tact is “violence” and is reprehensible; any other way of
violating rights is merely “force” and is a legitimate, peaceful
method of dealing with opponents.
For instance, if the rebels occupy the administration building, that is “force”; if policemen drag them out, that is “violence.” If Savio seizes a microphone he has no right to use, that is “force”; if a policeman drags him away from it, that is “violence.”
Consider the implications of that distinction as a rule of social conduct: if you come home one evening, find a stranger occupying your house and throw him out bodily, he has merely committed a peaceful act of “force,” but you are guilty of “violence,” and you are to be punished.
The theoretical purpose of that grotesque absurdity is to establish a moral inversion: to make the initiation of force moral, and resistance to force immoral—and thus to obliterate the right of self-defense. The immediate practical purpose is to foster the activities of the lowest political breed: the provocateurs, who commit acts of force and place the blame on their victims.
3. To justify that fraudulent distinction, the Berkeley reb
els attempted to obliterate a legitimate one: the distinction
between ideas and actions. They claimed that freedom of
speech means freedom of action and that no clear line of
demarcation can be drawn between them.
For instance, if they have the right to advocate any political viewpoint—they claimed—they have the right to organize, on campus, any off-campus activities, even those forbidden by law. As Professor Petersen put it, they were claiming the right “to use the University as a sanctuary from which to make illegal raids on the general community.”
The difference between an exchange of ideas and an exchange of blows is self-evident The line of demarcation between freedom of speech and freedom of action is established by the ban on the initiation of physical force. It is only when that ban is abrogated that such a problem can arise— but when that ban is abrogated, no political freedom of any kind can remain in existence.
At a superficial glance, the rebels’ “package-deal” may seem to imply a sort of anarchistic extension of freedom; but, in fact and in logic, it implies the exact opposite—which is a grim joke on those unthinking youths who joined the rebellion in the name of “free speech.” If the freedom to express ideas were equated with the freedom to commit crimes, it would not take long to demonstrate that no organized society can exist on such terms and, therefore, that the expression of ideas has to be curtailed and some ideas have to be forbidden, just as criminal acts are forbidden. Thus the gullible would be brought to concede that the right of free speech is undefinable and “impracticable.”
4. An indication of such a motive was given by the rebels’ demand for unrestricted freedom of speech on campus—with the consequent “Filthy Language Movement.”
There can be no such thing as the right to an unrestricted freedom of speech (or of action) on someone else’s property. The fact that the University at Berkeley is owned by the state, merely complicates the issue, but does not alter it. The owners of a state university are the voters and taxpayers of that state. The University administration, appointed (directly or indirectly) by an elected official, is, theoretically, the agent of the owners—and has to act as such, so long as state universities exist (Whether they should exist, is a different question.)
In any undertaking or establishment involving more than one man, it is the owner or owners who set the rules and terms of appropriate conduct; the rest of the participants are free to go elsewhere and seek different terms, if they do not agree. There can be no such thing as the right to act on whim, to be exercised by some participants at the expense of others.
Students who attend a university have the right to expect that they will not be subjected to hearing the kind of obscenities for which the owner of a semi-decent barroom would bounce hoodlums out on the street. The right to determine what sort of language is permissible, belongs to the administration of a university—fully as much as to the owner of a barroom.
The technique of the rebels, as of all statists, was to take advantage of the principles of a free society in order to undercut them by an alleged demonstration of their “impracticability”—in this case, the “impracticability” of the right of free speech. But, in fact, what they have demonstrated is a point farthest removed from their goals: that no rights of any kind can be exercised without property rights.
It is only on the basis of property rights that the sphere and application of individual rights can be defined in any given social situation. Without property rights, there is no way to solve or to avoid a hopeless chaos of clashing views, interests, demands, desires, and whims.
There was no way for the Berkeley administration to answer the rebels except by invoking property rights. It is obvious why neither modern “liberals” nor “conservatives” would care to do so. It is not the contradictions of a free society that the rebels were exposing and cashing-in on, but the contradictions of a mixed economy.
As to the question of what ideological policy should properly be adopted by the administration of a state university, it is a question that has no answer. There are no solutions for the many contradictions inherent in the concept of “public property,” particularly when the property is directly concerned with the dissemination of ideas. This is one of the reasons why the rebels would choose a state university as their first battleground.
A good case could be made for the claim that a state university has no right to forbid the teaching or advocacy of any political viewpoint whatever, as, for instance, of communism, since some of the taxpaying owners may be communists. An equally good case could be made for the claim that a state university has no right to permit the teaching and advocacy of any political viewpoint which (as, for instance, communism) is a direct threat to the property, freedom, and lives of the majority of the taxpaying owners. Majority rule is not applicable in the realm of ideas; an individual’s convictions are not subject to a majority vote; but neither an individual nor a minority nor a majority should be forced to support their own destroyers.
On the one hand, a government institution has no right to forbid the expression of any ideas. On the other hand, a government institution has no right to harbor, assist, and finance the country’s enemies (as, for instance, the collectors of funds for the Vietcong).
The source of these contradictions does not lie in the principle of individual rights, but in their violation by the collectivist institution of “public property.”
This issue, however, has to be fought in the field of constitutional law, not on campus. As students, the rebels have no greater rights in a state university than in a private one. As taxpayers, they have no greater rights than the millions of other California taxpayers involved. If they object to the policies of the Board of Regents, they have no recourse except at the polls at the next election—if they can persuade a sufficient number of voters. This is a pretty slim chance— and this is a good argument against any type of “public property.” But it is not an issue to be solved by physical force.
What is significant here is the fact that the rebels—who, to put it mildly, are not champions of private property—refused to abide by the kind of majority rule which is inherent in public ownership. That is what they were opposing when they complained that universities have become servants of the “financial, industrial, and military establishment.” It is the rights of these particular groups of taxpayers (the right to a voice in the management of state universities) that they were seeking to abrogate.
If anyone needs proof of the fact that the advocates of public ownership are not seeking “democratic” control of property by majority rule, but control by dictatorship—this is one eloquent piece of evidence.
5. As part of the ideological conditioning for that ultimate goal, the rebels attempted to introduce a new variant on an old theme that has been the object of an intense drive by all statist-collectivists for many years past: the obliteration of the difference between private action and government action.
This has always been attempted by means of a “package-deal” ascribing to private citizens the specific violations constitutionally forbidden to the government, and thus destroying individual rights while freeing the government from any restrictions. The most frequent example of this technique consists of accusing private citizens of practicing “censorship” (a concept applicable only to the government) and thus negating their right to disagree.8
The new variant provided by the rebels was their protest against alleged “double jeopardy.” It went as follows: if the students commit illegal acts, they will be punished by the courts and must not, therefore, be penalized by the university for the same offense.