A GREAT COLUMN BY ROBERT SHIBLEY ON Tennessee Democratic Legislators’ Efforts To Equate Support For Free Speech With Support For ISIS.

Finally, to fear pro-ISIS speech on campus to the extent of being willing to trash the First Amendment to prevent it is to accept some extremely dubious assumptions about Tennessee’s students. Do Tennessee legislators really think that ISIS’s message is so attractive to the state’s college students that they will be convinced to join if they hear it?

This profound lack of faith in the basic good sense of young Americans would be disturbing anywhere, but perhaps nowhere more than in Tennessee. The Volunteer State draws its very nickname from the willingness of its citizens to rise to the defense of the United States. Take it from this son of two Vols: Any list of places where ISIS’s message is least likely to be successful would very likely put the state of Tennessee near or at the very top.

Maybe you figure students could do without hearing what ISIS thinks — or the Westboro Baptist Church, or the Black Panthers, or even Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. But in our democracy, all sides must be able to speak out so that people can fairly consider each other’s views and determine why they’re right or wrong.

Living in a free society means having the confidence that examining even the worst ideas can help us reach the truth — and there’s no place more appropriate for that exercise than a college campus.

Daniel showed that confidence on Wednesday. Hopefully, next year, the rest of the Legislature follows suit.

Indeed.