(Update) The Left Disgraces Itself at The New School

(And these are the clowns the Democratic Party is taking its marching order from.)

I know it will come as a shock that a number of "open-minded progressives" at The New School acted like fools today during Sen. McCain's commencement address. They don't like his views on just about everything -- Iraq, Iran, the War on Terror, abortion, gay marriage, etc. -- and the fact that he spoke at Liberty University the week before. When Sen. McCain spoke at Liberty there were also some in the audience who disagreed with him on some issues. But they listened respectfully to an elected official who had also spent nearly 6 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Such courtesy was evidently in short supply in Greenwich Village.

The National Review's Rich Lowry was at McCain's speech and blogged the following on NRO's Corner:

...shameful performance by The New School student body, but I suppose it could have been worse. Kerrey must be a little embarrassed. He gets up: "For those of you who listened to two speeches...one from McCain...the other from [the student], you saw two acts of bravery." (Actually, it is very bad form to directly attack another speaker in such a forum-but I guess Kerrey feels he can only go so far in defending civility.) Kerrey says, in contrast, that in heckling from the audience, there is "no bravery required." He gets pretty good applause. Asks if when students get older and someone is heckling, laughing or booing them, will they stand up for their beliefs? "Will you stand and say unpopular things?" A loud shout from the back: "You are a war criminal!"

Another: "Let's graduate!"
Posted at 4:36 PM

McCain delivers... [Rich Lowry]

...a beautiful prose poem to America, national service, and civil debate (congrats Mark Salter, as ever), and gets derided for it, of course.

"I supported the war in Iraq." Boos. Explains the war was not for cheap oil. A little heckling: "You're full of it!" Says he thought the "country's interest and values demanded" the war. Someone shouts: "Wrongly!" Someone else: "More poetry!" (A reference to lines from Yeats McCain had quoted earlier.)

He says "whether [the war] was necessary or not...we all should shed a tear" for those who have sacrificed in it. Some hissing.

Shouting.

He eventually enters into a Bushian rift: "All people share the desire to be free"; "human rights are above the state and beyond history"; we are "insisting that all people have the right to be free." Someone shouts: "We're graduating, not voting!" Lots of derisive shouts and laughter and applause.

As McCain continues with a personal story, a student shouts: "It's about my life, not yours." McCain:

"When I was a young man, I thought glory was the highest value..." Groans from the students. "It's not about you!" "Sit down!"

McCain circles back around to the theme of civility: "We are not enemies, we are compatriots..." Boos, shouts. McCain: It "should remain an argument among friends"; we should be "respectful of the goodness in each other." Literally one person applauds.

McCain goes on to tell his story about his reconciliation with an opponent of the Vietnam War: "I had a friend once..." Groans, boos.

He talks about forgiving his friend who dissented from the war. Hostile rumblings from the students.

He says after the reconciliation, he and his friend "worked together for shared ideals." A shout: "We don't share your ideals!" As McCain closes there is a mix of boos and applause, and a few people even stand to clap.
Posted at 4:28 PM

McCain opens... [Rich Lowry]
...with a long riff about the arrogance of youth and how he learned humility as he grew older. He says we have "a noisy contentious society," and that we love "self-expression," but "that passion sometimes overwhelms our civility." (That's you standing with your backs to him in front!) He says he was young he was "quite infatuated with self-expression" and thought he was "so much more eloquent and wiser than anyone I knew." Hard to imagine an opening better suited to, through the subtle art of self-deprecation, make the protestors look like asses.
Posted at 4:08 PM