THE U.S. Supreme Court dealt freedom of speech a violent blow Wednesday when it yielded to the liberal politics of student activity fees. The Court ruled in Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v. Southworth that universities can continue to use mandatory student fees to support student groups, regardless of whether some students object to the viewpoints and goals of any of the groups. Although University of Wisconsin officials have touted the decision as a victory for free speech, the ruling does nothing more than water down the First Amendment and give in to the thought-police mantra of toleration that has grown alarmingly common on college campuses.
The plaintiffs, a group of self-described conservative Christians, objected to the use of their activity fee money to subsidize liberal organizations such as women's and gay rights clubs. They argued, correctly, that the use of their money to support such groups was coerced speech. The Court's decision stated that a university is an institution charged with encouraging a free flow of ideas, and thus, as long as the organization system is inclusive of all viewpoints, student fees can be used to support the groups.
Faulty logic. A college classroom certainly is a venue for the exchange of ideas, and thus schools can offer courses in subjects from Christianity to the occult. And a college campus is supposed to be an extension of the classroom. But there is a big difference between the money that is used to pay a professor teaching the History of Women's Rights and the money that supports a college chapter of NOW: advocacy. The student fee money that goes to NOW could be used to purchase posters for an abortion rights demonstration.
Freedom of speech means that the group can hold a demonstration. Freedom of speech also means that students can object to the demonstration. Money talks, and if student activity funds are buying the posters, the students who have to pay the mandatory fee are in effect saying that they support the abortion rights, even if they do not. But refusal to support certain groups is a means by which students can exercise their freedom of speech. By refusing to support a group financially, a student says, "I disagree with you." Forcing a student to pay a fee that in part will support a group with which he disagrees, however, is a severe constitutional violation.
The Court justified its transgression by touting the need for a free flow of ideas on a college campus. It sounds like a benign goal, even a goal worthy of honor. Something that would do our founding fathers proud. We've heard this line before. We must subject ourselves to opposing viewpoints, and we must tolerate them, even if we feel to the cores of our very beings that they are wrong. Furthermore, the rhetoric goes, we must respect these viewpoints. Our generation is particularly susceptible to falling for this dangerous deception.
Since childhood, we have been conditioned by the media and by liberal academics to look upon the words "tolerance" and "respect" with reverence. To do otherwise, we have been taught, is sacrilege, un-American and immoral. But tolerating and respecting a person's right to express his opinion is not the same as tolerating and respecting the opinion itself. If everyone tolerated and respected everyone else's opinions, an attempt at a truly free exchange of ideas would be stymied.
A free exchange of thought depends upon argument and debate, and argument and debate in turn are founded upon a lack of tolerance for dissenting opinion. To debate is to attempt to convince a person to agree with you. An argument cannot occur without a prior conviction that someone else is wrong. Such conviction implies a lack of respect for another's opinion -- if a debater respects his opponent's opinion, the debate is over before it even begins. Respect for an idea implies faith in its accuracy. If more than one opinion is right, and if all opinions are equal, there's no point in arguing. The free flow of ideas crumbles and to hold an opinion at all becomes pointless.
True freedom of speech requires that all people have the right to hold an opinion, which means the right to refuse to respect opposing opinions. True freedom of speech rejects the notion that a person should be forced to support the promotion of an opinion he believes is wrong. True freedom of speech rejects the notion that a person should be forced to monetarily encourage the spread of an idea with which he disagrees.
And yet, modern liberal rhetoric tries to convince us that in order to uphold free speech, we must tolerate and respect dissenting opinion. This very same rhetoric won the case for the University of Wisconsin. Forcing a student to subsidize an organization he finds objectionable is forcing a student to tolerate that organization's beliefs, when in reality, the Constitution only stipulates that he must tolerate that organization's right to possess its beliefs. As a non-political, non-partisan institution, a public university has a duty to treat all organizations equally -- whether that means subsidizing none or subsidizing all. But such responsibility should not fall to the student. To claim otherwise, as the Court has done, is to endorse forced toleration and forced respect -- the makings of a police state.
(Masha Herbst's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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