Townhall Review | Commentaries

Thanks to a nearly unanimous Supreme Court, colleges and universities may well face a reckoning for their attempts to bully students into silence on their campuses. Justice Clarence Thomas ruled in an 8-1 decision that a student at Georgia Gwinnett College did not have to demonstrate actual damages to sue over the school’s actions in preventing his religious expression and political speech on campus.

For far too long, these academic institutions have stifled dissent and discourse. The use of “speech zones” and policies prioritizing sensitivity over the First Amendment have been mere conveniences in forcing students to buckle under to the Left’s dogma in the very venues that should challenge it.

It’s an enormous victory by Alliance Defending Freedom—along with the support of, yes, the ACLU and the Catholic Church. It will serve to balance the equation back in favor of free speech and free thought. Speech codes and enforced assent will now have real costs to Academia.

Perhaps we may yet see a new dawn of freedom on our campuses.

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A recent Harvard/Harris poll asked Americans some questions about social media and political bias. “Are social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook” they asked, “biased in favor or against Democrats or are they largely unbiased?”

43 percent found them biased towards Democrats and 17 percent found them biased against. That’s a margin of more than two to one. What might this mean for the potential of regulating these companies? Well, 57 percent—a strong majority—support the idea of legislation that would regulate these companies.

These companies have chosen the wrong side, or more to the point, they’ve made a bad decision by choosing sides at all.

Corporations exist to serve customers, make a profit and give a good return to the investors who own them.

When CEOs decide to go public and have their shares owned by us, they’re relinquishing their right to use corporate resources to ride their own political hobby horses.

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Cancel culture struck again, this time aiming for Justice Clarence Thomas and the books of the late Dr. Seuss.

February was Black History Month. As if to make clear its hypocrisy, Amazon stopped streaming the inspiring documentary about Justice Clarence Thomas, “Created Equal.” It’s a great African American success story. Thomas chronicles his rise from poverty in segregated Georgia to the Supreme Court, brilliantly defending our founding principles.

Dr. Seuss has been charged with incorporating racist images in some of his classic books. Now six of them will no longer be published.

Cancel culture can’t stand either man because both proclaim the principle enshrined in our Constitution: all people are created equal, regardless of skin color. And for some today, that idea is a mortal threat.

Those who can’t defend their views in the marketplace of ideas instead try to shut down the entire market. It’s our job to say, “No.”

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The Biden administration has announced that they are pulling back their nomination of Neera Tanden to head the Office of Management and Budget.

This was not a party-line failure. Moderate democrats shared concerns about her too. Good. They were right to.

The OMB is one of those agencies that is supposed to be at least somewhat independent, keeping an accurate score on things such as budget deficits and economic forecasts. It’s supposed to be credible to both sides. Tanden was far from credible. Her specialty was political agitprop, not honest fiscal bookkeeping.

Some jobs require at least a measure of credibility across party and ideological lines. Budget director is one of them.

President Biden has a new opportunity to nominate a credible Democrat to the job.

Given the amount of spending we’re looking at and the concerns looming over inflation and the health of the economy, credibility is exactly what we need.

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Baseball’s spring training is always a time of hope, but this year is in a whole different category.

All who have listened to even a bit my radio program know that I’m a fan of Cleveland sports: the Browns, Indians and Cavaliers—and of course the Ohio State Buckeyes football team.

As the Indians—and all of major league baseball—begin spring training , the air is filled with a sentiment all too rare for many months: hope.

The Indians will be at Progressive Field starting April 5—and there will be fans in the stands, limited capacity at first, but fans loudly cheering and lustily booing. Television cameras will be able to pan the stands and not see cutouts, but kids with mitts hoping for a foul tip at Progressive.

Vaccines are rolling out. People are going back to work and school.

I’ve been scheduled for my second shot myself.

2020 was a very long year.

But what a great year 2021 will be.

Normalcy beckons.

