Free Republic

......a poetic plea from an 8-year-old boy. His message was broadcast inside a community center in Newark on Saturday afternoon, but his words were interrupted by gunshots. “Violence came as I was talking,” Nyeeam Hudson said. During Nyeeam’s plea for peace, a young man was shot and killed outside.

Many Americans seem to think that free speech and the First Amendment are synonymous. They're not: the former is a larger and more primal concept. But one consequence of that confusion is that, whenever free-speech questions arise, you always get a ton of emails droning, "There's no First Amendment issue here, Steyn. Mozilla/Brandeis/A&E/whoever is not the government. It's a private entity and is perfectly free to can its chief exec/disinvite Ayaan Hirsi Ali/suspend 'Duck Dynasty'/whatever if it wants to." Which is true as far as it goes, but doesn't address the core question of ugly thuggish identity-group enforcers remorselessly narrowing...

There has been mounting evidence in the last two weeks that the Internet, one of the last unregulated venues for communication, might well be headed for federal regulation. What makes the specter of Internet regulation (or "net neutrality," as its proponents prefer to call it) all the more ominous is that it might become law through rulings by the Federal Communications Commission rather than a vote of elected representatives in Congress. On Sept. 24, the Washington Post reported that the FCC was working with activists seeking to generate comments in favor of tough, 1930s-style regulation of telephone. In what the...

Educators at Ward Melville High School are either woefully ignorant of the U.S. Constitution or they really don’t like Christian teenagers.For the second year in a row, the Long Island, New York high school has denied students the right to form a Christian club.“I feel like they have something against me and my faith,” 17-year-old John Raney told me. “I feel marginalized.”John is the founder of Students United in Faith, a service-oriented Christian club. Nearly 20 young people wanted to join the club – but the school said no.“I wanted to start the club because I thought it would provide...

Note: Hate speech, not hate crimes. YouGov asked people about hate crimes for its poll too and found bipartisan support for the federal law that provides steeper penalties for crimes motivated by hatred of the victim’s race, religion, gender, or national origin. Sixty-four percent of Dems gave thumbs-up to that versus 54 percent of Republicans. A plurality of Republicans also support expanding that law to target hate crimes committed against gays: 44 percent say yes versus 30 percent who say no.Hate-crimes laws matter in the sentencing phase. If you’re guilty of the underlying offense, then you can be punished...

Airliners that routinely complete their flights, like a dog that bites a man, naturally get no headlines. A flight must crash and burn to get attention, like the man who bites a dog. It's controversy that sells tickets, particularly on campus. When Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the brave human-rights activist and a native of Somalia, spoke at Yale last week, 300 students turned out to listen. Others were turned away because security was so tight. The sponsors were almost apologetic because there was no controversy. This is how free speech can work on a campus with bold academic leadership behind it....

Prof. John Banzhaf has filed a petition asking the FCC to revoke the broadcast license of stations that use the word “Redskins.” Some “longtime participants in the FCC regulatory process” — including former FCC chair Reed Hundt — have likewise argued that, It is impermissible under law that the FCC would condone, or that broadcasters would use, obscene pornographic language on live television. This medium uses government owned airwaves in exchange for an understanding that it will promote the public interest. Similarly, it is inappropriate for broadcasters to use racial epithets as part of normal, everyday reporting. Current FCC chair...

Despite its protection in our Constitution, free speech has never been a given in the United States. From the struggle to pass the First Amendment to Twentieth Century prohibitions on anti-war speech, every American generation has fought some sort of battle to protect this most sacred of rights. In 2014, Millennials are waging their generation's fight for free expression on college campuses across the nation. And today, they are winning. Over the past several decades, "speech codes" have proliferated at an alarming rate across our nation's college campuses. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education defines such a code as...

Rights: A Ninth Circuit Court ruling that students can't wear American flag T-shirts because they may offend Mexican students celebrating Cinco de Mayo is a ridiculous yet dangerous assault on the First Amendment. On Sept. 17, more than four years after Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Calif., sent students home for wearing American flag t-shirts, an 11-judge Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled that it was the right choice, "tailored to avert violence and focused on student safety." The decision upheld the court's three-judge ruling in February that justified the school's actions based on tensions between Mexican...

