After several years in jail, former media tycoon Jimmy Lai has been found guilty of subversive activities. To China, “subversive” means speaking truths not approved by Beijing. Lai spoke out when silence was safer.

The story of Lai’s remarkable life is told in a 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 crackdown on any dissent, he could have fled to the West. But he chose to stay, and now the tyrants want to make an example of him.

As Robert Sirico put it in a Daily Wire article,

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 courage can be ground down when he refuses to bow.

Stories like this should make us thankful that we don’t live in a society governed by totalitarian overlords. But we should also realize how important it is to defend the freedoms we enjoy and not take them for granted.

For example, a recent report by free speech group The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) claimed a record number of attempts in 2025 by colleges in the U.S. to silence speech:

FIRE has?documented?273 efforts—so far—this year in which students and student groups were targeted for their constitutionally protected expression. This breaks the previous record of 252 set back in 2020, the first year of the Students Under Fire database, during the unrest prompted by Covid-19 lockdowns and the murder of George Floyd.

Not all of these incidents were caused by overzealous administrators attempting to keep students in line. 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 protections, students were told that what they were saying wasn’t illegal, just dangerous. The implicit message to students being that it’s safer to remain quiet.

As a researcher with FIRE described it:

Aside from the harm on the individual students 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?

Much of the suppression comes from the Left. Like Jimmy Lai, the reason that Colorado continued to take Jack Phillips to court for more than a decade was to scare others from dissenting out loud. In the UK, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce has been arrested repeatedly for silently praying near an abortion clinic. Apparently, even silence doesn’t guarantee safety there.

But many of the incidents mentioned in the FIRE report involved left-leaning students being silenced. Feeling emboldened after years of the government, the media, and the academy silencing anything out of step with progressive orthodoxies, some on the Right have decided to fight fire with fire. This is not ok. Censorship paved with good intentions still ends up in the same bad place.

As the West devolves more into a power struggle between incompatible ideologies, the risks to our freedoms only increase. As Fr. Sirico put it:

The test of our generation is whether we are 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.

This test must shape how we disciple our children. What kind of education, preparation, and formation do they need to courageously stand for truth in the public square and defend liberty? At the very least, they must know that dangerous courage is better than silent safety. Teach them about Jimmy Lai and Jack Phillips and 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 takes only one generation who lacks the courage to stand up for what’s right, for it to be lost. Whether they will have the courage they need begins with what we teach them today.

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