Two weekends ago, almost one million people descended on Washington, D.C. in one of the biggest protests in the capitol’s history. The target of the protest, dubbed the March for Our Lives, was America’s lax gun regulation, the product of years of advocacy by gun rights lobbying groups and intransigence by lawmakers. The march, and affiliated marches across the world, were a powerful rejoinder to the view, common among many conservatives, that the Second Amendment guarantees an absolute right to bear arms, regardless of the consequences.
This fundamentalist view of the Second Amendment has become entrenched among vast swaths of the country, with many viewing any effort to control gun ownership as a violation of their constitutional rights. Escaping as much scrutiny, however, is the fundamentalist view of the First Amendment that has emerged in recent debates about free speech on college campuses from Clemson to Harvard.
Academics, columnists, and politicians across the political spectrum have been sounding the alarm about free speech on campus for quite a while now. To this cadre of “Free Speech Fundamentalists”—who, with a few exceptions, all happen to be white men—recent protests against controversial speakers and ideas on many college campuses across the country represent a grave threat to the free speech protections outlined in the First Amendment. This is one of the few issues that unites liberals like Frank Bruni, Nick Kristof, and Jonathan Chait, and conservatives like Ross Douthat, David French, and the Wall Street Journal editorial board. And it’s not just columnists: several high-profile politicians and public figures on the left and right have boarded the campus protester-bashing train. In a speech last year at Georgetown University, Attorney General Jeff Sessions proclaimed, “Freedom of thought and speech on the American campus are under attack.” President Obama, no ideological ally of Sessions’, made a similar point back at a town hall meeting back in 2015, remarking, “I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view.”
In advocating an absolutist view of free speech, the Free Speech Fundamentalists bear many similarities to the Gun Rights Fundamentalists. To the latter, no gun, no matter how dangerous, should be banned. To the former, no speaker, no matter how racist, sexist, or homophobic, should be censored. To the latter, even the most piecemeal gun control measure is a violation of the constitutional right to bear arms. To the former, even the smallest protest of a controversial speaker or idea is a violation of the constitutional right to free speech. Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the NRA and a prominent Gun Rights Fundamentalist, infamously remarked in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.” To the Free Speech Fundamentalist, the only way to stop a bad idea is with a good idea.
Although there is significant overlap between the ranks of the Free Speech Fundamentalists and those of the Gun Rights Fundamentalists, many Free Speech Fundamentalists take a remarkably different tack when it comes to the Second Amendment, acknowledging a degree of nuance in these debates that they are unable to see when it comes to the First. Bruni, Kristof, Chait, Douthat, French, and the Wall Street Journal editorial board have all expressed support for at least modest gun control measures. Bruni went so far as to argue that, “when it comes to guns, we have lost our bearings in this country, allowing misguided chest-thumping about a constitutional amendment penned in an entirely different epoch, under entirely different circumstances, to trump all prudence and decency.” Yet Bruni, as well as the rest of the Free Speech Fundamentalists, are guilty of the same misguided chest-thumping when it comes to a different constitutional amendment penned in an entirely different epoch—the First Amendment.
In a powerful speech after the Parkland school shooting, Stoneman Douglas student Emma Gonzalez, one of the main organizers of the March for Our Lives, quoted an argument she read made by a teacher: “When adults tell me ‘I have the right to own a gun,’ all I can hear is my right to own a gun outweighs your student’s right to live.” This sentiment resonated with many people across the political spectrum. Yet when college students argue that an invited speaker’s right to free speech does not outweigh their right to feel safe on their campus, the Free Speech Fundamentalists spill gallons of ink expressing their outrage. It is worth considering whether the demands of the Parkland students are so different than the demands of campus protesters.
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