The word "liberal" is tossed around at TownHall.com like a synonym for "Nazi," "Communist," or "murderer of small puppies." Ben Shaprio, writing about the "Worst commencement speakers of 2004," trumps up the argument that liberals are everywhere, indoctrinating our children and running down our puppies with steamrollers.

First of all, Shapiro uses fuzzy math to overstate the representation of conservative speakers at college commencements. "At the 50 highest-ranked undergraduate universities (according to U.S. News & World Report), liberals overwhelmingly dominate the list of graduation speakers. Of the 40 universities where commencement-speaker information was available, 29 speakers are politically partisan. Twenty-one of those 29 -- 72 percent -- are liberal," he says. Hang on, now. "72 percent" refers to the percentage of liberals out of partisan speakers, the partisan speakers themselves (29) only representing 72 percent of the total population of colleges for which commencement speakers is available (40). This percentage of liberals is actually 52.5%, not considering the other 10 major colleges for which no commencement speaker information is available. If there is a similar percentage of liberal speakers at the other 10 colleges, then the amount of liberals at all 50 universities could still be 52%. The breakdown of speakers looks like this: liberal, 52.5%; no affiliation, 27.5%; conservative, 20%.

Look at all these "liberal" speakers! Bill Clinton? Why the hell is he delivering a commencement address? What did he ever do for America? Madeline Albright! Lani Guinier! Shapiro refers to Guinier as "Clinton Justice Department nominee Lani Guinier." This qualification is obviously pejorative and means something only to people who agree with Shapiro. Guinier has done much more in her life than be a Clinton Justice Department nominee (that's like introducing Branford Marsalis as "former Tonight Show bandleader Branford Marsalis"). Shaprio remarks, "Strangely, prominent conservative/populist media people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Tony Snow and Bill O'Reilly are not scheduled to speak anywhere." That's because those people have nothing important to say beyond their vitriolic partisan attacks! If Sean Hannity didn't condemn liberals in every speech, he'd have no job. The entire purpose for his being is to vilify liberals. It could be that colleges chose speakers that they felt were successful in life and could deliver an inspiring messages to students. What inspiring message could Rush Limbaugh give? "If you work hard, you too can devote your life to the hatred of an entire class of people based solely on who they vote for." Great parting words. I'm inspired.

Why did colleges choose conservative speakers like George Bush, Colin Powell, and Condoleeza Rice? Because these people have been successful; they have not spent their lives tearing other people down. College commencement speeches are supposed to be inspiring, not platforms for partisan politics. "But on campus, a day -- even graduation day -- without soapbox liberalism is a day without sunshine," writes Shapiro. I'll bet dollars to donuts he went to Google or LexisNexis to get this information, not having listened to a single one of these commencement speeches, liberal or conservative. He has no idea how politically charged these speeches are, and in his own demented mind, there are only two kinds of speech: conservative political speech and liberal political speech. There is no room for non-political speech, and there is no room for any viewpoints other than "conservative" or "liberal." (Looking up Shapiro's biography, I discovered that he's merely a senior at UCLA. I pity the poor guy, who will grow up with these crazy ideas about speech and politics, negating anything non-political, non-partisan, or beautiful that he might ever encounter in his life.)