Washington Times On Leftist Assaults On Speech

I think this sums the matter up nicely, putting the recent rash of attacks on conservative speakers in a larger context.

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.

Violence, of course, should be intolerable no matter who is on the receiving end, and must be rejected by people of goodwill, whatever their political ideology. 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.

And if these attacks do not stop, perhaps the time will arrive where conservative speakers need to give their talks armed -- and ready to act in self-defense against their attackers.