speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

The Evasions of Neutrality
gay men into soliciting sex. "I knew what to look for and what sort of
places to investigate—that's possibly why I was so good." 22 For
other collaborators, however, the goad is pure ambition. As a
professor at San Francisco State University, S.I. Hayakawa helped
form the Faculty Renaissance Committee to combat campus radicals.
A grateful state chancellor recommended him as acting president
to then Governor Reagan, who responded with typical tact:
"Tell him if he takes the job, we'll forgive him Pearl Harbor." On his
first day in office Hayakawa crushed the students' strike by jumping
on their soundtruck and ripping out the loudspeaker wires. As
senator for California he opposed bilingual education and ballots as
"foolish and unnecessary" and sponsored a constitutional amendment
to make English the official language. Spared wartime internment
(as a Canadian citizen), he called it "perhaps the best thing that
could have happened" to Japanese-Americans because it forced
them to assimilate. "I am proud to be a Japanese-American, but
when a small but vocal group demand a cash indemnity of $25,000
for those who went to relocation camps, my flesh crawls with shame
and embarrassment." 23
Despite its professed loyalty to formal equality, collective neutrality,
and value agnosticism, the liberal state cannot avoid choices. If
one is free speech, another is abridging speech when the state feels
threatened. In December 1991 the Islamic Front won 189 out of 430
seats in the first free Algerian election in years and was expected to
win enough runoffs to gain a majority. Fundamentalists in Lebanon,
Sudan, Jordan and Yemen rejoiced. Demanding immediate segregation
of the sexes in schools and workplaces and a ban on alcohol,
Mohammed Said told a huge crowd it was time Algerian women
went back to veils and stopped looking like "cheap merchandise
that is bought and sold." The Front proclaimed its intent to introduce
an Islamic state under the slogan: "No laws. No constitution. Only
the laws of God and the Koran." When the Algerian military nullified
the results and barred all demonstrations western nations breathed a
sigh of relief; none criticised this blatant suppression of democracy.
24 The day after a nearly successful coup in Venezuela an
association of retired military officers took full-page advertisements
in major newspapers, condemning the regime for corruption and
poor administration. President Carlos Andres Perez immediately
prohibited newspapers from publishing photographs of the plotters
or articles or advertisements suggesting that they enjoyed popular
support or military backing, and seized defiant papers. "We have
said, don't exalt the man who attempted the military coup." 25
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