Liberals on campus are certainly different than those who were in college a decade ago.
As the only conservative columnist at Ohio University’s student newspaper, PostI felt it was my duty to challenge the liberal lemmings: the feminists who gush over The Vagina Monologues without using critical thinking skills, the sex ed campaigners who refuse to look at the murky side of hookup culture, and of course the free speech hypocrites who disrupt any form of speech they personally do not support.
But now when I think back to those days I think: “At least I was allowed “to write such things.”
In the four years I’ve been a observable conservative on campus, no one has suggested Post I should withdraw my column. I have never been accused of “triggering” a classmate or inflicting “emotional trauma” on my fellow students by disagreeing with them. No one has claimed to feel “unsafe” because—gasp!—I exposed them to opinions that were not theirs. Needless to say, I have never been physically attacked.
Times have changed.
Just ask Ben Shapiro, who tried to speak at UC Berkeley last week. I operate the word “tried” because, as Ben wrote, “the school blocked off the upper level of the auditorium, fearing that radicals from the violent, far-left group Antifa would infiltrate the speech and start throwing objects from the balcony into the crowd below. Ultimately, the school spent about $600,000 on additional police response to potential riots… All so I could deliver a speech about personal responsibility and individualism.”
What happened?
I was looking for answers in the book Again Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University. The media portrays “Millennials”—my generation—as narcissistic snowflakes who rebel against the idea of sharing a campus with people who are different from them. But the Millennials have grown up and moved off campus. They’ve been replaced by a up-to-date generation of even more feebleminded, emotionally crippled college students. Twenge has dubbed this generation—teenage people born after 1994—“iGen.” But this generation is so intellectually pampered and intolerant of those with different views that a colleague suggested Twenge call them “Generation P-ssy.”
The statistics for this generation are horrifying—and tell us all we need to know about the black-mask-wearing, bat-wielding “antifa” morons on college campuses. iGen is rife with spoiled brats who feel justified in physically attacking conservative speakers because, ironically, they claim they feel “unsafe” in their presence. And they have no problem controlling the political climate through violence, intimidation, and threats.
Why? The answer is, quite frankly, that iGen liberals don’t believe in free speech. As Twenge writes in Again, “views of social justice and free speech are unrelated among people over 40, but people under 40 who support social justice are less enthusiastic about free speech.” In other words, this is what liberals over 40—Gen X and baby boomers—really mean when they quote Voltaire: “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
iGen liberals, however, are staunchly opposed to free speech. “In a 2015 study, 35% of college students believe the First Amendment does not protect ‘hate speech’ (although it does), and 30% of liberal students believe the First Amendment is ‘outdated.’”
iGen created a hostile, intimidating classroom environment. “More than one in four students (28%) agreed that ‘a faculty member who says something racist in class on one occasion should be fired.’” As Twenge notes, “racial insensitivity” is entirely subjective, and the accusation could be leveled at, say, a sociology professor leading a discussion of racial and income inequality.
“This is deeply problematic,” Twenge writes. “38 percent of students believe that ‘faculty members should not discuss racial differences in the classroom.’ It’s no wonder that many faculty are now afraid to teach any topic related to race, effectively shutting down any discussion—conversations that could lead to greater understanding.”
And God forbid the College Republicans invite a prominent conservative like Ben Shapiro to speak on campus! In that case, iGeners will create a Facebook lynch mob to pressure the administration to censor the speech and “uninvite” the speaker.
“When students disagree with a guest speaker on campus, they prefer that he not come at all,” Twenge writes. “Support for banning ‘extreme’ speakers reached a record high in 2015… a nonprofit free speech organization found that the number of ‘no’s’ has increased five-fold since 2000.”
If claiming they feel “unsafe” and “threatened” doesn’t work for iGen, then violence will: 20% of students think it’s okay to operate violence against an “offensive” speaker.
Despite their militancy, iGeneres are shockingly poorly informed about politics and current events. They rarely read books or newspapers. They don’t follow what’s happening in Congress and can’t name their representatives. Most don’t even bother voting. So where do campus leftists get their news? Facebook. This generation spends an astonishing amount of time on social media and molds their views to the online flock. They are the ultimate conformists. Their Facebook friends slap a rainbow filter on their profile pictures to support gay marriage—so iGeneres support gay marriage, too. Reason is not their forceful suit: “Each person should rely on their own subjective feelings to decide whether a comment is frowned upon and therefore grounds for a harassment charge. Emotional reasoning is now accepted as evidence.”
According to Twenge, iGen parents are to blame. Today’s college students are being raised by overprotective, overly involved “helicopter parents” who believe their children should be protected from discomfort at all costs.
The result is terrifying to anyone who still believes in the First Amendment. They may like to throw around the words “fascist” and “Nazi” to describe anyone they don’t like, but the statistics on teenage liberals’ support for free speech are indisputable. Today’s college campuses are filled with little fascists.
