Friday, April 02, 2021

First Amendment Cases

David French has a good article about recent challenges to First Amendment rights, which these days are usually about trying to shut down the rights of conservatives to express opinions.  His take is that these ridiculous challenges end up strengthening 1st A precedents, but are still concerning because they are relentless.  The Walls Are Strong, But the Cannon Fire Is Real.

WRT the students at religious colleges who object to policies unsupportive of LGBT rights, French points out that no one made them choose those colleges, and there are plenty of schools which would agree with their POV they could have gone to.  I am reminded of Garrison Keillor's summary of  Father Emil's yearly sermon on birth control, "If you didn't want to go to Chicago, why did you get on the train?" It is a line I have used many times over the last thirty years, as it applies to so many things.

I miss 1980s Garrison Keillor, by the way. A quiet brilliance, but hatred overcame him.

6 comments:

Mike Guenther said...

So David French, the blind squirrel found half a nut. Him, Jonah Goldberg, Rick Wilson, etal., are CINO's. They don't even talk a good conservative game. In fact, in order for them to get invites to all the "proper" social events, they spend all their time on twitter licking each other's nuts and denigrating real conservatives.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I disagree. They didn't like Trump. Is there other evidence they don't qualify as conservatives?

Grim said...

French is regularly criticized for his embrace of Drag Queen Story Hours for children at local public libraries. I think his point was that they are 1A protected, but he was a little more enthusiastic, describing them as “one of the blessings of liberty.”

I can definitely see a conservative argument against that position. Even if you’re ok with Drag Queens for adults — I personally see no grounds for forbidding such things in a free society — one might argue that justice entails trying to create a protective zone from even more mainstream sexuality for pre-pubescent children (at least).

Grim said...

In fairness I am probably not a conservative myself anymore; as Tolkien said of himself, “My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs).”

Assistant Village Idiot said...

In that instance I might draw a distinction between a private and a public library, and if the latter, have some mechanism for local control. If you live in a community where the majority of people think Drag Queen Story Hour is great, I suppose that's not the library's fault.

Sam L. said...

AVI, I stopped reading National Review Online when it went NEVER TRUMP, and will never trust any of them again. Disliking Trump is one thing, but helping the Dems is the whole ball of wax with poison infused.