How can you even object? Are you pro-trauma? Pro-denialism? You think kids should have their identities denied and be traumatized in the home?

The fear of terrorism — a statistically infinitesimal risk in everyday American life — has caused us to expand the American surveillance state, launch misbegotten wars, consent to the search of everything from library records to our bodily cavities, and generally surrender our liberty. So, too, will a pervasive fear of social danger raise the demand for social control.

It’s hard not to see the mechanism of privilege at work. These students are taking on decades worth of debt, or spending 15 times the median income on their college education — why shouldn’t they demand that adjunct professors and guest speakers not offend them? And as they graduate into the upper echelons of American life, paying the lion’s share of taxes, they’ll demand the same of fellow citizens, too. I pay for these cops, why shouldn’t they tell you what to think? I’m creating a supportive community.