Today’s illiberal ‘liberals’

The word “liberal” is spoken with a sneer these days. Especially when conservatives say it. So tainted has the label become that liberals themselves now insist on the term “progressive.”

But sneered-at “liberals” aren’t really liberals at all anymore. Liberalism for many years now has been trending toward the illiberal. The trend is illustrated by the transformation of the venerable American Civil Liberties Union. It was originally a free-speech organization and a fearless, uncompromising one at that. Much less so nowadays. This former champion of the First Amendment has “rethought” its position. It has now cracked the door open for censorious actions against “hate speech.”

Hate speech is an elastic term. It can be stretched to cover any speech of which you happen to disapprove. It can serve as a handy cudgel to suppress dissent or enforce orthodox views. The rethinking moves the ACLU into a closer alliance with such mislabeled “civil rights” organizations — actually hack pressure groups — as the Southern Poverty Law Center and Council on American Islamic Relations. Together, they and other self-appointed monitors of correct dogma constitute a threatening piranha swarm, one that could reduce the First Amendment to skeletal remains in no time at all.

Sour-puss, finger-wagging “Enid Stricts” — illiberal liberal Church Ladies — are everywhere. Like Taliban clerics, they scour the public square looking for, finding and erasing all traces of the devil and his politically incorrect works.

The menacing trend is most evident on university campuses, bastions of today’s illiberal liberalism. There the Savanarolas rule over a Bonfire of the Liberal Vanities. They scorn the things academia once proclaimed as its credo. Diversity of thought, for example. And due process. They demand instead “trial” by mob and punishment