Leftists want everyone’s speech and actions policed - except theirs

How dare Trump detain a pro-Hamas agitator! Oh, and please arrest that old lady praying outside the abortion clinic.

The Left has put itself in yet another weird position, this time with its support of Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian Columbia grad student detained by ICE for his role in disruptive campus protests over the last year.

The ACLU seems to believe all Khalil did was exercise his basic First Amendment rights, and the official X account for Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee expressed similar sentiments.

The centrist free speech group FIRE also criticized Khalil’s detention on the basis of the government’s “lack of clarity” on the matter. But at least FIRE recognizes that what’s happened at Columbia also has included unlawful conduct.

The College Fix has documented quite a bit of the latter at Columbia since October 7, 2023, including the most recent — the takeover of Barnard College’s Milbank Hall where at least two employees were assaulted, the building vandalized, and a dean held captive.

In January, pro-Hamas demonstrators barged into a class on Israeli history to pass out flyers depicting the destruction of the Star of David.

As pro-Hamas activists on various campuses have routinely crossed the line between mere expression and violent conduct, the University of Delaware’s Micki Burdick reminds us that abortion clinics — or “reproductive health clinics” — still need protection from those who would pray outside them.

Headshot of Micki Burdick Burdick (pictured), a professor of women’s and gender studies who uses “they/them” pronouns and “utilizes a reproductive justice framework to explore medical systems, reproductive technologies, and reproductive politics” in “their” research, says the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act is as important as ever.

“The FACE Act prohibits the use of force or threat toward people trying to obtain or provide reproductive health services,” Burdick writes. “It was created to limit the anti-abortion movement’s tactics outside clinics, requiring that protesters cannot physically stop patients from walking into clinics and receiving care.”

The actual law notes protesters are prohibited from “physically obstructing” access to abortion clinics and “intimidating” (potential) clients.

In “their” highlights of the FACE Act’s importance, Burdick says the pro-life group Operation Rescue used to “hold up signs with images of aborted fetuses to scare patients into leaving the clinic.” Its members also “sat or la[id] down in front of clinics, using their bodies to physically block patients from entering.”

Those sound like fairly peaceful protests, especially compared to what’s been going on at college campuses regarding the Israel-Hamas war.

How many “die-ins” have there been since Oct. 7, 2023 that have impeded entrance to college buildings? How many pro-Hamas activists have held up placards or other items depicting scenes of death from the war?

Those all were lauded by the Left as peaceful expressions protected by the First Amendment … despite being little different from protests in which many anti-abortion activists have engaged. The Biden administration not only arrested the latter, but threw them in jail.

So, remind me again what the big deal is with the current administration using other laws to arrest and detain Mahmoud Khalil — for activities that go beyond that of pro-life activists?

Always remember: Modern leftists do not care about your free speech rights if your beliefs don’t align with theirs. Just take a look at what happened in Maine’s legislature recently.

And in the last year and a half, universities have been scrambling to deal with the monstrosity they created. Administrators, professors, and student groups that whined about “safe spaces,” “microaggressions,” and “hurtful speech,” and created “language guides” — all of which squelched speech merely because of politics — are now concerned about free expression and its limits.

Weird.

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