Thoughts from James Taranto on the hot-house whining from leftists in both academia and journalism, and defense of free speech:

The reason we find Leiter’s comments amusing rather than disgusting is that we, unlike Althouse, are not part of academia and thus have no personal investment in the ideal of disinterested and honest scholarship. Rather than offend our ideals, Leiter reinforces our stereotype of academia as being filled with fools and knaves. You can see why this would bother Althouse, a scholar who does not fit the disparaging stereotype.

Althouse’s emotional reaction to Leiter’s comments is similar to ours when the New York Times publishes blatantly slanted stories on its news pages or outright lies on its opinion pages. Those are our professional standards the Times is transgressing. Some of our readers thought our outrage at the Times naive; we would say that, like Althouse’s disgust with Leiter, it was merely idealistic. It is possible to be knowing without being cynical.

To return to John Benjamin’s letter, we certainly agree that it is better if “foolish, crazy or hostile ideas” do not survive, or at least do not thrive. A good deal of our work is devoted to combating them with the weapons of logic and mockery. As the disgusted Althouse demonstrates, shaming can also be an effective tactic.

Look at Leiter’s defensive updates to his initial blog post. He accuses Althouse of an “inflammatory hatchet job” and us of a “drive-by smear.” He answers by asserting that “I did not, and do not, call for political violence”–technically an accurate statement, as explained above, but a curious claim for him to deny since neither Althouse nor this column ever made it. Leiter wouldn’t be acting like such a crybaby if he weren’t losing this argument.

I think that Harry Truman said something about heat and kitchens.