Today is the season finale of South Park, which has lampooned political correctness this season. From “PC Principal” to “Shitipatown,” South Park showcases – in the words of Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III – “the tyranny of political correctness.”
This tyranny manifests itself in the stifling of unpopular and un-PC free expression. Recently, this has been most apparent at college campuses, which – for the most part – argue that limits on free speech are necessary to protect minorities and other oppressed groups.
But in the video below, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education Program Officer Ari Cohn argues that free speech is in fact an oppressed person’s strongest weapon. That’s because marginalized minorities, by definition, have little political power, so free expression is one of their few tools for making their voices heard. History has shown that without strong protections of free expression, majorities would likely try to censor minority speech.
“Had the powers that be been allowed to silence advocates of abolition, civil rights, women’s suffrage, and gay rights,” says Cohn, “our democracy would look much different today.”

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