“Limits on free speech is uniquely troubling for the future health of a free society,” wrote Ray Nothstine in an Acton Commentary. “Students become accustomed to having their rights limited, and will be more lethargic in countering possible oppression from a growing and intrusive state.”
Nothstine wrote those words in 2008 — and they’ve proven to be distressingly prophetic. Every year for the past decade limitations on speech by students has been increasing, leading an entire generation to assume such restriction are to be expected.
Fortunately, this country’s founding generation did not take the limitations of their freedoms so lightly. But what if our constitution had been written like campus speech codes?
