With few exceptions, college campuses are America’s least intellectually diverse places. If not for the federal takeover of student loans, which has laundered billions into the hands of progressive experts, that might matter, as they feel the same pinch as local print-news media—another vestigial cultural affectation we no longer need. You can get news – better news – without newspapers and quality education without a brick-and-mortar campus, and think of all the emissions we’d reduce: no more campus, no campus hate, no violent speech. No problem. But it is a problem.
Seven in ten [college students] believe that speech can be as damaging as physical violence. Sixty percent of students agreed with the statement “the climate at my school or on my campus prevents some people from saying things they believe because others might find it offensive.” That’s higher than the 54% who believed self-censorship was a problem in 2016 but down from 65% in 2021. …
Of the 70% of students who equate speech with violence, 82% are Democrats and 59% are Republicans. Tellingly, “only 43 percent of these students feel that freedom of speech is very secure or secure today — that’s down from 73 percent of students who felt the same in 2016,” reports Campus Reform.
I expected the self-identified Dem percentage to be higher, and maybe it is. There’s no incentive to be honest about this, which might explain why the self-identified GOp numbers are so high (I hope). That alarming 59% tells us the College Republicans and Young Americans for Liberty have a problem. You’re not doing it right. That number should be well below 30% or at least less than half – because if we can’t claw them back, we are one generation or less away from seeing a significant public push against the last bastion of genuine free speech rights on the planet.
What To Do?
The beauty of these results is that a majority of those saying speech can be the same as violence would refuse to refute the notion that silence is also violence, but how can both be true? Brain damage. Or they’ve internalized the idea that someone other than they decides that on a situational basis. But by agreeing to either or both, you abrogate your right to free expression and thought because they are inseparable from some other authority. In the case of most Democrats, that authority is the government. But even matriculating morons would never give up that right to a government-run by someone like (say) Donald Trump, which would undermine Democracy or something. At the same time, this rise in concern follows in the wake of pro-Hamas and pro-Palestine protests that Democrats and the Biden Administration are (at least rhetorically) opposing. So, we have Democrats engaging in speech that leads to violence, suggesting that there should be limits on their speech that include their own, and they have witnessed it but seem incapable of connecting these events to the dangers inherent in their polled preference.
I might have that all mixed up, but do not worry. None of it matters. There is an easier way to resolve the problem and satisfy the self-contradicting campus horde. The First Amendment applies to the government. Private institutions can suppress any speech they please. All we need to do is get the public money out of higher Education. Stop the federal grants, loans, and bailouts, and return student loan management to the private sector. If the government’s hands do not touch it, you can call speech whatever you like. But be warned. Funding for their good works will again have to come exclusively from deep-pocketed philanthropists who see value in the undertaking and who will expect some result or return for their investment (burns lip on crack pipe).
Yes, we’ve likely gone too far down the progressive shitter to climb out and rinse off that stench. Still, the alternative is to convince the minds full of mush that what they embrace contradicts their rhetoric and self-interests. That the power they want to hand over to the “authorities” never stops with speech that makes them uncomfortable. And I don’t think they’ve got the intellectual agility to understand that before it’s too late.
