DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Watch The Intellectuals.

I’m not interested in hearing Ann Coulter speak, but I am very, very much interested in fighting the mob culture that seeks to shut down speakers like Ann Coulter, in part by howling curses at, and attempting to humiliate, Americans who are interested in what she has to say.

If you think this is going to stay in Berkeley, you’re mistaken. This mob action might not spread to places outside of the coasts, but here’s what’s going to happen: those young people who join the mobs, they are going to graduate and move into the institutions of American life. They are going to carry their militant illiberalism, including their contempt for free speech and open discourse, into those institutions, and are going to do their damnedest to institutionalize them. One thing I have learned from the past few months spent studying Soviet-bloc communism: watch the intellectual class. It is a very big mistake to think that what they say and do only matters in the shadow of the ivory tower.

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