This year marked the 40th anniversary of the infamous “summer of love". Its spiritual center was the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, where tens of thousands of young men and women came to “turn on, tune in and drop out”. The music was about love and peace, the drugs were hallucinogenic and the sex was plentiful and (mostly) free. The summer of 1967 in San Francisco represented a total rejection of the establishment and its rules; it was a perfect statement about the 1960s generation which wanted to give the proverbial finger to authority. It was the ultimate multi-cultural orgy.

Unfortunately, San Francisco now embraces it’s hippie past in name only, for it is now clear that the city has abandoned any pretension to openness and tolerance – unless, of course, you hoe to an orthodox line that is anti-business, anti-military and anti-Christian. Over the past several years the city has declared itself to be officially a “military-free” zone, denying the rights of military recruiters to come onto city campuses, rejecting the plan to use the famed WW II battleship USS Iowa as a floating museum and, most recently, preventing the U.S. Marine Corps from shooting a commercial on California Street downtown. Such rejections are ironic and sad, as the city’s military tradition prior to the 1960s was a proud one; many a returning soldier and sailor from the Pacific in World War II, Korea and Vietnam saw the Golden Gate as their first glimpse of home.

It wouldn't be a heroes' welcome today. Sadly, San Francisco is now the epicenter of what I call a “new left fascism” – a total subjugation of individual thought in favor of a “progressive” ideology that supposedly speaks for everyone. It is intolerant of diverse viewpoints and opinion, even as it celebrates the concept of diverse ethnicities, backgrounds and lifestyles. It is anti-free speech even as it purports to support the first amendment. It is fueled by political correctness and an elite media that squelches debate that does not fit into well defined parameters. It has infected our academic institutions to the point that open debate is not only discouraged but often prevented. And it rejects the notion that service to our country is noble and honorable -- believing instead that the military has no place in the world in which they live.

Examples of the new left fascism are everywhere and pervade every area of serious debate in this country. One typical example: UC Davis was forced by a group of women faculty to rescind a speaking invitation to Larry Summers – the former president of Harvard who was himself drummed out of the Ivy League for daring (!) to raise the possibility that men and women are biologically different (imagine that!), and that those differences might lead them to make different choices in their career path. Summers dared to question the prevailing feminist viewpoint in academia, and for that he was dismissed like a wayward child. At UC Davis, the administration replaced Summers with the august Susan Kennedy, former staffer for Gray Davis and the current governor’s (Democrat) chief of staff. Presumably, Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff has more enlightening (or politically correct) things to say then the former Treasury Secretary and award-winning economist.

Unfortunately, such obvious intellectual bias isn’t limited to academia. Go to the liberal blogosphere and you will find no limit to the character assassination and defamation of those who dare to think for themselves. The Daily Kos and Moveon.org have been methodical in their quest to ensure that the whole of the Democrat party marches in lock-step to their opposition to the Iraq War and anything that is even remotely “Bush”. There is no room in the “big tent” of the new Democrat party for diversity of opinion and views. Just ask Joe Lieberman. The reality now is that honest, open debate is no longer possible among the left, who have exchanged democracy for orthodoxy.

What explains this? My theory is that because liberalism is based principally on emotion, it is impossible for those so convinced of the correctness of their views to entertain the notion that they might be wrong. It goes to the heart of what they believe – not just what they think. That’s why facts that might call into question core beliefs are summarily dismissed – usually in a smokescreen of personal attacks related to racism, bigotry or stupidity.

It happened to Larry Summers at Harvard – and it can happen to anyone who dares to believe that the world isn’t flat, after all.