Freedom: Two Different Interpretations

When I was a kid in elementary school in the 1960s, I caught on quickly to the stark difference, repeatedly ground into us, between living in communist countries like China or the Soviet Union (almost always then simply called "Russia").  We were free and they weren't, period.  So, to us in our immaturity, freedom meant being able to do or say whatever we wanted without suffering any negative consequences therefrom.  After all, it's a free country, isn't it?  Later on, some of us learned (while some didn't) that the "freedom" we enjoyed here in America was that the GOVERNMENT could not restrict our speech, movements, and associations and that, apart from the state not coming down on us (as long as we didn't break any laws, that is), our behavior did carry the potential for negative consequences.  That's called "growing up" and becoming a mature member of adult society.  Nevertheless, as a kid I never considered my "freedom" as a right in the way that many in the current "Millenial" and "Generation X" generations see it, for the term has two disparate meanings...

Freedom can mean the ability to make one's own choices in life...that's the way I've understood it and lived it out in my life, for better or for worse.  But freedom can also be interpreted as freedom "from" things that people don't like...like hate speech and writing, or even anything that violates whatever the current political correctness codes happen to be. Comedian Chris Rock has stated that he won't perform his often politically incorrect act, full of biting satire as it is, on college campuses anymore because of the self-righteous mindset of the students, so many of whom regarding anything that pokes fun at a segment of the population as bigoted, racist, or even hateful.  After some isolated incidents of racism at the University of Missouri recently, one of the students, who happened to African-American, was interviewed on TV.  She expressed that she felt she was being discriminated against...the culmination of the interview revealed that this feeling was because some bigoted white moron had written something racist publicly somewhere and that the University's president hadn't reacted vehemently enough against this provocation.  I'm sorry, but this country has had enough racism in its history (and, sadly, in the real news of today: look at the police killings of unarmed blacks, over and over again...even when they are already in custody) for people to act as if they have some kind of inalienable right to be "free" of others offending them.  If you are offended, then say so...but it is not yet a crime to be offensive.  If and when offensive speech does become illegal, we will become like those totalitarian nations of my youth that we used to be so dead-set against...