F.I.R.E. Going After Campus Speech NAZI's Wallets?

I have posted previously concerning The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (F.I.R.E.), an organization I have been following for some years now, as they are among the few entities out there who are putting up a viable fight to see that the 1st Amendment rights of the students of our nation's institutions of higher learning are upheld.

Their successes have been many, yet even so, many university and college administrators/professors still seem to believe they can trample all over the rights of their student expressing themselves in the form of "speech codes," intimidation, threats, and other PC nonsense - and can do so with no personal financial risk to themselves.

Thanks to the efforts of F.I.R.E., that may be about to change:

PHILADELPHIA, December 22, 2010—Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) warned the presidents and top lawyers at nearly 300 public colleges and universities across the nation that they and their staff should be ready to pay out of their own pockets if they continue to violate their students' free speech rights.

"For too long, public college administrators have been intentionally violating the free speech rights of their students, secure in the knowledge that they won't personally lose a dime should a court rule against them," said FIRE Senior Vice President Robert Shibley. "This has given administrators the opportunity to censor whatever opinions they dislike and make all of us pay for it. But thanks in large part to FIRE, the excuse that makes this possible—that they 'didn't know' that students had free speech rights—is quickly vanishing."

FIRE is putting them on notice by sending a certified mailing this week to the presidents and general counsel of 296 of the biggest and most prestigious public colleges across the nation, highlighting significant legal developments from the past year. FIRE's mailing warns these top administrators that with the state of the law on campus speech codes clearer now than ever before, they and their employees violate the speech rights of students at their own financial peril, as they can no longer count on "qualified immunity" to shield them from liability.

[...]

Administrators should also be aware of a recent federal case in Georgia coordinated by FIRE, in which a federal district court determined that former Valdosta State University president Ronald Zaccari was not shielded from personal liability for violating the clearly established rights of student Hayden Barnes. (Zaccari is currently appealing that decision.) This is a major finding against a former university president, and if upheld, it will serve as important federal precedent for holding future administrative malefactors personally responsible for their abuses of student rights.

You can read the rest at this link.

It's about bloody time.

Funny how libs are always so generous when it comes to spending other people's money, but when it comes to their own, the weld their wallets shut tighter than Fort Knox.

Maybe now that the possibility of being held personally liable for defecating all over the rights of their students will cause at least a few of them to pause and consider the consequences of their blatantly illegal actions before implementing them.

I'll be keeping an eye on this latest development.

Who knows? Perhaps freedom of expression will survive in the last places you would ever consider it threatened.

Philly Mayor Saves Christmas!

Okay, that may be overstating things a bit - well maybe a lot, but even though this is a very small victory for our side in an overall much larger War on Christmas, a victory it still is.

Via philly.com:

Breaking News from City Hall:

Christmas is back.

Mayor Nutter, after sustaining two days of controversy, wants "Christmas" back up on the signs at the entrance to the German Christmas Village at City Hall. Nutter told PhillyClout he spoke with the village organizer and the sign should be back up by tomorrow.

Nutter said the decision came after "personal reflection" on the matter.

"We are an international, multi-ethnic, multi-faith city," Nutter said. "I took some time to step back from all of this to think about it in a larger context.

You can read the whole thing at this link.

It's too bad that in a supposedly free country we who know the true "reason for the season" are constantly subjected to the PC whims of a bunch of Christ, Christian and Christmas-hating bigots, who somehow have developed the belief that they posses the "right" to impose their bigotry on us by restricting our 1st Amendment rights.

What I have found so distressing about all this is the Christian community's tepid response to these assaults on our freedoms. It's time to grow a spine, start throwing this stuff back in their faces and tell them to get lost if they don't like it.

One thing I have been doing for years is that, every time I get the PC "Happy Holidays" greeting, I respond with, "Merry Christmas to you, too." I have often gotten some strange looks in return, and a few people appeared somewhat offended by my reply, but so what?

Just exactly where in the Constitution of the United States does it say people have a right not to be offended?

