Has Anyone Seen the First Amendment?

The United States is nearly unrecognizable. Last week, the representatives of We The People called for a book banning. This week, a school shuts down the microphone during a high school graduation speech. There are a couple of disturbing aspects to this.

1. The title of the article states that the speech was religious. In other words, a reference to God or Christ automatically classifies the speech as religious. By that logic, a reference to baseball would make the speech a sports rally, a reference to Karl Marx would make it communistic, a reference to Wiley Coyote would make it a cartoon.

Are we really that stupid? Are we actually buying this? Why was the valedictorian not permitted to make her speech? She was citing the things that she felt helped her achieve what she achieved. Is she actually not allowed to say that?

2. Allen Lichtenstein, the ACLU lawyer, stated that since it was a school-sponsored event, then the content was school-sponsored as well. Really? So when Hamas speaks at UCLA, we can also assume that that speech is school-sponsored. But, at UCLA, the microphones are not turned off. And the ACLU will be right there to defend Hama's right to free speech.

We certainly are lying to our students when we cover the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We discuss what free speech means. We then leave out the examples of abridgment of those rights.

We were silent when the list of words that could not be spoken first blasted our ears and our intellects. We permitted SOMEONE (who, exactly, I want to know) to give us a list of words that we could not say. The list has become the foundation for the much-overused term politically correct.

If my child attended a school where the microphone was turned off during a valedictorian speech, I would demand a refund.