Remember When Millennials Believed in Free Speech?
Remember when young people were in favor of free speech and free expression? Yeah, me neither.
The kids who once sought liberation from the Man’s stultifying grip are now rushing into his arms for protection against the specters of racism, misogyny, and transphobia. Even more shocking, their teachers and professors, who fought for free expression when they were students, are eagerly acceding to their demands.
For an outstandingly condescending example, see University of Chicago professor Eric Posner’s recent Slate article, “Universities Are Right—and Within Their Rights—to Crack Down on Speech and Behavior.”
Posner’s article rests on a laughably flimsy premise: students are children, not adults, and left-wing speech codes are necessary to shelter their precious little brains. He ignores the reality that as recently as 50 years ago, teenagers were getting their hands dirty in factories, fighting in wars (hang on—some of them still are), getting married, and having babies (well, that too). Our glut of kids living at home into their 20s is an historical aberration.
But the mollycoddling of Millennials has far darker implications than the legions of basement-dwelling man-boys playing Call of Duty. We can wince at student unions banning Robin Thicke’s soulless R&B song “Blurred Lines” for its “rapey” lyrics or demanding “trigger warnings” on class syllabi, but the problem is that these crybabies are allowed to vote. And more important, they’re enforcing their pearl-clutching views on everyone else.
As Millennials—Millennial women in particular—grow in power, they seek to transform society into their personal hugbox. Their preferred method for doing so is the social media witch-hunt: targeting “racist,” “sexist” or otherwise un-PC individuals for Two Minutes Hates; getting them fired from their jobs, and worse. Pax Dickinson, Justine Sacco, Gavin McInnes: the list of social justice warriors’ victims could fill a phone book.
The flames of left-wing outrage are fanned by a battalion of websites for whom indignation is lifeblood. Gawker, Buzzfeed, xoJane, and other clickbait sewers make their ducats from catering to the worst instincts of Millennials: hypersensitivity and impotent anger. Thanks to the efforts of media moguls such as Nick Denton—the William Randolph Hearst of the Internet age—even legacy outlets such as the Washington Post have sensationalized their content in pursuit of views.
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