What today's fascists don't understand

Howard Dean thinks "hate speech" is not protected by the First Amendment. A New York University professor was given space in the New York Times to deride the idea of "a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks" and to defend protestors who, using violence, shut down a speech that was to be delivered recently by Charles Murray, the social scientist. A political science professor at Middlebury, the college where Murray was barracked, jostled, and threatened, apologized to the perpetrators for inviting Murray.

Justification of modern, left-wing fascism and spineless capitulation in the face of it is becoming more common. The illiberal tide is rising. This isn't just a thing among wacky rich kids at colleges aren't worth the fees they charge. No, a growing minority on the left argues against the principle of free speech and against the idea of open debate. They use bad law and bad philosophy for their arguments.

They would, without a doubt, gravely regret the consequences if they got their way, for the results would be pernicious.

Ann Coulter, the right-wing provocateur, was invited to speak at the University of California, Berkeley, recently, which infuriated campus militants. Some of them protested and threatened massive disruption, at which the university caved in and canceled Coulter's speech. The censors — they are thought police, the same ilk as book burners — had won. They deployed the threat of violence to silence a voice that disagreed with them.

Former Vermont Governor and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean thought this was just fine. Citing a tasteless Ann Coulter joke about Timothy McVeigh blowing up the New York Times building, Dean wrote on Twitter "Hate speech is not protected by the first amendment."