THE BURDEN OF SIXTIES IDEAS.

One such idea was the distinction between reactionary and revolutionary violence.  The former was never defensible, the latter socially necessary.  Professor Leiter consigns the New Left to the memory hole, yet resurrects the distinction.

At some point these acts of brazen viciousness [scaling back the public sector, to the less aggravated] are going to lead to a renewed philosophical interest in the question of when acts of political violence are morally justified, an issue that has, oddly, not been widely addressed in political philosophy since Locke.

A related idea was that of liberating tolerance, sometimes encountered under the simultaneously pejorative and more accurate rubric of progressive intolerance.

Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left. As to the scope of this tolerance and intolerance: ... it would extend to the stage of action as well as of discussion and propaganda, of deed as well as of word. The traditional criterion of clear and present danger seems no longer adequate to a stage where the whole society is in the situation of the theater audience when somebody cries: 'fire'. It is a situation in which the total catastrophe could be triggered off any moment, not only by a technical error, but also by a rational miscalculation of risks, or by a rash speech of one of the leaders.

Nobody says liberating tolerance any more, but perhaps it has been repackaged (re-framed) as civility. Professor Althouse sees through it.

My tag for the "new civility" has always been "civility bullshit." It was always, obviously, a strategy to control conservatives (while liberals regrouped after the drubbing in the 2010 elections). Now that the Wisconsin protesters have gone so far beyond anything that could be attributed to Tea Partiers or to Sarah Palin maps-with-crosshairs, I suppose the MSM will act as if there never was a new civility movement at all. Suddenly, virulent dissent will be portrayed as noble.

And let me drag Ron Schiller — the punked NPR exec — into this. One of the things he said to the fake would-be donors was: "In my personal opinion, liberals today might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives." I loathe this kind of self-flattery. Everyone thinks his own ideas are good. That's why they're your ideas. But to layer in this self-love: I'm smarter. This is what Leiter is doing too. He's inclined to approve of the impulse toward violence on the left and willing to mobilize the discipline of philosophy to generate rhetoric to support its political goals. It's quite disgusting.

Yes, and goodness gracious, if the Good Ideas of Smart People were that persuasive, there'd be no serious debate about their Correctness.   The conclusion is left to the reader as an exercise.