First Amendment dead on liberal college campuses
There are five freedoms listed in the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the United States of America. It grants us freedom of worship, speech, press, the right to petition the government and to assemble peacefully. It is freedom of speech that we see violated on elite, liberal college campuses on a regular basis in our country today, and it’s getting worse.
When news spreads that there will be a conservative speaker scheduled at one of these so-called bastions of free thought, there is an immediate movement to circulate petitions and plan demonstrations to disrupt these scheduled speakers. Obviously, someone at these institutions of higher learning thought it would be a good idea to have a different viewpoint on important, timely topics presented.
Students at these elite, ivy league universities are being denied opinions on both sides and are only being presented with one viewpoint on any subject. No wonder they all graduate with liberal points of view and think that socialism is good and capitalism is bad.
Unfortunately, this has been the case in way too many colleges lately. Some students and faculty members apparently feel threatened by these outsiders treading on their sacred intellectual territory. Conservative speakers and authors like Ben Shapiro and Ann Coulter have been shouted down and run out of town whenever they show up to present an alternative viewpoint. It would be safe to say that President Trump himself, or any senior members of his staff, would not be welcome on any of these liberal college campuses.
Just last week retired Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director Thomas Homan had his event shut down on the private campus of the University of Pennsylvania. Homan was supposed to be a member of a panel of three discussing the immigration issues in this country. It was entitled “Detention and Deportation from Obama to Trump.” He received a warning prior to the event that a petition signed by over 500 students and alumni of the university was circulating to cancel the event.
Dozens of those from other colleges also signed the petition, including students from Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.
We can only guess that these more than 500 petition signers didn’t agree with the administration’s efforts to round up illegal aliens and send them back to their own countries. Campus security emptied the room and the panelists were escorted off the stage when the protests began as soon as the emcee approached the podium.
Homan had the opportunity to visit with a small number of students after the event was shut down. The 34-year ICE veteran who served under six presidents said the Trump administration has actually removed fewer illegal aliens than the Obama administration did. He said he didn’t understand where all the hate and racist talk was back then. He said the students he visited with were just as upset as he was that this important discussion did not take place, calling it a “big, serious issue” with 31 percent of women making the journey being raped and children dying along the way.
It’s unfortunate that so many young minds have already been made up about all the important issues facing our country today. Many students have been indoctrinated by liberal teachers and professors along their educational paths. It’s “their way or the highway,” with no room for any meaningful discussion that might sway them from their one-sided thought processes.
We have to ask, “Where is all this freedom of speech and openness of thought that is supposed to be found in these ivy league institutions of higher learning?” What kind of young people are we sending out into the real world? They are in for a rude awakening when they suddenly discover that not all people think like them, and simply protesting doesn’t make alternate thoughts go away.
We have lost our way in this country when we can no longer have meaningful public discussions about important issues and can only agree with people who think like us. What a sad state of affairs we find ourselves in today.