Robert Torricelli, former U.S. Senator from New Jersey, discusses protestors in Iran and free speech censorship on America’s college campuses. Torricelli comments that this trend is “troubling, and I don't know how we get out of it. And the odd thing about it is, it is the very institutions which have been the safeguard of American free thought and speech, American universities, think-tanks, the media, who are the worst offenders. We've entered in this period of American history, where are the range of permissible thought and speech has so narrowed, that if you depart from it at all, you are labeled, you are censored, and you are silenced.” The former Democrat senator comments, “It's incredibly dangerous. But who would have believed, the Founding Fathers would have been astounded that at a point in history American free thought and speech was challenged. And it didn't come from a foreign adversary, it didn't come from a radical political movement. It came from our own institutions, by labeling people whether it’s a racist, or antisemitic, or whatever other unattractive label, or simply claiming that the speech was unacceptable, because it's out of the norm. A free society moves in its’ thoughts by people who are out of the norm. We’ve progressed by people who are a step ahead in their thinking, you don’t progress by maintaining the status quo. I wish I could tell you how I thought that we could escape from this, I just I don't know, but it scares me to death.”
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