The Berkeley city council terms U.S. Marine recruiters "uninvited and unwelcome intruders." Such hostile receptions come with the territory of being a Marine. The elected officials voted to give the Code Pink protest group a sound permit and free parking space in front of the Marine recruiting station. "I believe in the Code Pink cause," Berkeley's Mayor Tom Bates announced after the vote. "The Marines don't belong here, they shouldn't have come here, and they should leave." Can't one believe in the Code Pink cause and tolerate the presence of Marines?

I got shouted down and witnessed a book burning of my writings at Berkeley, so I know something about the local intolerance. I joined the Marines from Amherst, Massachusetts, so I know something about signing up for the military in a place largely hostile to it. One thread connects both: freedom of expression. What's so threatening about a guy giving a speech or a Marine talking to a young person about career options? If the speech is bad, disagree or leave. If the Marine is selling snake oil, the potential recruit has the right to turn down the entreaty. It's his life, not Code Pink's. Why do uninterested third parties care so much about the words of others that they go so far as to silence them? A lot paternalistic, no?

Berkeley boasts of being the home of the Free Speech Movement. Back in the 1960s, when Mario Savio histrionically implored fellow students "to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop," it's telling that the words, seldom quoted, that followed were: "Now, no more talking." It's also interesting that two years after Savio uttered those famous words, he was arrested when he, and a number of cohorts, surrounded U.S. navy recruiters in a sucessful attempt to block the servicemen's on-campus recruiting table.

Such tables, manned in 1964 as they were by activists Savio sympathized with, were a catalyst of Savio's red-faced exhortations. When people with a message he disliked manned such tables, Savio's knight-errant of free speech act changed dramatically. As Nat Hentoff put it, "free speech for me, but not for thee."

It is now as it was then: brownshirts masquerading as civil libertarians, hypocrites demanding the rights they deny others.

I attended Berkeley in the mid to late 70s, and the left-winged are rife with hypocrites. For the typical lefty free speech is too dangerous for certain sorts (i.e., those who disagree with us). That they don't see their basic opposition to free speech is breathtaking. And they really don't see it.

Come on. We all know that it's you fascist nazi Conservative Republicans who are intolerent. You just lack an understanding of diversity to get it.

Will be worse when President Clinton/Obama are running things.

Well said, Dan. Would this be considered tolerant intolerance or intolerant tolerance? This hippie rhetoric about open-mindedness, aside from being just plain cliché and boring, is really just another way of saying "Me First!".

It looks like the new book is available for purchase, maybe Berkeley is preparing a good ol' fashioned book burning in your honor. Maybe some day they’ll burn something I’ve published.

I say we burn down Berkeley.

The site has been having some obvious technical difficulties. Although the main page is back, my updates don't appear here yet. I posted, for instance, on Saturday, and it appears in the archives for February 2008, but does not appear on the main site. Hopefully things will be running full speed ahead come Monday.

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nice article

Dan, your site (as you probably now know) was hijacked. I'm also pretty sure that it was the replacement page that gave me several virii and spyware/malware packages. It took me the better part of the day on Sunday to get rid of them all. If anyone else is having trouble, especially with annoying and sometimes disgusting popups, post here and I'll try and help you out. It possible I picked it up somewhere else, as I have been downloading Conan O'Brien shows from Bittorrent, but I really don't think that was it.

This is the first shot I've had at getting any recent access. Friday and Saturday, the url linked me to some senior care website and then I was out of town for a few days so now I assume that's been resolved. Even getting on today there were no new postings. Now, it seems, you're back. Somewhat.