Argumentative Essay: The 14th Amendment

The fourteenth amendment protects the little people. The people who are slipping through the cracks, the ones that have fallen by the wayside of the majority. Recently, this has meant rulings in favor of same-sex marriage. Historically, it has granted women the right to an abortion and given African Americans the right to go to the same schools as their fellow Americans. In each case, an oppressed or otherwise infringed group from the overreaches of the state, the society at large. But something else has begun to slip through the cracks, and nobody is rushing to save it. It is impossible to tell where this slippage first began, but its ever increasing severity is in full display: Middlebury students turnings their backs and chanting as the

They would do well to heed the phrase “debate always wins out over denial”. Listening to a controversial idea is liking judging the merits of a pastrami sandwich. There are two options available: one can closely inspect the pastrami sandwich from every possible angle and come to the conclusion that it’s no good and throw it into the bushes for the birds to eat. The other approach is to take one brief, horrified look at the pastrami sandwich and shove it into a corner, where it spoils and makes everything smell like rotten pastrami. To translate: when Charles Murray or Milo Yiannopoulos gives a speech, there are a few nods and a few shakes of the head, but their words are eventually forgotten. When these speakers are shoved aside they make a ruckus, and are remembered. On a college campus such as Middlebury, a capacity for questioning stated facts and thinking critically over ideas is highly valued: students should be capable of discerning the quality of a new idea (or a pastrami sandwich, for that matter). Indeed, the idea that exposing students to controversial ideas inevitably brings about their adoption is as offensive to said student body as it is to the