First, the liberal "social justice warrior" college students cried for safe spaces and trigger warnings and attempted to limit people's freedom of speech and press. They forced faculty to resign, harassed student journalists and threw hissy fits over chalk scribblings on the sidewalk.
At first, conservatives laughed it off. Some commentators presented logical counterarguments as they staunchly defended our constitutional right to free speech. "Facts don't care about your feelings" became a well-known catchphrase around political blogs and Twitter.
Then something else happened-- I'm not sure exactly how or when, but a new wave of right-wing justice warriors has replaced the group of liberal SJWs as the craziest kids on campus. These people seek to limit the free speech and rights of anyone who disagrees with them. They have no facts to back up their arguments, so they call everyone "cuck" instead. Maybe this group of hypersensitive, pro-censorship and anti-free speech right-wingers has always existed, but they are especially prominent now.
One example is the people who got lit up about some of Lena Dunham's recent comments. Dunham recently did an interview in which she threw a hissy fit because Odell Beckham, Jr. didn't chat her up at the Met Gala. Now, I hate Lena Dunham, and I've never defended her. She cries misogyny and sexual harassment at every turn, even though she admitted to sexually harassing her own little sister. But conservatives can't drag her for crying misogyny, then turn around and accuse her of misandry or anti-black racism because of some harmless (albeit idiotic) comments. If you care about actual misandry, worry about the fact that one in four men suffer domestic violence, yet they are still stereotyped as aggressors. Don't cry about words, especially when you've been mocking the speaker for crying about other words.
The most classic example is Republicans people who got offended by Colin Kaepernick not standing for the national anthem. What Kaepernick did was not a crime or an aggression and is his prerogative as an American. He can either stand for the pledge and the national anthem, or he can refuse to do so, exercising his constitutional right to free speech. How can conservatives get lit up about constitutional rights and then cry when someone exercises them? You may be offended by Colin Kaepernick, but don't try to limit his freedom.
Of course, every movement has a prominent media figure at its head. For the hypersensitive right-wing justice warriors, the current figurehead is Tomi Lahren from The Blaze. We've all seen her emotionally charged videos on Facebook. She's apparently trying to make a name for herself as the angriest Barbie on the internet, but she presents little, if any, empirical evidence based on research. And yet "facts don't care about your feelings" conservatives eat her videos up and share them.
I know I'll get called a liberal for writing these points. But I'm actually coming from a conservative viewpoint because conservatives are supposed to be pro-free speech and anti-censorship. We're supposed to defend people's rights to say stupid stuff, no matter how much we hate or disagree with them. We're supposed to rely upon facts and reason, not angry, overemotional Facebook videos.
We make fun of hypersensitive liberals who cry for trigger warnings, censorship and safe spaces. We counter their emotional arguments and delicate sensibilities which have no basis in reason, and we're right to do so. But somewhere along the way, "facts don't care about your feelings" became "my conservative feelings don't care about your liberal feelings." Thus political discourse became totally emotion-based. If conservatives want to be taken seriously, then we need to take our own advice and toughen up.