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As college students around the country protest against their universities who book conservative speakers that traffic in hate speech, Republican state legislatures around the country are taking up bills that would punish students for resisting and exercising their free speech rights.

The AP reported, “University of Wisconsin students who disrupt speeches and demonstrations could be expelled and campuses would have to remain neutral on public issue under a bill Republican legislators are pushing this week….The bill is modeled after a proposal the conservative Arizona-based Goldwater Institute put together to address campus free speech problems; North Carolina lawmakers are also considering the legislation. The Wisconsin lawmakers sponsoring the bill said it represents Republicans’ promise “to protect the freedom of expression on college campuses.”

Interestingly, Republicans had no issues with campus protests when a Democrat was in the White House, but now that they have one of their own in the Oval Office, student protests are a problem that must be dealt.

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When a president is as unpopular as Donald Trump is, resistance to his agenda is going to exist at nearly every level of society, but the conservative myth that institutions of higher education are dens of liberal vipers has been a never ending talking point of the right throughout their endless pursuit of “liberal bias.”

The reality is that Republicans are targeting college students because they are more vulnerable. The criminalizing of dissent would have the real world impact of silencing students who might be worried about the consequences of being convicted of this sort of “crime.

Instead of listening to The Resistance, Republicans are trying to punish it. The will of the people can’t be legislated against, and eventually, the people will triumph.