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Why Do We Put Up With It?

If you were planning to attend conservative Ann Coulter’s speech on the University of California’s Berkeley campus this week, you may want to ask for a refund on the airline tickets. UC officials have canceled the Thursday event.

Republicans at UCB had invited Coulter to speak about illegal immigration. But last week, the Berkeley College Republicans were notified by letter that university officials were canceling the appearance.

Why? “We have been unable to find a safe and suitable venue,” wrote two university officials. “Given current active security threats, it is not possible to assure the event could be held successfully.”

One wonders what their reaction would have been had Angela Davis, who teaches at UC-Santa Cruz, been scheduled to speak at Berkeley but been threatened with protests.

It was at UCB a few weeks ago that masked rioters went on a rampage, smashing windows and commiting other acts of vandalism, to stop a planned speech by another conservative. UCB officials said the same people “planned to target the appearance of Ann Coulter on campus.”

So what? A fair number of people I know would have reacted to the threat by issuing a statement something like this:

“Dear thugs: We let you get away with it earlier this year, but it isn’t going to happen again.

“The Ann Coulter speech will go on as planned. If you show up for it and use violence in an attempt to disrupt it, we will instruct both the campus and city police to arrest you. We will take those masks off your faces, get mug shots of you, and circulate them to every other campus in the country.

“We will ask that prosecutors and judges throw the book at you. As you well know, you are fond of commiting any number of crimes, including some of violence, in attempts to intimidate people with whom you disagree.

“While you are in jail, we will bill you and your parents for the cost of restoring order on campus. We also will investigate to learn what organizations pay for your brutality. We will bill them, too.

“Have a nice day.”

It’ll never happen, of course. And we all know why that is so.

Why do we continue to put up with this — from both the protesters and some in so-called higher education? Is true freedom of speech dead in America?

Myer can be reached at: mmyer@theintelligencer.net.

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