LIBERAL INTOLERANCE DEPT

The Daily Cal, the University of California’s newspaper ran an apology this morning for running an ad yesterday with the title “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery Is A Bad Idea – And Racist Too.” The editors, caught unawares, responded today by saying that they would like to “formally apologize for the printing of a paid advertisement in yesterday’s edition. The full-page ad … was not condoned by the Senior Editorial Board, but we realize that the ad allowed the Daily Cal to become an inadvertent vehicle for bigotry.” Bigotry? David Horowitz has found what he thinks is the ad. You can read it here. I just did. Although there are plenty of reasons to disagree with the arguments of the ad, I can certainly find no evidence of actual bigotry in it. In fact, it’s generally quite persuasive, impassioned and informed. It specifically opposes the cause of reparations in part because of the blanket, racist assumptions that lie behind it, e.g. that all contemporary “blacks” are somehow victims of slavery and that all contemporary “whites” or “non-blacks” are guilty of participating in it. It says something about the creeping totalitarianism on many campuses today that even raising these issues is to run the risk of being labeled a “bigot.”