Absolute Values

The First Amendment offers “no guarantee” to “hate speech,” is how Tim Walz, hoping to be the next vice president, put it during a television interview. That’s not true, although Secretary of State Marco Rubio seems to agree, at least when it comes to noncitizens—who, if they perpetrate “anti-Semitic conduct” that creates “a hostile environment for Jewish students,” can be kicked out of the country. Conduct, here, means speech; Rubio alone has the power to decide whether it’s bad enough to give law-abiding permanent residents the boot. Rubio’s theory is that “past, current, or expected [!] beliefs, statements, or associations that are otherwise lawful” can, if determined by himself to interfere with the United States’s foreign-policy interests, justify deportation.