I’ll take seriously conservatives whining about Berkeley.

11/ And just so we’re clear: liberals WOULD VISIT small rural towns, conservative colleges, etc. if they were welcome there. They aren’t.

12/ Look what happened to James Martin, a liberal Jesuit priest. Right-wingers ran him out of Christian schools he planned to talk at.

13/ I don’t see @benshapiro making the rounds on TV to martyrize HIM, do you? No, because only conservative speech counts as free speech.

14/ This right-wing tantrum about college campuses feeds into their broader narrative about “middle America” being the only America.

15/ They‘d have us believe large cities, home to all our country’s cultural, racial, ethnic diversity are “out of touch”, “in a bubble”...

16/ ...while tiny towns of white people who all talk, think, worship, work, act the same way are somehow authentic and woke.

17/ The media never calls this out for the nonsense it is. But anyone who has been all over this country knows it’s true.

18/ Until we defeat that mythology, conservatives will keep spewing nonsense like their crusade against colleges. And get votes for it.

END