Yeah, facts should always matter and feelings should be kept in check. Tell that to the "war on Christmas" crowd. Or the birther crowd. Or the global warming denial crowd.
I'm not really disagreeing with anything you're saying about this particular incident. But I find it rather nauseating to hear it being translated into generalizations about "the left," "liberals" or "democrats." Not only is it apparent that practically no liberal on this entire forum supports what these particular students were doing (speaking of Yale here in particular), but there are way too many problems with denying reality on the right for that to not come across as rank hypocrisy.
The fact is, we're better off now then we were 60 years ago when it comes to tolerance of race, gender and sexual preference. Yet some people take it too far to the point where it becomes stifling. It's tough to find the perfect middle ground between being just vigilant enough and being hyper-vigilant. People tend to run to extremes rather than finding happy mediums. However, from where I sit this extreme is a heck of a lot better than the opposite extreme.
Regardless, conservatives with their tendency to operate on emotion (for example, voting for idiots who they "like" instead of competent candidates) and ignoring facts are causing much greater problems than college campuses being too PC. There are many issues more damaging than this, and conservatives are on the wrong side of too many of them.
On the face of it, sure, but I'm no longer sure that is true. As The Atlantic article points out, this is being institutionalized; future generations are going to grow up knowing nothing else unless this is successfully opposed. And this behavior is most common in places like Yale - places where our future leaders are educated. (Or not, as may be.) Sure, students in community colleges have a lot more sense, but these students will be the ones making and interpreting our laws. Vastly more powerful politicians and federal judges come from places like Yale than from community colleges, and one thing about which virtually every one of these elites is firmly convinced is his/her own superiority to those not so "well educated". If this movement continues its course undiverted, it has the potential to erase everything for which America has stood - free speech, individual liberty, equal rights, self defense, you name it.
You assume that these kids will "grow up" once they hit the real world, but there are two potential problems here. First, if there are enough of them, with enough influence, then the real world will bend to accommodate their way of thinking. Look at slavery - the most powerful people of their time could not keep things the way they were once the people decided otherwise. There is no particular reason this power can only make things better. (Although I would agree it's certainly easier to move society in a better direction because we are all born with an innate sense of decency and fairness.)
Second, those who cannot cope with the real world will return to academia. They will be the ones who get master's and doctorates and thus the teaching and administrative positions, which means they will be the ones who set the rules under which future generations are educated, and their time in the real world will only embitter them and convince them that the real world needs to be changed to accommodate people like themselves. Very, very few people are going to teach that the rules under which they could not compete are the proper way to rule a society.
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