April 3, 2007
Guns and Speech V Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 02:30 PM EST Mr. Gordon has changed the rules in mid-play. I provided evidence of a case in which a college was forced to cancel an appearance by a left-wing speaker because that speaker was threatened with violence, and he replied with a long list of interesting facts that have little bearing on the subject at hand. Yes, the institute that invited Churchill to campus is left-leaning. Yes, Ward Churchill has been accused of shoddy research. Yes, Jeane Kirkpatrick was a more respected scholar than Ward Churchill. To this list, one might add: Hamilton College is located in upstate New York, in a small town called Clinton. The average January snowfall in Clinton, New York, is 30 inches. I have no doubt that Mr. Gordon feels genuinely sorry for right-wing students, like those at the University of Michigan who staged “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day” and a “Fun With Guns” event last year. The latter involved using BB guns to shoot targets representing John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. But on the issue of free speech, Mr. Gordon is inconsistent. He rends garments over quite deplorable instances of left-wing thuggery on college campuses, but he argues that the young man in Alaska who was suspended for hoisting a “bong hits for Jesus” banner deserved to be dressed down by his local school. According to Mr. Gordon, his speech was “essentially meaningless, intended solely to get a reaction. . . . There was no idea or opinion related to the real world being offered . . . the court of first instance should have dismissed the case under the doctrine of de minimis non curat lex. There was no real-world First Amendment issue here. Claiming one, and the courts taking the claim seriously, just because ‘words’ are involved is, at best, silly.” On the other hand, Mr. Gordon does believe that the students in Connecticut who were not permitted to perform an original play about the Iraq War have been done a great wrong. This idea works, but only if we appoint Mr. Gordon the final arbiter of what constitutes meaningful speech. Of course, we can’t do that. Our Constitution doesn’t allow for it. (It might be possible in Iran, or maybe Zimbabwe. I’ll look into this and get back to Mr. Gordon as soon as I learn something.) Again, I wonder whether groups and individuals who support an expansive reading of the Second Amendment will attempt to strengthen the individual-rights emphasis of the Bill of Rights by defending the broadest possible speech rights for students.
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