PA FREEDOM CAUCUS: UPENN PRESIDENT’S DEPARTURE HIGHLIGHTS HIGHER ED HYPOCRISY
Harrisburg, PA- The Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus released a statement today regarding the stepping down of University of Pennsylvania President, Liz Magill, following a disastrous testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives. Now, more than 70 members of Congress are demanding the top schools in the country review and update their school policies to ensure they protect Jewish students.
PA Freedom Caucus Member Rep Joe D’Orsie (R-York), who sits on the House Education Committee, says this fight had been a long time coming. In March of this year D’Orsie submitted legislation seeking to ban the free speech bias seen on Pennsylvania’s public campuses, even specifically warning of the troubling rise in on-campus antisemitism back in October.
“Our colleges have a longstanding heritage of stifling conservative speech and, in fact, exist today largely as a liberal vacuum. I’d argue this fact has directly led to the kind of antisemitism we’re seeing on campuses like Penn,” stated D’Orsie. “But the real story is in the blatant hypocrisy of school leaders. Conservative speakers are cancelled, yet students advocating for the liquidation of Jews are given generous latitude, and in some cases encouragement from bigoted faculty.” D’Orsie continued.
Although private, as a research institution Penn receives around $800 million from the state and federal government. PA Freedom Caucus Member Rep Aaron Bernstine (R-Butler, Lawrence) believes these institutions should be held to the same standards the Commonwealth was founded on. “For far too long these universities, who receive taxpayer money, have condoned, and even encouraged antisemitism and called it ‘free speech.’ If you condone harassment of individuals on your campus due to their religious beliefs, you should not receive one penny of taxpayer funding.”
It might be worth-while, to point out that "freedom of speech" has been limited, in the USA, for at least a century, by the sort of anti-libel and anti-slander laws that allowed former-President Theodore Roosevelt to sue someone for [libelous defamation]; and that, THEREFORE, the idea that the First Amendment casts the USA as the kind of "consequence-free environment" in which the most outrageous statements imaginable can be made, with NO repercussions being felt, by whomsoever might spout such drivel...
...is inconsistent with reality.
It might be worth-while, if those who, being among the Freedom Caucus' sympathizers AND whose expertise and/or interest is in the field(s) of Pennsylvania Law and [U.S. and/or Pennsylvania] political philosophy [dating back to pre-Revolutionary times],...
...were to develop a well-documented, thoroughly-cited "position paper" which "finds" that the First Amendment's protection of "speech" (including "political speech" and "expression")...
...DOES NOT, NOR EVER DID "protect" persons whose "speech" was of a "type" or "character" that "crossed the line" which separated "good faith" from "malice", and "ruthlessness" from "sociopathy".
What happened to the originators and publishers of the libelous, slanderous rumors that circulated throughout the Republic, in its early days, regarding candidates for President who were derided with euphemistic innuendo which suggested that they were notorious homosexuals?
What was the cost that was assigned to the "worthies" of Washington, DC "society", in the early 1800s, when they attempted to "freeze" newly-elected President Andrew Jackson and his wife, socially, due, not to President Jackson's having been elected by "the rabble", rather than by "the [property-owning] elite" (as had been the case, previous to 1816),...
...but due, rather, to Mrs. Jackson's rumored status as, not merely a "divorcée", but as a bigamist who had been married to TWO men, simultaneously?
What was the price that the whisperers paid, for their trafficking in insinuation and character-assassination?
Especially, after James Monroe --himself, a scion of "old money", whose heritage, connections, and personal reputation were impeccable, powerful, and unimpeachable-- paid a social call upon Mrs. Jackson; and made it clear, by his action, that the First Lady of the USA was to be treated as a LADY!
(And yet, times change, once all of the "actors", in a drama, have died. Revenge might be able to be had.
But, can that revenge be had, with impunity?
It is said that, in one of James Monroe's biographies, the biographer included the somewhat-titillating (!!!) assertion that "[then-future-President] James Monroe's political fortune was made, on the day when he first lifted his hand to Mrs. Jackson's knocker."
What was that biographer's fortune? Did he prosper?
Or, did he --like Truman Capote and certain others who tried to make a living by making light of gravitas, in certain circles-- learn what it meant, to be "out in the cold", and to die, there?
Or, had so much time passed, by then --and "had the 'Trail of Tears' and other policy decisions so ruined Andrew Jackson's reputation"-- that no one cared to defend the memory of the President whose "Monroe Doctrine" was the basis upon which SIGNIFICANT American foreign-policy initiatives have stood [arguably "including the Cuban Missile Crisis", if not "unto the present day"]?
The "position paper" that I suggest, here, in this comment, might cite a certain Law of the U.S. State of Georgia --was it the Georgia State Constitution?-- in which the concept of "fighting words" was established, and State Law asserted that, under certain circumstances, the liability associated with any physical violence that might be visited upon one who had uttered "fighting words" would be laid upon the utterer of those "fighting words", rather than upon the one who had responded to that utterance with delivery of violent retribution, upon the utterer.
When I was a kid, being taught "The 3 'R's" (and other "basics") in the Georgia, West Virginia, California, and Virginia public-schools, I was taught that the USA is, in essence, a "self-governing" Republic whose power, independence, character, and "way" are the result of the fact that the overwhelming majority of US Citizens are self-restrained and self-governing, taking care to "NOT 'tread on' others" nor violate their rights and privileges.
"Free speech" means that an American isn't afraid to say, "Lightening is electricity, rather than some kind of ectoplasmic emanation from the Hand of an Angry God," before flying a kite in a thunderstorm, to see whether or not his hypothesis is true.
"Free speech" does NOT mean that the USA is a place where people make a pastime out of the practice of walking up to strangers; telling them that their mothers wear Army-shoes; and expecting the recipients of the assertion to express gratitude, to the speaker, for having provided information that might prove useful to know, when Mom's birthday rolls around, next year.