Collegiate Times

A great Virginian once said, "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."

But one of the best ways to get a reputation as a dangerous citizen is to go around repeating the phrases that our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.

Over the last 20 years or so, I've watched with growing unease the regrettable tendency of Americans to forfeit our fundamental rights, freedoms and liberties in the interests of polite (vapid) dialogue, (empty-headed) multiculturalism and the illusion - the mere appearance - of security.

That inclination makes it that much sweeter when those rights are vindicated - as in the recent court decision to overturn the mindless, pointless ban on alcohol advertisements in student publications.

The restriction was so overreaching and limiting, I couldn't have even used the phrase "happy hour" a short time ago, because of limitations on even such oblique references to alcohol.

Federal Magistrate Judge Hannah Lauck not only sided with the student newspapers at the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech, she also sided with common sense and basic freedoms of the press and expression.

The Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control's rules initially were adopted to curb underage student drinking - which Magistrate Lauck deferred to the state's interest. Here's where I part company with the judge - and probably with conventional wisdom. However, we can have a debate on the appropriateness and efficacy of underage drinking rules another time.

You see, it's all beside the point. Whether curbing underage alcohol use is in the public interest or not, whether it works or not, the press has the freedom and the right to publish whatever it considers appropriate. Lauck also recognized the right of "commercial speech" in this case as protected by the First Amendment because it doesn't promote anything illegal and isn't misleading.

While I agree in practice, I disagree on the issue of "promotion" of illegality. Fifty years ago it would've been illegal - and by extension not protected speech - if an advertisement rejected segregation laws here in Virginia, no?

Simply because something is disagreeable, unpleasant or - yes - even illegal, does not give the state the right to bar us from promoting - or in this case, even discussing - the thing.

I'm no fan of drinking. That's not what I'm defending here - at least not in the first place. I agree with William Penn when he said, "All excess is ill, but drunkenness is of the worst sort. It spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans men. It reveals secrets, is quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous and bad."

Virginia ACLU executive director Kent Willis said, "When the government curbs speech, it has to show that it serves an important societal purpose. There was simply no evidence whatsoever that limiting advertising reduced alcohol consumption by students."

I feel out of my depth saying it, but ACLU simply isn't going far enough. It's not enough that curbs serve an "important" societal purpose. If that were true, we could censure racist speech, blathering conspiracy theorists and religious maniacs (i.e. usually blathering, often racist, sometimes hateful conspiracy theorists) in the public interest.

This is not an unqualified freedom. A lack of any restriction leaves the bully free to victimize the weak. We can't allow people the freedom to disassemble our freedoms. As Karl Popper said in "The Open Society and Its Enemies," "We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."

Society has a right to defend itself from existential threat; but I think we can agree a half-page CT ad for dollar Bud drafts isn't going to collapse the republic.