A man dressing up like a woman is one thing...

....but disagree with the sacred tenets of progressivism and you can get labeled a "pervert."

//On other occasions, I was heartened to witness individuals coming out of a different and much more restraining closet when, after honing in on something I’d said, they’d lean forward and whisper cautiously and confidentially, “I’m . . . not a socialist either.”//

Hilarious.

I've had the same experience....as had anyone who has been a conservative in a liberal profession or institution (UCLA Law School, in my case.)

Liberalism - Slogans, not rules.

When did liberals stop liking the presumption of innocence?

First, liberals toss freedom of speech under the bus.

Now, it is presumption of innocence.

What's next? Due process?

Reason’s Robby Soave reviews Polis’ statements and Joe’s apt response:

[Polis said] “It certainly seems reasonable that a school for its own purposes might want to use a preponderance of evidence standard, or even a lower standard. Perhaps a likelihood standard…. If I was running a (private college) I might say, well, even if there is only a 20 or 30 percent chance that it happened, I would want to remove this individual.”

Cohn responded that a burden of proof standard even lower than the preponderance of evidence standard would unquestionably violate students’ due process rights. The preponderance of evidence standard is itself an abridgment of due process unless it is accompanied by balancing factors such as cross-examination, subpoena power, and competent judges and juries, according to Cohn.

Astonishingly, Polis continued down this line of thought:

[“]It seems like we ought to provide more of a legal framework, then, that allows a reasonable likelihood standard or a preponderance of evidence standard. If there are 10 people who have been accused, and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, it seems better to get rid of all 10 people.We’re not talking about depriving them of life or liberty, we’re talking about them being transferred to another university, for crying out loud.”

(Emphasis [Soave’s].) That last line drew applause from the crowd.

As Joe pointed out, students expelled for sexual assault find that the “rapist” label follows them for life, hindering their professional careers and other goals. And many lawmakers are pushing for exactly this result, with legislation designed to make obvious to recipients of a student’s transcript when that student has been punished for (or has an unresolved investigation for) sexual assault. Of course, if the student actually committed the crime, this result is appropriate. But to do as Polis suggests and derail a student’s life because of the mere accusation that he or she might have done something wrong—without a majority of the evidence pointing to his or her guilt, and even with the vast majority pointing to his or herinnocence—is irretrievably incompatible with basic principles of fairness and justice.

The Surveillance Effect.

Apparently, the leftist tactic of sending letters telling voters that they are sending letters about their donations and voting habits to neighbors is happening in Massachusetts.

Also, it appears that such tactics - a tactic of group surveillance used in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia - actually increases voter turnout.

Except, presumably, where someone is identified as a Republican in a Democrat precinct, then not so much.

Glenn Reynolds observes:

Have you noticed that the left’s nightmare is a small town where everybody sees and comments on whatever you do, but they try to turn every place into a small town where everybody sees and comments on whatever you do?

It's "projection."  When people are accusing you of doing something you are not doing, you can rest assured they are doing it.

Here is more on the social science aspect of this kind of invasion of privacy.

More liberal fascism in Wisconsin.

So, now the liberals are attempting to intimidate voters by making their donations public to their neighbors.

A reader emailed me:

I got the same thing on donations about 2 weeks ago (see attached). Ugh

A group of “researchers” using a Harvard University return address (108 Littauer Center – I checked and Harvard has that center.) is sending out campaign contribution information showing one Republican donor (me) and multiple (blinded) Democratic donors. This reeks of intimidation tactics, i.e. “we have your name, etc and we will spotlight you”. They claim this is information from “my neighborhood” – I know I live in a very Republican neighborhood so these names could be pulled from anywhere, e.g. the big UVA Democrat areas several miles from here.

Have others received similar notes? They do it under the guise of “research” but the timing and tone seem very fishy if not illegal. Is this research being funded by “stimulus” funds by the Federal Government? I am sure there are other questions here.

I have not gone to their website for fear of tracking, etc.

I didn’t know what to do with it but your posting encourages me to at least share it with you.

This is dangerous, totalitarian stuff.

More Liberal Fascism...

...if party members don't vote, they will be declared ungood nonpersons. 

Ann Althouse writes about a disturbing letter she got from a leftist political action group:

"We're sending this mailing to you and your neighbors to publicize who does and does not vote."

This is totalitarian-league stuff.

The obvious end game in the failure of public discourse is naked violence.

Making its way through the blogosphere is the story of how Brett Kimberlin, a convicted terrorist and political activist being funded by the likes of Barbra Streisand, George Soros and Teresa Heinz Kerry., has hoodwinked a Maryland judge into arresting a conservative blogger for blogging about Kimberlin's tactics.

Another tactic is called "SWATting" and works by tipping the local police team that a blogger is armed and dangerous in his home, causing the police to send in SWAT, and the blogger to get killed, as happened this weekend with Patrick Frey, aka Paterica.

This is strategy being shaped by the totalitarian left side of the blogosphere naturally.

This is an offense against the habitrs that make free speech possible.

More liberal totalitarianism, but this time it's found among conservatives.

James Taranto stops to actually think about some of the things that Rick Santorum has been saying about contraception - rather than reflexively engaging in knee-jerk condemnation - and finds that while Santorum may be wrong, the points he is making have substance. Taranto also considers why there is such a knee-jerk reaction against Santorum among the center-right and discovers the fact that they are "liberal totalitarians":

Rubin proclaims herself puzzled as to how Santorum can "square" his attitudes toward birth control, on which he would not impose his religious views through legislation, and abortion, on which he would. But Santorum explains that right off the bat: The latter but not the former, in his view, is "the taking of a human life." That's Romney's position too, and the position of every Republican presidential nominee since Reagan.

In the video Rubin scorns, Santorum actually makes an entirely reasonable and fairly sophisticated argument, and he says nothing cringe-worthy. He doesn't appeal to the authority of the church or "family values." He doesn't say that people who fornicate are going to hell or ought to be ashamed of themselves. Nor does he deny that it is prudent for them to use birth control.

What he says is that birth control has greatly expanded sexual freedom, and that sexual freedom has had consequences that are harmful to society and to women in particular. Again, one may disagree whether, on balance, these harms outweighed the benefits. But what is so upsetting about the idea that they might have? What in the world explains Friedersdorf's and Rubin's overwrought emotionalism?

Here's our attempt at an explanation: In liberal metropolises like Los Angeles, Washington and New York (homes of Friedersdorf, Rubin and this columnist, respectively), a high proportion of conservatives have internalized the assumptions of feminism. One of those assumptions is that female sexual freedom, an essential component of sexual equality, is an unadulterated good. Santorum's statements to the contrary challenge this deeply held view.

Furthermore, contemporary feminism is, as we recently argued, a totalitarian ideology, by which we mean one that tolerates no divergence between the personal and the political. If you are not a feminist, you can enjoy a lifestyle of sexual freedom and also take seriously the idea that sexual freedom is bad for society. If you are a feminist, that is a thoughtcrime. Thoughtcrimes are enforced through cognitive dissonance, which produces the departures from rationality that we have seen here from Friedersdorf and, to a lesser extent, from Rubin.

We say "to a lesser extent" because Rubin's bottom line, that Santorum's personal opinions about birth control make him unelectable, is not outlandish and could be true. But to the extent that Friedersdorf and Rubin support that hypothesis, it is by example rather than by logic. That is, if their emotions are typical of those of independent voters in swing states, then Rubin's conclusion is probably correct. But like this columnist, they are members of a rarefied class--media professionals living in highly Democratic areas--so the premise is counterintuitive to say the least.

Totalitarian ideologies sustain themselves in large part through fear, and feminism has been particularly fearsome of late, as the Susan G. Komen ladies and the Catholic bishops can attest. But our intuition is that this is a sign of weakness, not strength. The fearful reactions to Santorum's heresies against sexual freedom reinforce that sense.

This column has its differences with Rick Santorum, but we admire him for his fearlessness in challenging feminist pieties. "One man with courage makes a majority," Andrew Jackson is supposed to have observed. Is Rick Santorum such a man? If not, let's hear a reasoned argument to the contrary.

A "reasoned argument"...now there's an idea.

A "reasoned argument" was all I was looking for from Dude 1, and a "reasoned argument" was the one thing missing from his responses.