Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. After several years in jail, former media tycoon Jimmy Lai has been found guilty of subversive activities. To China, subversive activities mean speaking truth not approved by Beijing. Lai spoke out when silence would have been safer.
The story of Lai's remarkable life is told in a moving documentary by the Acton Institute. Born in poverty, he became one of the wealthiest men in the once-free city of Hong Kong. When the communists began to crack down on any dissent, he could have fled to the West, but instead he chose to stay. And now the tyrants want to make an example of him. As Father Robert Sirico put in an article at the Daily Wire, and I quote, the verdict was preordained.
The performance has been elaborate, and the point could not be more explicit. China intends to demonstrate that even a man of extraordinary achievement, wealth, international attention, and moral outrage can be ground down when he refuses to bow. End quote. Stories like this should, of course, make us thankful that we don't live in a society governed by totalitarian overlords. But it should also make us realize just how important it is to defend the freedoms that we enjoy and not take them for granted.
For example, a recent report by Free Speech Group, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, claimed that a record number of attempts were made in 2025 by colleges in the U.S. to silence speech. Quote, FHIR has documented 273 efforts so far this year in which students and student groups were targeted for their constitutionally protected expression. That breaks the previous record of 252 set back in 2020, the first year of the Students Under FHIR database, during the unrest prompted by COVID-19 lockdowns and the murder of George Floyd, end quote. And not all of the 2025 incidents were caused by overzealous administrators attempting to keep students in line.
At least in several cases described by the report, government officials threatened to cut off funds to schools that didn't suppress students saying uncomfortable things. To get around First Amendment protection, students were told. That what they were saying wasn't really illegal, but it was just dangerous. The implicit message, of course, to students is that it's safer to remain quiet. As a researcher with FHIR described it, and I quote again: aside from the harm on the individual student involved in these incidents, such actions could have the effect of chilling speech across an entire campus and across an entire generation.
What kind of lesson is that? that the safest move in college is to keep your head down and your mouth shut? End quote. Now, of course, much of the suppression of speech comes from the left. Like Jimmy Lai, the reason that Colorado continued to take Jack Phillips to court for more than a decade was simply to scare others from dissenting out loud.
In the UK, Isabel Vaughan Spruce has now been arrested repeatedly for silently praying near an abortion clinic. Apparently, there, even silence doesn't guarantee your safety. But many of the incidents that were mentioned in the fire report involved left-leaning students being silenced. Feeling emboldened after years of the government, media, and the academy silencing anything out of step with progressive orthodoxies, some on the right have now decided to fight fire with fire. And that's not okay.
Censorship, even when paved with good intentions, still ends us up in the same bad place. As the West evolves more into a power struggle between incompatible ideologies, the risks to our freedoms only increase. As Father Shirico put it in his article, the test of our generation is whether we're still willing. to defend the principles on which our free societies are built. or whether we will barter them for trade access and diplomatic convenience.
That's the test that has to shape how we disciple our children. What kind of education, what kind of preparation, what kind of formation do they need? If they're going to courageously stand up for truth in the public square and defend liberty. At the very least, they have to know that dangerous courage is always better than silent safety. Teach them about Jimmy Lai and Jack Phillips and the others who had the courage to stand up, even when it cost them greatly.
Liberty is under threat both here and around the world. It just takes one generation who lacks the courage to stand up for what's right for it all to be lost. Whether they'll have the courage they need will begin with what we teach them today. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored with Dr.
Timothy Padgett. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. That helps others find this daily commentary. And for a version of this commentary to download and share with others, go to breakpoint.org.
