On Tuesday, my new book for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Rage and the Republic, will be released. It is a book about revolutions, including our own. The book begins with a quote from the French writer Jacques Mallet du Pan, written in 1793: “Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.” History has proven him right over and over again. Today’s revolutionaries often become tomorrow’s reactionaries as the mob turns on its former leaders.
That inexorable pattern will soon play out as Democratic establishment leaders fuel the rage in the streets of cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. A glimpse of this reality was seen this week at Sarah Lawrence College. The college has long pandered to the far left and has virtually purged any conservatives or libertarians from its faculty ranks. Without a conservative to cancel, students set upon liberal columnist Ezra Klein, disrupting his talk, as Cristle Judd, president of Sarah Lawrence College, sat obediently in silence next to him.
After disrupting the event, the students left to carry on their protests outside. What was notable was Klein’s surprise, who (to his credit) remained calm and tried to engage the protesters. Klein attempted to object that he was not a “denier” of alleged atrocities in Gaza. The students were not there for a dialogue but a disruption. They ignored Klein’s efforts to tamp down the rhetoric and yelling.
Judd was entirely useless, remaining a mere pedestrian watching the protest. After the students left, she quipped, “Welcome to Sarah Lawrence College.” There was no pledge to suspend or expel the students: just a shrug and a joke.
I have long argued that universities need to focus on conduct, not speech content. This is conduct. If you disrupt classes or events (rather than protesting outside), you deny the very essence of higher education by preventing others from hearing a diversity of viewpoints.
In fairness to Klein, I am not suggesting that he is leading a mob. Rather, he is an example of how the focus on cancelling conservative figures is unlikely to end there. Sarah Lawrence College is a liberal echo chamber with virtually no conservatives or libertarians to attack. In that environment, the left becomes the target of the far left; the spectrum simply adjusts with no relative reactionaries.
After years of viewpoint intolerance, schools like Yale have finally reached the point where there is not a single faculty member left who donates to the Republican party or candidates.
In 2018, a faculty member who called for greater viewpoint diversity at Sarah Lawrence was the subject of threats and vandalism.
Samuel J. Abrams, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College, wrote about the problem almost ten years ago. His research showed that, while the faculty was overwhelmingly liberal, the administrators were even more so. In his survey of 900 college administrators, he found that liberal staff members outnumber conservative staff members by a 12-to-1 ratio: “A fairly liberal student body is being taught by a very liberal professoriate — and socialized by an incredibly liberal group of administrators.”
That was almost a decade ago.
This does not happen overnight or by accident. It is the result of faculty and administrators replicating their own views while effectively purging their ranks of conservatives or moderates.
When this intellectual cleansing is complete, what remains is a new spectrum and an adjusted political litmus test. That is how a liberal columnist like Klein can become the target of a cancel campaign.
As Klein pleaded, “You have me right here. You can talk to me,” he was missing the point. It is not about dialogue or intellectual exchange. These students have been taught that they do not have to tolerate opposing views on their campuses. Klein was simply next in line.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of the Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Thankfully the echo chamber remains that, if vast, and its values still do not align with sense or reality. The more we can continue to stabilize society again, the more that will be apparent to these folks when they leave the chamber, which for an awful lot of young people will be for the first time in their lives.
Sad how the college experience, which was once associated with expansion of an individual is now thoroughly its opposite, inculcating and cementing a personal, mental prison cell. Matriculate and inculcate!
Many of us have been saying, having watched the trajectory of the dems over the past ten years in specific, that they will either fracture or cease to be. Madness of that level is not sustainable; history shows us time and time again. I hope people snap out of it (really. What will it take for the supposedly ‘sane’ liberals?) and it’s the former and we are not just left with an American party and a rabid communist one when all traces of a true liberal have been erased, and they willingly tossed matches and gasoline on themselves.
Up to 350 Colleges are expected to close in the next decade, many more if demographic and financial problems persist. It couldn’t happen to a nicer group of ideologues.
Unfortunately, this is not limited to colleges professors, staff or students. I have many friends who are seniors who simply refuse to discuss anything positive about Trump. I asked one of them if he thought Trump bombing the Iranian nuclear sites was a good idea. Instead of agreeing or disagreeing he diverted to something else he didn’t like about Trump because he just could not possibly accept that Trump could do anything positive.
Are you sure this is a blog about defending freedom, and not a blog about rationalizing tyranny and oppression?
Yes.
You are correct. The so-called commenters here are a particularly deranged group. No different than the deranged leftists.
This inability to exchange ideas, beliefs etc. will result in a population sector incapable of original thought and bereft of creativity. Already, the k-12 system is broken and children are and will continue to be the victims. The left blames Republicans for ending democracy, but requiring subscription to a single and universal doctrine is the true end of freedom!
Hoping to calm nerves after his government arrested reporters Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, on Friday Donald J. Trump reassured the staff at Fox News Channel that he does not consider them journalists.
“It’s true that I’m engaging in a systematic attack on the First Amendment rights of journalists,” he told the Fox employees. “But obviously none of that applies to you.”
Offering further comfort, Trump added, “I would never have hired Pete Hegseth if I thought he was a journalist.”
In a sentiment widely echoed by his colleagues, “Fox & Friends” co-host Steve Doocy responded, “Mr. President, we weren’t really worried.”
At the White House, press secretary Karoline Leavitt revealed that Trump had sent a similar message of reassurance to CBS News chief Bari Weiss.
