On Wednesday, March 30, William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, was attacked with a pie during his speech on U.S. foreign policy at Earlham College. A week later, Horowitz had a pie thrown in his face at Butler University.

Most recently, Pat Buchanan was attacked by a whacked-out college student while giving a speech. The young thug covered Buchanan's face with salad dressing. He screamed, "Stop the bigotry!" and almost hit him with the bottle. And last February a protester threw his shoe at former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle.

In interviews with NewsMax.com, Buchanan, who characteristically declined to press felony charges against his assailant, took the attack on him philosophically, seeing copy-cat behavior in the series of attacks; Coulter barely suppressed her anger over Arizona's failure to prosecute her attackers, which she says egged other thugs on; and Horowitz saw in the assaults an organized effort by the left to squelch criticism with violence.

Pat Buchanan told NewsMax.com: "I think these folks have read about one, two or three of these incidents and I think there is sort of a monkey-see, monkey-do aspect to it." But he also saw some organization of those behind the salad dressing attack at Western Michigan, saying, "My guess is that there was more than one individual in this thing."

For Ann Coulter, the failure of Pima County authorities to charge her attackers undoubtedly led to the other attacks on conservatives.

"I'm not a victim," she told NewsMax.com in an e-mail. "Neither of the pies hit me and one guy ended up with a broken shoulder and the other with a broken nose. Thank God for vigilante justice because that's the only justice there is in Arizona. All the attacks of the last week came soon after the Pima country prosecutor dropped all charges against my ... assailants, even though the whole attack was on videotape, all over TV, and I offered to fly out for the trial if necessary. I got a notice at the end of March that charges were dropped on March 18 or 19 (Friday). Right-wingers should refuse to speak in Arizona on the grounds that law enforcement refuses to prosecute cowardly thugs who stage sneak attacks on right-wingers."

David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, had just started a lecture at Butler when he was hit. "There's a wave of violence on college campuses, committed by what I'd call fascists opposing conservatives," he told NewsMax.com. "It's one step from that to injury."

He had a point. As the Washington Times recalled in an editorial last Monday, Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was on the verge of a general-election victory in 2002. "About a month before the election, protesters had thrown two cream pies laced with urine in Mr. Fortuyn's face," the Times reported. "The Dutch media dismissed this as non-violent protest. Mr. Fortuyn, however, began expressing fears for his safety. Just a week before the election he was shot to death."

Speaking of his own encounter with pie throwing thugs, Horowitz said, "We don't even know who those students were – or even if they were students. Or whether the incidents involving Bill Kristol were connected.

"I was also streaked at Purdue, which was actually a more frightening experience. I didn't see the guy coming - I saw him running at me late and had no idea what he was going to do. When he got within a foot of my face he was intercepted. He may have been harmless but it tells you that there are pretty intense passions out there. The last night I was there I spoke at Indiana University and there was another crowd of hate-mongers.

"The left is full of hate; that's what drives it. You never know when the line is going to be crossed. I worry about somebody like Ann Coulter, who weighs about 100 pounds, or even myself - I'm getting a little fragile, I've got an artificial hip. I was wearing glasses and the pie went right in my eye area - you could have some serious consequences even if it was just so-called prankster stuff."

Asked if he believed there was an organized effort, Horowitz said, "Yes, no question about it. The point is that the left is a religious fanatic movement. It is classically fascist. It's driven by very intense passions. They don't want conservatives to show their faces on campuses. They have really lost the ability to conduct a rational argument, and this is generally encouraged by the faculties. They're derisory; they make fun of conservative students and they have absolutely no consideration for what it means to be a young person in a university. When they don't do it themselves, they allow the class to do it."

Horowitz, a tireless crusader for free speech on college and university campuses, says that professors either encourage or do nothing to stop students from ridiculing a conservative student rash enough to voice a reasonable opinion in the polite way "that conservatives normally do.

"It's interesting hypocrisy on the part of the left because they've created this elaborate machinery to protect minorities from derision, gays in particular - and they are very sensitive about blacks. Yet they don't want anyone to express even a modest conservative opinion, and they regularly organize these lynch mobs in classes where conservative students are humiliated."

He ascribes this intolerance to "the totalitarian mentality of the left that wants to suppress dissenting opinions. They can't tolerate a single conservative poking their heads up on a college campus and speaking out against their mythologies and their hate-mongering agendas.

"The left is driven by hate. Look at the campaigns against Bush or Tom DeLay - it's all about a witch hunt-find the demons - and the demons are always Christians and conservatives."

And how does the media react to these attacks? They joke about them.

Wrote columnist Michelle Malkin: "These physical attacks targeting conservatives on campus and in the public square are getting more frequent. (See Kristol, Coulter, Perle, Harris, and the conservative kid who got kicked by a left-wing nut professor, for starters.) The left continues to snicker about it. The MSM makes light of it (CBS: 'A Dressing-Down For Pat Buchanan'; NPR: 'What's a little pie in the face?'). And for the most part, college administrators let the thugs get away with it."

The Washington Times also bemoaned the media’s failure to take the attacks seriously. "The media should highlight these cases not as the jokes they are perhaps intended to be, but as unacceptable perversions of the First Amendment. So far, however, the mainstream media has failed to do so."

In case you’re wondering about that salad dressing – Buchanan says he thinks it was Blue Cheese.

Blue state cheese?

Editor's note: