Free Speech

Yale Students Sign A Petition To Repeal The First Amendment... Stop Being Stupid

If you freaked out over a viral video showing students eager to abolish the First Amendment, you're probably a bigger threat to American democracy than those kids.

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You might think, based on that title, that I’m going to chide Yale students for their blasphemous lack of respect for free speech. But you’d be wrong, because the morons in this story are the legions of folks on social media fawning over this video because it provides a warm hug to their stupid reductionist belief that “The Millennialz Be Stupid, Derp.” If you watched this video and thought it — in any way — accurately depicts elite Ivy League students tearing American freedoms asunder then you grossly misunderstand filmmaking and still believe in Carly Fiorina’s Planned Parenthood videos.

Your first hint that this video is a finely crafted work of advocacy fiction is that little Fox News logo in the corner, marking it as the work of an outlet that thrives on mythologizing that educated people are just out to take away your stuff. It’s also an outlet that, in recent years, has jacked up its Bill of Rights fundamentalism now that it’s vogue to call hating gays “freedom of religion.”

With your hackles properly raised, let’s take a look.

Pretty scary stuff, eh? Except every exchange where a student says, “I think this is fantastic, I absolutely agree,” or, “Excellent, love it!,” is shown without any indication of exactly what they were told about the petition — and in a number of cases, we don’t see those students ever sign. Even for those who do sign, we never see a complete conversation where someone is asked to support entirely repealing the First Amendment and then signs the form. At most, we see an opening pitch and then later cut to the person signing. What all happened in between? Was anything else said? We don’t get to see. Any number of caveats could be offered. Imagine the pitch, “The First Amendment must be rewritten because Citizens United has authorized unchecked campaign spending undermining our democracy.” If someone shoved that in your face while walking to work, would you interpret that as an effort to wholesale eliminate the constitutional protection of free speech or a proposal to overturn an overreaching Supreme Court decision that ignored nearly 100 years of precedent? Personally, I wouldn’t sign the latter either but I’d hardly view it as a treasonous suggestion. Indeed, in a later exchange, filmmaker Ami Horowitz is pitching a student by saying “we want to change it” which is very different than “we want to repeal it.” How many of these signatures were procured through a more measured pitch?

Now, a First Amendment Pharisee will take the stance that any support for even “changing” the First Amendment is verboten. But just as “Thou Shalt Not Steal” gave way to Aquinas’s argument in Summa Theologica that you may steal bread to feed a starving family, it’s not absurd to think about what broad value statements mean in practice and then make accommodations for unintended effects. That’s actually what mature value systems do. You may support campaign finance laws, or hate speech statutes, or laws against revenge porn… or not. But that’s a policy debate worth having about the regulation of speech at the margins. The point is, if these kids were twirling their hipster mustaches and gleefully seeking the end of all our fundamental freedoms as opposed to something more nuanced, why not show their statements in direct response to something the petitioner says? We see almost entirely one-sided conversations and are expected to imply the connection.

Other segments show people responding with an “uh huh” as the filmmaker narrates that the Constitution shouldn’t protect hurtful speech, but these sound more like people who just want to stop being hassled on their way to class. One even says, “I totally agree with where you’re at,” and then is cut off before she inevitably says, “but….” Seriously, listen to her condescending, pedantic tone of voice and tell me she isn’t about to turn the tables. During a montage of students signing the petition, Horowitz is shown busily expounding straw arguments for repealing the First Amendment to create the impression that the student themselves express that view (though some offer an “uh huh” or “yeah” at this point, that’s what one does when you’re dealing with a crazy guy thinking out loud).

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Does no one watch these things with a grain (or shaker) of salt anymore? If anything about this episode should trigger grave concerns about the future of the country, it’s that people are watching heavily edited advocacy pieces and uncritically swallowing the premise.

Yale fail: Ivy leaguers sign ‘petition’ to repeal First Amendment [Fox News]
Yale Students Totally Cool With Repealing the First Amendment [Reason]

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