University of Oklahoma president David Boren is a Rhodes Scholar, a lawyer, and a former United States senator. This means he's probably read the first amendment at some point in his life. What he doesn't care about, evidently, is violating the first amendment and pissing all over the United States Constitution when public pressure arrives at his doorstep. Because without any justifiable legal authority, Oklahoma, a state university subject to first amendment protections, expelled two fraternity members when a video of their racist chants went viral.

I don't want to spend this column analyzing the law, but when every legal authority in the country is in agreement that Boren's actions violated our Constitution, specifically the protections of the first amendment against a government action, there's no legitimate argument that what he did was legal. If either of these students sued Oklahoma over their expulsions, they would win. (By the way, do you know how difficult it is to get first amendment scholars to be in universal agreement that an action is illegal? It's a testament to how flagrantly misguided Boren's actions were that everyone agrees he can't legally do what he did.) Only here's the problem, neither of these students is going to challenge their expulsion because they're afraid to draw more attention to their ignorant statements. That means no one will sue to stop Boren's illegal actions and a dangerous precedent continues to grow in our country -- to hell with what the law says, let's give the mob exactly what they want and forswear all legal protections provided by our Constitution.

Indeed, Boren's illegal actions received nearly universal praise in our media. A man leading an educational institution chose to do something that he knows is illegal so the mob would be happy with him and everyone cheered. Why? Because most people are stupid when it comes to the Constitution. They don't understand how the first amendment works, indeed most only argue for the first amendment when they agree with what someone's said. That's easy, the difficult stance becomes when you don't agree with what someone said. Whatever happened to the bravery embodied in this quote, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it?"

It died.
Social media has killed it. 

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