Free Republic

Long before Senator McCarthy enjoyed his hour of disreputable fame, another Joseph had discovered how to deal effectively with political rivals. Not only the inquisitive senator, but every political inquisitor since, has owed a primary debt to Comrade Stalin. It was Stalin’s sinister genius to realize that arguing a case was not the best way to prevail in a dispute. Engaging his opponents on the merits of their critique was not his choice. Instead, he arranged show trials to conflate them with Adolf Hitler and purge them from his party’s ranks. So why should it surprise me when the left-wing...

I have been in many political battles in my life, but never have I encountered an opposition as vicious and dishonest as the opposition to the campaign for academic freedom. This opposition is made up of radical professors who want to enforce political correctness on vulnerable students, the teacher unions who represent them, their subsidized shills in the Democratic Party, and their political friends in the news and editorial rooms of the local and national media. These political forces have been unrelenting in their misrepresentation of the Academic Bill of Rights and their readiness to slander its supporters at the...