Sometimes a confluence of seemingly unrelated ideas offer great clarity regarding the current state of the nation. In this particular case, a column, a comment by a friend, a book, and a conference underscore a disturbing reality best described by the late, great Ronald Reagan. “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

The column was by Charles Krauthammer. “Two months ago, a petition bearing more than 110,000 signatures was delivered to the Washington Post demanding a ban on any article questioning global warming,” Krauthammer wrote. “The petition arrived the day before publication of my column, which consisted of precisely that heresy. The column ran as usual. But I was gratified by the show of intolerance because it perfectly illustrated my argument that the Left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation – no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition. The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian.”

The last two weeks have been banner ones for the new totalitarians. There was the firing of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich for daring to support California’s Prop 8, which stated that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California,” despite the reality that six million California voters – and President Obama – all supported the same idea at the time. There was the recision of an honorary degree by Brandies University that was to be awarded to women’s rights champion Ayaan Hirsi Ali, despite the reality that the same Jewish-sponsored university awarded honorary degrees to anti-Israel playwright Tony Kushner, and virulent anti-Semite Desmond Tutu. And then there was the faculty-led attempt at Rutgers University to disinvite former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from speaking at their commencement as well. Rutgers-Newark English and American Studies Professor H. Bruce Franklin illuminated his colleagues’ twisted worldview. “This is not good for Rutgers,” he contended. "What we’re doing is awarding an honorary degree and having a commencement speech from someone who is a war criminal.“

Krauthammer summed up this thuggery quite nicely. "What’s at play is sheer ideological prejudice – and the enforcement of the new totalitarian norm that declares, unilaterally, certain issues to be closed.”

Which brings me to the comment by a friend. “(The American left) is just waiting for our generation to die off,” he said. “After that they’ll be in total control, because young Americans have no idea what freedom and liberty are all about." 

That’s a damnable indictment of younger Americans – which brings me to the book, ”Unlearning Liberty“ by Greg Lukianoff. Lukianoff has documented the contemptible effort by America’s universities to firmly establish the idea – first acquired by most students, courtesy of an equally contemptible effort in the nation’s public schools – that the First Amendment’s protection of free speech can be trumped by one-overiding idea:

The "right” not to be offended.

“You can’t fully understand what lessons colleges are teaching students about living in a free society without knowing what students have learned before they set foot on campus,” writes Lukianoff. “The news isn’t good.” He cites a 2004 survey of 100,000 high school students by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, revealing that 73 percent “either felt ambivalent about the First Amendment or took for granted.” Another trio of surveys are equally disturbing. One conducted in 2009 by the First Amendment Center revealed that 39 percent of Americans couldn’t name a single right protected by the First Amendment. A 2010 online survey by the Bill of Rights Institute revealed the 42 percent of Americans believe Karl Marx’s maxim, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” is contained in America’s founding documents. And another large-scale study revealed that less than 25 percent of 12th graders have “a decent understanding of our system of government.”

Yet all of that pales in comparison to what these naifs experience in college. Aside from the well-documented speech codes, all of which center around the aforementioned right not to be offended, most Americans are probably unaware many schools now hold “orientation sessions.” These sessions are nothing more than a blatant attempt to intimidate students into embracing progressive ideology, lest they be faced with shame, ridicule, and in some cases the threat of expulsion, if they dare to resist. Lukianoff documents one case where a resident advisor (RA) presented a student with a questionnaire about what races or sexes he would date. When the student told the RA to mind his own business, he was “written up” and forced to take part in “Student Accountability Training.” It was conducted by a 20-something “accountability facilitator” who handed the student a worksheet where he was expected to document his wrongdoing. The trainer also referenced the “Power and Control Wheel,” which is nothing less than a diagram outlining how one’s First Amendment rights will be officially suppressed on college campuses.

Yet perhaps the most disgusting aspect of all regards sensitivity training with regard to race. A mandatory training session for RAs at the University of Delaware included material introduced by racial justice “educator” Shakti Butler. Her definition of “racist?” Try this:

“A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have to the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities, or acts of discrimination.”

And just in case you wondered, she’s got “reverse racism” covered as well:

“A term created and used by white people to deny their white privilege. Those in denial use the term reverse racism to refer to hostile behavior by people of color toward whites, and to affirmative action policies, which allegedly give ‘preferential treatment’ to people of color over whites. In the U.S. there is no such thing as ‘reverse racism.’”

Which brings us to our conference, namely the one sponsored by shameless race hustler (and now, apparently FBI informant as well) Al Sharpton and his National Action Network (NAN). For those who might have forgotten Sharpton’s execrable track record, a quick refresher course. 

