Isn't the way you learn and mature by other people figuratively beating sense into you?

It still shocks me the 180 that has taken place since I was a kid in post-war, cold-war 60s and ACLU defending free speech of Nazis 70s.

Now we are okay with gov't demanding papers, and we enthusiastically ask for speech codes. It's no longer gov't off our bodies and out of our bedrooms, it's inviting gov't into every aspect of our personal lives.

It shocks me, and then I remember Ray Bradbury said this would happen.

"Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic-books survive. And the three-dimensional sex-magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade-journals."

Old enough to vote, sign contracts, have sex, get married, go to war, command troops, write songs, create apps, write screenplays, study medicine, ...

Not old enough to think.
Too young to be able to deal with the free speech us old farts can deal with.

Perhaps a minor thing, but Yaki at one point apparently referred to the Supreme Court decision that shields minors from the death penalty. The point is that minors cannot be treated fully as adults.

And then he segues seamlessly into discussing college students, either unaware or simply disregarding the fact that, according to criminal law, college students are not minors.

But if they start to think, they may find their way off of his team, and find out that he and his former boss are both terrible people that want to control their lives.

The answer is to ban those under 25 from college, because they are not mature enough to handle it. Now that the science is settled, remind me again why we allow them to vote or drive.

It's no longer gov't off our bodies and out of our bedrooms, it's inviting gov't into every aspect of our personal lives.

Well, duh. The government has invited itself into our health care. You thought they'd just stay on the fringes? they have to bend the cost curve down some how.

Telling you what you can ingest is coming. Be prepared to have the government tell you a low fat, high carb diet is required. Because. They. Said. So.

This will make you feel all warm and fuzzy. 400 new crimes since 2008 enacted by Congress.

Free speech isn't the only thing being attacked on campus: due process seems to be an endangered species.

Jerry, the real irony in the quote you provided is that the 1970s leftists regarded Bradbury as a far-right reactionary. They called the scenario that Bradbury proposed in Farenheit 451 ridiculous, saying that nothing like that could ever happen in an enlightened society. They even did the Cluster B DARVO thing and flipped the script, accusing Bradbury of wanting to censor entertainment based on quotes taken preposterously out of context.

As for hostile work environment: Nowdays, I seldom have a non-work-related conversation with a co-worker. I know little about their lives outside of work, and they know little about mine. Where I work, they are talking about a total ban on personal mementos of any sort in cube areas. I've already been in an area in another building where it's no longer possible to personalize your work space -- the desks are extremely small, with barely room for a laptop and a writing space, and there are no dividers.

Jerry, so appreciate that Bradbury quote you posted.

The book is seeming like documentary instead of fiction.

To Cousin Dave:

Yes, well, it's a sad fact of life that just because people are forced to work together for many years and can be polite about it (whether in elementary school or as adults), that doesn't mean they want to be friends outside of the workplace, or they'd ask to get together with you. So not talking about anything besides work is the best way not to get on people's nerves; you may think you're all getting along well, but politeness is often just a mask for "I can't wait to get home so I can be with REAL friends with whom I actually have something in common."

One simple proof of that lies in the fact that even the old classmates who didn't move far away from you after graduation aren't necessarily the ones who will stay in touch.

And this isn't quite the same thing, but the free-speech issue reminds me of an article from the 1990s, maybe, by a high-school teacher.

In it, he told of how a class of teens in a middle- class(?) high school flatly refused to contemplate the idea that one purpose of high school is to expand your vocabulary. Quote (not verbatim) from a student: "If you people (adults) would only talk like everyone else, we wouldn't need all those extra words."

Reminds me of how some people say that nowadays, the purpose of college is to prove you have a high school education.

My son is sixteen. I just had him read this article.

When I have heard similar arguments before it has sorta worked to point that it would have to work the opposite direction to. We had some ultra-conservative religious people when I went to college...I would guess any college of reasonable size would to... so as to not offend those individuals no one will be allowed to promote things like gay marriage or even evolution. Of course they won't be allowed to say gay marriage is wrong either. Oh the government gets to decide? What if another Bush gets elected?

There was even a couple of English guys at my university that claimed it was wrong for the US to have declared its independence from England - I think they were really just being trouble makers but... so I guess the school can still teach facts but not make any judgments. I mean no disputed that declaration and the date...just whether it was an OK thing to do.

Oh...I work in an office that is now for the most part un-assigned seating so you cannot decorate. Or actually I guess you can so long as you take it down before you leave...
Certain coordinators have assigned spots, security has assigned spots, and a few people have gotten doctor's notes that they need more sunlight so have gotten seats assigned by the window.

Now I feel extremely privileged that my last job let me hang a cross in my cube.