Senator Ted Cruz, speaking at a recent Young America’s Foundation National Conservative Student Conference, told attendees that liberal colleges in this country are “trying really hard to raise a generation of pansies.”

Cruz’s lambasting of the education system — controlled by politically correct liberals for decades now — was in response to one student’s comment that the PC culture “[has] been quashing freedom of speech and our free expression of ideas.”

The student, currently attending SUNY (State University of New York) at Binghamton, elaborated by explaining that debate team participants are required to list “gender pronouns on the board” and to “trigger-warn” opponents if they intend to get a little edgy with their material.

The Texas senator had the room in stitches when, upon hearing this, he put his head in his hands.

“One of the saddest things we’re seeing is our colleges and universities are trying really hard to raise a generation of pansies,” Cruz said, turning a bit more serious.

“What is this sense that you have a right not to be offended? You have a right not to hear ideas that are scary?”

“Look, the entire purpose of university is to hear ideas that are scary.”

“I talked about being a happy warrior, not a daisy-wearing daffodil priest,” Cruz continued.

“It really is not that frightening. When I went to college, when I went to law school, I was surrounded by leftists. I took classes from Marxists, and by the way, I don’t find Marxism just sort of cute and chic.”

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Related: Conservatives on Campus Are Routinely Deprived of Free Speech Rights

He went on to tell students that rather than run away from ideas they don’t agree with, they should “ridicule the living crap out of” them.

He declared that “there are no safe spaces in this room” — a comment that elicited cheers from the crowd.

Today, on so many college campuses, triggered students are pulled from school because they can’t handle the presence of White House adviser Ivanka Trump. Students hold hunger strikes and the like to demand union benefits but are reduced nearly to tears when their counterparts hold a cookout right next to them. Pacifiers are even handed out to progressive students at the University of California-Irvine as they hold “safe space training” because they don’t like the speaker.

By contrast, when conservatives encounter strife on their campus, they respond a little more forcefully and constructively.

This piece originally appeared in The Political Insider and is used by permission.

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