“While the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom, the necessity of listening is what makes the right important.”

What's the deal with college campuses these days? A bastion for free speech in the old days is now an Orwellian training center. Free speech my a$$. It must be my age but I just cannot fathom all this 'racism' talk and transgender stuff being the focus of higher education. It's a bunch of nonsense. Just what the hell are they learning? Why are minority views considered superior simply because they are in the minority? The hypocrisy is too much. They do not listen to others or even to themselves apparently because if you put all their arguments side-by-side, many would contradict each other.

E Archer said it for me.

The delimited by ideology, pride and prejudice belief systems of the latter day Pharisees of the contempory American academy render them as viscerally averse to the contrast supplied by illumination as did those of their predecessors of old to the Illumination of the teachings of Jesus Christ.

The most faithful measure of the frailty of their notions is the amplitude of their intolerance, paragons of tolerance whom they fancifully esteem themselves to be, to beliefs and opinions that diverge, even incidentally, from those prescribed by their ideological orthodoxy.

If "the right to talk" demonstrates a maybe as "the beginning of freedom" - the systemic end to that beginning would be listening or 'NOT' listening - making up a fruition to that same right. It has been well illustrated by the most ardent patrons of the occupying statist theocracy infesting this land that those who refuse to listen also, deny the right to speak. AND, those that support the right to listen or ignore the here subject matter - 'word', also support the right of free speech. The comments above are spot-on and extremely germane to the topic.