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Threats win over free speech in Coulter cancellation

If you favor free speech, the fact that conservative author and commentator Ann Coulter was dissuaded from speaking at the University of California-Berkeley today should be anything but cause for celebration, no matter what your views.

Coulter was contracted to appear at UC Berkeley today by the Berkeley College Republicans and Young America’s Foundation. But that appearance was canceled after the college cited security concerns based on protests that broke out in February when right-wing writer Milo Yiannopoulos was to speak.

While UC Berkeley suggested an alternate date, the damage was done. The perception, accurate or not, was intolerance won over free speech.

That this came at UC Berkeley in the San Francisco area, the birthplace of the “Free Speech Movement” in the 1960s, made it especially disturbing.

This is not an endorsement of Coulter, who sometimes seem a little too calculated in being provocative, even incendiary, especially when coming out with a new book.

Coulter can sound harsh, even hateful in the rhetoric she uses when referring to those with whom she disagrees.

But that does not equate to hate speech. That’s a bar rightfully set very high when judging who should be muzzled.

Whether you agree with Coulter is beside the point. Whether her views are targeted to fire up a certain base, too, should not be a consideration unless they are an actual call to violent action.

Instead, UC Berkeley cited the threat of potential clashes between Coulter’s opponents and supporters to justify postponing her appearance — giving those who would use such threats a victory.

That should be chilling to even those who have almost nothing in common with Coulter, except the presumed right to share their views without fear of becoming a target for violence.

Coulter should be able to find a venue. Shutting her down, not permitting those views to be heard — and challenged — smacks too much of authoritarian tactics that have resulted in oppression and crackdowns on rights in other countries, both from right-leaning and left-leaning regimes.

Protests, if they remain peaceful, are justified as well.

Not allowing varying views to be openly aired and shared is just a short step away from a free press being muzzled.

As Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, candidate for president a year ago and a self-described democratic socialist, said this week, “What are you afraid of — her ideas?”

Far more to be afraid of in seeing successful attempts made to prevent ideas and views from being freely shared and debated.

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