“But he hasn't got anything on,” a little child said. – Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes

“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” – Attributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto after the Pearl Harbor attack.

One of the things you learn if you travel extensively, both at home and abroad, is that Americans are, for the most part, very nice people with a live-and-let-live attitude when it comes to those with different ideas. If you’ve seen Matt Walsh’s Am I Racist?, those moments when polite Americans listen to him spew woke race insanity are representative of Americans as a whole.

That’s a significant reason why leftists have made so many inroads into American culture: They portrayed their dysfunctional ideas (love all Muslims, no matter how violent; love all “transgenders,” no matter how manifestly insane) as “nice.” However, now that the leftist mask is off in a thousand different ways, Americans are awakening to the fundamental, ugly nakedness of leftist ideas, and they may, finally, stop being nice. In other words, we may finally be witnessing the sleeping giant filled with resolve to return to normal American values.

YouTube screen grab (cropped).

I say this because of a story out of the University of Colorado at Boulder. It’s a giant university and, of course, really, really leftist. However, it turns out that, at least in one classroom, both faculty and students are fed up with the pro-Hamas cadre and are no longer willing to give it any quarter, something unimaginable at a public university just a year ago:

A pro-Palestine student group alleges that two students were “violently assaulted” on Wednesday by a professor for interrupting a class at the University of Colorado Boulder.

A video posted on the Buffs for Palestine Instagram page shows edited footage of the incident, which the CU Boulder Police Department is investigating.

For those who have been tired of seeing campuses overtaken by keffiyeh-wearing radicals supporting Hamas, a terrorist organization dedicated to the brutal murder of the Jewish people, the video is refreshing. In the video, you can see shrieking women—it’s always women—express shock that their antics are being checked. Indeed, one of those hysterical women, wearing her little COVID mask, speaks to a very sympathetic local CBS news show to describe the absolute horror of her experience.

If you ignore her drama, what the video actually shows is that terrorist supporters tried to interrupt an educational experience, a form of trespass, and, after repeatedly being asked to leave, were routed, an appropriate response to trespassing. You can see more fully how the whole event played out here, with it very clear that these women were not victims but were, instead, perpetrators:

The university, of course, offered the usual “We’re taking this seriously” response, but it’s not entirely sympathetic to the protestors. It’s worth noting in this regard that the organization behind this classroom appearance, the “Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine,” had already run afoul of CU Boulder in October, when Biden was still president. Think about that—it’s an organization too extreme even for an American college.

The comments to the CBS video are probably not the oozingly sympathetic responses the trespassing women or the female media personalities expected:

“So much for ‘we were going to just leave if asked’. You were told to leave and did not.”

“She needs to be expelled from the school. Stop supporting terrorism”

“Trying to get it to stop?  don’t barge in to interrupt classes.  protest in the public spaces provided at the school.  she is not a victim.  she caused the entire confrontation.”

“Those 3 individuals had no business interrupting the class; then playing the victim card because the professor and students had the courage to stand up to terrorist sympathizers. Not understanding way those individuals faces are being blurred; that's what terrorists do.”

“There are reasonable time & place restrictions on protests & speech for a reason.”

“Just go to class and learn, stop being activists...we are all sick of activism you fools”

“She should be arrested. I am disgusted by these activist students. They have no clue of reality. What is wrong with her? How mad is she had her parents that she has to demonstrate her daddy issues why is she covering her face? If she’s so proud of being an activist this little brat needs to be arrested and suspended from see you immediately. Do not give her any publicity other than her jail time. Stop this now.”

Yes, there were a few pro-protestor comments, but the overwhelming majority were fed up.

The responses to the Denver Post video without any color commentary were no more encouraging:

“What did she expect was going to happen.    Just like hamas ...starts a war and whines when they are dealt with.”

“There are guidelines regarding protesting. Rights are granted to be able to protest (as they should), but you can't just disrupt a class, any more than you can block people from entering a store.”

“so cringe”

I know that this is only one incident, but I also know that courage is contagious, especially when people are allowed to acknowledge reality—which is why I headed this essay with a quotation from “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The American people want to be nice, but when they realize that the “niceness” that’s been sold to them is actually the skinsuit of a vicious ideology (whether leftism or radical Islam)...well, maybe the sleeping giant awakes and leftists will find that their disruptive and often violent protests no longer receive a polite reception.