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"When people say, 'I believe in free speech but...,' then they don't believe in free speech," he said. "The whole point about free speech is that it upsets people."

"It's very easy to defend the right of people whom you agree with -- or that you are indifferent to," Rushdie said. "The defense (of free speech) begins when someone says something that you don't like."

That happy ideal is under assault on campus not only by dueling ideas but also by dueling grievances, some of them brought out by newly minted conservatives like Trump.

New York University engineering major Dylan Perera, for example, recently described the horrors on "Fox & Friends" of having a female student "screaming at me, calling me a 'racist' and a 'fascist' " after he said he supports Trump.

"That's not what America is about," Jake Lopez, a Westmont College student and California director of Students for Trump, told a Los Angeles Times reporter. "Mr. Trump, he's single-handedly bringing back freedom of speech. He's enabled students to voice whatever we believe in a thoughtful way."

And sometimes unthoughtful ways, such when Trump called for a temporary halt on the admission of Muslims to this country or when he declared, "I think Islam hates us."

"Donald Trump is what happens when you forget what America is," said Rushdie. Yet as much as he disagrees with what Trump says, he argues that it would be more dangerous to block him from saying it. Indeed, in a regime of free speech, bad ideas should be confronted with better ideas.

Admirably Rushdie has consistently defended freedom of expression even when his own life would appear to be at stake. For example, he campaigned successfully to prevent the British government from banning a libelous Pakistani film about him, because a ban would have made it "the hottest video in town." Instead, the film went virtually unnoticed outside of Pakistan.

That's a good model for those who would like to silence Trump. It's much more satisfying to see the New York billionaire and reality TV star hang himself on his own half-baked and still-evolving version of conservatism. To do otherwise would grant his views the false attractiveness of forbidden fruit.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)

(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.