War on the First Amendment

War on the First Amendment

By Pastor Hal Mayer on Apr 30, 2018 12:30 am

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Freedom of speech is protected in the U.S. under the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution. But law students at CUNY law school in New York recently disrupted and shouted down a visiting law professor giving a speech on free speech itself, exposing the motives of the left.
Professor Josh Blackman, of South Texas College of Law, had been invited to give the speech, as he had done many times before to law students at other law universities, by CUNY Law’s Federalist Society chapter. Keep in mind, Blackman was not speaking on transgender rights, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, immigration reform, police misconduct or any other hot-button issue (which would have more predictably engendered protests), but on “The Importance of Free Speech on Campus,” as he had done without incident at many other law schools.
Incredibly, though, Blackman was effectively prevented from delivering his talk on March 29 at the school in a deeply disturbing episode. The audience was not made up of undergraduates. These were graduate students at a law school who had gone to the trouble and expense of seeking a legal education. These are law students that are expected to graduate with the ability to think clearly and rationally.
Numerous signs waved by the protesters contained such slogans as “Rule of Law = White Supremacy” and “The First Amendment is Not a Licence [sic] to Dehumanize Marginalized People.” Students shouted, “Legal objectivity is a myth” and some obscenities. CUNY Law’s National Lawyers Guild chapter tweeted that “free speech” activists are “not welcome at our PUBLIC INTEREST school.” Is this the face of “social justice” now in the United States?
Blackman is the opposite of a lightning rod or demagogue. “He is a prolific legal scholar, writing mainly in the area of constitutional law. Though politically right of center, he is more libertarian than conservative. He signed the Originalists Against Trump statement prior to the 2016 election, is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and has coauthored books and articles with Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett, a noted libertarian.
“He is not deliberately confrontational but mild-mannered, soft-spoken and unfailingly polite. This year, the Federalist Society gave him the Joseph Story Award, an honor bestowed on a law professor under 40 who ‘has made a significant public impact in a manner that advances the rule of law in a free society.’”
These leftist students were saying that the First Amendment is itself “hate speech,” “racist,” “threatening” and evidence of “oppression.” Has reasoned discourse all but disappeared in the United States? Is this intellectual honesty, or is it the shameful destination to which liberal ideas will take the nation?
“CUNY Law administrators shamefully took no action to prevent the disruptive protest, claiming later that a mob shouting down an invited speaker “did not violate any university policy.” CUNY Law Dean Mary Lu Bilek risibly stated that ‘CUNY Law students are encouraged to develop their own perspectives on the law in order to be prepared to confront our most difficult legal and social issues as lawyers promoting the values of fairness, justice, and equality.’” In other words, the school sanctions the suppression of disfavored opinions, for those words, are political buzzwords of intolerance.
Perhaps the question we should be asking is, “Where will this sort of unreasonable and intolerant display stop? After all, these are the ones who pled for tolerance in the past. Have American young people, particularly the next generation of lawyers, come to the place where they would overthrow the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution in the name of political correctness, fairness, justice and equality? Will the left assist the right in persecuting those who do not comply with the laws that fly in the face of the first amendment as they now more frequently do.
It is becoming more obvious that the very fabric that held American society together and maintained a level of civility is being torn to shreds. Eventually, the United States will repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government. See Testimonies for the church, Vol. 5.

Source References
CUNY Law School’s First Amendment problem