Some
lawmakers in Mississippi, obviously alarmed at the violent demonstrations and
restrictive measures at college campuses intended to silence what passes for
conservative viewpoints, have whipped up what they consider a fitting solution in
their legislative kitchen, House Bill 1562, ‘Forming Open and Robust University
Minds (FORUM) Act’. But the result is
far from enticing.
The
heart of the bill is found in Sections 3 & 4:
SECTION
3. Expressive activities protected under the provisions of this act
include, but are not limited to, any lawful verbal, written, audio-visual or
electronic means by which individuals may communicate ideas to one another,
including all forms of peaceful assembly, protests, speeches and guest
speakers, distribution of literature, carrying signs and circulating petitions.
SECTION
4. The outdoor areas of campuses of state institutions of higher learning
in this state shall be deemed public forums for the campus community, and state
institutions of higher learning shall not create "free speech zones"
or other designated areas of campus outside of which expressive activities are
prohibited.
What’s
wrong with preventing free speech zones, allowing ‘individuals to communicate ideas
to one another’, and the like? Don’t we
need to push back against the Lefties on college campuses? We will return to this thread later, for
there is something else that needs to be addressed about this bill first, that
something being the complete subversion of federalism in Mississippi.
The
authors of the bill show their disdain for Mississippi as a self-subsisting
State by basing their legal claims about freedom of speech, etc. on First
Amendment grounds (mentioned three times in the bill), i.e., the First
Amendment of the [u]nited States Constitution, not the Constitution of the
State of Mississippi. But that amendment
clearly applies only to the Congress in Washington City, not to the folks in
the House and Senate in Jackson, Miss.
There is not a single reference made in HB 1562 to Mississippi’s own
free speech provision, found in Article 3, Section 13, of the State
Constitution (http://www.sos.state.ms.us/ed_pubs/constitution/constitution.asp),
which would the proper basis for a bill of this kind, since States have
jurisdiction over their internal matters, not the federal government.
That
is remarkable, and dangerous, for it places Mississippi ever more completely
under the direct authority of Washington City, even going so far as to waive
their Eleventh Amendment immunity so as to be sued in federal court for
violations of a STATE law (Section 12 of the bill). They are thus stamping out what is left of
their existence as a unique political entity by making themselves nothing more
than an appendage of the federal apparatus (a thing which was created by the
States to be their helper, not their master; so much for fanciful schemes of
divided sovereignty, etc.) - and they are doing this voluntarily. Who needs Lincoln and Grant, Bush and Obama,
et al., to do the subjugating with State lawmakers like these?
That
said, this is the same Mississippi that declared in its Constitution (Section
7),
The right to
withdraw from the Federal Union on account of any real or supposed grievance,
shall never be assumed by this state, nor shall any law be passed in derogation
of the paramount allegiance of the citizens of this state to the government of
the United States.
Thus,
there appears to be quite a bit of Stockholm Syndrome present in Mississippi, a
greatly misplaced loyalty in the souls of her people, which needs to be
overcome but that nartheless may explain the cock-eyed constitutional reasoning
found in HB 1562.
Having
said a bit about that now, we will return to the question we left earlier: Is not free speech a praiseworthy thing to
have on college campuses? Are they not
supposed to be places of free inquiry, exchange of ideas, etc.? To a large degree, we would answer no. Any institution exists to pass on a tradition
to those who become a part of it. If the
main activity of students on college campuses in Mississippi or anywhere else
becomes the non-stop questioning and debating and protesting of every teaching
and belief received in life, that will impart only one thing: nihilism, that every man is a law unto
himself. Wise old Aristophanes’s play The Clouds is a perfectly good warning
to us about this (listen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFd0SnftqUg): Strepsiades hands his son Phidippides over to
the philosophers, who teach him to question all the ancient teachings of their
land, and the result is that Phidippides becomes an atheist who advocates that
children should beat their parents.
I revert to what I was
saying when you interrupted me. And first, answer me, did
you beat me in my childhood?
Why, assuredly, for your
good and in your own best interest.
Tell me, is it not right,
that in turn I should beat you for your good, since it is
for a man's own best interest to bebeaten? What! must your
body be free of blows, and not mine? am I not free-born
too? the children are to weep and the fathers go free? You
will tell me, that according to the law, it is the lot of children to be beaten. But I reply that the old men are children twice
over and that it is far more fitting to chastise them
than the young, for there is less excuse for their
faults.
Was not the legislator who
carried this law a man like you and me? In those days be
got men to believe him; then why should not I too have
the right to establish for the future a new law, allowing children
to beat their fathers in turn? We make you a present of all the
blows which were received before his law, and admit that you thrashed us with impunity. But look how the cocks and other animals fight
with their fathers; and yet what difference is there
betwixt them and ourselves, unless it be that they do not
propose decrees?
. . .
Again, consider this other
point.
It will be the death of
me.
Come, show me what profit
I shall gain from it.
I shall beat my mother
just as I have you.
. . .
Oh show some reverence for
ancestral Zeus!
Why, assuredly.
He has not dethroned him.
I believed it, because of this whirligig here. Unhappy
wretch that I am! I have taken a piece of clay to be a
god.
Very well! Keep your
stupid nonsense for your own consumption. (He goes back
into STREPSIADES' house.)
To
make colleges nothing but places of protest and agitation is a sign of a decrepit
Christendom. Dr William Wilson in
discussing Basil Gildersleeve once said that at some point questioning must
cease and a creed be accepted.
Mississippi’s colleges and those across the South are in much more need
of a creed, of the Truth, than promoting verbal clashes amongst students. If Southern institutions of higher education
are not willing to teach the truth, to pass on a tradition that amounts to more
than nihilism (or its near of kin, utilitarian Chamber of Commerce-approved
STEM programs and the like), it is probably better to dissolve them than to
submit the young to their destructive influences. Students and professors shouting at each
other about whose pet ideology is better is no safeguard against them.
Anyone
who has spent time in a kitchen knows that a half-baked dish will likely make
him sick if he eats it. Mississippi’s
House Bill 1562 is just such a thing. If
it passes in its current form, no one should be surprised if the current spiritual-political-cultural
illness worsens all across that State.
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England,
South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð,
unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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