NATION: Left isn't right

Hillsdale College recently shared an adapted speech of Kimberley Strassel. She writes a weekly column in The Wall Street Journal.

I felt it was very apropos of what we are witnessing in our country today. Her three children, ages 5, 9 and 12 were arguing with each other until at one point the 5-year-old told the oldest brother to just “shut up.” Mrs. Strassel asked each in turn what free speech meant. The oldest quoted our Constitution and James Madison. The 9-year-old didn’t know what some of the words he used meant, but there should never be a reason or a place where you can’t say anything you want. The 5-year-old, with deep thought said, “Free speech is that you can say what you want — as long as I like it.”

It’s hard to believe that some of our colleges are uprising over who they will permit to address them, going so far as to setting fires, breaking windows and in general destroying property and threatening physical harm to certain people if they should dare come on campus.

We are experiencing shout downs at town hall meetings where no one can be understood and complete disrespect for the office held by the one giving the meeting. One cannot help but see the parallel between those who interrupt meetings, today’s college students who now wear black, and the “Brown Shirts” of Hitler’s Germany before the war.

Are we seeing a true picture of what the left wing in America has come to be?

DALE HEDMAN

Hayden