Republicans Endanger Themselves on Campus

Perhaps it is not too surprising that Democrats want to ban alternative forms of expression other than their own, particularly on college campuses. What is mystifying is the degree to which Republicans want to help them do it.

“Fifty-three percent of all Americans think colleges should protect students from offensive speech,” Cato Institute pollster Emily Ekins said at the Network of enlightened Women (NeW) conference last week. That breaks down to “66 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans,” according to Ekins.

But the Dims, as Lou Dobbs calls them, would go much further in curtailing freedom of speech, the poll results Ekins garnered show:

• “53 percent of Democrats favor Employers censoring employees Facebook accounts;”

• “64 percent of Democrats believe ‘Our society can prohibit hate speech and still protect free speech,’;”

• “66 percent of Democrats believe hate speech is an act of violence.”

That any Republicans would go along with any of these propositions is particularly remarkable since, as Ekins discovered, “53 percent of all Americans says the political climate prevents them from expressing themselves including 46 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of Republicans.”

Ekins has worked as a pollster at Reason magazine. The audience at the NeW conference consisted nearly entirely of young, conservative college-age women.

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