Through the prevalent use of both straw men and non-sequiturs, American university and college campuses are increasingly shutting down any opinions or ideas that don’t conform to a leftist worldview. This isn’t news. Over the last several years, a growing list of individuals such as Charles Murray and others who hold conservative or libertarian views have been effectively forbidden from speaking on campus. Often the banning comes about as a result of student protest — they justify their protesting based on the fallacious reasoning of censoring intolerant “extremist” views, and the administrations and faculties often appear all too eager to appease the mob.

A culture of censorship has taken root and is fast developing in many of America’s universities. Once free thinking and tolerance were espoused as the greatest of virtues, but those things have been replaced with calls to join the fight to shut down “extremism.” Now walls of unbending ideology and dogma have been erected to protect against “discrimination.”

In yet another example of leftist “tolerance,” a college student at Rollins College in Florida has been suspended over the fall-out stemming from his challenging of a Muslim professor’s statement that Jesus’ crucifixion was a hoax. The student is a Christian, and he states, “Our university should be a place where free-speech flashes and ideas can be spoken without punishment or fear of retribution. In my case it was the total opposite. … I came forward with the story because I know so many other students like me suffer under today’s liberal academic life.”

Tolerance is a one way street. For example, we have cases like the one at Iowa State University, where a professor instructed his students to write about the 9/11 terrorist attacks — from the al-Qaida attackers’ perspective. It’s one thing to understand motive, but the professor, a leftist Democrat, really seeks to distort that motive.

Meanwhile, groups that don’t assent to the “progressive” worldview are deemed dangerously bigoted and intolerant and therefore are to be excluded from the “tolerant” campus life. For example, more than 100 of the nation’s universities and colleges have forbidden Christian groups from meeting on campus due to their “discriminatory” practice of not allowing non-Christian leadership. Imagine a capitalist seeking to lead the college Marxists. Maybe if administrators considered things from the perspective of the Christians for once…