Tancredo Tanks

The disruption of racist idiot Tom Tancredo’s speech at the University of North Carolina last night strikes me as a significant new development.

Yeah, yeah, free speech, the right of assholes to makes their views known, etc., etc. Don’t bore me. I’m as close to a free-speech absolutist as you can get, but I’ve been around political battles long enough to know that’s not really the point in this case. The Ku Klux Klan has the right to march through Harlem, but it wouldn’t be too smart for them to try to exercise it.

When the heat rises, people’s emotions take over, and shit happens, sometimes including flying mojones (or broken windows, like the one Tancredo’s appearance engendered). Enough people’s lives have been destroyed by the wave of xenophobic hatred unleashed by Tancredo and his nativist followers that the Colorado congressman should be grateful he escaped with his nalgas still attached to his lower back.

Youth for Western Civilization [sic], the UNC student group that invited Tancredo, is busily lamenting the takeover of their meeting hall by barbarian hordes. But the fact is that Tancredo was chased out of town by 200 students and no doubt some ‘outside agitators’ too. I think that means the fury isn’t just on one side of this debate any more—‘bout time.