Democratic Governor Stands Against Campus Free Speech, Vetoes Key Legislation

In yet another example of Democrats’ troubling views toward free speech, the governor of a traditionally red state killed a Republican-sponsored bill designed to deal with First Amendment violations on college campuses by anti-Trump protesters.

Amazingly, the Democratic Governor of Louisiana, John Bell Edwards, vetoed the bill protecting free speech on campuses because he said it was not needed. Edwards wrote that the bill was an “unnecessary and overly burdensome to our colleges and universities as the freedoms this bill attempts to protect are already well-established by the bedrock principles declared in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

Bell is clearly, at best, in the throes of denial about what is happening on college campuses around the country–at UC Berkeley, for example, anti-Trump students as well as the off-campus masked terrorist group, ANTIFA, succeeded in shutting down conservative icon Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking on campus by firebombing cars and generators.

But the Republican sponsors of the bill and considerable numbers of Edwards’ own Party are facing reality by trying to combat a totalitarian mindset endorsed on college campuses.

The bill proposed sanctions on disruptive students and their attempts to halt “the free expressions of others;” moreover, it would have made college administrations re-affirm their commitment to free speech by signing a statement to that effect. Lance Harris, the leader of House Republicans and the sponsor of the bill, has a better gauge of the perils to free speech on campuses, when he says, “Freedom of speech is under siege on college campuses around the country.”

House Democrats clearly share these concerns by helping pass the Bill in the House by 94-1. Perhaps there is hope in a Party whose members often advocate for free speech only when it their side of the political spectrum being denied such rights.