I'm a Georgia Bulldog through and through, so that naturally places me at odd with Auburn fans (including my parents) at the height of football season. Though I cheer for the "Dawgs" when they're on the field, I stand with the Tigers when they fight their administration to regain the free speech rights which are justly there.

In this editorial, an Auburn alum and PhD student speaks out against his school's coercive speech codes, which ban the display of anything in dorm room windows, and demonstrates how they are inherently unconstitutional:

What made this incident so egregious is that the university permitted other students to display their bumper stickers, flags, and signs in dorm room windows. This double-standard suggests that Auburn, a public university, was more interested in suppressing ideas associated with a popular political candidate than it was in the safety and welfare of the student body.

Auburn’s policy is to ban the hanging or displaying of items that obstruct residence hall windows. This policy represents an alarming restraint on student speech. Total bans on expression are, among other things, too often subject to abuse of discretion and arbitrary prosecution. The Auburn incident is a case in point.

 Read the full editorial here.

I'm sure you've all heard it -- the idea that man automatically gives up his rights by choosing to live with other men. That if we really wanted to be "left alone," we should go "live on a desert island by ourselves."

Though most of us are tempted to simply shrug our shoulders and say, "You can't fix stupid," that certainly doesn't mean that it can't be critiqued. This entire argument is unsound, as is the "social contract theory" from which it is derived.

In this essay, I examine this fallacy as offered to me by one of my former professors and reject, in entirety, the idea of the social contract theory:

As they are, man’s rights are not the product of societal invention. Instead, they are the product of reality – moral absolutes based on each man’s own life as his ultimate value and on the protection of those things which are universally necessary for all men if they are to pursue that value. Man does not get his rights from being in a society. Man gets his rights by being man. It is true that man would have absolute liberty if he lived alone a desert island – no one would be there to violate that liberty – but he is at no greater degree of individual liberty on a desert island than he would be (or morally should be) in a society. Does man become less of a man when he moves from a desert island into a society? No, and so too does the liberty to which he is entitled not diminish.

Remember when you were young and there was always that one kid on the playground that had to complain about everything? "Mom! The slide has dirt on it!... Mom! I can't push myself on the swing!... Mom! I stepped in a puddle and now my shoes are dirty!"

Well now that kid has grown up (sort of) and he spends his free time complaining - not to his mother, this time, but to the government.

And here we have just another example of government paternalism hard at work while issues like the economy are simply "overlooked."

On Tuesday December 13th, the FCC approved new rules which would require all television commercials to be broadcast at the same average volume of the program they punctuate. Those TV providers who do not comply will face fines. Since 2008, the FCC has received close to 6000 complaints for loud commercials, which caused FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to state affirmatively, “This is an issue people care about.”

Is he serious? Find out here.

Lochner v. New York (1905) is one of the most roundly criticized cases in the twentieth century. This is an unfortunate effect that progressivism has had on our academic and legal systems in the United States, because Lochner is actually one of the strongest stances the Supreme Court has ever taken in the defense of individual liberty.

Despite being overruled by a more progressive High Court in New Deal America, Lochner still serves as a reminder of our Ninth Amendment liberties which exist, recognized or not. And moreover, it gives us a look into the path we must take to restore a true, liberty-oriented interpretation of the Constitution:

This is the idea of substantive due process – the idea that one’s life, liberty, and property are theirs so long as the use of that life, liberty, and property do not violate another’s right to his own life, liberty and property. This is best summed up in a statement by Justice David Josiah Brewer, Justice Field’s nephew, in his own dissent in the Holden v. Hardy: “The utmost possible liberty to the individual, and the fullest possible protection to him and his property, is both the limitation and duty of government” (1896)...