The incident at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, in which Pat Buchanan was prevented from continuing a speech by being doused with Caesar salad dressing (it was "Caesar Chavez Day" — get it?) continues to throw off emanations and penumbras. Dan Flynn investigates the background of the hysteria campaign launched on the WMU campus which may have played a role inciting the violence.

The post contains a very notable comment thread, in which postings by students and Professor Edith Fisher, accused by College Republican Chairman Matt Hall of assaulting him and urging students to tear down posters promoting the speech, contradict Hall's account of events. The accounts are as different as those presented in Kurosawa's classic film Rashomon.

Whatever the specific facts may be, the postings themselves are quite revealing of the mentalities at work on all sides, including whining that conservatives are themselves responsible for the attacks upon them, because they were provocative and appeared to be racist, sexist, and homophobic, and because (gasp!) they were placed in buildings housing Women's Studies and Africana Studies. How insensitive! Such victims must be protected from seeing anything contradicting their preconceptions. Tsk, tsk.

Of course, there is the no—longer—uncommon phenomenon of a "progressive" thug demanding that conservatives be locked up silenced and forced off the web.

Political thuggery indeed.

Thomas Lifson  4 11 05