And if someone is truly offended by anything related to Christmas (and what sort of a miserable, self-hating wretch does one have to be in order to be offended here, anyway), perhaps they would feel more comfortable living in somebody else's country.

Like North Korea.

If you'll pop for the one-way ticket, I'll happily drive them to the airport - for free.

(h/t: Drudge)

Government School Children Forced to Pray to Allah

Via americanthinker.com:

The video was taken inside the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center - Boston's controversial Saudi-funded mega-mosque - during a Wellesley Middle School social studies trip to the mosque, ostensibly taken to learn about the history of Islam first-hand. Yet the video reveals that the students are being blatantly mis-educated about Islam. A mosque spokesperson is seen teaching the children that in Mohammed's 7th century Arabia women were allowed to vote, while in America women only gained that right a hundred years ago. This seems to be an increasingly recurring theme in American schools - the denigration of western civilization and the glorification of Islamic history and values. In fact, just recently, the American Textbook Council revealed that the New York State high school regents exam whitewashes the atrocities that occurred during the imperialistic Islamic conquest of Christian Byzantium, Persia, the African continent, and the Indian subcontinent, even as it demonizes European colonialism in South America.

The mosque spokesperson also taught the students that the only meaning of Jihad in Islam is a personal spiritual struggle, and that Jihad has historically had no relationship with holy war. As far as we know, the school has not corrected these false lessons.

You can read the rest, as well as view the video at this link.

I have to disagree with the author on one point, as I think all the parents should sue, as well as demand the school officials responsible for this be terminated immediately.

Like I have always said, packing off a child to a government school is a flagrant act of child abuse.

Banned From HotAir

Well, it's official. My nearly five year-old account at HotAir is toast.

Burnt, nuked, and buried for all time. 

I got the word straight from AP two nights ago.  

My offense? Using the term "closet camel-washer" in reference to the Imam-in-Chief's outing himself over the trophy Mosque.  

It's not exactly as if I haven't posted what in many ways has become my "signature term" over there tons of times, as well as on many other blogs.  

I guess that was one time too many for them.

Of course, I could have used rag-head, camel-jockey, dune-monkey, or chosen among a whole host of other derogatory terms often used (practically interchangeably) to describe the brainwashed adherents to this fourteen century-old tyrannical political movement that has managed to successfully disguise itself as a "religion" in the minds of many millions of at or near illiterates, as well as many millions who are literate, and should know better.

Sad to say, it appears political correctness has now seriously taken root over at HotAir, just as it did at LGF (which I admit apparently coincided with an in-home lobotomy that went hideously awry) and which is now taking over at RedState, as well. 

Too bad, as I have had a long association with both RedState and HotAir, and LGF was once on my daily Must Click list. Now I wouldn't allow my dog to read it.

I was given the option of appealing directly to Ed Morrissey, but I am not in much of a mood these days to grovel my way back onto a site that appears to be lurching toward the squishy middle.  

Y'all know me. I don't do squishy middle. Not even a little bit. 

LOL - Hell, I don't even flirt with it.

There is one thing about this I find not a little ironic: I got my plug pulled by a guy who has been posting all over the Internet for years under the name Allahpundit. 

Yeah, like that hasn't put a knot in a few Islamic turbans along the way.

I'll miss some of my friends over there, but most I have hooked up with elsewhere, anyway.

HotAir was once the best place to be on the net, but apparently it has decided to appeal to a wider audience, and the contributers now appear to have become somewhat concerned with the perceptions of the RINOs of the world.

Fine, it's their site, and they are free to take it wherever they wish, but the squishy middle isn't a place I am interested in visiting myself, not even for a brief period.

Even so, I want to wish everybody at HotAir good luck and a great future. 

Yes, even you, AP.

There Is Stoopid, And Then There Is Government Stoopid

And only Government can be this stoopid.

Via tampabay.com:

But government regulations are requiring that their headquarters on the beach be made handicapped-accessible, even though the only people who ever use the two-story building are the lifeguards.

Another example of your tax dollars at work.

