In a panel discussion earlier this month, Jordan Lorence placed the responsibility of preserving free speech rights squarely upon the shoulders of Young Americans for Freedom activists. Lorence, who serves as Senior Counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, spoke as part of a panel discussion on First Amendment rights on college campuses with Lee Otis of The Federalist Society. The panel, which was part of Young America’s Foundation’s YAF Activist Training Seminar, was broadcast live on C-SPAN. During his remarks, Lorence used a poignant quote from Abraham Lincoln to support his impassioned defense of free speech:“The struggle of today is not all together for today — it is for the vast future. Also, with a reliance on providence, all the more firm and earnest, let us proceed in the great task which events have called upon us.”Lorence noted that the censorship on college campuses today is the worst he’s ever seen. In Lorence’s view, the current generation of young conservatives was placed on this earth for a specific purpose– to champion free speech and ensure Americans’ rights are intact for generations to come. Lorence told the student audience:
“In the providence of God you have been selected to be the age you are at this time in history. Not two hundred years ago, not two hundred years in the future. You are in the United States and you are not in some other country (…) we’ve got this politically correct authoritarian disease that is running rampant at the universities. So our fight is not just for today, it is for the vast future and providence has developed upon us and has thrust upon us these events.”The panel can be watched in its entirety here via C-SPAN.
