Several years ago, a women’s working group at the Philadelphia Bar Association invited me to speak to their members about being a conservative woman in the legal profession.

When word got out that I was the guest, an online mutiny broke out among lady lawyers who were triggered by the idea that any female could be pro-life.

That seemed to be the crux of the problem, even though the Trump thing played into it as well. Thought to their credit, the Bar Association actually had the guts to let me speak.

It was an interesting discussion, and there was indeed a great deal of hostility. One women in particular kept harrumphing about my conservative views, and I simply said she needed to move out of her liberal Philly bubble and realize there were a lot of women who didn’t idolize the notorious RBG.

It is rare that people want to hear more than one side of any issue.

That came into focus with special irony last week at Stanford Law School. The Federalist chapter had invited Judge Kyle Duncan of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to discuss cryptocurrency and gun regulations.

The Federalist Society is a conservative organization, so it’s not exactly surprising it would have invited a Trump-appointed judge to come and speak at the school.

But even before Duncan had an opportunity to open his mouth, protests broke out from law students who have no concept of free speech, freedom of assembly and common courtesy.

I hope that a list of their names can be circulated among the most prestigious law firms in the nation, because one would hope that these legal knuckle draggers would never be hired at a respected institution.

They are only fit for those places that advertise on the back of buses, and giant billboards on the interstate.

I digress.

Judge Duncan was subjected to jeers, to whining, to screeches and posters that made sexually explicit suggestions. And that was just the student body.

The administrators did little to nothing to stop the mob from shutting down the conversation, leaving the judge to defend himself. He did an admirable job.

It’s rare that a speaker who is under assault from a group of foaming-at-the-mouth radicals is able to give as well as he gets.

In this case, the judge reminded the students where they were and what they were studying, and essentially exposed them to being mediocre thinkers with bottom-of-the-barrel reasoning skills.

Of course, they wouldn’t admit it. But the rest of the world saw it as the video of the event went viral online, and Stanford was covered in shame.

That’s not to say that the media was overly critical of students.

Publications like the legal blog Above the Law attempted to justify the actions of the legal vultures by writing things like this:

“The whole point of the manufactured ‘campus cancel culture crisis’ is to make protesters look unruly and fringe speakers appear reasonable by comparison. A hate group shows up on campus, you take some disingenuously edited clips of the protest while the representative of a recognized hate group sits on stage and plays the patient victim. Rinse and repeat.”

The fact that the students were unruly is not a premise; it is a fact. You only need to look at the video of their antics.

And that “hate group” they were referring to in the blog is nothing other than the Federalist Society which, as noted earlier, is an organization of conservatives in the legal profession.

Apparently, being right of center now makes you a domestic terrorist to the sterling minds at Stanford and their allies in the media.

A recent asylum client, a journalist from Pakistan, told me about how the Taliban tried to censor him.

First, they asked him to tell their stories. When he refused, they sent letters threatening him.

When that didn’t work, they destroyed his workplace. And when he continued to defy them, they murdered his colleague.

We’re not at that point yet, where words that upset us are the justification for murder.

But those Stanford lawyers need to brush up on the concept of free speech.

Threats can come in many forms, even from kids who did well on their LSATs.

Copyright 2023 Christine Flowers