Just another protest event for the oh-so-tolerant left.

I know leftists will be quick to dismiss this as nothing more than a group of rowdy protesters getting carried away, but variations on the incident linked above have been instigated by the left over and over again for the last several years.  Right-leaning speakers and pundits like Ann Coulter, David Horowitz and Pat Buchanan are routinely attacked by lefists at universities who engage in childish antics like throwing pies in the faces of these speakers and shouting or playing music loudly so that they can’t be heard.  Recently at Columbia University a group of students attacked the founder of the anti-illegal immigration Minutemen group to stop him from speaking after he was invited there by the local chapter of the College Republicans.

How on earth can anyone justify this kind of behavior?  Do we not live in a free society where the right to free speech is protected by the 1st amendment?  Shouldn’t we, as a civilized society, be promoting a level of discourse that at least allows people like Coulter to express their ideas in front of an audience without being shouted down?  I think we should, but the left obviously doesn’t feel that way.

And make no mistake that it is pretty much the left, and the left alone, engaging in this sort of thuggery.  There may be isolated incidents of right-wing activists trying to silence left-wing speakers or activists, but it certainly isn’t happening in the same scope or with the same frequency as it is on the left.

Throughout history totalitarian regimes have been propped up by partisan stalwarts who used physical intimidation and other tactics to silence critics of their masters.  Down in Venezuela today Hugo Chavez’s regime is protected by people who use beatings and other types of thug tactics to silence critics of that socialist government.  Perhaps it is telling, then, that while Chavez was in America recently he received standing ovations from union activists and college professors, many of whom also organize the attacks on right-wing speakers and politicians described above.

This a major problem for the political left.  It is a growing cancer within their political movement.  It’s is un-American, yet no one on the left seems willing to speak out against it.