Students Against Speech

If ignorance is bliss, progressive kids at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are among the most blissful when it comes to the ABCs of free speech.

The Student Coalition for Progress recently petitioned to have the campus Young Americans for Freedom chapter deemed a hate group and its members subjected to “intensive diversity training.”

YAF, for the record, is largely a Reaganite bunch. But apparently spreading love of free markets and other conservative ideas creates “a hostile environment on campus.”

Triggering the whiners was a visit from conservative columnist Ben Shapiro, who spoke about how “safe spaces” limit free speech — which, the petition claimed, had denied “systematic and institutional violences” against marginalized communities.

Other charges against the YAFers: efforts to “misgender LGBTQIA+ students” and to launch discussions that “made unsafe prominent members of student government.” God forbid you fail to use my preferred pronouns — or try to debate a campus leader.

Happily, the petition bombed, scrounging barely more than a couple hundred signatures. But the effort shows yet again that “shut up” remains the central argument of the campus left.

Sadly, the kids who need re-education — or, rather, a basic education in the fundamentals of civilized discourse — are the ones in the Student Coalition for Progress.