Al’s descent into hell began in 1987 with the Tawana Brawley race hoax, where he not only perpetrated that lie, but proceeded to contend that local prosecutor Steven Pagones “had kidnapped, abused and raped” Brawley on “33 separate occasions.” The case was declared a hoax by a grand jury, and ten years later, Pagones successfully sued Sharpton, winning $65,000.

In 1991, after a 7-year-old black youngster named Gavin Cato was run over and killed by a driver in a Hasidic Jewish rabbi’s entourage in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, Sharpton was at it again. Even as the neighborhood was erupting in race violence, Sharpton engaged in an anti-Semitic rant, comparing Crown Heights to segregationist South Africa. “The world will tell us he was killed by accident. Yes, it was a social accident…It’s an accident to allow an apartheid ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights…Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid…All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no kaffe klatsch, no skinnin’ and grinnin’. Pay for your deeds.”

In 1995, Sharpton organized a picket in front of Jewish-owned Freddies’ Fashion mart because the owner, Fred Harari, terminated a sublease agreement he had with a black tenant, Sikhulu Shange, who owned The Record Shack. Harari himself was a tenant who leased the space from the real landlord, the United House of Prayer for All People, a black Pentecostal church. The church used Harari to evict Shange instead of doing it themselves. 

Sharpton ignored this inconvenient reality when he spoke on radio station WWRL on September 9, 1995. “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother, so that some white interloper can expand his business on 125th Street,” he told listeners. “And we’re asking the Buy Black Committee to go down there, and I’m gonna go down there, and do what is necessary to let them know that we are not turnin’ 125th Street back over to outsiders as it was done in the early part of this century.”

Shortly thereafter Roland J. Smith, aka Abubunde Mulocko, entered the store, ordered all black customers out, shot four people and set the place on fire before killing himself. Eight people died.

In addition, there are sound bytes available in which Sharpton refers to former New York Mayor David Dinkins as as a person who wants to be the “only n—er in the newspaper, the only n—er on television…” as well as one from a speech at Kean College in NJ in 1994, where Sharpton disparages “Chinamen” and “Koreans selling us watermelon.” And who can forget Sharpton’s tireless effort to fan the flames of the racial divide with the Trayvon Martin case, even as MSNBC gave him a platform to spew his hate on a nightly basis.

So who shows up to honor this despicable huckster? None other than President Barack Obama and his equally polarizing Attorney General, Eric Holder.

That reality, in and of itself, is utterly disgraceful. But both men outdid themselves with their speeches. Holder proceeded to play the race card, characterizing himself as a “victim,” incensed by the treatment he received at the hands of Reps. Louis Gohmert (R-TX) and Steven King (R-IA), both of whom had the temerity to suggest – citing several examples in the process – that Holder runs the most partisan and divisive Department of Justice in recent memory. 

As bad as Holder was, Obama was worse. “The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago,” he contended. “Across the country Republicans have led efforts to pass laws making it harder, not easier for people to vote." 

And how have those "evil” Republicans done that? By passing laws requiring a picture ID to vote. The same kind of laws supported by nearly 75 percent of the nation, along with a 6-3 Supreme Court decision in 2008 verifying the constitutionality of such for state of Indiana. As part of the ruling, leftist Justice John Paul Stevens cited historical examples of vote fraud. The same vote fraud Democrats insist doesn’t exist.

Let me be clear: there is no intellectual argument of any shape or form that can de-legitimize protecting the integrity of the vote, which is why Democrats and their allies never use one. Furthermore, the only racism involved here is the reality that those same leftists – led by the president himself – believe a particular group of Americans is inherently incapable of procuring such ID.

All of the above is part of an effort, not to delegitimize the vote, but to delegitimize reason in favor of emotion. Why? Because reason, and the intellectual rigor that undergirds it, represents the ultimate stumbling block for progressives and their totalitarian impulses. Ergo, the twin efforts outlined here to suppress anything that does not accrue to progressive ideology, even as those same progressives seek to jack up division among Americans by appealing to raw emotion. Suppression and emotionalism that stands an ever greater chance of succeeding, as legions of younger Americans become indoctrinated rather than educated, in both public school and college.

Lastly, a prediction: bet your life that today’s racist becomes tomorrow’s misogynist when Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign ramps up in earnest. The same Democrats and their media allies will greatly expand the “War on Women” motif for the express purpose of suppressing as much of Clinton’s miserable track record as humanly possible.

Sadly, those who champion the right not to be offended will be applauding, every step of the way.

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