Imagine five Jewish kids go to school one day wearing yarmulkes. Skinhead students are furious. They mutter threats and complain to the assistant principal that their political beliefs have been insulted. The assistant principal responds by ordering the Jewish kids to take off their yarmulkes or go home.
Imagine further that when the kids go to court to get help, the judge replies: Sorry, fellows, you've misunderstood the concept of free speech. It lasts only until a fascist bully threatens to punch you. After that, we're on his side, not yours.
The head of every First Amendment lawyer explodes, right⢠Editorial boards at The New York Times and Washington Post are struck down with strokes, right⢠Political progressives demand that ObamaCare provide free backbone transplants for judges, right?
Wrong, at least if you replace "yarmulke" with "American flag." When a federal judge in San Francisco ruled this month that school administrators in a California town had the right to kick out kids for wearing American flag T-shirts because they were offending Mexican-American students, the silence among First Amendment activists and the media was deafening.
This sad story of multiculturalism run amok begins in Morgan Hill, Calif., during last year's Cinco de Mayo celebration. At Live Oak High School, scores of Mexican-American students wore the red, green and white colors of the Mexican flag. But five kids came in American-flag T-shirts. As the five sat at a table during a morning break, assistant principal Miguel Rodriguez summoned them to the school office.
Mexican-American students were angry about the American flags, Rodriguez warned the five, and they had to turn their T-shirts inside out or go home for the day.
In federal court testimony later, Rodriguez admitted that the five boys weren't doing anything wrong. But he had been warned that Mexican-American students were unhappy. And he recalled that on Cinco de Mayo the year before, Mexican-American students had threatened violence when somebody raised an American flag.
The five boys went home. But three of them sued Rodriguez, another administrator and the school district, saying they had been deprived of their freedom of expression and right to due process and equal protection under the law.
Hogwash, ruled federal district court Judge James Ware. By making the bullies angry, the boys "could cause a substantial disruption with school activities," which gave administrators the legal right to kick them out, the judge said. There was no need to eject students wearing the colors of the Mexican flag because nobody had threatened to beat them up, he added.
Ignorant layman that I am, I would have guessed that the point of the First and Fourteenth amendments was to protect the rights of tiny, peaceful minorities rather than angry mobs. But UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh says the judge is probably correct under a 1969 Supreme Court ruling that allows schools to restrict speech that would "materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline."
So I guess I've learned something about the law. And about multiculturalism: that it sees American democracy as an enemy that must be beaten into submission. And public schools: that they've declined to the point where they are unwilling or unable to protect the safety of a kid whose only offense is an affection for red, white and blue.
Glenn Garvin is a columnist for The Miami Herald. Pat Buchanan is off today.
