Many folks who read this website are likely in favor of open borders and profoundly disagree with Wilders’ position on immigration. That’s a fine and reasonable position to hold. But it is also within the bounds of human reason to hold a contrary position—especially in a western welfare state where Third World immigration has the potential to adversely impact the national budget, debt, and sundry other matters.

My point is this: We should shudder when the expression of a widely held political opinion, in a western nation with a history of freedom, is criminalized.

Articles 137(c) and 137(d) of the Dutch Criminal Code (starts on page 81) operate to prohibit making public intentional insults, as well as engaging in verbal, written, or illustrated incitement to hatred, on account of one’s race, religion, sexual orientation, or personal convictions. In essence, this law makes it a crime to honestly discuss political matters such as gay marriage, Islam, and immigration.

So how far are we from similar hate speech laws? Considering the clamor on college campuses for “safe spaces” where contrary ideas cannot be discussed, I’d say we are getting closer. If our universities discourage true free speech and are teaching this to students, we can expect that the next generation of leaders will likely prize the restrictions of the Dutch model.

Yes, we still have a First Amendment, but that parchment barrier did not stop the Federalists in 1798 from criminalizing speech challenging the polices of John Adams, and it will not stop adults raised on the milk of safe spaces from enacting their own Article 137 into law.

* * *

William J. Watkins, Jr. is the author of the new Independent Institute book, Crossroads for Liberty Recovering the Anti-Federalist Values of America’s First Constitution.

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The various interest groups and institutions linked with the espousal of political correctness—in short, Hillary’s base—had become more and more pervasive and intrusive for fifty years or so. No doubt the members of this ideological bloc took for granted that they could, and would, only march toward greater and greater power over the populace until that glorious day when the last remnants of the old, despised social order, including the belief systems that supported it, would be crushed once and for all beneath the wheel of history that they had insisted on giving a boost lest the inexorable “progress” be slowed or—perish the thought—halted.

Meanwhile, however, the scores of millions of Americans whose ideas and social actions did not comport with the progressive agenda grew more and more resentful, but the political process failed to cough up a champion who would, and could effectively, lead a counter-revolution by the “deplorables” against the detested cultural and political establishment.

Enter Trump, seemingly on a lark, because his manner of speaking and campaigning amounted to little more than thumbing his nose at political correctness and its adherents. Yet, no doubt to the surprise of the Clinton camp, he elicited an enthusiastic and growing response from millions of people united by little more than resentment and, in some cases, hatred of their self-anointed betters. This kind of popular rebellion was not supposed to happen; the deplorables were supposed to recognize that they were on the losing side of a long historical-cultural conflict and act in a way that validated their acceptance of defeat. But the make-America-great-again group was not buying it, and they leaped at the chance to embrace a political leader who would proudly endorse their burning desire to spit out political correctness like a rotten fish.

So the contest for the presidency boiled down not to a clash of alternative public-policy packages so much as to a battle between two groups that identified with glaringly different cultural assumptions and values. In effect, the election was above all a referendum on political correctness. People who had tired of being called every sort of insulting name—racist, sexist, ignorant, backward, religious, in short everything that the Clinton crowd fancied it was not—rose on their hind legs and began to buck vigorously. One suspects that Trump himself must have been surprised by the magnitude and enthusiasm of the following he attracted. After all, he is not a sociologist, a political scientist, or even an experienced politician. However one might label him, though, he had stumbled onto a cultural time-bomb waiting for a detonator. Thus, he was not so much the man of the hour as he was the right tool for the task a great many people yearned to see carried out.

(For a much longer, more academic discussion along similar lines, see the recent article by Angelo M. Codevilla.)

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Droz and his friends begin the weekend by disrupting a protest. They throw meat on a group of vegans and make enemies with a variety of other groups on campus including a bunch of stoners, radical feminists (the “Womynists”), and an Afrocentrist group. The president of the fictional university is positively obsessed with “sensitivity awareness” and multiculturalism. Among a variety of other policies (suggesting, for example, that Bisexual Asian Studies be given their own building) she proposes changing the school’s mascot from a potentially offensive Native American character to a whooping crane.

The rest of the film centers around Droz and his cohorts fighting to keep their living space on campus by throwing a massive keg party (while simultaneously locking the Board of Trustees in a room with the song “Afternoon Delight” playing loudly on repeat).

In a recent episode, the show South Park took up the topic of political correctness and college campuses, discussing the prevalence of and continuous push for “safe spaces.” The episode culminated in the townspeople hanging the only thing questioning their safe spaces—a man named Reality.

While both this movie and the episode of South Park were particularly humorous, they reflect a scary trend in academia. Free speech is dead on many campuses, as is the ability to reflect upon and grapple with difficult subjects. This became clear last year at Yale, when someone dared to question the university-wide email calling on students to be cautious in choosing their Halloween costume (because God forbid anyone should be offended). Students were outraged, calling for the offending faculty member to be fired, even surrounding him outside a building to yell at him. Students at Emory University are apparently unable to cope with a chalk image of presidential candidate Donald Trump.

What have we come to that young adults attending some of the most elite educational institutions have the emotional capacity of toddlers and intellectual skin as thin as puff pastry?

The fact of the matter is, college is supposed to be a place where you get offended! I tell my students that if they aren’t being challenged in their classes they aren’t getting what they ought to be getting. I tell them that, “if you don’t question the opinions that you hold, you cannot claim them as your own.” Too often people take with whatever they hear in school or on the news as gospel.

That’s the definition of ignorant.

To not challenge our students does them a grave disservice. As opposed to growing as individuals, who have been exposed to, thought about, and grappled with tough issues, they become what my mother would call “hot house flowers.” That is, they require an inordinate amount of care and highly precise conditions lest they shrivel up and die.

Such individuals don’t do well in the “real world.” I hate to tell Emory students, for example, that if their future coworker has a political bumper sticker, claiming that makes you feel threatened makes one look like a petulant child and a complete idiot (impressive in all the wrong ways). In the workforce, people aren’t always nice. They don’t bend over backward to ensure you’re fragile psyche is never offended. If students have failed to learn how to stand firmly as individuals, to take criticism and interact with all kinds of people, they’re in for a tough road.

I refuse to play into this with my students. In reality, there are people from all kinds of places, different racial, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds. People think differently and hold different ideals. You often don’t get to decide whether or you interact with these people, but your ability to function as an adult depends on whether or not you can work with these individuals successfully. Since college is supposed to be preparing students for the real world, they better get used to differing opinions.

My classroom is indeed a safe space—for students and ideas. I write into my syllabus that we will discuss controversial topics. I require them to treat each other with respect. Attacking a person for the opinions they hold is not acceptable. However, questioning someone’s ideas or opinion is, and should be, done frequently and without hesitation.

I find that once students learn it’s OK to disagree with someone, they feel more comfortable engaging. Sometimes, when discussing a policy issue like the minimum wage, human organ sales, child labor, or environmental regulation, students will ask for my opinion. I always reiterate what it is that economics tells us. But I always follow it with something to the extent of, “my opinion may or may not go along with that.” I always tell my students that, when answering questions about a policy on an assignment, or discussing it in class, the credit they will receive has absolutely nothing to do with the opinions they hold. I’m concerned with how they argue for their stance and the economic reasoning they use to justify it.

Students should reflect on their held beliefs and have their existing ideals challenged. If we are truly concerned about critical thinking and cultivating the next generation of leaders, we owe it to out college students challenge them.

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