Nobles and knaves

Nobles: Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith, for being “the type of leader that every new soldier should try to become,” as one soldier described him.

On April 4, President Bush will posthumously bestow the Medal of Honor on Sgt. Smith during a ceremony at the White House. Sgt. Smith, who died April 4, 2003 in Iraq, is credited with saving the lives of 100 soldiers before being killed in action, according to the official Army citation report.

Sgt. Smith was in an engineering unit supporting the 3rd Infantry Division’s advance toward Baghdad in the early stages of the Iraq war. On April 4, while attempting to take Baghdad Airport, Sgt. Smith and his men were pinned down by advancing units of Saddam’s elite Republican Guard.

When his unit was hit by both a rocket-propelled grenade and a mortar, wounding three soldiers, their situation became desperate. “That was when Sgt. Smith made a decision with the gallantry of the Medal of Honor,” said Lt. Col. Thomas Smith, 11th Engineer Battalion commander. “He got in the M-113 [an armored vehicle] … and had [the driver] back up to just the point where he could cover all three of the Republican Guard targets … We know he went through three boxes of ammunition.” While manning the .50-caliber machine gun, Sgt. Smith was fatally wounded. His heroic action allowed his unit to evacuate the wounded men and fortify their position. For being the first soldier in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to receive the nation’s highest military award, Sgt. Smith is the Noble of the week.

Knaves: Liberal college students, who don’t know the first thing about the First Amendment.

While New York Times columnist Paul Krugman could write in all seriousness that “America isn’t yet a place where liberal politicians, and even conservatives who aren’t sufficiently hardline, fear assassination,” as his did on Tuesday, his fellow liberals on campus seem not to be taking much notice. At least so far as it concerns conservatives.

This week saw two instances where liberal students attacked conservatives while giving speeches. The first occurred on Tuesday at Earlham College, where William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, was pelted with a pie while giving a speech on U.S. foreign policy. Then, on Thursday night at Western Michigan University, commentator Patrick Buchanan was splattered in the face with salad dressing. To the left, perhaps, this is funny. To normal people, it’s a display of intolerance.

We await Mr. Krugman’s follow-up column next week warning about the threatening atmosphere for conservatives on college campuses.

For their puerile show of disagreement, these liberal college students are the Knaves of the week.