By Ron Unz
The Unz Review
May 7, 2024
I think the striking events we have witnessed in American society over the last few months-and especially the last few days-are best understood if we consider a shrewd observation widely misattributed to Voltaire:
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who are not allowed to criticize.
From the years of my childhood I'd always been aware that political activism and protests were a regular feature of college life, with the 1960s movement against our Vietnam War representing one of its peaks, an effort widely lauded in our later textbooks and media accounts for its heroic idealism.