Many people, especially in the media, comment that this generation lacks either courage or convictions. However, as we can see in our men and women in the armed forces, that certainly cannot be true; too many of them have voluntarily put their lives on the line in defense of freedom and their country. Ah, but that's a small percentage, naysayers will tell you. Universities and colleges abound with apathy or worse, as activists seem to fade from sight.

Perhaps they're fading because people don't want to hear the message they support. Longtime reader Brian Scott e-mailed me today with the story of Bryan Henderson, a high-school conservative who decided to risk the wrath of his classmates and his teachers to protest the leftist indoctrination he received at school:

At the end of the day, my fellow PW chapter members and I felt it was time to fight back and strike at the public education indoctrination machine that seemed to be running out of control. Our school desperately needed some ideological balance, so we decided that the next day we would up the ante and place 500 signs in the halls of the school.

I got to a quick start the next morning ... and just when we posted about 200 of our 500 signs, we heard a rustling around the corner. Upon investigating the noise, we found a fellow student tearing the signs from the wall and ripping them into shreds. We made no attempt to stop her, but she quickly abandoned her pursuit when I removed my camera from my backpack. Apparently, her being conscious of her own hypocrisy was not enough to prevent her from forcibly suppressing our dissenting point-of-view. But facing the prospect that others might be made aware of her hypocrisy, and it's cut-and-run. Typical.

Replacing the fallen signs we ran into a teacher who didn't find the signs appropriate, objecting to their pro-war message. She then told me that if I was responsible for placing them I would have to take them down. After I refused, her true colors came shining through. Abandoning her pacifist ways she summarily began to tear down the signs from the wall. My fellow ProtestWarriors and I sat back and photographed the action.

Since I was the "ring leader" (as if we were some sort of street gang), I was escorted to the office while the remaining signs were confiscated. However, the fight did not end there.

Bryan has a number of pictures from his protest, including that of teachers tearing down his posters, students agitating against Bryan's "hatred", and a very believable account of threats made against him by both other teens and an adult who injected herself into the maelstrom. Be sure to read the entire article. Even though I think a couple of his handouts were unnecessarily incendiary, Bryan shows exactly how to stage an intelligent and legally defensible protest. It's a great story.

UPDATE: Bryan's not the only one; Athena is making her mom and dad proud by standing up for what she believes in, too.

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What happens when the Right decides to fight Lefty signage (or t-shirts) with some of their own in a high school? Bryan Henderson at Princeton High in West Virginia does so and teaches a number of people a lesson in free speech rights. [Read More]

Tracked on June 22, 2004 3:12 PM

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Today I hit the 1000 mark. Just for today. I have over 3000 hits now and it's only been a little over 2 months, which is pretty good. Unfortunately a lot of the hits have been from search engines searching [Read More]

Tracked on June 23, 2004 11:10 PM