[American Thinker] This spring, visiting professor Ryszard Legutko was prevented from speaking at Vermont's prestigious Middlebury College due to strident opposition by extremist and intolerant students. This was the second such embarrassment for the college: writer Charles Murray and a Middlebury professor were insulted and assaulted there in 2016.Professor Legutko recently related his perspective on the experience, revealing that the college not only caved to the disruptive and disrespectful students, but legitimized their conduct! Further, the students have set out to proscribe future discourse that might again ignite their sociopathic anarchy.
Last year, our nation's children walked out of high schools to complain about school shootings. Encouraged by teachers and principals, these students proclaimed that they would finally end school violence by effecting changes to national gun laws. Many have praised these optimistic youths; others have condemned them. Both approaches are wrong.
Addressing the rebellion of America's youth in the 1960s, writer Wendell Berry remarked that "this generation is as subject as any other to intelligent scrutiny and judgment, and as deserving of honest criticism. It has received much approbation and condemnation, very little criticism" ("Discipline and Hope," 1970). Mr. Berry argued that the '60s youths correctly criticized their parents' world but that without guidance, they eventually embraced those same values in new forms. Thus, the Flower Children took root in Silicon Valley, where they now grow bald while the military complex and industrial waste flourish.