Inside the Beltway: Ron Paul disciples take on campus intolerance

NEWS AND OPINION:

The legions of young fans who supported former Texas representative Ron Paul’s quest for the White House in 2012 have reorganized into a 257,000-member activist group called Young Americans for Liberty. They are still ready to rumble, this time to push back against political correctness on the nation’s campuses. The organization launches the Fight for Free Speech campaign on Wednesday to end “unconstitutional speech codes” that have prompted discord between students for months, staging 340 events in all 50 states, including sneak peek showings of “Can We Take a Joke?,” an upcoming film featuring such comedians as Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette that faults the nation’s “addiction to outrage” and its effect on the creative world.

“College campuses are under threat from authoritarian voices that only look to stomp out ideas and viewpoints,” says spokesman C.J. Sailor, who adds that the organization’s aim is the restoration of “the healthy, free flow of ideas.”

The group may face hostility when they arrive on campuses, which include Clemson University, University of California at Berkeley and American University, among many.

Hypersensitive students have their own ideas. A recent Gallup poll found that 69 percent of U.S. college students say campuses should be able to restrict language offensive to “certain groups.” Another 63 percent say campuses should be able to ban the wearing of costumes that stereotype racial or ethnic groups. An earlier Pew Research Center poll also revealed that 40 percent of the age group say “speech offensive to minorities” should be censored by the federal government.

’Illiberal liberalism’

New from Encounter Books: “The Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left” by historian and former Assistant Secretary of State Kim R. Holmes. Liberals, the author points out, were once open-minded. That zeal appears to have evaporated with the rise of “the New Left in the 1960s,” Mr. Holmes writes. The postmodern Left followed, and with it, “a cornucopia of identity theories promising perfect diversity,” and later “the political activism of the universities, including shaming rituals,” Mr. Holmes noted in the book, published Tuesday.

“There is in our culture today a general eagerness to demonize political opponents, but what makes it particularly dangerous is that so much intolerance is practiced by liberals who otherwise claim to be fair and open-minded. This liberal version of intolerance, which I call illiberal liberalism, occupies the commanding heights of American culture and its institutions — the media, our schools and colleges, the entertainment industry, the leadership of American corporations, the establishment political class and even many mainstream churches — threatening the foundations of American governance,” says Mr. Holmes.

Media moment

“Good night, and good luck.”

— Final message from Al Jazeera America, the Qatar-owned news network which went dark Tuesday after broadcasting for three years.

The grass grows greener

The ancient hippies of yore would be speechless over new statistics from New Frontier, an analytics authority that tracks and produces “cannabis market research.” Headquartered in the nation’s capital, the organization deems legal marijuana “one of the fastest growing industries in America with a compound annual growth rate of 31 percent.” Sales are projected to reach $7.1 billion this year.

“By 2020, legal market sales are expected to surpass $22 billion,” says Giadha DeCarcer, CEO of the organization.

The optimism of Ted Cruz

Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz has surveyed the campaign of rival Donald Trump, weighed the equities of a contested GOP convention in July and established his takeaway message.

“I believe we will have an enormous advantage. One of the ways to understand is the simple question: Where do the Marco Rubio and John Kasich delegates go? I think they naturally come to us,” Mr. Cruz told Glenn Beck during a visit to the independent media maven’s studio in Dallas, Texas, on Tuesday.

“They’re not going to go to Donald, particularly when he’s threatening violence and abuse the system. And the amazing thing, you know, there’s a lot of focus on our ground game, and I’m proud of the job our team has done organizing. But it’s important to understand, our staffers couldn’t do this if there was not a grassroots tsunami,” Mr. Cruz noted.

McCaul: Terrorist threat ’increasingly lethal’

The House Homeland Security Committee released a new “European Terror Threat Snapshot” with disquieting news: Over the last year, two new attack plots aimed at Europe and linked to the Islamic State emerge every month. In addition, some 5,000 European Union citizens have traveled to Syria and Iraq; over a 1,000 have returned to just four countries — Britain, France, Germany and Belgium.

“ISIS terror operatives have exploited the largest flow of refugees and migrants since World War II to infiltrate Europe undetected. EU member states reported nearly 2 million instances of illegal border crossings involving around 1 million people last year,” the new report noted.

“The United States and our allies face an increasingly lethal Islamist terror threat. A global jihadist network operating from safe havens is exploiting Western security gaps to orchestrate a widespread terror campaign, particularly in Europe,” warned Rep. Michael McCaul, Texas Republican and committee chairman. “These operatives are also potentially a plane-flight away from our shores.”

Poll du jour

77 percent of Americans can identify the First Amendment; 83 percent of Republicans, 76 percent of independents and 73 percent of Democrats could also identify it.

75 percent overall can identify the Second Amendment; 79 percent of Republicans, 76 percent of independents and 72 percent of Democrats could also identify it.

57 percent overall say the U.S. Constitution has “held up well” as the basis of government; 68 percent of Republicans, 61 percent of independents and 43 percent of Democrats.

28 percent say the U.S. Constitution should be “updated”; 20 percent of Republicans, 23 percent of independents and 41 percent of Democrats.

Source: A YouGov poll of 1,000 U.S. adults conducted April 8-10.

Shouts, weary sighs to jharper@washingtontimes.com.