A Trifle Premature

I may be missing something, but it seems to me that Howard has not only fired a load of buckshot in his post below rather than aiming or firing with any precision, he has also engaged in a sort of premature expostulation.

When I read the words “according to FIRE,” I tend to assume what follows will be supporting evidence, especially if I see hyperlinks looming just ahead. And when I see something referred to as a “test,” I tend to assume the test-taker is at least registered for the class. Of course FIRE has spoken and acted on the subjects of campus heckler’s vetoes and disinvitations of campus speakers. Both are university speech issues. I have no idea what the organization thinks about comedy club disinvitations, and the story Howard links to doesn’t tell me—perhaps because until very recently, FIRE’s mission was limited to questions of university speech, and so far as I know it hasn’t been vocal on the question of comedy clubs.

Perhaps unwisely—money and mission creep are both dangerous things for organizations that have acted usefully within a more limited scope— the organization recently announced that it would be expanding into free speech issues more generally. No doubt in the fullness of time FAIR will be confronted with various “tests” of consistency. Perhaps it would be fairer to wait until then before trying to figure out the nature of that test. Like all debates, culture-war debates are of dubious value generally, but certainly become more dubious the more untethered they are from specifics. 

(As a side issue, there is no inconsistency between the Religious Test Clause, or the First Amendment as such, and the belief that faith in God is at the heart of American values. Those who drafted and ratified the Constitution and the First Amendment would no doubt be surprised by many things, but certainly not by that. I’m not sure how much we should care what they thought, or what they would think about a United States senator pronouncing on local issues of this sort, but they certainly would not have found the assertion that religious faith is a central part of American values to be “news” or to be inconsistent with prevalent notions of constitutionalism. They would have been more surprised by a contrary assertion. Even setting the anachronism aside, I think they would have been much more surprised and bemused by Senator Rubio’s assertion that something as trivial as baseball is “tied to our nation’s values.”)