Edition Two of "let's see what's bitten Janet Albrechtsen". I hope this becomes a regular section. Certainly, there's no shortage of material to draw on - one can have only admiration for her ability to circulate her views despite the cruel censorship meted out by Australia's liberal elite.

Today's opinion does a beautifully executed version of what she's be so vociferously complaining about from "The Left" and its take on the (maybe) War on (something like) Terror(ism). Albrechtsen has been maintaining for some time that any discussion of specific American foreign policies in connection with Islamic terrorism is invalid, since it turns America (the victim) into America (perpetrator of wrongs).

Yet this morning, she explicitly connects violence in the form of shots aimed at a journalist's home to a putative lack of respect for free speech at universities. Shut down dissenting voices, shoot a journo - same thing, same type of people. It ought to be noted that dissent here is defined as "breaking the left-wing uniformity through challenging the anti-West orthodoxy". Robert Manne is apparently an Australian Edward Said, and a major proponent of this thought policing. So it appears that all those campus Stalinists like Robert Manne are journo-shooters.

As analysis, it would serve to keep my chips warm (in its hard-copy format). It's an unworthy, cheap and foolish tirade against perceived opponents. Calling your opponents the licensors of death threats might be free speech; it's not anything like the call to intellectual debate the passing of which she laments. Voltaire vaunted Truth. Albrechtsen has not even the suggestion of evidence, connection or analysis. Freedom of speech is not freedom from critique.