High School Students Are Cool With Freedom Of Speech… Just Don’t Hurt Anybody’s FEEEEEEELINGS.

This really isn’t the day to shatter my faith in the next generation, guys.

According to this, a new poll from the New York Times shows that high schoolers overwhelmingly love the idea of free speech – support for expressing “unpopular opinions” tops out at 91% (I would like to have a chat with the remaining 9%, though).

91 percent of high school students say they believe that people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions https://t.co/Sx6FPjePhg

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 7, 2017

But once you start putting in qualifiers like “offensive speech” or “hate speech,” then their inner snowflake comes out and the support for freedom of speech drops down to 45% or lower –

Yeah… sounds like that unit on censorship didn’t go so well (if indeed it ever was taught in public schools).

Guys – let me explain to you a thing: There is no true bravery in proclaiming “unpopular opinions” like you think that Captain Benjamin Sisko is the best captain in all the Star Trek series (true, Sisko is freaking awesome – but Kirk is still by far the top dog in the rankings). Beyond minor stuff like that, how do you think these kids felt by having their clearly “unpopular opinions” trampled on by not only their peers, but teachers as well?

Oh, I forgot – “unpopular opinions” that are favorable to Donald Trump or anything right-of-center isn’t just an “unpopular opinion” to you. It’s part of that nebulous, ill-defined weirdness of “hate speech.” And THAT’S offensive.

It’s almost like they actually hate the First Amendment.

Clearly, it’s never occurred to these kids that one advantage of freedom of speech is that it encourages your opponent to keep talking. The more they talk, the more people hear from them, and (in the left’s case) the dumber they sound. And you get to freely debunk stupid ideas like socialism and collectivism and all that other nonsense that progressives try to push for more control.

Beyond the moral implications and ethics behind censoring others’ speech, I would MUCH rather the left continued to spout their insanity and leave the rest of us in no doubt whose philosophies and ideologies are the worst.

Then again, perhaps that’s why the left is so cool with censorship. If they’re the only ones allowed to talk, then people (students, especially) only get one point of view and they don’t actually have a choice. Even though their point of view generally blows chunks, if you never hear the other side, what else do you have to base your own opinion on? So, they call right-wing ideology “hate speech” and “offensive,” without even knowing what it’s really all about.

So, there you go. Leftist ideology in public schools has brought up an entire generation where over half of the students believe it’s okay to censor speech they don’t like. I would ask if they’e proud of themselves, but the sad thing is that they probably are.

(h/t Twitchy)