"It's odd. Obviously no one here is handicapped. No one in a wheelchair has ever asked to come up here," head lifeguard Donovan Burns said during an interview on the building's second floor. He noted that disabled people can borrow fat-tired beach wheelchairs from the lifeguard station for free, but those are stored on the ground floor.

The little yellow building near Pier 60 has to be brought into compliance with the state building code and the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

You will find the whole thing at this link.

This is still further evidence (as if we needed any) supporting my long-held belief that America has become too stupid to survive as it was founded.

Suns Fans Booted From Arena for Wearing Shirts in Supprt of Arizona Illegal Alien Law

Via dailycaller.com:

Two fans at a Phoenix Suns basketball game were ejected from their first row seats and removed from the arena last week after refusing orders from security guards to take off their shirts in support of Arizona’s recently passed law against illegal immigration.

One of the fans, businessman Jim Clark, said he and a friend, who were wearing orange shirts that read “Viva Los 1070,” eventually were allowed to return to their seats during last Wednesday’s game against the San Antonio Spurs after speaking with a security director.

This is not the first occurrence of politics creeping into the Suns basketball games: On Cinco de Mayo, team owner Robert Sarver came up with the idea for the team to wear “Los Suns” on their jerseys in protest of the immigration law. That’s what drove Clark to don his own shirt.

“If they’re going to shove their politics down my throat, I’m going make a message of my own,” Clark told The Daily Caller.

The phrase “Viva Los 1070” is in reference to the recently passed Arizona immigration law, Senate Bill 1070.

You can read the rest at this link.

I wonder if those government "educated" security guards, as well as their employer, have ever heard of the 1st Amendment?

Last time I checked, political correctness doesn't trump the God-given right to freedom of expression.

I have asked several people who oppose Arizona's new law to please point out to me just exactly what that law authorizes law enforcement to do in Arizona that federal law doesn't?

I'll get back to you if I ever get an answer.

(h/t: Boortz.com)

Students Sent Home for Wearing American Flag Themed Clothing

If I were the parent of one of these kids, I would be suing the school district into bankruptcy over this outrage.
 

Will Hasan's Rampage Mean Yet Another Assault on the 2nd Amendment?

It seems every time there is a senseless shooting (and even times when they are not so senseless) there is no shortage of gun-grabbers waiting in the wings, gearing up to use the latest tragedy to try and push through a new wrinkle intended to further interfere in our constitutional right to "keep and bear arms."

Never mind that no gun law ever written has kept a gun out of the hands of a criminal who sought one, but that doesn't matter to the anti-freedom crowd, and make no mistake, that is exactly what they are.

You see, it has never been so much that we 2nd Amendment supporters love guns so much as it is that we love freedom, and if you have even been paying any attention at all to the history of the last 300 years or so, those who surrender their firearms soon after forfeit their freedom, and some their very lives.

What happened at Ft. Hood was indeed a tragedy, and could have been stopped much sooner than it was, but not because of the availability of firearms, but due to the lack of them.

Via Reason.org (emphasis mine):

When Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan started shooting up the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, Pfc. Marquest Smith dove under a desk. A.P. reports that “he lay low for several minutes, waiting for the shooter to run out of ammunition and wishing he, too, had a gun.”

Neither Smith nor the other victims of Hasan’s assault had guns because soldiers on military bases within the United States generally are not allowed to carry them. Last week’s shootings, which killed 13 people and wounded more than 30, demonstrated once again the folly of “gun-free zones,” which attract and assist people bent on mass murder instead of deterring them.

Judging from the comments of those who support this policy of victim disarmament, Smith’s desire for a gun was irrational. According to Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, “This latest tragedy, at a heavily fortified army base, ought to convince more Americans to reject the argument that the solution to gun violence is to arm more people with more guns in more places.”

Note how the reference to “a heavily fortified army base” obscures the crucial point that the people attacked by Hasan were unarmed as a matter of policy. Also note the breathtaking inanity of Helmke’s assurance that “more guns” are not “the solution to gun violence.” In this case, they assuredly were.

You will find the entire article here.

