“Obviously intent on emulating the political intolerance that typified the nihilistic academic activism of the late 1960s,” write the editors of the New York Post, “students and faculty at Columbia University and the New School are demanding that Sen. John McCain be disinvited from campus speaking gigs…Now, it seems, it’s become taboo even to listen to McCain speak–the First Amendment not being part of the New School’s ‘progressive social values.’”

Compare this mentality to Ortega y Gasset’s description of the “’reason of unreason’” which characterized the rising fascist mindset in the 1930’s:

[T]here appears…a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions. This is the new thing: the right not to be reasonable…[the] detestation…of…objective standards…This means …a renunciation of the common life based on culture which is subject to standards, and a return to the common life of barbarism.

Eerie stuff, these outbreaks of elites eschewing both rational dialogue and the logical defense of their opinions.