We all have ourselves a good laugh at what’s happening on campus: shutting down freedom of speech in the name of “starting a conversation.” Deprivation of due process in the name of “justice.”
The application of force — “I need some muscle over here” — in the name of “safe spaces.”
Not everyone has noticed, though, that the Democratic Party is essentially turning into the nationwide equivalent of hysterical college activists.
Everything the campus crazies are doing is part of the M.O. of the leaders of the Democrats, because both groups are essentially driven by the same idea, which is identity politics. If you have a membership card in the in-group — if you’re members of the coalition — ordinary rules of common decency don’t apply. Actions count less than wearing the uniform of Team Progressive.
At the same time, via sheer projection, the left is falsely accusing its current targets of opportunity (say, fraternity brothers, or white people, or men, or Wall Street) of enjoying the “privilege” of acting with the impunity the left reserves for itself.
The Campus Left does its best to shut down discussion — at a November panel to discuss free speech at the William F. Buckley Center at Yale University, unruly student protesters tried to shout down the participants — and so do Bernie Sanders, Bill de Blasio and Hillary Clinton.
Last week Bernie Sanders tried to create a poverty-tourist photo opportunity for himself when he strolled through a Baltimore ghetto seeking the Black Lives Matter vote while bemoaning the conditions there. (Unasked question: Which party, and which political philosophy, has been running Baltimore for the last 50 years?)
At a press conference, his flack asked the reporters to “Stay on topic,” warning them, “Don’t ask about ISIS. It’s not on topic.”
As MSNBC reported, “No one seemed eager to ask about the terror group” in the first place but because Sanders’ camp brought it up, a CNN reporter asked if Sanders was trying to avoid the topic. “You want to ask me about ISIS?” Sanders said, peevishly. “We will talk about ISIS,” he added, then shut down the press conference and left without talking about ISIS.
So, a “free speech” panel where leftist operatives try to prevent anyone from speaking. A press Q&A canceled because someone from the press asks a Q.
Mayor de Blasio’s press conferences have long gone the same way: “That’s not on topic,” reporters are told, if they decline to play their assigned roles in de Blasio’s Progressive Theater.
Hillary Clinton not only declines to take questions from real reporters (as opposed to interviewers from the powder-puff squad), she pens the hacks in herds like cattle. Which is of a piece with her public policy: One of the centerpieces of her campaign is to fight, by constitutional amendment that would neuter the First, the Citizens United decision. That would be the ruling that says it is not OK for the government to ban a film about Hillary Clinton.
Denial of due process? It’s all over campus, in large part thanks to lawless Title IX directives from the Obama administration demolishing the rights of suspects of certain kinds of crimes.
Young men whose lives could be ruined by accusations of sexual misbehavior are being told they can’t hire lawyers, aren’t entitled to publicly respond to their accusers and will be investigated not by law enforcement professionals but by heavily politicized campus committees whose stated aim is to give the benefit of the doubt not (as the law requires) to the accused but to the accusers, who are restyled as “victims.”
Even the basic right not to be assaulted doesn’t apply on campus, as long as a leftist is the one doing the assaulting, as in the case of Melissa Click, University of Missouri professor who shoved someone who was simply trying to film a protest.
It’s as if progressives, from the lowliest campus activist on up, believe in an alternative Constitution, one sprinkled with asterisks.
First Amendment? *Does not apply to anyone whose language makes someone else feel uncomfortable or runs counter to the aims of Democratic politicians. (Unlike the Clinton film at the heart of the ���Citizens United” case, “Fahrenheit 9/11” was not the subject of any proposed government ban.)
Fourteenth Amendment due process rights? *Not applicable to any college male who ever had a sexual encounter with anyone who later regretted it, or for any American placed on a secret “no fly” list.
Political correctness began as a campus joke, evolved into a cultural disease and now is becoming firmly embedded in the law as applied. The left is blasé about this, because to them it’s only the bad and wrong people who are having their rights stripped away. Call it Progressive Privilege.