European Professor's Smug Critique of USA Backfires as Americans Remind Him What Makes Our Country Great
Imagine a Venn diagram that depicted all the narcissists, Marxists and self-styled intellectuals of the last 150 years. In that case, the diagram’s three overlapping circles would practically blend into one.
The latest illustration of prideful authoritarianism from a lettered, leftist lunatic occurred last week when Francois Balloux, a Swiss-educated professor of computational systems biology at University College London and director of the UCL Genetics Institute, decried as “un-American” the idea that property owners have the right to limit “freedom of speech” on their own property.
Balloux’s grotesque perversion of the First Amendment called forth corrections from more sensible and knowledgeable Americans.
“The concept that the owner of the land has a right to suppress the freedom of speech of those happening to be on their property is illiberal, authoritarian, and actually remarkably ‘un-American,'” he said in a Friday social media post.
The concept that the owner of the land has a right to suppress the freedom of speech of those happening to be on their property is illiberal, authoritarian, and actually remarkably ‘un-American’.
— Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) April 12, 2024
In the abstract, that sounds like the sort of losing argument a debating society would assign to its least-popular member.
But Balloux did not make that argument in the abstract. He made it in response to a viral incident on Tuesday in Berkeley, California.
According to the New York Post, Erwin Chemerinsky, the Jewish dean of the University of California, Berkeley Law School, and his wife, Catherine Fisk, a Berkeley professor, invited law school graduates to their private home for a celebratory dinner.
With guests seated, and over the protests of the husband-and-wife hosts, a hijab-wearing, anti-Israel student named Malak Afaneh took a microphone and began speaking.
The dean objected.
“Please leave. No, please leave. Please leave. This is my house. You’re my guest,” Chemerinsky said in a video posted to X.
Afaneh ignored him and kept talking. Moments later, Fisk appeared to grab the microphone and attempt to take it from Afaneh’s hand.
“We have attorneys. We have attorneys,” Afaneh said, apparently referring to herself and another young woman standing to her right.
“This is our First Amendment right,” the disruptive and narcissistic Afaneh then falsely asserted.
“No. This is my house,” Chemerinsky reiterated.
Readers may view the full clip below in which multiple young women exhibited the sort of narcissistic self-righteousness that they believe empowers them to trample on the rights and liberties of others.
This clip shows the protester was asked to leave repeatedly and refused, even after the homeowners threatened to call police. She held on to the mic, risking pulling an older woman down. She said that because she was a Muslim women, she could not be touched. pic.twitter.com/hrvQ38J7Ep
— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) April 11, 2024
Balloux commented on the clip and insisted that the homeowners had an obligation to “engage” with the protester “intellectually.”
“The student’s annoying – students sometimes are, that’s part and parcel of being young and idealistic – but if you manhandle a student rather than letting them perform their silly antics, pretend to listen, or better engage with them intellectually and try to talk sense into them once they’re done if you disagree, you totally failed as a professor, even more so as a law professor,” he said.
The student’s annoying – students sometimes are, that’s part and parcel of being young and idealistic – but if you manhandle a student rather than letting them perform their silly antics, pretend to listen, or better engage with them intellectually and try to talk sense into them… https://t.co/08SccZcmp9
— Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) April 12, 2024
Once an allegedly intelligent person has written something that inane — suggesting that the dean and his wife should have shown a graduating law student the same sort of indulgence they would have shown a tantrum-throwing infant — why attend to anything else that that allegedly intelligent person might write?
Fortunately, Americans who understand the First Amendment made quick work of Balloux’s “freedom of speech” nonsense.
“Speaking as an American, no it’s not. If my neighbor walked onto our lawn, started shouting insults at us, & refused to stop we would eventually call the police & the police would escort him/her off our lawn. Americans have a right to peace in their homes, owned or rented,” one user replied.
Speaking as an American, no it’s not
If my neighbor walked onto our lawn, started shouting insults at us, & refused to stop we would eventually call the police & the police would escort him/her off our lawn
Americans have a right to peace in their homes, owned or rented
— Catherine Johnson (@smarterparrot) April 13, 2024
“Oh, you can come to my house and we can have a spirited discussion. But if you bring a bullhorn and refuse to leave even after I have asked you to, that is tresspassing and you deserve to be arrested. You can scream on the public sidewalk outside my house all you want,” another user wrote.
Oh, you can come to my house and we can have a spirited discussion. But if you bring a bullhorn and refuse to leave even after I have asked you to, that is tresspassing and you deserve to be arrested. You can scream on the public sidewalk outside my house all you want…
— Joseph Warren MD (@JosephWarren999) April 12, 2024
Another paraphrased one of American history’s most famous quotes in order to set Balloux straight.
“The idea of sovereignty over your land and to rule it over it , is actually a very American and historically Anglo Saxon thing. An English man’s home is his castle. It’s a very European thing for the lines between public space and private spaces to be blurred,” the user wrote.
The idea of sovereignty over your land and to rule it over it , is actually a very American and historically Anglo Saxon thing. An English man’s home is his castle.
It’s a very European thing for the lines between public space and private spaces to be blurred
— Max Hillaert (@maxhill007) April 12, 2024
In the famous 1761 Writs of Assistance case involving warrantless searches, Massachusetts lawyer James Otis expressed a foundational American principle. “A man’s house is his castle,” Otis declared.
Thirty years later, James Madison wrote that principle into the Fourth Amendment.
In short, the entire Bill of Rights protects citizens from their government. It prevents government officials from trampling the rights and liberties of individuals.
But here comes the key point. Narcissists do not believe in the rights and liberties of others.
A self-righteous protester like Afaneh cannot envision a world in which Chemerinsky and Fisk have rights that she must respect, for she very clearly sees the world through the Marxist oppressor-oppressed dynamic. Conveniently, that dynamic allows her to identify with the “oppressed” and thereby justify all of her abhorrent behavior.
Meanwhile, a self-styled intellectual like Balloux showed contempt for others simply by touting his credentials.
“I made it to professor, and Institute director for my good looks, but allegedly, some academics are smart,” the pompous blowhard posted on Saturday.
I made it to professor, and Institute director for my good looks, but allegedly, some academics are smart … https://t.co/9jD9X6bg6G
— Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) April 13, 2024
Thus, as a narcissist in his own right, Balloux also has echoed Marxist principles. Historically, of course, Marxists have respected no property rights but their own. And Balloux undermined property rights by suggesting they should not hinder an unwelcome guest’s right to speak.
In short, both Balloux and Afaneh used the language of “freedom” to promote the familiar authoritarianism of narcissists.
In so doing, they proved they do not stand for anything truly American.
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