To me, the one glaring irony in this tragic occurrence is that, on one of America's largest military installations, and eight years into a war, it took a civilian police officer to drop the rampaging goon, but not until he had caused the deaths of fourteen human beings, and the wounding of nearly forty others.

If someone chooses not to own a firearm, that is just fine with me, but I don't want anyone else, especially the government, making that decision for me.

I have a sneaking suspicion that along the way, several of the gun-grabbers out there are going to find themselves cowering under their bed one night, frantically dialing 911 and praying the government is going to arrive in time to save their ass, along with those of their loved ones.

I bet more than a few of them will be wishing, just as Pfc. Smith did, that they had a gun.

Obama Jugend: 11 More Videos Surface

Big Hollywood has the whole disgusting story here.

Big Hollywood has already posted a couple disturbing videos of young school children singing/speaking praises to President Obama, but when eleven more dropped in our email box it came as quite a shock. What seemed like an aberration now appears to be a troubling pattern.

Maybe “epidemic” is a better word.

Each one of the videos below is creepier than the last because the further down you go, the younger the children — brace yourself for kindergartners – except for the last and most disturbing video, which you have to see to believe.

I bet Baldur von Schirach would be proud.

Political Correctness Suffers Defeat

As I noted previously, firefighter James Krapf was ordered to remove the American flag sticker he had affixed to his locker, and was suspended without pay for refusing to remove it.

I am happy to note, as per my friend Eowyn at Giovanni's World, Krapf has prevailed and, thanks to a large public outcry, been reinstated to his position.

Nice to see a victory for freedom over the cancerous political correctness that is working to kill our America.

Firefighter Flag Flap

A Chester Pennsylvania firefighter has been suspended without pay for refusing to remove a sticker of an American flag affixed to his locker:

Chester, Pa., firefighter James Krapf wants to know what's wrong with Old Glory. The 11-year veteran was suspended without pay Thursday after he refused to peel a sticker of the American flag from his locker.

"It's pride…it's a matter of pride," Krapf said.

A new department rule mandates that all stickers and statements – union, cartoon and political – be stripped from lockers after several offensive and racist images showed up in the firehouse. But Krapf figured the red, white and blue was safe.

It seems he was wrong.

You can read the whole NBCPhiladelphia story here.

I cannot believe in post-911 America that a fire department, of all things, would forbid the display of Old Glory on the locker of a firefighter.

I support Kraph's decision to defy this hideous rule, and if his employer insists on continuing this blatant violation of this man's constitutional right to freedom of speech/expression, I hope he sues.

Political Correctness is a cancer on all of our freedoms and liberties, and its about damn time it was eradicated.

(h/t: Drudge)

Schoolchildren Compelled to Sing the Praises of Dear Leader

I think we have seen this sort of thing before:

Is HotAir Pussing Out?

I have been a member at HotAir for over four years. I have a huge amount of respect for Michelle Malkin, Allahpundit, and Ed Morrissey, along with most of my fellow members and friends there.

However, I have noticed that the powers-that-be at many so-called "conservative" sites of late appear more concerned with what the left is saying about them than they are about what Comrade Chairman KAOS is rapidly doing to this country:

http://hotair.com/ar...
 
God, if a site owned by Michelle Malkin is going PC, then perhaps it is time to start thinking about a serious escape plan.

No Joke.

If You Oppose Obama, Then You Must Be A Racist

I have been trying hard to ignore the cries of RACISM! that have been emanating from our friends on the left of late, and which are aimed at those of us opposed to the hideous, nation-destroying policies of Barack Hussein Obama. I understand why they are doing it, as they have run out of ways to defend the rapidly failing presidency of the former ACORN lawyer and community agitator, and are now reduced to scraping the bottom of their arsenal barrel in a desperate effort to try and save it for him.

Now they have gone out and dug up our 39th POTUS, affectionately known in my circles as Jihad Jimmy, and who proudly wears his antisemitism on his sleeve, to join them in hurling this ridiculous charge in a pathetic attempt to intimidate us pale-faces into silence:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

What I find puzzling about the remarks of my former governor is they are coming from someone who is essentially occupying the 43rd spot on the POTUS totem pole. Why would he want to come to the aid of a man that is on a pace to possibly knock him up a notch?