Author’s Note: This is the fifth column in a series. The first four installments, “This is Providence,” “Pharisees and Pharaohs,” “Prayers and Preparation,” and “Pride and Perjury” can be accessed in my column archive. Some of the themes discussed in this series were also part of a speech I gave at an Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) event in July. The full speech can be viewed by clicking on this link. I first met David French back in 2004. He had just taken a job as president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE. I loved working informally with...

‘The shadow of ‘dark money’ haunts the midterms,” warned the Washington Post in a headline on September 2. Two days later, the Huffington Post chimed in with a headline of its own: “It’s Time to Name the 2014 Midterms the Dark Money Election.” The stories that followed were utterly predictable: pious condemnations of the role of money in politics, with dutiful references to Charles and David Koch, the libertarian brothers whose affiliated groups support Republican candidates. The notion of dark money was first introduced in a 2010 report from the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit group that calls for greater transparency...

Penn State Young America’s Foundation Chapter were told to take down their table from a designated “free speech zone” on campus. They were handing out Constitutions – on Constitution Day.

Freedom for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) president Greg Lukianoff “Freedom From Speech,” a 61-page broadside written by Freedom for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) president Greg Lukianoff, deftly illustrates the evolving assault on free speech. “The public’s appetite for punishing attempts at candor gone wrong, drunken rants, or even private statements made in anger or frustration seems to be growing at an alarming rate,” Lukianoff warns. The author cites a range of incidents to make his initial point, covering a large and diverse cast of characters. They include former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson,...

To the Yale Muslim Students Association and its many sister organizations that have co-signed a letter protesting Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s lecture on Monday: I love your new free-speech concept! Obviously this woman should have been banned from campus and had her face stomped in; why couldn’t they have just quietly murdered her in Holland along with her fellow discomfort-creators? These people are worse than tweed underwear! They practically live to make undergraduates uncomfortable. But let’s deal with the harsh realities. Your inspired suggestion, having Official Correctors speak right after Ali to remind students of the authorized view of Muslim...

‘The constitutional amendment before us,” Harry Reid said Tuesday, describing a proposal to give federal and state governments the authority to regulate political giving, “isn’t about limiting free speech.” Harry Reid, may I present the American Civil Liberties Union. I am sure you two have met before. Writing in June that the nonprofit “strongly opposes” the so-called Udall amendment, the ACLU’s Laura Murphy and Gabriel Rottman called the Democratic proposal “deceptively complex,” “unnecessary,” “redundant of existing law,” “dangerous for liberties,” “vague,” “overbroad,” “exceedingly dangerous to democratic processes,” and “the first time the amendatory process has been used to directly...

Political correctness is apparently more important than educating children. At least that’s the message I take away from a Colorado Democrat’s plan to defund schools that have “unauthorized” mascots. Wielding the self-righteous tomahawk of political correctness, Democrat Joe Salazar has decided to leverage Colorado’s pawns kids as a bargaining chip in his effort to rid the world of “offensive” Native American mascots.Under the Thornton legislator’s plan, schools will be required to seek permission from Native American tribes for their western-themed mascots, or go without any state funding. (On the bright side, I can now honestly say I’ve seen a Democrat propose...

We are, as it always seems, "at a pivotal moment in American history." At least that's what Sens. Tom Udall and Bernie Sanders maintained in a melodramatic Politico op-ed last week as they explained their efforts to repeal the First Amendment. Let me retort in their language: It's true that building the United States has been long, arduous and rife with setbacks. But throughout the years, the American people have repelled efforts to weaken or dismantle the First Amendment. We have weathered the Sedition Act of 1918, a law that led to the imprisonment of innocent Americans who opposed the...

When, this spring, Brandeis University reneged on its commencement invitation to human-rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, it revealed the cravenness that characterizes many of America’s leading institutions of higher education. The decision of Yale’s William F. Buckley Jr. Program to invite Hirsi Ali to New Haven as part of its speaker series has exposed the same quality in many of that school’s students.

Sen. Ted Cruz Objects to Democrats Attempt to Repeal Free Speech Protections

Congress is back in Washington, and Senate Democrats have wasted no time in bringing forward their proposal for a constitutional amendment that would give Congress the right to set limits on how much money can be raised for and spent in federal political campaigns. Senate Joint Resolution 19 ... Section 1. To advance democratic self-government and political equality, and to protect the integrity of government and the electoral process, Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections. Section 2. Congress and the States shall...