Are the Founding Fathers Too Privileged to Matter?

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Are the Founding Fathers Too Privileged to Matter?

By: Betsy Pearson

 

College campuses are in a tricky place right now. Half of the time the student body is retreating to their safe space away from free speech, and in the other half they are exercising their freedom of speech to protest against the President. To make matters worse, this issue is often separated along party lines. On one side there is the triggered leftists, who preach for toleration, but leave no room for views other than their own. This breed of student often says that free speech is dangerous because it potentially could lead to their feelings getting hurt. On the other side there are the bigoted right wing conspiracy crowd. These people are legitimately racist, and most of the speech they are trying to connect to the first amendment is actually hate speech and not what the founding fathers intended.

At the University of Iowa, the student body president thinks that allowing free speech on campus “knowingly reserves the right to hurt people”. She also adds that since the people that gave us the first amendment were so privileged, that we have the right to re-examine them to fit modern day. I have been an activist on this campus for four years now, and have dealt with this administration and student government personally. When they say the Founding Fathers are ‘too privileged’ they mean they were too white, and too male.

Say what you will about the Founding Fathers, but do not take away the rights they gave us. Were they all white males? Yes. Does this automatically discredit their revolutionary ideas on the freedom of speech? No way.

We are only three months in to 2017, and I am already tired of people blaming other people for their privileges. I am not one of those people that worships the constitution, I do understand that there are some outdated qualities, but free speech is definitely not one of them. I am not denying that race relations were completely different back then, nor am I saying that race relations are perfect now. All I am saying is that the color skin, or gender, of the people who wrote the Constitution does not give the state (or my student government) the right to take away my freedom of speech. Free speech is a fundamental liberty, and it is what separates us from other countries suffering under dictatorships.

We do not need to re-write the first amendment to cater to those people who need safe spaces. Free speech protects you whether you are privileged or not. People who are in favor of more state restrictions on speech (the left), don’t understand the consequences of doing this. What about all the good the first amendment has done for us? Where was the first amendment during the women’s marches? Where was the first amendment when Trump was elected in all the protests to follow? Limiting the power the citizens have over their government in any way, will only lessen the voice that we the people have over the people that make the laws.

Instead of restricting our freedom of speech and defining where, when, and who has it, we should be focusing this effort on protecting this right.

Original Post http://daily-iowan.com/2017/03/29/free-speech-holds-the-day-in-the-imu/
EDITOR’s NOTE: The views expressed are those of the author, they are not representative of The Libertarian Republic or its sponsors.

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