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Jewish World Review
Nov 30, 2011
/ 4 Kislev, 5772
Giving bullies a veto on the First Amendment
By
Glenn Garvin
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Imagine five Jewish kids go to school one day wearing their yarmulkes.
The school's numerous skinhead students are furious. At lunch they
mill around in the school yard, muttering threats and complaining to
the assistant principal that that their political beliefs have been
insulted. The assistant principal responds by calling the Jewish kids
into his office and ordering them to take off their yarmulkes or go
home.
Then imagine further that when the kids go to court to get help, the
judge replies: Sorry, fellows, you've misunderstood the concept of
free speech. It only lasts until a fascist bully threatens to punch
you in the nose. After that, we're on his side, not yours.
The head of every First Amendment lawyer in America explodes, right?
Editorial boards at The New York Times and Washington Post are struck
down with collective strokes, right? Political progressives all over
the country pour into the streets demanding that Obamacare be expanded
to provide free backbone transplants for judges, right?
Wrong, wrong and wrong, at least if you replace "yarmulke" with
"American flag." When a federal judge in San Francisco ruled earlier
this month that school administrators in a California town had the
right to kick out kids for wearing American flag T-shirts because they
were offending Mexican-American students, the silence among First
Amendment activists and the media was deafening.
This sad story of multiculturalism run amok begins in Morgan Hill,
Calif., a small town south of San Jose previously notorious only for
its hellishly efficient speed traps, during last year's Cinco de Mayo
celebration. (Cinco de Mayo, May 5, is the anniversary of an 1862
battle between the Mexican and French armies; curiously, it isn't
celebrated in Mexico at all.)
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At Morgan Hill's Live Oak High School, scores of the many
Mexican-American students wore the red, green and white colors of the
Mexican flag. But five kids came in American-flag T-shirts. As the
five sat at a table outside during a morning break in classes,
assistant principal Miguel Rodriguez summoned them into the school
office.
The Mexican-American students were angry about the American flags,
Rodriguez warned the five, and they had to either turn their T-shirts
inside-out or go home for the day. "They said we were starting a
fight, we were fuel to the fire," sophomore Matt Dariano told the
Gilroy Dispatch.
In federal court testimony later, Rodriguez admitted that the five
boys weren't doing anything wrong. But he had been warned that
Mexican-American students were unhappy. And he recalled that on Cinco
de Mayo the year before, Mexican-American students had threatened
violence when somebody raised an American flag. "Rodriguez, they are
racist," a Mexican-American student had yelled at the time. "They are
being racist. (Bleep) them white boys. Let's (bleep) them up."
The five boys went home. But three of them later sued Rodriguez,
another administrator and the school district, saying they had been
deprived of their freedom of expression and right to due process and
equal protection under the law.
Hogwash, ruled federal district court judge James Ware.
By making the bullies angry, the boys "could cause a substantial
disruption with school activities," which gave administrators the
legal right to kick them out, the judge said. And in a truly Orwellian
twist, he added that there was no need to eject students wearing the
colors of the Mexican flag because nobody had threatened to beat them
up.
Ignorant layman that I am, I would have guessed that the whole point
of the First and Fourteenth amendments was precisely the opposite -
that they exist to protect the rights of tiny, peaceful minorities
rather than angry mobs. But Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor whose
conservative blog The Volokh Conspiracy is among the few media outlets
following the Morgan Hill case, says the judge is probably correct
under a 1969 Supreme Court ruling that allows schools to restrict
speech that would "materially and substantially interfere with the
requirements of appropriate discipline."
So I guess I've learned something about the law. And about
multiculturalism: that it sees American democracy as an enemy that
must be beaten into submission. And the public schools: that they've
declined to the point where they are unwilling or unable to protect
the physical safety of a kid whose only offense is an affection for
red, white and blue.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
Glenn Garvin is a columnist for the Miami Herald
Previously:
09/15/11: Bloodsucking Progressives Must Die video game is acceptable?
06/28/11: Send this one back where it came from
06/23/11: Doesn't this president remind you of someone?
05/26/11: A new standard of racial correctness
05/12/11: Vast wasteland speech 50 years later
04/13/11: Bay of Pigs fiasco offers lessons for Obama's Libya adventure
03/03/11: Inconvenient truth for teachers' unions
07/10/10: Still looking to score
06/22/10: Ripe for fraud and abuse
05/25/10: Big Brother picks your pocket
11/04/09: Have conservatives scored a stealth prime time drama?
08/27/09: Left's been out for blood, too
08/13/09: What's not being celebrated
07/31/09: Pay-or-play means more lost jobs
07/16/09: OAS turns a blind eye to violations by left
07/02/09: Nothing so shocking about this coup
06/22/09: Libs' darling strikes out
06/03/09: Yes, America should read Sotomayor's speech in context
05/20/09: Bloody mission goes awry
05/07/09: The problem is they aren't just goofin'
04/30/09: Why can't students say guns in school?
04/08/09: When non-U.S. citizens vote
03/2e/09: Of course the AIG bonus boys the best and the brightest deserve their loot
03/12/09: No choice in Free Choice Act
© 2009, The Miami Herald Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
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