Everyone Is Reduced

Words are supposed to hurt.  That's considered a legitimate way of fighting things out.  And what did it replace in the historical scene?  It replaced actual violence.  Words are supposed to be free so we CAN actually fight things out, in the battleplace of ideas, so we don't end up fighting them out in civil wars.  If we try to legitimately ban anything that can hurt someone's feelings, everyone is reduced to silence.

-- Gregory Christopher Lukianoff (1974 -), president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, speaking with John Stossel on Fox Business (2009)