Nearly everyone had an opinion about the controversy surrounding SacramentoBee publisher Janis Heaphy’s Dec. 14 commencementremarks. A sample from newspapers across America:

Sacramento News & Review

Ultimately, the audience’s zero-tolerance for acontrary point of view was wrong and an embarrassmentfor our city. Are those people so afraid of words? Arethey so insecure about where our country stands thatthey can’t have someone discuss dangers to ourfreedoms? This is not the time for fear and silence;it’s the time for debate and dialogue.

The San Francisco Chronicle

Look kids, it’s called “commencement,” as incommencing life in the real world–a dangerous world.Part of the danger is these young people’sunquestioning attitude and belief that theirgovernment can do no wrong. Another part of the dangeris that kids just want to be pampered with easyspeech.

The Atlanta Constitution-Journal

As Heaphy learned the hard way, America has entered aperiod when anything that hints of political dissent,even mild dissent, is bound to bring harsh rebukes.For 20 years, conservatives have claimed that thepolitical left had imposed a rigid politicalcorrectness; if that were ever true, conservatives-andeven nervous moderates-have now done just the same.

The Christian Science Monitor

The student’s reaction to what they perceived ascriticism of the government may just reflect thenearness of the terrorist attacks. But it might alsobe a sign of what some analysts see as an emergingtoward a more nationalistic, traditional,conservative, and in some ways, conservative politics.

The New York Times

Christmas break usually leaves the campus ofCalifornia State University (in Sacramento) to roamingroosters and janitors. But the school’s administratorshave been busy all week, fielding questions over anincident last week in which a commencement speaker wasbooed off the stage for calling for the protection ofcivil liberties in the government’s response toterrorism.

The Los Angeles Times

The issues raised by Heaphy are as understood bymost of the audience as they are by Heaphy. Thelisteners reflexively and rightly concluded thatneither law nor custom nor their desire to honor thegraduates required them to sit quietly as subservientschoolchildren while their political judgments wereassailed. The Sacramento audience simply responded tothe ancient maxim, Qui tacet consentire videtur. Theydid not agree sot they were not silent.