Thanks to Deanna for bringing my attention to a story about a young girl’s experiment with the diversity and tolerance that is so touted in America’s liberal elite communities.   In Oak Park, Illinois, a wealth “liberal” community much like my own, a 14 year old public school child, noting how her peers were vocal in their support for Obama, decided to conduct a little experiment:  she wore a McCain shirt to school.  The response she got had absolutely nothing to do with diversity of opinion, and a marketplace of ideas, and everything to do with sheer hatred:

Immediately, Catherine learned she was stupid for wearing a shirt with Republican John McCain‘s name. Not merely stupid. Very stupid.

“People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn’t be wearing it,” Catherine said.

Then it got worse.

“One person told me to go die. It was a lot of dying. A lot of comments about how I should be killed,” Catherine said, of the tolerance in Oak Park.

But students weren’t the only ones surprised that she wore a shirt supporting McCain.

“In one class, I had one teacher say she will not judge me for my choice, but that she was surprised that I supported McCain,” Catherine said.

[snip]

One student suggested that she be put up on a cross for her political beliefs.

“He said, ‘You should be crucifixed.’ It was kind of funny because, I was like, don’t you mean ‘crucified?’ ” Catherine said.

Other entries in her notebook involved suggestions by classmates that she be “burned with her shirt on” for “being a filthy-rich Republican.”

Some said that because she supported McCain, by extension she supported a plan by deranged skinheads to kill Obama before the election. And I thought such politicized logic was confined to American newsrooms. Yet Catherine refused to argue with her peers. She didn’t want to jeopardize her experiment.

“I couldn’t show people really what it was for. I really kind of wanted to laugh because they had no idea what I was doing,” she said.

Only a few times did anyone say anything remotely positive about her McCain shirt. One girl pulled her aside in a corner, out of earshot of other students, and whispered, “I really like your shirt.”

Please read the rest here.

There is nothing “liberal” about liberals.  The old British concept (from which the word sprang) of a loosening of the tight hold a monarchy and aristocracy had on the kingdom, allowing for a freer expression of ideas, is gone.  “Liberal” is now an oxymoronic phrase stuck onto a totalitarian mindset that is filled with hatred of the other.

And it’s no excuse that Catherine received these responses from children.  First, as noted, she got a similar, although less heated, response from a teacher as well.  And second, children learn these responses from the adults in their lives:  from the dinner table conversations in their homes, from the TV they watch, and from the interviews their favorite stars give.

The above is a very frightening story, because it so perfectly illustrates that gaping chasm between the PC, inclusive, tolerant mantra daily chanted on the Left, and the reality of the Left’s approach to American politics.   Those on the Left have armored themselves against, not criticism, but self-reflection, by attaching laudatory words to themselves, and allowing the most foul conduct to exist underneath that loving carapace.

UPDATE:  And here’s an example of a similar kind of “tolerance” at an institution of “higher” education.  Gary Larson has more details, as well as a look at what Annie Grossman’s beating means.