One of the most troubling aspects of liberal hypocrisy is its obsession with the suppression of debate, and even with what speech is permissible during a debate.  These are the same liberals, mind you, who constantly lecture us about the need for diversity.  By diversity, they don’t mean diversity of opinion, of course.  “Diversity” to a Leftist means embracing a wide variety of people, including black liberals, Hispanic liberals, gay liberals, transgender liberals, and a limited number of Caucasians, who happen to be Marxists.  Strangely, these advocates for diversity will permit there to be only one side to every issue – their side.  The problem is most acute on our college campuses, where the tenured faculty by and large consists of former 1960’s radicals who, in their youth, saw it as their solemn duty to challenge authority.  Now that they are the authority on campus, however, challengers are disciplined and condemned.  Colleges once were vibrant centers of learning, where free speech reigned and every side of any issue could be aired and considered.  No more.  Our First Amendment freedom is nowhere more at risk than on a college campus, where the faculties are the functional equivalent of the Japanese Fascist-era Kempetai – the thought police.  A few brave academics have noticed.  NYU Professor Jonathan Haidt attributes the recent wave of campus intolerance to “a new religion,” a Spanish Inquisition, where “true believers” act against heretics who would violate orthodoxy.  Mr. Haidt says these true believers are transforming citadels of intellectual freedom into holy spaces, where supposed victim groups are worshiped like gods and are provided “safe spaces,” like the Safe Zone at the College of Charleston, where “one can feel free to talk about being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, allied, asexual or intersex without fear of criticism or hatred.  It is a place where one can feel not only supported, but affirmed and valued.”  Even the New York Times has taken notice.  Times writer Judith Shulevitz described a scene at Brown University, part of the vaunted Ivy League.  In anticipation that a libertarian speaker might criticize the accepted term “rape culture,” the school created a  safe space for people who might find potential comments “troubling” or “triggering.” The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma, which might result from bombardment by viewpoints that differed from their dearly and closely held beliefs.  Ms. Shulevitz mused, “I’m old enough to remember a time when college students objected to providing a platform to certain speakers because they were deemed politically unacceptable.  Now students worry whether acts of speech or pieces of writing may put them in emotional peril.”  Hey Judith, everyone’s old enough to remember Leftist suppression of conservative speech.  It happened at least 3 times in the last 2 months – at Berkeley and NYU in February, and at Middlebury College in March, where a violent mob of students attacked a Middlebury College professor and author Charles Murray, for daring to express an unorthodox opinion.  Professor Haidt has likened the atmosphere at his school to the good old days in East Germany, with the true believers playing the role of the Stasi (secret police).  The faculty members function as the high priests on campus.  It is their job to enforce orthodoxy.  Witness, recent events at Northern Arizona University.  There, a female student was marked down for her use of a prohibited word.  What’s that?  Yes, the student’s sin was that she dared to use the word “mankind.”  The Professor/Priestess had included that word on a list of prohibited words, with the proviso, “I will respect your choice to leave your diction choices ‘as is’ and to make whatever political and linguistic statement you want to make by doing so.  By the same token, I will still need to subtract a point because your choice will not be made in the letter or spirit of this particular class, which is all about having you and other students looking beneath your assumptions and understanding that ‘mankind’ does not mean ‘all people’ to all people.  It positively does not.”  The fact that virtually nothing means the same thing to all people apparently was lost on the Professor.  And notice her viewpoint.  “I decide what words may be spoken, and should you choose to deviate, that’s your political statement.”  No Professor, the list of forbidden words is YOUR political statement!  The Professor also seems not to comprehend that “respect” for a student’s choice of language, coupled with automatic punishment for that choice, is neither tolerance nor respect, it’s oppression.  Instead of “mankind,” the student must use “humankind.”  The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines mankind as “the human race:  the totality of human beings.”  So mankind and humankind are synonyms.  Even the extremely liberal History Channel understands this.  They entitled a recent series, Mankind, The Story of All of Us.  Maybe the Professor should correct them, after all, the Merriams and Webster all were men, so their definition  can’t be trusted.  The Professor’s list of dirty words is a typical Leftist phenomenon, the good idea, run amok.  In the early 1980’s New Jersey, like many States, revised its statutes and other enactments to be gender neutral, by including both masculine and feminine pronouns where necessary.  That made sense.  But mandating humankind over mankind?  Really?  Where does it end?  When a sewer worker goes to work, does he or she descend into a humanhole?   Will a person arrested for humanslaughter be placed in humanacles?  When I go to Florida, will I see the humanatees?  Must a department store mannikin henceforward be called a humannikin or perhaps a womannikin?  Will humankind be able to humange so humany forced changes?  The real question is how long will thinking people tolerate the assault on their language and culture by a mob of uncultured true believers who themselves tolerate nothing but their own beliefs?  The truth is, the Arizona Professor is a humaniac, and her forbidden word list is a steaming pile of humanure.