Rage Against the Outrage Machine

Article here. Excerpt:

'The scene is familiar to every soccer fan: An aggressive defender slightly bumps a striker, who reacts as if struck by a taser's barb. His arms flail. His legs crumple beneath him. He writhes on the turf, grabbing at indeterminate pain. And then, once the ref either does or does not call a penalty, he pops up, unharmed as ever, and plays on.

The Internet too often resembles that scene. Every week, a fraught subject is broached, usually imperfectly. Perhaps a wrongheaded or offensive claim is made. Plenty of thoughtful people offer smart, plausible rebuttals. But they're overshadowed by distortionists with practiced performances of exaggerated outrage. The object isn't a fair debate—it's to get the other guy ejected.

Last week, George Will was the focus of the umbrage-takers. His June 6 column, "Colleges become the victims of progressivism," isn't without flaws. The worst of them may deserve a yellow card for a careless, overaggressive tackling maneuver. But only by misrepresenting Will's argument can his least responsible critics insist that, after four decades and thousands of columns in the Washington Post, he ought to be fired from his twice-weekly perch for these 753 words.

The column is about higher education. Universities are learning "that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous ('micro-aggressions,' often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate," Will argues. "And academia’s progressivism has rendered it intellectually defenseless now that progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, has decided it is academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle."'