We all knew that was a self-serving line of bull, but now it has proven itself to be such.
The latest university to cave to Trump’s and MAGA’s war on campus free speech is Columbia University. One of MAGA’s censorship attempts is stifling the free speech rights of pro-Palestinian students.
It wasn’t so long ago that MAGA posed as the ultimate champions of free speech on campus. Try these on for size:
Alliance Defending Tyranny Freedom, a MAGA-aligned organization, said this in an October 18, 2017 press release: “What’s a politically correct university campus to do when seeking to deter freedom of speech on campus? Tell those who dare to trespass on campus orthodoxy they must pay special fees for security guards at their events, fees other groups don’t have to pay.”
ADF also asserted in an amicus brief to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, as recently as January 24, 2024, that “College students have the freedom to share their beliefs anywhere on campus; they don’t need permission from college officials to speak, nor should they have to jump through burdensome and illegal hoops just to talk with their classmates outside. … We urge the court to reverse the lower court ruling that prohibits free speech on campus.”
Center for Arizona Policy, affiliated with the SPLC-listed MAGA hate group Family Research Council, gleefully announced that Gov. Ducey Signs Bill Protecting Free Speech on College Campuses: “Yesterday, Governor Doug Ducey signed into law CAP-supported SB 1069 Postsecondary Institutions; Free Expression Policies. The bill clarifies that a state university or community college shall not restrict a student’s right to speak, unless the restrictions are constitutionally permissible.”
As a Libertarian, I agree with their free speech rights on campus. One more time: I agree with their free speech rights on campus.
The problem is that MAGA does not support free speech and never will. They ban books and seek to criminalize peaceful protest, after all.
No, MAGA is merely using free speech as a crowbar to advance their own anti-liberty and anti-free speech ideas in the public square. Once they gain power, they will obliterate free speech faster than the implosion of the Titan Submersible.
To MAGA, free speech, and the Constitution itself, are not ideals to be upheld, but weapons to be cynically used to destroy both free speech and the very Constitution that protects it. MAGA’s “Constitutional scholars” study the Constitution for the same reasons that a demolition firm studies a condemned building’s blueprint: to bring it crashing down.
After all, it’s MAGA that is leading a charge to dismantle the Constitution as it currently exists, and that endeavor has a long list of endorsers – a veritable Who’s Who of MAGA.