What is Free Speech?

This past week I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Nadine Strossen. Strossen is a nationally acclaimed first amendment advocate and came to campus to talk about her take on the first amendment and the current events surrounding it. She went on to talk about the event in UC Berkley where students caused $100,000 worth of damage just because they did not want Milo Yiannopoulos to come to speak on campus. Was this okay to do? Should these actions be protected under their first amendment rights? Strossen argued that this was wrong and there was no reason these individuals should be protected.

Though everyone is allowed to peacefully protest the key word is peacefully. Often times people believe that by trashing public property and causing damage to public areas they, because of the first amendment, they are protected. That however could not be more wrong as just because the first amendment protects free speech (as well as other things) it does not however protect rioting. If a protest goes as far as to damage public property the government has every right to arrest you and put you in jail if you are found guilty of damaging property. This is completely right and just as Strossen talked about, when it puts in danger the 1st Amendment rights of someone else the situation should not be covered by the 1st Amendment. Even though these students believe that they were wronged in this situation feel like the US Government did them an injustice but instead the government were within their rights to shut it down and stop the riots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_4nIxagmJI