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This spring's graduation speaker at UNC, the school I dropped out of several times, was originally Linda Chavez, a former director of U.S. English, the outfit that wants to inflict an official language on the entire nation.
Some UNC students protested. The administration first said she would speak despite pickets and boycotts, but later withdrew her invitation. This will doubtlessly appear in National Review as yet another example of left-wing academic terrorist suppression of free speech.
The issue isn't exactly free speech. Elsewhere in the
First Amendment are two aspects of religious freedom, the
establishment clause
and the free exercise
clause.
The establishment clause
means that I can't be
forced to support the church across the street. Free
exercise
means I am free to attend that, or any other,
church.
Apply that to the Chavez controversy, and you see the
real issue. If somebody wants to rent a hall and sell
tickets to a Linda Chavez speech, that's free
exercise,
and most of us are all for that.
It's the establishment clause
that causes
trouble. UNC receives public funds, some of which go for
commencement speakers. The question is whether tax money
should finance statements that many people find
offensive.
Here, both sides are shameless hypocrites. The right
wing will argue that Linda Chavez is being censored,
just because she won't get tax money to promote her views.
But they're the same people who say that the tax-supported
National Endowment for the Arts has no business doling out
money for urine-soaked crosses that offend many
Americans.
Those leftists who confuse censorship
with
absence of public funding
will find a way to argue
against Chavez and in favor of using your money and mine to
finance disgusting artistic statements.
In an ideal world, you could say The government is
neutral. Your right to free expression is protected, no
matter how offensive, but financing it is your
problem.
Colleges, though, are supposed to expose students to a variety of viewpoints, and variety costs money -- tax money at a public institution. My own hands are dirty here, for I recently spoke at a workshop on rural journalism at Western State College. I doubtlessly offended some people, yet I am supposed to receive $100 from the state treasury.
However, there's a big difference between the give-and-take of seminars and a commencement speech from on high, with no arguments from the audience.
Commencement speakers therefore become official voices. If they're interesting, they're controversial and thus offensive to some segment of the population, and if they're not interesting, they're a waste of time and money. There's no way to win, and the solution is obvious -- quit having commencement speakers. Mail out the diplomas and get it over with. Who ever remembers anything a commencement speaker said, anyway?
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