The Silenced Generation

Are America's college students doing to themselves what the Chinese Communist state does to its citizens?

An Ivy League professor — an old-fashioned liberal who actually cares about free speech — recently warned me about what's happening in classrooms like his.

He encourages class discussion of the great books he teaches in class — but students are afraid to speak, not because they're afraid of the professor but because they fear each other.

Communist regimes have tried to stamp out dissent for more than a century.

Tyrants and totalitarians have always tried to sow suspicion among their subjects, turning friends, neighbors and even family members into informers against anyone who won't conform to the party line.

That's the scenario in George Orwell's dystopian classic "Nineteen Eighty-Four," and it's the intention behind China's insidious "social credit" system today.

What Orwell never imagined, though, was that young men and women in a free society would one day willingly impose "political correctness" on their peers — and use the 21st century's decentralized social media to do it.

Students, the professor told me, are afraid to be recorded on their classmates' cellphones talking about politics and political philosophy — the subjects he teaches — and don't want to disagree with their fellow students about anything because the person they're arguing with might belong to a "disadvantaged" group.

It's not only what you say that's dangerous, but who you say it to.

A young man getting into an argument with a young woman, or a white student with a black student, is not a "good look" on social media, and a classroom conversation runs the risk of leading to an online inquisition.

Conservative students, who often have to face ostracism for their dissenting views, might be less intimidated than liberals and progressives, who aren't used to not fitting in.

All too many liberals have also been conditioned from a young age, both at home and in school, to believe that good-faith argument about serious subjects is inherently offensive — you might hurt the feelings of the person you're arguing with.

Better to remain silent, even if the professor urges you to speak up.

Communists in the 20th century used very heavy-handed tactics to punish dissidents, but the more groups like the independent, Catholic-inspired labor unions of Poland's Solidarity movement were harassed, the more they resisted.

What's terrifying about the new self-imposed social control in America is that it's more effective using less coercive and more decentralized techniques.

And the effect is a kind of brainwashing, no less than what Orwell's protagonist, Winston Smith, suffers in Room 101 of the Ministry of Love at the end of "Nineteen Eighty-Four."

Once young men and women get used to censoring themselves and their defensive crouch becomes permanent, they don't need to be punished anymore: their thoughtcrimes will have been stopped before they can begin.

This American-style social credit system is what happens when pervasive technology combines with an ideology that claims to be about compassion and tolerance — but that really uses those noble-sounding principles as a pretext for enforcing submission.

That part Orwell did anticipate: there's a reason Big Brother's inquisition is called the Ministry of Love.

Anecdotes aren't data — maybe my professor friend has just had an unusually passive set of students for the past 10 or 15 years.

Yet plenty of other indications support what he tells me.

A study published in Science last month by researchers at Stanford University, for example, found one-third of American teens prefer turning to AI for "serious conversations" rather than engaging with another human being.

This was a study of artificial intelligence's people-pleasing bias — it tells users what they want to hear.

It doesn't argue, contradict or hurt anyone's feelings, "even when users engaged in unethical, illegal, or harmful behaviors," the study's "editor's summary" noted.

"The very feature that causes harm also drives engagement," the report's abstract concluded.

That might be said about today's liberalism as an ideology, too — it may sound agreeable and nice, but adopting it leads to harm, including the psychological damage that politically left-wing people report experiencing at much higher levels than conservatives.

Fragility, bitterness, timidity — these are the fruits of the orthodoxy America's elite has embraced, and which its children enforce against outliers with vigilante zeal.

The victim mentality has become an excuse for bullying.

And rather than confront it, many young people find it easier to make friends with an AI.

Social isolation is socialism's greatest ally, while the kinds of community the Communists could never stamp out, not with all the power of Soviet tyranny, are the secret to freedom's survival.

