Robert Maranto, the Twenty-First Century Chair in Leadership at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville's Department of Education Reform, co-edited a just-released book discussing how the nation's education system is failing to teach the values of free speech and inquiry.

Maranto said: "[P]rofessors, students, and regular Americans self-censor far more than during the McCarthy era . . . That atmosphere limits research on how to make life better, and it also undermines democracy, making us more like Russia or China."

Here's the interesting bit, though. Lil' ol' Arkansas has been at the vanguard of fighting this largely leftist intellectual scourge for several years now.

You might recall my columns from a while back detailing how Ashlyn Hoggard had her free-speech rights violated by an Arkansas university. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit aptly described what occurred: "Just outside the Student Union . . . student Ashlyn Hoggard set up a small table. She was accompanied by Emily Parry, a non-student representative for Turning Point USA . . . an organization focused on promoting free markets, limited government, and individual liberty. Hoggard and Parry aimed to recruit students for a local Turning Point chapter, which they hoped could become a registered student organization . . . But in short order, two University administrators . . . approached the table to investigate."

One administrator "told Hoggard and Parry they could not 'table' at . . . the 'Union Patio.' If Hoggard and Parry wanted to set up a table and display their signage ('Free Market, Free People,' 'Big Government........

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