Free Republic

Young America's Foundation scored a legal victory against UC-Berkeley this week after a judge in San Francisco refused to dismiss the organization's lawsuit against the university for infringing on the First Amendment rights of conservative students and speakers on campus. “Young America’s Foundation looks forward to moving on to the merits of this case and vigorously defending our claims at trial. This ruling allowing YAF’s critical First Amendment case to move forward is a win for conservatives and free speech, and it shows that Judge Chesney believes there is significant evidence of Berkeley’s work to suppress conservative speech," Young America’s...

Last week, I visited the University of California, Berkeley. The preparations for the visit were patently insane. First, the school charged the sponsor group, Young America's Foundation, a $15,000 security fee. Then, the school blocked off the upper level of the auditorium, fearful that radicals from the violent far-left-leaning group Antifa would infiltrate the speech and begin hurling objects from the balcony onto the crowd below. Finally, the school ended up spending some $600,000 on additional policing, including the creation of cement barriers and hiring of hundreds of armed police officers for a prospective riot. All this so that I...

Demosthenes, the Athenian rhetorician and champion of liberty, pointed out around 355 B.C. that residents of Athens were free to praise Sparta's regime, but Spartans were banned from praising Athens. In 1689, the British passed a law guaranteeing freedom of speech in Parliament. A century later, French revolutionaries incorporated into law the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which established free speech as a universal right. Two years later, the Americans ratified the First Amendment, which guarantees that the state shall not infringe on the right to free speech. Roughly a century and half later, in 1948, the United Nations...

There is a clear and present danger to conservative students at the University of California Berkeley. The birthplace of the so-called free speech movement is now the epicenter of a nefarious movement to silence freedom-loving young people. Conservative commentator Ann Coulter had been scheduled to speak today, but she canceled. Leftwing groups had threatened to silence Ms. Coulter by any means necessary. But the university refused to guarantee the safety of Ms. Coulter or the students who invited her to speak – the Young America’s Foundation. I know these students. I know this organization. They are good people – patriots...

The violent riots on college campuses designed to shut down free speech are simply the latest sign of the elephant in the room: modern liberals are fascist tyrants at heart who reject democracy, free speech, and pretty much everything else in the Constitution. They are not patriots with a different vision of democracy, but traitors who want to remake America into a one-party state where the government rules the people. That may sound harsh, but recall that liberals vilified Donald Trump when they thought he might reject the results of the election because of voter fraud. Yet now those same...

The birthplace of the free speech movement has become its graveyard. Hundreds of liberals rioted at the University of California Berkeley Wednesday night -- burning stores, throwing Molotov cocktails and clashing with police. The birthplace of the free speech movement has become its graveyard. Hundreds of liberals rioted at the University of California Berkeley Wednesday night -- burning stores, throwing Molotov cocktails and clashing with police. The British conservative journalist called the violence a “horrible spectacle and very humiliating for American higher education.” The crowd hurled fireworks at police officers and smashed windows at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Student...