One of the bastions of freedoms in the United States of America is the freedom of speech. You have a right to offer your opinion just as much as anyone else – in other words, your voice is just as important as anyone else’s.

I’ve always heard that the true measure of freedom of speech (and freedom in general) is defending the rights of someone who speaks from a point of view that you disagree with, regardless of how vociferously their words rub you the wrong way.

I agree with that point of view. I may not agree with you, but I will defend your right to speak. 

Why? Because though we may disagree, there just may be something in that disagreement that may actually teach us something we otherwise would’ve never heard or been exposed to.

I’ve said many times on these pages that those “moments of gray” — where the absolute black of my opinion and white of your opinion create a sliver of commonality and enlightenment — are where too many of us refuse to even look, much less allow ourselves to learn something. I believe our unwillingness to merely simply listen to each other to learn instead of listening to reply is a big factor in the polarity we see in America today.

If you step back and think about it, it would seem there would be no more important place for those “gray areas” to exist than on our college campuses. After all, our supposed ‘leaders of tomorrow’ are supposed to be expanding their minds and preparing themselves for those leadership roles.

And to be clear, there was a time when our institutions of higher learning were at the forefront of promoting the concept of free speech. It wasn’t too long ago that our colleges were viewed as “free speech safe zones,” actively promoting all kinds of points of view that seemed to flow against the mainstream of American thought and philosophy, all in the name of embracing diversity.

However, for whatever reasons, today our college campuses have become anything but safe zones for free speech.

Conservative lawyer and commentator Ben Shapiro has become the latest poster child in the war to protect free speech. Tufts University in Massachusetts is the latest college to freak out over him, with liberal students at the college saying Shapiro’s rhetoric puts them in “tangible amounts of danger.”

It seems Tufts Student Action and Tufts United for Immigrant Justice started a Facebook event, “Pack the Room: Vote No to Ben Shapiro” in anticipation of a student government meeting, now set for early December, where the College Republicans club on the campus planned to ask for funding for Shapiro’s speech there.

“Ben Shapiro’s history of spreading fake news and fear-mongering, particularly around issues of immigration, has put many of our communities in tangible amounts of danger,” the groups wrote. The students say Shapiro’s appearance at Tufts will give the writer “a legitimate platform to continue spreading these lies and will threaten the undocumented-friendly environment we’ve spent the past five years fighting for.”

Of all places, University of California Berkeley, the literal birthplace of the free speech movement in the 1960s, was recently one of the campuses that went outhouse rat crazy over Shapiro making a speaking appearance. Thousands of students wailed to the heavens, many literally marching on the campus to protest his visit there. It got to the point where students and faculty — yes, the teachers, the “adults” in the equation — were offered counseling to help them “cope” with Shapiro’s visit.

So what exactly is the source of all the angst regarding Shapiro? Opinions. That’s all. Simple opinions. 

See, Ben Shapiro doesn’t do anything other than offer his opinions on current affairs. Furthermore, the opinions he offers are solely his and not reflective of anything or anyone other than him.

What most of the people screaming at the skies about this kind of thing seem to be forgetting is this: normally the best way to make opinions you disagree with to disappear is to ignore them and do so en masse. Making a big deal of them only puts them more in the spotlight, it would seem.

And whatever happened to the concept of debate? If you really have a disagreement with someone’s viewpoints, it would seem the absolute most effective way of negating them would be to engage them in a debate setting and counter their points with your own facts. 

Of course, I realize debate is kind of an old-fashioned thing, but it has seemed to work pretty well over the last, oh, I don’t know, thousand years or so — unless of course you can’t back up your viewpoint as well as the person you’re debating. Then it becomes, shall we say, “outdated.”

Again, it seems embracing diversity is a great battle cry, just as long as those crying the loudest get to define what that diversity is.

America is increasingly becoming a land where too many think that mere words are the same as violence. You may disagree with what is said, and the words may be hurtful, hateful or horrible — but they are not the same as actual violence. If you don’t know the difference between the two, I suggest you look up the words ‘violence’ and ‘opinion’ in this old fashioned thing called a dictionary.

If you think the First Amendment is important, their definitions aren’t subject to debate.