It’s early in the day, stick to the topic.
Actually this is kinda fun to watch them devour themselves. Now you not only have to be against something, you have to put your loyalty to the cause on full display in even more and more over the top performance! That mob in Minneapolis who mistaken some IT guys having lunch for ICE LEOs, the mob demanded the ITs say “F— ICE!” When they did not, one woman declared, “If you are not with us, you are against us!”
Leftists, the far-leftists are coming for you! Better get you hair dyed blue or they will declare you to be a pro-ICE, Trump, fascist!! 😉
Stupid comment. Come back when you can write coherently.
💯 👍
“virtually no conservatives or libertarians to attack. In that environment, the left becomes the target of the far left; ”
French Revolution
You’re quoting. Who? French revolution? No such quote ever existence. Fraud.
Try reading the article before commenting. If you did you’d know he’s quoting the article and saying the quote also applies to the French Revolution. But you were too lazy even to do that. You just reacted without even thinking, so you are the fraud in this situation. Frauds like you usually post anonymously.
“Frauds like you?” And you’re not anonymous? Then I say, you are a particularly stupid creature. As you always prove.
You are such an idiot. The quote is a reference and was written by Turley above. Thank you for telling us you cannot and don’t read. You are a troll.
I do hope the first act of cannibalism will be the mayor of NYC. I stab at, not only, socialism/communism-lite, but also at islamists who think that they are on their way to creating the American Caliphate. I doubt if the “true believers” in islam or those suffering TDS will recognize the change but perhaps all the squishy middle that waffles around will recognize the signs of impossible-to-fulfil promises and the rage that accompanies such failure to deliver to angry mobs with nothing to lose.
Someone is full of hate this morning. Liberal-derangement-syndrome?
It was the CLIMATE that had this same crowd blocking streets, screeching at everyone and throwing paint on works of art, then it grew in intensity because Trump was back in office and the Jews were involved and so it was Israel’s “genocide” that was the end of the world and so they needed to block streets, chant, whistle and attack places where Jews might congregate.
In between the CLIMATE and my points to follow we had the riots for race in 2020 when they “allowed” folks to go out in mobs while forcing you to abandon sick parents and grandparents while keeping your kids out of schools. Of course this worked twofold for the left, it hurt Trump and it harmed the nation.
Of course as the fighting part of the Israel-Hamas war’s actions stopped and Israel actually forced Hamas to a ceasefire (thanks to Trump not forcing them to stop as Biden always did) the same crowd had to find a new target. Enter Tesla and Elon Musk and the crowd destroyed dealerships and attacked the cars of fellow liberals just because they were Tesla’s.
Well Elon new what to do and he left the public sphere and the same crowd needed a new target for their Two Minutes of Hate and enter ICE. Now it is blocking streets, blowing whistles and making their newest demands. Note how the demands always, and I mean always, do harm to America and/or the west. They never protest China. They haven’t said a peep about Iran killing 30,000 of their own citizens and they never tweet, comment or protest when an illegal kills an American woman.
Follow the money and it will lead back to anti-American operatives and eventually even China. This is how we had the anti-nuke nuts in the 80s when it was the Soviets that backed these loons. It is always our enemy in conjunction with our very own self hating Americans, like professors, the media and leftist Hollywood types, that cause these eruptions that harm our nation.
. Funny how that lock-down created a need for mail in ballots. Funny how things just work out like that.
What a heap of nonsensical BS.
Please rebut what you think I got wrong with facts and or counterpoints. Otherwise you are just another anonymous waste of everyone’s time.
“This is what Fascism looks like!” There is no less tolerant group than leftwing Fascists.
A judge ordered Don Lemon released on his own recognizance after he was indicted for interfering with a religious service during an ICE protest in Minnesota.
The judge also denied the government’s request for a $100,000 bond and refused to restrict his travel.
Just like all the other high profile indictments brought by Bottle Blonde Bondi, this case is going nowhere !!!!!
Let’s see how the trial goes
Traumatized children will be among the witnesses who present the evidence.
Sarah Lawrence is a private institution. If they wish to submit to cultural Marxism I support their right to do so. However, why do the rest of us have to fund them, though tax exemptions, scholarships, and grants? The original idea was that private institutions of higher learning, such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and, yes, Sarah Lawrence, were providing a public good, a liberal education. Does anyone still believe that?
Let George Soros and his ilk fund them. They can’t get any worse.
. Qatar
Klien was presenting himself as a more moderate leftest after his book “Abundance.” Of late he as been agreeing with extreme leftests on his podcast. Almost like he was getting messages he was no longer allowed in the tent.
Yet another example of what happens when adults abdicating their responsibilities to teach!
The true adults are not welcome to teach. Those within the current academic faculty ARE teaching just what they believe in. These current faculties are full of angry outliers and the generation coached on the fumes of old hippy utopianism/communism and racial justice ideology. They are quite happy believing that they are completing the mission of the likes of Howard Zinn and Saul Alinsky and G-d only knows how many more crackpots that I have resisted reading. The abdication came with the voters who elected enough far left types since post WWII to saturate our media/education industry with this egregious ideology. Women voters tend to vote with their emotions, rather than logic, and this explains how America has wandered away from its original vision and into the softer, illogical era of hope utopianism/bleeding heart radicalism.
Pray tell, what is a “true adult”? Anything like the delusional geriatrics populating this place?
If you have to ask, then you are not one…