UC Berkeley and "Dangerous Ideas"

UC Berkeley is overflowing with wacky professors with bad ideas. Two of the most well-known are the dean of the law school, Erwin Chemerinsky, of whom I  have often written, and Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, also appearing periodically on this site. Now they are featured in an article by The College Fix, as usual, spouting their wacky ideas. Reich thinks that Elon Musk has to be taken down-for his “dangerous ideas” (free speech). Chemerinsky has now apparently concluded that the Constitution needs to be revised and the Electoral College needs to be abolished.

Reich has always been full of wrong ideas. I truly think he has Marxist tendencies. No wonder he wants to eliminate Musk. This is a man who has shown more than once that he wants speech he doesn’t agree with silenced.  

Similarly, Chemerinsky is always on the wrong side of everything, up until recently, denying campus anti-Semitism (he has now woken up.)  Chemerinsky was the first dean of the UC Irvine law school, which he molded into a training ground for leftist activists. He has done the same at UCB. And this guy is considered one of the country’s foremost Constitutional experts! If Kamala Harris is elected, I predict he will be a front-runner for the next SCOTUS opening.

Let me be clear: While I think their ideas are crazy, I would never argue that they need to be silenced. Countered yes, but unlike Reich, I believe in free speech. We have laws that define what is protected speech and what is not. If Reich wants to shout from the rooftops that Elon Musk or the Tea Party (wherever they are now) should be silenced, that is his right, I suppose as long as he doesn’t try to put that into action. 

As for Chemerinsky, he needs to think it through (thinking is his job, right?) If the Electoral College goes away, our elections will basically be decided on the East and West Coasts, and you know what that means. The left will be forever victorious, and we will have one party in power, the Democrats. (Maybe Chemo has, in fact, thought it through.)

And yes, the US Constitution was written centuries ago by dead white men, some of whom possessed slaves (who did not enjoy the protections of the Constitution). Yet, those same men who crafted the Constitution created a basis for future reform that would guarantee the rights of all-even if it took up to the 1960s). And unlike many countries that designed their own constitutions on ours, the US Constitution is not just a scrap of paper, ignored by dictatorial governments. 

So let Reich and Chemerinsky prattle on about their misguided ideas in op-eds, interviews, and the hallowed halls of Berkeley. We are free to counter them, ignore them, or laugh at them. Hopefully, that will be the common reaction.