"Being a left-winger on an elite campus like Middlebury is the most conformist thing imaginable. The anti-Murray protesters were defending a failed status quo against a genuinely radical critic of the system."

Robert Stacy McCain writes in the American Spectator,

...The goons who attacked Charles Murray at Middlebury College probably think of themselves as rebels, defending “diversity” against a fascist enemy, but the truth is the complete opposite. Murray is the real rebel, and the mob who attacked him are the real enemies of diversity. Being a left-winger on an elite campus like Middlebury is the most conformist thing imaginable. The anti-Murray protesters were defending a failed status quo against a genuinely radical critic of the system. Murray is a man who creates controversy because he asks tough questions and follows wherever the facts lead. Does this sound familiar?

...Charles Murray has been looking below the surface for a long time. A native of Iowa whose SAT scores were his ticket to Harvard, he has become a leading critic of the liberal ideology that prevails at his alma mater and other elite universities. Liberalism simply doesn’t help the poor people for whom liberals claim to feel so much sympathy, and liberalism doesn’t help poor white people any more than it helps poor black people. Murray’s 2012 book, Coming Apart, examined the declining fortunes of non-college-educated white Americans. Progressives who talk of “white privilege” simply ignore the data showing that drug abuse and the unraveling of family life (to name two key factors in the persistent problems of black communities) are also associated with socioeconomic decline among working-class whites. Liberals insist that poor blacks are victims of racism, but they have no simple explanation for the problems of poor whites, few of whom ever make it to the Ivy League, or to Middlebury College, for that matter.

Read more here.

The Middlebury College disaster

You have probably heard about what happened recently at Middlebury College in Vermont. Charles Murray gives us his account here.

"These last protestors were masked. If they, and those like them, prevail, they will, one day, be wearing uniforms."

Andrew Stattaford writes at The Corner,

Paul Crookston has already discussed yesterday’s attack on free speech at Middlebury College, but it’s worth adding how it concluded. After Charles Murray had been forced to abandon his speech, he was escorted to a separate room where he was interviewed by Allison Stanger, a Middlebury professor of international politics and economics. The interview was livestreamed. And then, The New York Times reports:

Once the interview began in the second room, protesters swarmed into the hallway, chanting and pulling fire alarms. Still, the interview was completed and officials, including Ms. Stanger, escorted Mr. Murray out the back of the building.

There, several masked protesters, who were believed to be outside agitators, began pushing and shoving Mr. Murray and Ms. Stanger, Mr. Burger [a spokesman for the college] said. “Someone grabbed Allison’s hair and twisted her neck…”

After the two got into a car, Mr. Burger said, protesters pounded on it, rocked it back and forth, and jumped onto the hood. Ms. Stanger later went to a hospital, where she was put in a neck brace.

Appalling, but revealing too. Murray was leaving the campus, and yet the fracas not only continued but also degenerated into outright violence. The ‘justification’ for disrupting his speech was that opinions such as Murray’s should not be given a hearing on campus, but this was something else. Murray was not about to speak, he was about to depart, and yet he and Ms. Stanger were attacked. It was not, apparently, enough to stop Murray from expounding on his views. He had, in addition, to be punished for them, and so (if Stanger’s assailants were doing more than lashing out at anyone in Murray’s vicinity) did an academic who evidently understood the importance of free expression.

These last protestors were masked. If they, and those like them, prevail, they will, one day, be wearing uniforms.

Rebuilding liberty, without permission

Land of the free? Gone. Now we need permission. Can we get back to something like that? Not without systematic civil disobedience!

Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission

In the Washington Post Carlos Lazada reviews Charles Murray's new book "By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission." Murray contends that

an army of federal bureaucrats and administrators has conspired with a corrupt political process to make the United States a near kleptocracy. Murray highlights zoning regulations, employment laws, rules governing professional “best practices” and regulations restricting risky personal activities as just a few unnecessary intrusions against liberty. Because of their economy-wide mandates, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are the three “most visible intruders.”

Read more here.