This latest scheme by the left and their dog-washers in the State Controlled Media (SCM) to paint opponents of Obama as racists will ultimately backfire on them, just as their boycott of Glenn Beck and their attack on Rep. Joe Wilson did.

What is truly sad about this latest lefty lunacy is that it could very well damage race relations to a point that may take decades to repair. Isn't it strange how those who claim to support "racial harmony" are the first to fan the flames of racial division every chance they get?

Back when I was researching Obama, it quickly became apparent that he was no "uniter," but was, in fact, a divider. This prompted me to post on several Internet sites that, if elected, Obama could well set race relations in this nation back two decades.

I may have been wrong, as it appears he could set them back far further.

How unfortunate for America.

JammieWearingFool on Political Correctness Run Amok

Just how much more ridiculous can this PC lunacy get?

Apparently plenty.

(h/t: HotAir.com)

The Texas Flag Flap

A hospital supervisor in Mansfield, Texas was ordered by her employer to take down an American flag she had hung in her workspace just prior to this past Memorial Day weekend (bolds are mine):

Debbie McLucas is one of four hospital supervisors at Kindred Hospital in Mansfield. Last week, she hung a three-by-five foot American flag in the office she shares with the other supervisors.

When McLucas came to work Friday, her boss told her another supervisor had found her flag offensive. "I was just totally speechless. I was like, 'You're kidding me,'" McLucas said.

McLucas' husband and sons are former military men. Her daughter is currently serving in Iraq as a combat medic.

As it turns out, the offended co-worker was an African immigrant who came to this country 14 years ago, and apparently has little or no appreciation for her adopted country of residence. But it gets worse:

...McLucas said that supervisor took down the flag herself...

"The flag and the pole had been placed on the floor," McLucas said.

So, not only was this African immigrant offended by the sight of our nation's flag, but totally disrespected it by placing it on the floor.

You will find the entire CBS11TV story here.

Of course, due to the adverse publicity this affair has generated, McLucas' employer, Kindred Hospital, which is owned by Kindred Healthcare, has since apologized and has allowed for the flag to be put back up.

My problem is, this should have never happened in the first place.

I do not give a damn that someone might be offended by the sight of the American flag, whether they are from here or not.

I am sick to death of people offended by our flag telling us that we, citizens of the United States of America, have no right to display it. I'm sorry, but there is no constitutional protection against being offended.

As for this African immigrant, she should be invited to return to the land whence she came, as I feel rather strongly that people like her should not be allowed to live in this country.

Zero Tolerance: Are Our Children Safer?

Or, is it just another brick being laid on this nation's path to total wussification?

Anti-gun hysteria has reached a fever pitch in this country. Someone sees a firearm, or even thinks they do, they promptly panic, frantically dial 911 on their cell phone, and soon all hell breaks lose.

Police are summoned, someone alerts the local media, the S.W.A.T team arrives, the surrounding eight block area is cordoned off, authorities go door-to-door, evacuating those who reside in the area, and police helicopters fill the skies, all because of the reported presence of a firearm.

Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration, but it isn't far off the mark.

Nowhere has this hysterical phenomenon been more apparent than in and around our nation's government schools. Ever since the Columbine incident, and even before, most of our nation's government school districts have had in place all kinds of rules regarding firearms on, or even near, campus. While some of these rules are probably reasonable given the times we live in, the interpretation of those rules has often been anything but.

"Zero Tolerance" has, sadly, become the order of the day. To the average person, this would, on its face, appear to be a reasonable course of action. Problem is, zero tolerance has been taken to the point of lunacy in many of our nation's school systems. It insulates school administrators from having to actually think, and turns them into mindless government robots, while doing little, in my opinion, to make students safer while in school.

One of my "favorite" policies are the "Gun Free Zones" that have sprung up around many school campuses in this country in recent years. In some areas, these zones extend thousands of feet in all directions from the school's property. As I see it, these "zones" have done little more than make our children sitting ducks, as it appears to me they are really open invitations to those who wish to harm our children.

