Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), during an exclusive interview with Campus Reform, issued quite the challenge to young socialists while addressing the topic of free speech and intellectual diversity on college campuses.

Campus Reform Editor-in-Chief Lawrence Jones sat down with the Texas Republican on Tuesday in Cruz's Washington, D.C. office to ask him, among other things, about a recent report that found that 41 percent of college students do not think hate speech should be protected under the First Amendment, a poll on which Campus Reform previously reported.

"How about you actually engage with the fact that socialism has produced poverty and misery and suffering for billions across the globe..."

[RELATED: Cruz: Defund colleges that don't support free speech]

Cruz responded to the report, saying that he's not surprised by its findings.

"Unfortunately, students...they're not being taught to think," Cruz said. "What's defined as hate speech, by the way, is anything the Left disagrees with. The First Amendment wasn't designed for popular speech. You actually don't need the First Amendment if what you're saying is popular. The First Amendment was designed to protect unpopular speech, to protect minority views, to protect views that are not in common agreement. And particularly the whole point about a college experience is learning to confront views you've never seen before."

The Texas senator continued by recalling how, in his own college experience, he took classes with "Marxist" professors because he said he wanted to know how they thought. Cruz contrasted that experience with the approach taken by today's young socialists.

"If you want to be a young socialist, how about you actually engage with defenders of free enterprise? How about you actually engage with the fact that socialism has produced poverty and misery and suffering for billions across the globe and the greatest enemy poverty's ever seen, in the history of mankind, is the American free enterprise system," he said.

[RELATED: (EXCLUSIVE VIDEO) Ted Cruz: Senate to investigate Yale Law]













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