As I drove away from Reagan National Airport on Monday, I heard a report on WMAL radio that a group supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders had tweeted out a congratulations to those who had forced the cancellation of Donald Trump’s speech in Chicago.
The tweet called the cancellation a “great victory” and saluted the “thousands” of people and “dozen” groups that had helped bring about the protest.
By the next day (Tuesday), the “victory” did not look so great.
Willie Geist, a cohost of “Morning Joe,” reported on one poll that said 88 percent of those surveyed said that Mr. Trump had actually been helped by the antics of the anti-Trump demonstrators.
Then Joe Scarborough reported that Mr. Trump had gone up six points in one poll in Florida since the protests.
It is significant to note that no conservatives have protested in such childish ways or done anything to force the cancellation of Clinton or Sanders rallies.
Edward Luce, the top U.S. correspondent for Britain’s Financial Times, wrote a column late last year entitled “The Rise of Liberal Intolerance in America.”
He wrote: “Yet the revival of political correctness on US campuses — and the increasingly shrill tone of much of the intellectual left — tells another story. Instead of championing free speech, the left is trying to shut it down. In the name of diversity, it demands conformity. At stake is the character of US democracy.”
Conservatives have known for many years that those who proclaim their tolerance the loudest are actually some of the most intolerant people in this country.
Censorship of conservative students and speakers has been going on for many years, especially on college campuses.
In September of 1968, I returned to the University of Tennessee after working that summer in the Nixon for President campaign.
The year before, I had written a weekly column on national issues for the UT Daily Beacon as that paper’s token conservative.
Someone sent to me anonymously the minutes of the Issues Committee, the group that controlled student activity fee money in bringing in outside speakers.
That year they had invited several of the then most famous leftists—such as Angela Davis, Nat Hentoff, and Tom Hayden (Jane Fonda’s husband). The most conservative speaker they had invited was the Democratic nominee for President, Hubert Humphrey.
They had listed as possible conservative speakers members of the John Birch Society or Ku Klux Klan.
I wrote a column blasting this blatant bias and listed 15 very respectful conservative speakers such as William F. Buckley, Jack Kemp, Russell Kirk, and others.
Tom Gillem, the Beacon editor, refused to print it, with the very flimsy excuse that he did not feel the column was on national issues.
I then took the column to the editor of the Knoxville Journal, our morning daily newspaper.
He not only printed my column, but surprisingly ran much of it on the front page instead of the editorial page, the next day, a football Saturday when the Journal circulation went up to 82,000, 5,000 more than usual.
Tom Gillem got so mad that he said he was removing me as news editor, taking me off the student government beat, and cutting my column to every other week.
I said, “You’re not, because I quit.” I was working for free anyway. I then went and told the Journal editor what they had done, and he hired me to work fulltime as the Assistant State Editor. The Journal in those days gave nice titles to compensate for low pay.
At any rate, the PC police are stronger now than they were in 1968, and all their guns are currently aimed at Donald Trump.
But people all over the country are sick and tired of political correctness and are especially fed up with the hateful intolerance of the far left.
This is already leading to an astounding Republican turnout in all the primaries this year and I believe will produce a great tide of conservative victories in November.
Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. represents the 2nd District of Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives.