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Ted Cruz Shines in Senate Hearing on Campus Free Speech

Ted Cruz Shines in Senate Hearing on Campus Free Speech

“The First Amendment is about opinions that you passionately disagree with and the right of others to express them.”

https://youtu.be/DNdZQQ40S30

Respecting free speech has been an ongoing issue on college campuses for years now but reached a boiling point in 2017. So far this year, there was a riot at Berkeley over a planned speech by Milo Yiannopoulos. Berkeley also had to cancel a speech by Ann Coulter over threats of violence.

Charles Murray was shouted down by a violent mob at Middlebury College and another student mob threatened Heather Mac Donald at Claremont McKenna.

And then there’s Evergreen State College.

Those are just a few of the high profile examples.

The situation is so serious that the Senate held a hearing on the subject. CNN reports:

Senate judiciary committee hearing focuses on campus free speech

Two college students warned of increasingly stifled speech on college campuses at a Senate judiciary committee hearing Tuesday.

Zachary Wood, a rising senior at Williams College, and Isaac Smith, a student at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, appeared before the committee at a hearing titled “Free Speech 101: The Assault on the First Amendment on College Campuses.”

As the president of “Uncomfortable Learning,” Wood faced backlash for his student organization inviting controversial speakers to campus, like conservative commentator John Derbyshire. According to Wood’s testimony, Derbyshire’s invitation was canceled after significant outcry from Williams students and faculty over Derbyshire’s inflammatory comments about race.

“In my time at Williams, I cannot name a single conservative speaker that has been brought to campus by the administration,” said Wood, who himself identifies as a liberal Democrat.

Smith echoed Wood’s sentiment in his own testimony, sharing how he sued Ohio University for penalizing his student group over allegedly offensive T-shirts, which violated OU’s code of conduct at the time.

The person who really stood out during the hearing was Senator Ted Cruz. He was in his element and his understanding of the importance of the issue came through perfectly.

Chris Pandolfo of Conservative Review rounded up some of Cruz’s best lines:

Ted Cruz wallops anti-speech college crybullies

In his opening statement during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “The Assault on the First Amendment on College Campuses,” Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, offered a robust defense of free speech, criticizing colleges and universities that have “quietly rolled over” to intolerant and bullying liberal student bodies.

“If universities become homogenizing institutions that are focused on inculcating and indoctrinating rather than challenging, we will lose what makes universities great,” Cruz said. “The First Amendment is about opinions that you passionately disagree with and the right of others to express them.”

“College administrators and faculties have become complicit in functioning essentially as speech police – deciding what speech is permissible and what speech isn’t,” Cruz said. “You see violent protests … enacting effectively a heckler’s veto where violent thugs come in and say ‘this particular speaker, I disagree with what he or she has to say. And therefore, I will threaten physical violence if the speech is allowed to happen.”…

“What an indictment of our university system,” Cruz declared. “If ideas are strong, if ideas are right, you don’t need to muzzle the opposition. You should welcome the opposition. When you see college faculties and administrators being complicit or active players in silencing those with opposing views, what they are saying is they are afraid.”

“They are afraid that their ideas cannot stand the dialectic, cannot stand opposition, cannot stand facts or reasoning, or anything on the other side. And it is only through force and power that their ideas can be accepted.”

Watch Cruz in the video below:

Bravo, Senator. We need more like you in Washington, DC to defend our basic but sacred rights.

Featured image via YouTube.

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Comments

At the rate the Left is becoming a cancer in the body politic, they will cause democracy to die in broad daylight!

What as truly disgusting was Feinstein standing there and saying that if anyone objects to what a speaker says, then of course the university should prevent that speaker from talking.

She’s too stupid to realize that she’s saying that if a right wing group wants to stop her from talking, all they need is a big enough, violent enough mob and then it will be OK.

    fscarn in reply to Tom Servo. | June 21, 2017 at 10:40 am

    She’s been elected to elective office x number of times. After each election, before being seated, the election’s winner is required (Article VI; counterparts are found in each state’s constitution) to support “this Constitution.”*

    She’s taken the oath numerous times. Never meaning a word of her oath. Explaining Adams’ oft-quoted wisdom that our form of government is meant for a moral, honest/non-lying people; where your yes means yes, and your no means your no.

    *That phrase, “this Constitution,” is used 11 times in the 1787 document. The use of the specific descriptor “this” is to let the clueless among us know that the written one is being referred to. Feinstein (as a proxy for Democrats generally) is not clueless; evil and seditious are more accurate.

    Paul in reply to Tom Servo. | June 21, 2017 at 1:15 pm

    Exactly. Conservatives need to rise up and demand that the Marxists and Progressives shut up. We find their anti-liberty demands HIGHLY offensive. I find anyone even mentioning further restrictions on my Constitutional rights HIGHLY offensive. These people need to shut up so I can retreat back into my Constitutional Safe Space.

“In a proposed amendment to a media shield law being considered by Congress, Feinstein writes that only paid journalists should be given protections from prosecution for what they say or write. The language in her proposal is raising concerns from First Amendment advocates because it seems to leave out bloggers and other nontraditional forms of journalism that have proliferated in recent years thanks to the Internet.
“It rubs me the wrong way that the government thinks it should be in the business of determining who should be considered a journalist,” said Ken Bunting, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition at the Missouri School of Journalism.
– See more at: http://watchdog.org/100682/feinstein-wants-to-limit-who-can-be-a-journalist/#sthash.yTPhDUes.dpuf

    notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to pakurilecz. | June 21, 2017 at 2:45 pm

    Well since Feinstein is among the best politicians that
    Money Can Buy……

    OldProf2 in reply to pakurilecz. | June 21, 2017 at 11:35 pm

    Democrats have long maintained that the Second Amendment only guarantees the right to bear arms for people who are members of government-approved groups such as the armed forces and police. It would be consistent for them to back a law that enforces free speech only for “approved” or “licensed” or “professional” journalists. Then, the government could control who gets “free” speech, and revoke their licenses if it doesn’t like what they say. Just like the right to bear arms, the right to free speech must apply to everyone, and not just government-approved groups.

Albigensian | June 21, 2017 at 2:47 pm

If it’s just a matter of being a “paid” journalist, then presumably you could find someone to pay you a dollar a year for your journalistic output. Or perhaps some pro-free-speech entity (FIRE?) would hire you at that munificent salary.

Yet in the end it is government that would determine who is, and who is not, a “journalist” (and thus entitled to these enhanced free speech rights).

Which, I suppose, is a solution that would appeal to those who trust in the (at least potential) benevolence of government, and not so much those who deeply distrust it. And who might “those” be?