In his YouTube video, Greg Lukianoff cites the 71% instance of censorship on college and university campuses as a threat to the freedoms we enjoy under the First Amendment to the Constitution.
The climate of suppression of dissenting viewpoints is not new to America, nor is it limited to one party. In fact, as far back as the Alien and Sedition Acts during the presidency of John Adams, there have been attempts to muzzle the press.
Newspapers and magazines, and in later times radio and television, have been extended the First Amendment freedoms specified in the Constitution and the decisions of the Supreme Court.
In the landmark decision of Near v. Minnesota, from 1931, the Court ruled that a state (in this instance, Minnesota) cannot engage in "prior restraint"; it cannot, in other words, prohibit someone from publishing or expressing a thought, with rare exceptions. (The appellant, J. M. Near, was engaged in printing racist and viciously anti-Semitic remarks, which was what prompted the state to close him down.)
The principle here is simple; the right of free speech entitles someone to scream, at the top of their lungs, something that makes you so angry you would scream at the top of your lungs to oppose it.
The propensity of those in power, whether they be conservative, liberal, radical, or moderate, to "make themselves look good" while trying to "do dirt" to their perceived enemies, whoever they may be, is an unfortunate reality in the world today. People are not used to hearing substantive and honest debate, as opposed to platitudes and sound bites. A Patrick Henry, who would regularly speak thunderously in the Virginia House of Burgesses, would be denounced by "spin doctors" today as a dangerous demagogue. The series of debates between Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln during their Illinois Senate race would have been merely a trading of empty slogans, showing the electorate nothing of value.
The surest way to construct a house on the proverbial "foundation of sand" that will fall at the slightest opposition is to use opinions and beliefs that have never been tried. It is only those precepts that have withstood the toughest opposition, that have gone through the furnace and been purified and tempered, that have the strength to be a bulwark and a shield. This is the value of debate, the arena where ideas are tested. It is only then that the most good for the most people can be achieved.
If these principles are not taught and honored at our colleges and universities, where the traditions of academic freedom have been espoused for generations, then most will never be exposed to them. Once people become accustomed to being restricted, in whatever context, and cease to question those restrictions, they then come to accept those restrictions as the "natural order of things" that need never be questioned.
Presenting all sides of a question, and encouraging vigorous and substantive debate on the issues involved is vital to the survival of our republic.
