Dear White People: Don't be Snowflakes
Everybody loves free speech, it seems -- and just about everybody also knows someone who they wish would just hush up.
That's an old saying that I just made up. It came to mind amid some of the protests that have been busting out all over Donald Trump's America.
Back in the 1960s, progressive college students campaigned for free speech. Today we see a new generation of college students and faculty who seem to be campaigning just as passionately to restrict speech -- as long as it is somebody else's.
Conservatives have made hay for decades out of this censoring impulse, especially when they think it is only found on the left.
An exquisite example is provided by Milo Yiannopoulos, author, public speaker and senior editor at the conservative Breitbart news sites.
I almost felt sorry for Yiannopoulos when his speaking engagement sponsored by the College Republicans club at the University of California, Berkeley, was cancelled after peaceful protests turned into a riot.
Police blamed about 150 masked troublemakers out of a crowd of more than 10 times that many peaceful protestors. The university defended Yiannopoulos' right to speak and only shut the event down after violence broke out, he wants you to know.
"The left is absolutely terrified of free speech," Yiannopoulos posted on Facebook after the Berkeley episode, "and will do literally anything to shut it down."
Ah, but not just the left, it turns out. Yiannopoulos, who has gained national infamy -- and suspension from Twitter -- as a snide and profane critic of feminism, Islam, political correctness, "social justice warriors" and other ideologies has now, at long last, encountered some speech that he is eager to muzzle.
He and numerous other fellow travelers right-wing circles are upset by the promotional YouTube trailer of an upcoming Netflix comedy series called "Dear White People."
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