A few nights ago, I was watching the 2016 film, Trumbo. This critically acclaimed hit recounts the true story of Dalton Trumbo, a top-level Hollywood screenwriter who was blacklisted for being a member of the communist party and his adventures that followed. It was a well-done film, and while I quite enjoyed it, I found it somewhat conflicting. Allow me to explain.
Dalton Trumbo lived in a world where many people felt threatened by his beliefs regarding communism. They were threatened by people who disagreed with their one-sided belief system and wanted to make it a punishable crime to think differently than they did. Those who know me know that I am no fan of communism. I am an outspoken supporter of capitalism and the free market. That said, I find Trumbo’s story all too relatable. I may be attending a liberal arts college, but I can promise you that there is nothing liberal about it. The majority of students around me are about as far left as you can be when it comes to political opinions, but they refuse to accept any point of view that differs even slightly from their own. This doesn’t refer simply to personal politics. If anyone speaks out against customs that these students cling to, such as trigger warnings or safe spaces, they are automatically forced to deal with students who want to silence them. Simply put, these students don’t believe that anyone who disagrees with them has a right to be heard. If you dare to question anything they say or do then you are deemed an instant threat and need to be stopped. This concept is not unlike the one posed by George Orwell in his dystopian novel 1984, in which readers are introduced to thought police, whose job is to literally police what people are thinking. The concept seemed harmless enough back then, but it is starting to trickle into the real world all too quickly. During my previous semester, a student I knew shared an article on Facebook that was titled No, You’re Not Entitled To Your Own Opinion.” I try my best to always be tolerant of opinions that differ from my own, but moments like that are where I draw the line.
As an outspoken critic of my campus's culture, I am no stranger to the type of environment in which Trumbo lived. When I published an article questioning the concept of safe spaces on college campuses and just how much good they truly did, I was met with students whose first move was to try and silence me. These students misinterpreted my article greatly and did not take the time to understand it. I still question whether some of the people who tried to shame me for the article even read it or just made assumptions based on its title. I wasn’t hurting them but because I had posed an opinion that opposed their own, they decided that I must be wrong, not unlike the government officials who blacklisted Dalton Trumbo for his outspoken communist views. Our First Amendment right to free speech means nothing to the students of which I speak, nor did it mean anything to Trumbo’s critics. Both groups displayed a blatant disregard for the fact that everyone is allowed to have their own beliefs. As Trumbo states in the film while addressing John Wayne, “I disagree and that's the point. We both have the right to be wrong.”
I think that many of the students of my college would do well to remember that.