Something as simple as a robust debate in class strikes a blow against Big Brother — and Little Brother with his snooping cellphone.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
• 04/28/26:Colleges Are Making Political Violence Worse
• 04/21/26:Immigration Amnesty by Any Other Name
• 04/14/26: A New Extreme in Gerrymandering
• 04/07/26: A New Extreme in Gerrymandering
• 03/17/26: Why Are Senate Dems Making Air Travel Worse?
• 03/10/26: Cuba Should Accept Trump's 'Friendly Takeover'
• 03/03/26: Immigration Enforcement Saves Lives
• 02/24/26: How a Party Offends Its Voters
• 02/17/26: Why Are Anti-ICE Activists Building Borders?
• 02/10/26: A Japanese Lesson for Troubled Britain
• 02/03/26: The Trump Coalition Wins But the GOP Brand Doesn't
• 01/27/26: Canada Should Warm to Trump's Arctic Plans
• 01/20/26: From Rock to Tech, Talent Flees Taxes
• 01/13/26: Woman Who Weaponized Car Against I.C.E Endangered Her Life -- and Yours
• 01/06/26: Tim Walz Personifies Dems' Decline
• 12/30/25: Harvard Says Yes to Discrimination, No to Western Civ
• 12/23/25: JD Vance Gets America's Creed and Heritage Right
• 12/16/25: Trump's Inflation Trap
• 12/09/25: Biden's Immigration Debacle Is the Media's, Too
• 12/02/25: 'Iryna's Law' and the Bad Judges Who Make It Necessary
• 11/26/25: Marjorie Taylor Greene's Exit Is a Warning to Republicans
• 11/19/25: Trump Hasn't Lost Hispanics (Yet)
• 11/11/25: Trump's Tariffs on Trial
• 10/28/25: MAGA Makes Allies Great Again
• 10/21/25: How To Make the AmericaS Great Again
• 10/16/25: Columbus Day Celebrates Our Civilization
• 10/09/25: Why Sharpies Are Made in America Again
• 09/30/25: Assata Shakur and Other Parents of Political Violence
• 09/09/25: Who's Accountable for Autopen Pardons?
• 09/02/25: Gender dysphoria is a mental-illness, NOT an all-encompassing delusion
• 08/26/25: Trump's Industrial Policy Is Realism, Not Socialism
• 08/19/25: Is Gavin Newsom the Dems' Answer to Trump?
• 08/12/25: Just Say No to More Marijuana
• 08/05/25: Will the GOP Make Libs Generous Again?
• 07/30/25: Trump's Trade Lesson for Economists (and the World)
• 07/22/25: Whose Politics Canceled Stephen Colbert?
• 07/08/25: A Big Beautiful Test of GOP Principles and Discipline
• 07/01/25: Dems Need Populism, But Not Zohran's Sort
• 06/25/25: Secure Borders Win Wars Like This One
• 06/18/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/17/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/04/25: State that's long eluded GOP turns toward Trump
• 05/21/24: Trump's Sun Belt Hopes and Rust Belt Needs
• 05/14/24: What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
• 05/07/24: The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden's Party
• 05/06/24: Nationalists of the World, Unite?
• 04/25/24: Foreign Policy Splits
• 04/16/24: How pro-lifers stand to lose everything gained in overturning Roe
• 04/02/24: PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
• 04/02/24: Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
• 03/26/24: Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
• 03/19/24: Princess Kate and Democracy's Discontents
• 03/12/24: Can Biden Buy the Voters?
• 03/05/24: Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
• 02/20/24: Do Americans Trust Either Party?
• 02/13/24: Vladimir Putin -- A Passive Aggressor
• 01/23/24: Will 'Lawfare' Take Trump Off the Ballot?
• 01/16/24: Will Africa Save America?
• 01/09/24:'The Sopranos' at 25: A new world tragedy
• 01/02/24: Trump, Biden and a Fight for the Heart
• 12/12/23: What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
• 12/12/23: Biden Looks Doomed -- But Is He?
• 12/05/23: A Test for Trump and His Rivals
• 11/21/23: When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
• 11/14/23: Nevermind, The Battle's Over
• 11/07/23: War in the Dem Party -- and at the Opera
• 10/24/23: Israel's Lesson for 2024: A Lib Crackup
• 10/17/23: Libs' Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
• 10/10/23: Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
• 10/03/23: Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
• 09/26/23: Biden's a Loser -- but Dems Can't Ditch Him
• 09/19/23: Do Sex Scandals Matter?
• 09/12/23: Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
• 09/05/23: What Trump Does for Democracy
• 08/2/23: Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
• 08/22/23: Take 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Seriously
• 08/16/23: How America Kills Its Own
• 08/08/23: The Biden Pardon That Can Spare America
• 08/01/23: Harding, a consevative for the ages
• 07/25/23: Demography Destiny, for Us and China
• 07/18/23: The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
• 07/11/23: Britain's Bad Example for American Conservatives
• 07/05/23: Could We Still Win a Revolutionary War?
• 06/27/23: Civilizations Clash -- in Ukraine and at Home
• 06/20/23: China Comes for the Caribbean
• 06/13/23: Fertility, Family and Bio-Socialism
• 06/06/23: From American Dream to Orwell's Nightmare
• 05/23/23: Ukraine war is an existential struggle --- for the West
• 05/23/23: Learn the Right Midterm Lessons -- or Lose in 2024
• 05/16/23: Feinstein Today Is Biden Tomorrow
• 05/09/23: Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
• 05/02/23: RFK Jr.'s Threat to Biden
• 04/25/23: Biden's Lost Generation
• 04/25/23: Who's In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
• 04/11/23: Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
• 04/04/23: 2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
• 03/28/23: Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
• 03/21/23: All the Conspiracy That's Fit to Print