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What if the Founders Took a Page from Today’s College Administrators?
At the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), it goes without saying that we’re big fans of the First Amendment and our legal system’s robust guarantees of freedom of expression. Goodness, though, the free speech protections we enjoy in our society can bear awfully little resemblance to the conceptions of free speech (and un-free speech) that have taken root in the speech-code-heavy culture of our colleges today.
This got us wondering: What if the Founding Fathers conceptualized the First Amendment with the same boundaries college administrations so often put in place — what with their policies on “biased” speech, unconstitutional “free speech zone” restrictions, and increasingly intolerant attitudes toward “microaggressions?”
This two-minute animated video, released by FIRE today, is the result of that little thought experiment. For a whole lot of reasons, we can be glad it’s not historically accurate.
Published in General
The truth is so sad.
I really liked this. The contrast of those brave, smart men discussing those insipid concepts is as ludicrous as anything I’ve seen.
You can no longer stay ahead the self-satire that is the USA. We have read TheOnion and it is us!
Those guys in powdered wigs and knee-britches are not a very culturally representative group. And (except for the one dissenter) I think they are appropriating somebody else’s culture.