Did you know that in America you can be criminally charged for using a racial slur? The First Amendment is supposed to protect our freedom of speech (even the use of racial slurs!) and in theory it should prevent such a gross violation of our civil liberties.
But apparently it happens anyway — and it happens because the revolutionary left doesn’t care about free speech. What they care about is power, and if they have enough power they will throw their ideological opponents in prison for the crime of disagreeing with them.
Consider the case of Lauren Noble, a Yale graduate and the founder and executive director of the Buckley Institute, named for conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. Two years ago, Noble was arrested in New Haven, Conn., for allegedly using a racial slur in an argument with a black parking attendant.
The parking attendant, 60-year-old Gerno Allen, claimed that Noble repeatedly called him the N-word during a dispute in July 2023. Allen didn’t file a complaint with the police until February 2024, and Noble was arrested that May and charged at first with disorderly conduct and then three counts of breach of the peace.
Noble maintained her innocence throughout, and the misdemeanor charges against her were dropped last month. The state prosecutor cited “insufficient evidence … inconsistencies in the witness’ statements,” and “video evidence clearly contradicting the complaining witness’ statements.” In other words, Allen made up the entire story.
It’s great that Noble is no longer facing criminal charges, but the fact that she was forced to go through two years of this appalling legal ordeal based on an accusation with no evidence to support it is outrageous.
Even more outrageous is that she was arrested and charged in the first place for allegedly uttering an offensive word. Even if Noble had called Allen the N-word, and there was video evidence of it, that’s not a crime. You’re free to use whatever racial slurs you like, even lazy ones like the N-word. Contrary to what many college students seem to think at places like Yale, there’s no such thing as “hate speech” in America. It might be offensive, but it’s not illegal — at least it’s not supposed to be.
But this was a just-so narrative that was apparently too good for the left-leaning police and prosecutors in deep-blue New Haven to ignore: a conservative woman who runs an organization promoting intellectual diversity and freedom of speech at Yale, caught using the N-word against a working-class black man. Perfect.
As Noble herself wrote in a recent New York Post op-ed: “The interest in my case seemed to have more to do with what the Buckley Institute represents than anything I ever did, or was accused of doing. Headlines in local newspapers made much of both Buckley and conservatism generally, as left-leaning media outlets welcomed the opportunity to advance the dishonest narrative that everyone on the right is racist.”
That’s really what Noble’s case was about. Concocting a race-based “crime” out of thin air to tarnish the reputation of a conservative activist and ruin her good name.
For the left, conservatives aren’t just wrong or misguided, but evil. They should be silenced. If they can be silenced by jailing them on bogus charges stemming from a made-up story, so be it. Even better if the story exposes them as racist.
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