A California high school student is suing his school district for violating his free speech rights. The student, who writes for his school paper, wrote two controversial editorials in which he opposed illegal immigration and argued that minorities were guilty of reverse racism. After the first in the series was published--with the approval of the paper's faculty advisor--students and parents protested. The school capitulated, pulled the remaining issues of the paper, and publicly reprimanded the student: it sent a letter out to all students and parents saying that the editorial "negatively presented immigrants in general and Hispanics in particular" and stressing that it should never have been printed. The student's second article was never published. Now he is suing the school for censoring him: "I just wanted to write about illegal immigrants and was hoping people would read and discuss it," he said. "That's what journalism is about. But they thought it was better to appease the crowd of Latinos than to stand with the fact that they already approved my work. They blamed me, and it caused me to become a target." His lawyer puts the case succinctly, noting that the school district turned "what could have been a lesson about our cherished right to protected speech" into a lesson "about the tyranny of the majority." The result, she notes, "was mob rule. They stifled Andrew's voice because he had an unpopular viewpoint."

Michelle Malkin links the California case to wider cultural pressures not to criticize U.S. immigration policy, noting in particular that even the traditionally protectionist Republican party has yielded to political correctness on this issue. If you can get past the rah-rah Grand-Old-Party-ism of the piece, Malkin has much of value to say. Malkin rightly notes that the student's pointed comments about illegal immigrants were quickly misread and distorted: the school district blamed him for his "negative" presentation of "immigrants in general" and for targeting "Hispanics in particular." She notes, too, that this distorting generalization culminated in the most damning of contemporary epithets: the student was branded a "racist" and castigated for his "ignorance."

Malkin lists a number of recent instances in which Republican officials have "bent over backwards to appease the pro-illegal alien crowd," including New York Governor Pataki's support for legislation that would allow illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition at New York State schools and the recent wave of attacks on Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo's campaign for immigration reform. Malkin doesn't come right out and say it, but her point is pretty clear: policymakers have caved to the pressures of political correctness. Rather than be labelled "racist" or "anti-immigrant," they are both endorsing questionable legislation and distancing themselves from those who dare to criticize the present system.

It's bad enough to see politicians trading in their spines for votes. But that's to be expected. The other point to be made here is much scarier: that schools are training students to base their behavior not on their beliefs but on racial etiquette--on the governing assumption that it is far more important not to offend anyone than it is to air ideas and encourage debate. Media portrayal of Fortuyn's concerns about the danger unassimilated immigrants pose to Holland's liberal culture makes clear what the costs of such opinions are these days. Fortuyn was branded a "racist" and a "fascist." And, having been made into an object in this manner, he was finally shot. In the U.S., we are responding to ideas like Fortuyn's with similarly dangerous anti-intellectual word games. We even teach such tactics in our schools. It's not hard to figure out that in doing so, we are setting ourselves up for disaster.

If our current politicians tend to be gutless crowdpleasers, I can only imagine what our future ones will be like. Raised not to think but to appease, not to debate but to protest, not to respect dissent as the fabric of democracy but rather to demand punishment for those who express unpopular views, not to value informed thought but to cultivate instinctive outrage, today's students are going to make one terrifyingly unprincipled and--dare I say it?--potentially fascistic group of leaders.