William F. Buckley once observed, the trouble with college sophomores is that they tend to be sophomoric. With that in mind we usually dismiss most follies of youth as the misbehavior of children.It would be tempting to dismiss the actions of a few who vandalized the home of Brandon Henak as childish, even infantile. But Brandon isn't just any other college senior at Marquette University. Brandon is a College Republican, a political blogger, and most recently is the business manager for a new campus publication (and e-zine) The Marquette Warrior. The attack on his home wasn't the random happenings of a rowdy campus, but the deliberate attempt by some to intimidate Brandon into silence.
Events like this happen at colleges across the country but are rarely brought to light by the main stream media. Conservatives in college face intimidation, vandalism and even violence, conservative speakers are regularly shouted down or assaulted, and the free realm of ideas is lost as liberal administrators often turn a blind eye to (or even abet) the actions of the campus totalitarian Left.
So far, one, I repeat one, liberal blogger has condemned the attack, and she is not even a student at Marquette. Not one campus liberal or lefty has offered any sympathy to Brandon, and not one of them has stood for The Marquette Warrior to be free of intimidation by its ideological opponents.
The reaction has been just the opposite, as Professor John McAdams demonstrates on his blog. I think, too, he does the best job of explaining the attack.
What we have here, quite simply, is a culture of intolerance. Campus liberals are so obsessed with their own righteousness that they feel no obligation to be even slightly civil to conservatives.If the perpetrators are found, we'll see if the admistration is willing to stand for free speech or if they sympathize with the egg-throwers. (criminal charges? By District Attorney E. Michael McCann?) In the meantime, if you wish to make a donation please e-mail The Marquette Warrior at editor@thewarrior.org.
Admittedly, the College Democrats we know would not vandalize the house of a conservative student.
But then the average Southern white in 1930 would not lynch a black person, and the average campus leftist in 1968 would not burn a building nor spit on a speaker he disagreed with.
In both cases, however, there was a fundamental intolerance in the culture that allowed these things to happen. It’s not that the majority would do these things. It was that the majority didn’t terribly mind that they were done.
Thus, there is a pervasive view among leftist activists on college campuses that Republicans somehow deserve to be attacked.
