Why does the Left fear free speech? Once again the port-side brown-shirts have tried to shout down a conservative speaker on a college campus. This behavior seems to be pretty much exclusively a tactic of the Left which has swung 180 degrees from it's Berkeley free-speech days in the '60's. Today it's the Left which preaches tolerance of diversity but which cannot tolerate open discussion of opinions which differ from their own. It's the Left which decries hate-speech while constantly practicing it. It's the Left which has attacked campus speakers with pies, shoes, obscenities, and insults throughout the past year. It's primarily the Left which frequently abandons all pretense of civility and courtesy in our public discourse.
They have to do this, perhaps, because they understand that it's the only way they have a chance of prevailing in the struggle of ideas. They realize that their nostrums and policies cannot compete with those of conservatives in an open, polite forum. They intuitively recognize the intellectual blandness and bankruptcy of what they have to offer, so their only hope for success is to suppress the competition. When you don't have a compelling argument you raise your voice and shout down or drown out your opponent. That's the only recourse that the Left has left and every time they resort to it they announce to the world that their ideological cupboard is bare.