We grieve those we’ve lost, but we look forward with hope.

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Matt Meyer is the president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers—a union leading the effort to keep children at home, insisting that reopening schools is just too “unsafe.”

So jaws dropped when video of him was seen taking his own daughter to in-person pre-school.

The episode highlights the hypocrisy and cynicism evident in too much COVID policy—especially in education. School districts with strong teachers’ unions are less likely to hold in-person classes.

Meanwhile, our children remain trapped at home, suffering from social isolation and learning loss. The achievement gap has increased. And there’s been a worsening youth mental health crisis. Parents have stood by helplessly, at the mercy of the unions, even as the CDC admits that schools can reopen safely.

In-person learning shouldn’t be reserved for children of the privileged. Our kids deserve policies that put their rightful needs over the self-serving demands of union elites.

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From firing conservative actress Gina Carano, to putting trigger warnings on Muppets shows and turning ESPN into something resembling MSNBC, Disney has become one of the most politicized major corporations in America.

Now, if Disney executives want to promote leftism on their own time and on their own dime, that’s their prerogative. But Disney is a publicly traded corporation. Its shares are owned by millions of Americans—like you, perhaps, in your in your IRA or 401(k) account.

So that’s your money they’re using against you. But good news: you are in charge. It’s time to use your authority. Disney’s annual meeting is March 9. If you’re a shareholder, you can participate in it online this year and you can vote on board members and on various questions.

It’s time more of the nation let their shares be their voice to a company which has heard from only one side for far too long.

You have a vote. Use your vote.

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UFC champion turned movie star Gina Carano was recently fired by Disney from the popular show, “The Mandalorian.” Why? Because she pointed out that one of the lessons of 1930s Germany is that when we start to hate our neighbors over political differences, we set ourselves on a path to escalating intolerance.

As if to prove the point, Disney wrote her popular character off the show. Sometimes people—yes, even conservatives—say things in social media which are beyond the pale. But, Carano’s words were not beyond the pale.

But … instead of wallowing in victimism, Carano is entering into a film-making venture with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro.

I don’t like cancel culture, but what I like even less is conservative victimology. Carano and Shapiro are doing the right thing, building new and maybe even better institutions than the ones that blackballed her.

Every cancellation, every delisting, every ban and shadow ban is yet another opportunity to build better alternatives.

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Theo Hobson—a British liberal thinker—defines a moral revolution this way: “That which was repudiated must be celebrated. That which was celebrated must be repudiated. And those who will not celebrate must themselves be repudiated.”

Hobson’s words are very relevant in light of the Equality Act which was introduced last week by Democrats in the House of Representatives. As we watch the advance of the full array of LGBTQ-plus issues, sometimes the law is the last to change, not the first. Higher education and entertainment, of course, have come first—they changed first.

We’ve seen the Equality Act before, but this time it is introduced with a president who has declared his active support for the revolutionary legislation.

It represents the greatest threat to religious liberty in my decades of American public life.

If signed into law, it will be very, very difficult for any Christian college, or ministry or university to operate with Christian conviction.

It’s almost sure to pass by the democratic majority in the House.

Our only hope is that somehow this legislation can be stopped in the Senate.

If not, we’re in big trouble.

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The Supreme Court put an end to the legal challenges to the 2020 election this week, closing out a painful chapter of modern American history. Their rush to consider all these cases moot might well be understandable given the fantastical nature of some of the challenges, but it was ill-advised in other cases dealing with separation of powers and election rules.

For too long, state officials and courts at all levels have interfered with statutes governing elections, overriding the constitutional role assigned to state legislatures to set and enforce the rules for each state. The Supreme Court punted on these issues before the election in Pennsylvania. And now they have done so yet again.

As Clarence Thomas warned in his dissent, this only guarantees these issues will come up again. The next time the impact might force the courts to decide the winner. That would be a disaster for the confidence of Americans in the electoral process.

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