Why are modern liberals so afraid of free speech? Time and again we see the left seeking to muzzle, intimidate or insult its principled opposition.
I'll stipulate the right has elements that are equally rude. But in terms of organized, deliberate and sustained attacks against robust debate, modern liberals take the cake.
There is the question about money in politics. Or rather, there is the left's attempt to make money in politics an issue. No one did more to destroy the notion of public campaign finance than Barack Obama in his 2008 rejection of it, and this is, what do they call it?, settled law. Nevertheless, that's free speech that must be curtailed.
Consider President Obama's bald declaration that debate is closed on his signature domestic achievement, an enormous expansion of government power in health care. Here is a president who lied repeatedly about what Obamacare would do and a razor-thin Democratic majority that admitted it had no clue when they approved it. Against the clear-cut wishes of the American people, it should be noted.
If that's not something still hotly debated - and with good reason - then we need a new dictionary.
Or take Mozilla forcing the resignation of its CEO, Brendan Eich, because he donated $1,000 to the campaign for Proposition 8, the California constitutional amendment that defined marriage as between a man and a woman and passed with 52 percent of the vote.
Broken down, that means a man - acknowledged to be a brilliant computer guy who had done much to make Mozilla - who held the same position as Obama did in 2008 and virtually all civilizations did for more than 2,000 years was forced out of a job for expressing his belief. That belief isn't a flaky one; it may be on the way out, but it isn't something only nutjobs hold.
What's more, it really had zero bearing on his talent or qualifications for the job. Yet California liberals would not tolerate a diversity of opinion.
At least with Mozilla a case can be made there were sound business reasons for ousting Eich. The left-wing at Rutgers University has no such out when it comes to their ugly reaction to the prospect Condeleeza Rice would deliver a commencement speech. It would be impossible to argue Rice isn't deserving of such an honor or that her resume isn't studded with accomplishments and experience that would make her an ideal speaker.
Nope. She's not with the program and thus the left-wing faculty and students at Rutgers wouldn't stand for it. Perhaps Angela Davis is available as a replacement? Good news, she is! She's got a gig on the gender studies department faculty at UCLA.
Apparently, what graduating students entering an economy sputtering at near zero growth (surprisingly!) need to hear is Davis roaring, "democracy needs to be emancipated from capitalism. As long as we inhabit a capitalist democracy, a future of racial equality, gender equality, economic equality will elude us."
Davis is clearly channeling the great successes the world has seen with other systems, such as Communism. Or maybe even a dose of sharia to boost gender equality?
Speaking of useful idiots - and let's do so freely! - NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune music critic Keith Spera had a delicious detail in his review of Bruce Springsteen's Jazzfest show. Tom Morello, the radical left-winger temping for Steven Van Zandt has a hammer-and-sickle "prominently scrawled on his guitar." He could have gone with the swastika, which would have been the equivalent, but then Morello either knows nothing about history or deliberately falsifies it in tune with his censorship absolutist idols.
Still, there it was, right? And who's to say Morello isn't free to express chillingly stupid thoughts with his graffiti? The core of free speech, as a famous liberal once wrote, is "uninhibited, robust and wide-open" debate.
So why is the left so frightened by it and why do its most extreme elements work so hard to curtail it?
I think at least two factors play a role. One is the fear they will lose the debate. Obamacare encapsulates that factor beautifully, given Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts was understood to be the deciding vote against it and thus the Democrats resorted to unusually coarse politics to ram the beast through.
The second is an arguably sincere yet profoundly anti-American and anti-intellectual belief their positions are so correct, so unassailable, that permitting debate retards progress. Although the historical record shows irrefutably such thinking inexorably strangles liberty, this was essentially the position of Morello's totalitarian heroes in the Soviet Union.
What's your take? Post your thoughts in the comment stream below and I'll be here around high noon Thursday to chat about it.