Of Course: Millennials Are More Likely Than Any Other Generation To Support Censoring Offensive Speech

Matt Vespa | November 22, 2015 1:30 PM

Let’s start with the good news about Pew Research’s latest findings on the incredibly annoying delicate snowflake epidemic sweeping American higher education: these people aren’t the majority. It’s not even close. Sixty-seven percent of Americans support free speech (in keeping with past polling), while 28 percent think “government should be able to prevent” people from saying offensive things about minorities. Supermajorities of men, women, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, high school graduates, and college graduates all support free speech principles. Non-whites don’t have supermajority support, breaking 57/38 in favor of free speech. To no one’s surprise, Millennials are the generation where the largest proportion feels that government should curtail free speech rights (via Pew):

Four-in-ten Millennials say the government should be able to prevent people publicly making statements that are offensive to minority groups, while 58% said such speech is OK.

Even though a larger share of Millennials favor allowing offensive speech against minorities, the 40% who oppose it is striking given that only around a quarter of Gen Xers (27%) and Boomers (24%) and roughly one-in-ten Silents (12%) say the government should be able to prevent such speech.

Compared with people we surveyed in dozens of nations, Americans as a whole are less likely to favor the government being able to prevent speech of any kind

I guess another silver lining (remember 40 percent is high, but it’s nowhere near a majority) is that we’re not becoming like Europe, even if Millennials in college are eating up this political correctness/safe space nonsense at the moment, which does actively seek to end discussions on certain issues.

At the same time, while it’s easy to classify all Millennials as hopeless, please watch Editor-in-Chief of DailyWire Ben Shapiro talk to Mizzou students, the ones who are rational, about the current climate on college campuses, especially the fiasco that has embroiled their institution to the point where their president and chancellor both resigned for pretty much being Caucasian. Young America’s Foundation hosted the event.