So perfect, this David Horowitz moment, the blend of agitprop and indignation and intellectual provocation. Why Reparations for Blacks Is a Bad Idea for Blacks and Racist Too. Which, they insisted, was hurtful, and racist, and oppressive. Horowitz's trap was so well laid that its jaws slapped shut before the students realized what had happened. Soon newspapers and liberal writers and civil libertarians across the country were slamming the radicals for political correctness run amok.
Censorship is the weapon of the impotent.
Horowitz is a short cork of tightly wound energy, and his voice trips a bit as he paces the well of the Berkeley auditorium. He's flanked by two broad-shouldered bodyguards. Apparently on this campus some ideas are too dangerous for people to hear. The left is authoritarian, the academy peopled with cowards, the students sheep in service of socialist impulses. You, sir, are a racist and a bigot.