Paxton Smith Goes Low at Highlands HS

At Texas’ Lake Highlands High School graduation, valedictorian Paxton Smith tore up her pre-approved speech and tore into Gov Abbott’s abortion law. The law’s intent clearly mitigates Roe v Wade, declaring Texas has the power to circumvent  the law of the land. Smith gave an emotional, sincerely felt personal monologue on her perceived consequences of the new law on women in general and herself in particular. Hilary Clinton, Sara Silverman, Beto O’Rourke have praise her courage to speak out and not remain silent.  

I confess my ambivalence. TGBL doesn’t care what political positions she takes. I don’t care if her audience fell over in shocked disbelief or stood on their chairs and cheered. Action Paxton has every right to hold her views and express them; however, First Amendment rights were not the only issues at play here. For one, she entered an agreement with the school. She submitted a speech for presentation, approved by administrators, then reneged and proffered a highly charged personal polemic without a word to the school that she withdrew her original speech. Whether she decided to change her remarks over breakfast or when she took center stage is irrelevant.

 Freedom of expression means you do not suffer consequences because of the opinions you made known publicly. It does not mean you can say anything, anywhere, anytime. There are considerations to a speech, such as audience, context, appropriateness. First rule is know your audience. Sometimes going off script is a good thing; sometimes it gets you in trouble. Not everyone wants to hear a teenager—no matter how smart or precocious—lecture a captive audience celebrating their children’s graduation rant about how she would handle a pregnancy in case of a rape under the new law. It is her right to feel exactly how she does, and her visceral reaction to a law she deems immoral is understandable. 

  By submitting the original speech to school officials, she agreed that that would be the one delivered.  It may be old fashioned and archaic, but keeping a commitment, honoring your word, especially in the context of a public event should mean something. She could’ve gone to her advisors and said this is my speech and I’m not changing it. If the school said no, then the backlash would be more than sufficient to get her word out. Confronting the school with her preferred talk would have been an act of courage too, handing the school tricky political and Constitutional questions.  I would have no qualms if Paxton announced at the end of her speech that she has a video on You Tube denouncing the law and trying to rally support. Call for a demonstration after graduation to fight the new legislation. Get airtime on the multiple media opportunities. An off-script  denouement would satisfy her agenda and still allow the valedictorian to claim she did not breach her agreement. To the officials’ credit, they let her continue and never pulled the mic.   

I wonder if all the Liberals praising her for her courage would feel the same sense of pride if Paxton delivered a speech exhorting states to recount the 2020 ballots so Trump can be installed as president and make Biden a one half-term president. Perhaps a valedictorian might stray from their script and explain why “Jews would not replace us” and ask for more Charlottevilles. Are such actions praiseworthy only when you agree with the views in the rebel student’s speech, or does all such activism merit such laudatory comments? We may not believe all opinions are value neutral, if the criterion is freedom of speech the student has a right to say it regardless of its repugnancy.

 It is all easy when you find the cause  in concert with your own beliefs, but  do you go full Voltaire and disagree but defend the student’s right to ditch the approved speech and go on a political rampage expressing abhorrent or offensive views. If such a right exists, it shouldn’t. Such conduct in other arenas would never be tolerated, and consequences would be swift if the organization was double crossed by an official who used it as an unauthorized political platform for personal  views.

 School is more than the sum of the academics it teaches.  There are subjects that receive no grades, but educate on responsibility, integrity, organizational relationships. The school board already announced a complete review of its process for student speeches to avoid a further situation. Paxton walks away a hero but made it that much more difficult for students to politicize speeches urging action. The students are not in charge of a school, and the weakening of rules, protocol, hierarchy, only hampers the functioning of a society already fractured and swollen with visions of individual power superseding vested authority.

 January 6 saw people express their opinions, hold the law in contempt, taking action. Admittedly Jan 6 takes it to the extreme, but individuals are not the law unto themselves, whether in a school, an organization, or a demonstration. Authority,  especially school’s, means very little these days, and the end result is what we see; ever increasing political violence, civics disintegration, social interactions turn into rage, mass shootings by the week. The lack of law and order begins with the courts’ evisceration of school discipline and its supporters. It worsens when public officials in statehouses and the Capitol condemn and discredit law enforcement, when Congressional subpoenas are laughed at; when a White House lawyer tells reporters to come get her for violating the Hatch Act. If respect for law means nothing to them, it would mean less to students. Evisceration of school discipline, already in high retreat, will only accelerate. Even now,  SCOTUS’ decision in Levy v. Mahanoy School District, sent school  safety to the back of the room with a dunce cap on its head.

 Freedom of speech and a podium to speak from are not instruments vesting students or protestors with divine right to nullify lawful authority—or betray your word and honor. Valid methods of activism and expression exist without breaking a school’s code of conduct or civil  law, whether you are a valedictorian, an aggrieved street demonstrator, or a believer in election conspiracies. There does exist circumstances in which such actions may be necessary. Graduation at Lake Highlands High School is not one of them.