It has become quite popular of late to refute an argument based on how severely it offends the interlocutor. Offense is put before facts and reason all too often, and it's created a sort of safety bubble for people who can't stand opposing viewpoints. This in itself might not be so bad if the action against the argument was simply willful ignorance, but the action so frequently taken now is censorship. I suppose this really isn't anything new; the Catholic church has been burning dissenters for much of its history and Muslims have been beheading people for making cartoons they don't like. The censorship that occurs now actually isn't worse at all, I don't think. It's just whinier. It's annoying. People are flocking to 'safe spaces' so that their feelings won't get hurt when someone challenges their views.

Censorship, in and of itself, is a progress stopper. When you end a conversation as soon as it becomes controversial, you back yourself into an intellectual corner. You can make no further headway in any direction. Censorship is quite possibly the largest source of human retrogression in any given field of development. Politicians refuse to cooperate, science is stalled by protesters, peace among kin is obstructed by ignorant and prideful representatives of equally ignorant and prideful populous.

However grim this sounds, I'm here to tell you that it's getting better. In the developed world, violence is no longer the 'go to' form of censorship. People are talking now. Democracy is on the rise, not the decline. Hope exists for future generations of endeavor. More and more people are abandoning their archaic beliefs, an increasing number of people are self-identifying as political independents rather than buying into one party to the detriment of compromise, and more people are thinking. More people are getting up and getting angry about the denial of free speech in purportedly democratic countries. More people are getting tired of censorship and doing something about it. Prophet I am not, but I foresee a flood of revolution coming over the horizon, and it's only a matter of time.