I am sure that some disturbed individual who has it in their mind to go to a school and shoot some students is going to see one of the signs denoting the boundary of such a zone and is going to say, "Aw, shucks," and turn around and go home. Right. That person is probably going to be encouraged to press further, knowing he will have more time to carry out his plan before anyone who is actually armed will show up and put a swift end to the proceedings.

I have read news stories of kids being suspended, even expelled, for having on then harmless items, and even in some cases, mere pictures, related to some sort of weapon or other. I have seen where a kid was suspended from school and threatened with psychological counseling because the kid (gasp!) merely drew a picture that happened to have a gun in it, but was not threatening in any way.

A friend of mine's son here in the Atlanta area was nearly suspended two years ago from his government school merely because he had a key chain that had been made from the empty, spent rifle shell he had saved from the very first deer he ever took while out hunting with his dad.

A recent example of the anti-gun hysteria that is sweeping this nation is the case of 17 year-old Marie Morrow, who was suspended from her Colorado school, and is facing possible expulsion merely for having fake drill team rifles in her vehicle. A couple of students saw them and reported it to the school administrators.

I have no problem with what transpired to this point (although I would be embarrassed if my own children were unable to distinguish between a real rifle and an obvious plastic fake) but what happened next was insanity.

Ms. Morrow is now facing her plight due to a Colorado law that requires this punishment for "violations" of weapons laws on campus. In my opinion, this nonsense should have ended once it was determined that the "rifles" weren't even close to being real.

Now, perhaps it could be argued by some that Ms. Morrow showed a minor lapse in judgment in having those drill team props visible in her vehicle (but to me that would be due more to the paranoid times we now exist in) but does her "transgression" warrant a two-week suspension and possible expulsion? Hardly.

I have seen kids who actually physically assaulted another student get less punishment than this.

Thirty years ago when I was in school, we had kids bringing old and antique (but fully functional) guns to school for show-and-tell, and no one thought anything of it. These ranged anywhere from 19th century muzzle-loading rifles to 1911 A1 .45s, and one for-real Samurai sword a kid's grandfather had brought back from Japan after WW II.

None of those kids ever even thought about using those weapons against another student.

I realize our culture has changed over the last three decades, and we seem to have more than a few kooks running around who are looking to harm children, but are we really doing our kids a favor by teaching them to be so utterly terrified of guns that they go all weak-kneed at the very sight of one?

Are we going to continue to allow school administrators to hide behind their mindless zero-tolerance policies that keep them from actually having to make a decision, or even apply a little common sense, to an event that involves their students?

Are we, perhaps unwittingly, allowing our children to be ingrained with the idea that only government can protect them?

After all, government did such a bang-up job of saving those kids at Columbine, did they not? It seems to me had there been a few adults in that school with access to firearms, and had they been properly trained in their use, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's bloody rampage could have been ended far sooner. After all, it didn't actually end due to any action on the part of government, but because the two little punks killed themselves.

Just think, while the local government "law enforcement" employees were milling about outside for hours trying to figure what to do, a few people on the inside, properly equipped and trained, could have saved many, if not most of those student's whose lives were taken from them that horrible day.

Or have we become so wussified as a society, and find violence in any form so abhorrent, that we prefer to allow ourselves to be mowed down than to actually do anything to protect ourselves?

Sometimes I wonder.

Our Nation's Colleges & Universities: Bastions of Speech & Thought Fascism

If there is one area where the freedom-hating illiberal left has enjoyed immense success in setting this nation on its current path to becoming a Marxist hell-hole, it is in their outright take-over of our nation's institutions of higher learning, a process which began over four decades ago. Conversely, one of the most colossal failures on the part of those of us who cherish the hard-won and unique freedoms and liberties we currently enjoy as a nation, was to stand idly by and allow this take-over to occur in the first place.

Sadly, almost commensurate with the left's subversion of our nations colleges, along came "political correctness." Anyone on campus who uttered any thought or idea that violated this, at the time, largely unwritten code, faced repercussions-some of which could be rather serious.

