Here’s a really scary trend: as reported in the April 2005 Newsletter of the National Education Association Higher Education “Advocate” newsletter, according to a study by UConn researchers, more than a third of high school students surveyed said that the First Amendment “goes too far” in the rights that it guarantees.

Further, nearly half said that newspapers shouldn’t be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories. Finally, when asked if people should be allowed to express unpopular views, only 83% of students said yes, compared to 97% of teachers and 99% of school principals. These results are consistent with various other articles around the country, exemplied by this article in the Toledo Blade, which documents that while liberal students still outnumber conservative students on college campuses as a whole, the gap is increasingly shrinking.

All I can say is, Wow! Almost half of the high school students surveyed supported government censorship of newspapers? I thought they only did that in totalitarian dictatorships. What a nice thought -- many of these high school students will end up being CEOs, politicians, and “leaders” of our society. That’s seriously depressing. The fight will never end, I guess.