...Those who seek to kill ideas are turning up just about everywhere these days....
...A very recent and most appalling example comes from the London School of Economics (LSE) in England. It involves a Marxist student group which calls itself the LSE Class War. In a manifesto it issued in early July, its leadership demanded the dissolution—the outright abolition—of another student group called the Hayek Society. Its “crime” is that it promotes discussion of the ideas of its famous namesake, Nobel Prize-winning economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992).
Ironically, LSE Class War could hardly have found another human being, dead or alive, more committed to the free expression of ideas than F. A. Hayek. He warned against intolerance and censorship on numerous occasions, including in his famous 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom....
...Check out the website of the Hayek Society and you will learn why this student group cannot be tolerated by the other one. It “promotes classical liberalism, libertarianism, and free-market economics among LSE students.” It hosts events, including debates, in the spirit of Hayek’s defense of basic freedoms. In other words, the ideas of the Hayek Society are to LSE Class War what a crucifix is to Dracula. So, in the name of “the people,” “the working class,” “marginalized minorities” and other entities for which it hilariously purports to speak, LSE Class War wants to shut up and shut down the Hayek Society. By inference, they want to erase Hayek and his ideas from discussion. They are, for all intents and purposes, book burners....