This came as a rude awakening for many American students who had assumed that liberals actually supported the concept of freedom of expression. After all, was it not supposedly "tolerant" liberals who were marching on campuses all across America in the 60s and 70s, loudly demanding that their free speech rights be observed?

I myself ran afoul of un-published PC speech restrictions while in college nearly two decades ago. Of course, unlike some of the students in my midst, I promptly and rather aggressively stood up for myself and asserted my rights as an American, and thus was able to put a swift end to the proceedings.

Today, many of our nation's universities are actually publishing lists of words and phrases that the powers-that-be have determined are out of bounds and can therefore not be used anywhere on campus. Often, the excuse given by the robed and tasseled gaggle who produce these codes insist that they are necessary to ensure that all of the student body feel "included" and are able to go about their daily activities and avoid being offended in some way or other. How nice.

Are these people not concerned that in just about all cases, the imposition of speech codes in a public university setting has been ruled to be a clear violation of the constitutional rights of the students and is therefore illegal? Apparently not.

Where, by the way, does the Constitution of the United States of America say that we citizens have a "right" to not be offended?

Another excuse one will often hear put forth by the robed mob is that speech codes are necessary in order to prevent "hate speech." Problem is, who, exactly, gets to define what constitutes hate speech? In my experience, this term has come to define anything said by a non-liberal that a liberal does not agree with, much like the term "racist" has come to define anything said by a white person that a person of color disagrees with.

One long-held concern I have had about speech codes, aside from the fact that they are a blatant affront to our God-given, constitutionally enforced right to express ourselves as we see fit is, when you start trying to control what people say, how far are you from ultimately controlling what people think?

It would be easy to blame the government, the elementary and secondary government schools these kids attended, the colleges and universities themselves, in addition to the freedom-hating left. After all, each of these entities share at least part of the blame for the sorry state our post-secondary educational system now finds itself in-particularly in the area of freedom of expression, if not freedom in general.

I lay the bulk of the blame squarely at the feet of the parents who send their offspring to these deeply flawed institutions. I do so not because they have failed to withhold the huge tuition payments they make to these schools, or that they do not send mass letters of protest to the administrators and faculty members for their shameless indoctrination of our nations young people.

I blame them for raising gullible, non-thinking, non-critical, easily-led little sheep.

Somewhere in these student's households, in the time between their gleaming parents bringing their little bundles of joy home from the hospital for the first time, and the day they packed up the SUV and drove their now teenage offspring off to the college or university of their choice, something went hideously awry.

I suspect that in most cases, the parents perched in the front of the SUV now making its way merrily along probably are congratulating themselves in the belief that they did a fairly good job in preparing their progeny for life in the real world. In many cases, the parent's are probably correct. In most cases, however, I think they have blown it-and quite badly at that.

The problem we have today is that so many young people have been so wussified by their parent's, as well as by society at large, that they most often will cower in the face of any restrictions placed on their freedoms, and just quietly go about their business. This, I believe, is the main reason the enemies of freedom have been so successful at stifling speech with which they disagree-speech that often reflects ideas and convictions that the institutional intelligentsia, for whatever reason, cannot stomach. How sad.

Fortunately for freedom of expression, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or F.I.R.E., was formed to help fight the speech Nazis that have infested so many of this nation's colleges and universities. You can read their mission statement here.

As I have been victimized by the campus speech fascists myself, I took a personal interest in this organization shortly after it was founded, and have regularly followed its progress ever since. They have a rather impressive record in combating speech restrictions that have been cropping up on campuses all over this nation.

Each year, F.I.R.E. releases a report detailing the current state of freedom of expression on many of our nations colleges and universities. You can read their 2009 report, which was just released, here.

Sad to say, even though there has been some limited progress made in the war for intellectual freedom in the very places you would not expect there to be a need for one, our nations institutions of higher learning, there is still much left to be done to rid this country of this freedom-sapping cancer.

What I find truly distressing is that, in the United States of America, an organization such as F.I.R.E. is even necessary.