OPINION:
A Latino student at Cornell University overheard somebody chanting, “build a wall,” so now the student government passed a resolution condemning “hate speech.”
Whatever that is.
Seriously — what is hate speech?
Read the First Amendment, and it’s not mentioned there. In fact, the whole concept of the First Amendment was in order that government could not intrude on a citizen’s right to express speech deemed by some as offensive — a sort of constitutional right to say hateful things.
Cornell students — and not just students, but the ones who serve on the student government and therefore, ought to know better — just don’t seem to be grasping that point.
From Campus Reform: “According to the Cornell Daily Sun, a Latino student allegedly heard a Zeta Psi fraternity member shout ’let’s build a wall around the Latino Living Center,’ just days before a black student was repeatedly called racial slurs and assaulted, leading the university to investigate a possible hate crime.”
Assault is already criminal behavior, no matter the skin color of the victim. But why take that criminal behavior and equate it with speech — even speech that’s racist in tone? Again, the First Amendment allows citizens to say all kinds of ugly things. And good thing for the rap music industry, one might add.
But hate speech is a fabrication of the left, a way of stifling conservative speech, offensive speech, and speech that falls under the category of “What Snowflakes Don’t Want to Hear.”
College kids who proudly ban it are pushing forward a dangerous principle, one that’s going to bring about the crumbling of America from within. They may not care — now. But one day, when the tables turn and the speech they utter is blasted by some radical wide-eye as hateful and then banned, then they’ll understand. Only then, sadly, it’ll be too late to reel back the infringement and correct the First Amendment wrong.
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