Every inch of US territory is a Constitutionally guaranteed free-speech zone. I am all for arresting and prosecuting without mercy any government employee–including military–who attempt to limit the size or scope of this zone.
During the Bundy Ranch standoff in Nevada, the Bureau of Land Management set up “free-speech zones.” I prefer to call them “First Amendment pens.”
The government uses these pens to segregate people. The US government says, “If you want to speak your mind, you may do so only within the pen. If you want out of the pen, keep your damn mouth shut.”
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Free-Speech Zones are Unconstitutional #
Luckily, government courts agree with the Constitution on this matter. College administrators seem eager to abandon the First Amendment. (Remember that US university professors and administrators were the intellectual source of Hitler’s persecution of Jews, too.) Numerous colleges try to limit free speech to tiny areas on the fringe of campuses, but judges quickly bar the abridgments to free speech:
In 2002, West Virginia University dropped its free-speech zone policy after being sued by a civil liberties organization. Two years later, a federal judge struck down Texas Tech’s policy establishing a 20-foot-wide gazebo as a free-speech zone. Last year, Des Moines Area Community College abandoned a policy restricting student leaflet-distribution activities to a table in the student center. And earlier this year, Modesto Junior College in California agreed to drop its free-speech zone and pay $50,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a student who was barred from distributing copies of the U.S. Constitution on Constitution Day. [source]
Look again at what’s going on here. The US government limits free speech, giving special privileges to those who surrender their power to speak. That’s one of the highest crimes against the United States a person can commit, and those guilty–including those who simply follow orders–should be prosecuted without mercy.
People Have The Power #
The Declaration of Independence provides our moral and philosophical justification for defending our rights and preserving power to the people:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Over 1,000 freedom lovers descended on the Bundy Ranch prepared to fight and die for the First Amendment. They were prepared to defend the Constitution against its greatest enemy: the US government.
On Thomas Jefferson’s birthday (April 13), remember what the Declaration’s author said about little rebellions as we saw in Nevada:
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
and
When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.
So let the government fear the people. It should. We built it up, and we can take it down.