John Leo Quotes

Once citadels of free expression and occasional revolutionary ideas, today many American colleges have endorsed political correctness.

You can't speak as a conservative on campus without being boycott, without being protested, without students lining up and playing music loudly so that they can drown out the sound of your voices.

I will withhold federal funding from universities that shut down debate and can't stand different points of view.

Students throughout the totalitarian world risk life and limb for freedom of expression, many American college students are demanding that big brother restrict their freedom of speech on campus. This demand for enhanced censorship is not emanating only from the usual corner - the know-nothing fundamentalist right - it is coming from the radical, and increasingly not-so-radical left as well.

The people on the far left, they claim to be about free speech and expression. But as soon as you put something out there that offends them, all of a sudden, no - free speech out the window.

Free speech is carelessly tossed to one side in order to silence views and people that liberals label as intolerant.

The politically correct crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints, except those they disagree with.

This epidemic of student demands for 'safe places' to protect against threatening words and ideas would make a great science fiction film, but unbelievably, events seem to be outpacing the political imagination.

In most cases, the only genuine victims of the 'safe places' demands for censorship are conservative student groups and their invited guest speakers.

American colleges are now increasingly reflexive in maintaining politically correct dialogue over controversy, and some say universities have lost sight of education's ultimate purpose.

Safety' is a bogus argument regularly used by university officials to keep conservative speakers off of campuses. This isn't because conservatives are dangerous, but because the left often reverts to violence instead of words when presented with ideas it disagrees with.

Freedom of speech, for those who don't accept multiculturalism or the sexual revolution, is increasingly limited, mainly by threats to the jobs of those who speak out of turn.

I believe America went wrong in terms of respecting the First Amendment, the state of free speech on American college campuses and on the media and in academia.

The P.C. police are out in force at all times... We've reached a point where people are actually afraid to talk about what they want to say.

The idea that the law should punish what is rude; that government should protect our tender sensibilities from those who would - quite often with shallow motivations but sometimes with deeper and more serious complaints - challenge our national certainties and rituals, should alarm and anger us.

Political correctness kills discussion.

Whether it's people walking off 'The View' when Bill O'Reilly makes a statement about radical Islam or Juan Williams being fired for expressing his opinion, over-reaching political correctness is chipping away at the fundamental American freedoms of speech and expression.

We've reached a point where people are actually afraid to talk about what they want to say, because somebody might be offended. We've got to get over this sensitivity and it keeps people from saying what they really believe.

I am politically incorrect, that's true. Political correctness to me is just intellectual terrorism. I find that really scary, and I won't be intimidated into changing my mind. Everyone isn't going to love you all the time.

And why do we, who say we oppose tyranny and demand freedom of speech, allow people to go to prison and be vilified, and magazines to be closed down on the spot, for suggesting another version of history.

Here's a nation, one of the founding pillars was freedom of speech and freedom of expression. And yet, we have imposed upon people restrictions on what they can say, on what they can think. And the media is the largest proponent of this, crucifying people who say things really quite innocently.

Let's face it: every campus has its share of students who can't quite comprehend that extreme political correctness is often born of the same intolerance and anti-intellectualism as standard-issue bigotry.

You can't allow the forces of political correction to shut you up. I mean, why are people afraid to say, 'Merry Christmas?' Give me a break. If people don't like it, yeah, they can go do something else.

The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as insult.

I try to exist in a world where there is freedom of opinion, where you're allowed to make jokes. I don't want to live in some PC world where no-one's allowed to say anything.