Free Republic

John R. Silber, who died Thursday, was the William Tecumseh Sherman of the culture wars. Given the job in 1971 of reforming Boston University, Silber took few prisoners and won his corner of the war. He stayed the course and personally rebuilt Boston University into a jewel of academia... The rest is well-known history because in his march to revive an academic center in the liberal northeast, Silber became a national lightning rod in the controversies over what came to be called "political correctness." John Silber was not politically correct. And he didn't much care who that upset. He liked...

AMERICANS BELIEVE that for every problem there is a solution. If we think and work hard enough, we believe we can solve every problem. Of course, we also live with the obdurate presence of contingency and uncertainty. We know that too, for we believe in Murphy's Law. But the media assume that this tragedy was avoidable and start blaming: the administrators were negligent despite the fact that their hands were tied. The gun store should never have sold firearms to Seung-Hui Cho. All relevant information concerning mentally ill persons should be known to the police and to gun store operators,...