The roles of three Professors in the blogsphere crystallize: Mark Kleiman makes the sharp observation that liberals are better than conservatives about standing up for the free expression of those with whom they disagree. Eugene Volokh writes a thoughtful response from the conservative point of view. And Glenn Reynolds helpfully, if unwittingly, serves as a data point.

Here’s the original story. Honestly, the image of the cow-suited protestor drowned in milk is funny—- but the reaction from Reynolds is lame. “More like this please”, indeed. Same goes for Iain Murray, who provided the original link and “chortles” that “the coming generation… sees through idiotarianism.” Yeah, that’s what we need: more groups of teenagers roaming about assaulting people whom they find ridiculous. We’d all be safer.

Ted Barlow has a good response. Incidentally, I don’t feel the need to ritualistically say “Of course I disagree with PETA.” Just on the basis of historical trends, if you want to predict something that will be thought of as barbaric a few generations down the line—- in much the same way as we think of, say, killing cats for fun as barbaric now, then the industrialized meat production techniques of modern agribusiness would be as good a bet as any.