The Pie-Throwing Goon Squads of Academia...

As of late, I've had my fun with the food-throwing Lefties that have been attacking Conservatives speaking at colleges and universities. Honestly, I find these stories to be pretty indicative of the level of gutlessness and intolerance that some Liberals are capable of. I find it amazing that many of the same people who claim to be champions of free speech seem to desperately want to shut down this right when the speech in question hurts their little ears.

However, there is an underlying dark side to these incidents that has been overlooked by the MSM. An editorial in the Washington Times considers the potential escalation of such attacks. The column gives the example of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. On the verge of an electoral victory in 2002, Fortuyn was also hit by pies from left-wing protesters. Not long after, he was shot to death.

"This is not to suggest that those who have attacked conservatives here will one day swap their pies for guns. But someone else with less conscience might. That's because once violence, however harmless it at first appears, is accepted as an appropriate means of protest, it tends to escalate.

The media should highlight these cases not as the jokes they are perhaps intended to be, but as unacceptable perversions of the First Amendment. So far, however, the mainstream media has failed to do so. It also gave scant attention to last year's election-oriented violence directed almost solely against Republicans. Perpetrators shot at Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters and attacked volunteers and destroyed campaign offices across the country, to cite a few examples. But news organizations such as the New York Times instead provided a platform to those making dubious charges of voter intimidation committed by the Republicans."

It goes without saying that it would be front page news if the recipient of a pie-throwing attack was someone on the Left, say Ward Churchill for example. Liberals always have a double-standard when it comes to freedom of speech. As the Times observes:

"It is ironic that college campuses -- which typically style themselves as bastions of free speech and tolerance -- are increasingly the scene of intolerant, thuggish behavior. These days it is being directed at folks who don't subscribe to the prevailing liberal orthodoxies."

Posted by: Gary at 04:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 389 words, total size 3 kb.