A wonderful, thought provoking, and timely article at Marginal Revolution about forced liberal reeducation:

At first, the U.S. POW camps for captured Germans were dominated by Nazi's who threatened and even killed anti-Nazi "traitors." But as American thoughts turned to the post World-War II era the camps were cleaned up and a reeducation plan was begun. In other countries, this might have been a euphemism for torture and forced labor but in the U.S. camps it meant libraries filled with books that the Nazi's had banned and open discussion sessions led by professors from Harvard, Brown, Cornell and elsewhere. The story is told in The Washington Post Magazine article, Learning Freedom in Captivity.

Go read Alex's entire post - it's pretty short!  His excerpted blibbet about the Austrian who read Hayek's Road to Serfdom in camp practically brings a tear to my eye.   I had a couple of reactions to the article -

One of the core things that our cultural relativists forget is that even a doctrine of tolerance requires tenets about which you are fundamentally intolerant.   Tarrabok is amused by the irony that American Reeducation Camps for the Germans had copies of Road to Serfdom - a modern masterpiece in the defense of Liberty and free association.   But I'm more at peace with the fact that a culture of Free Speech, for example, requires rather vigorous persecution (not necessarily by law - more often by social convention) of those who threaten it.  Free Trade must be pursued despite the vigorous opposition of those displaced.  And so on...

The broader truth is that conflict in the name of tolerance - ironic as it may sound - has been a fact of cultural and military life.  Many of us forget this because we are great-great-great grandchildren of previous "battles for tolerance" of the European enlightenment.   Our intellectual forefathers had spilt blood so long ago in this cause that the twists and turns of History have made many of us simply unaware.  We remember the Rights of Tolerance but forget the Responsibilities to uphold it.

Secondly, it's telling how pointedly the vignette illustrates the reintroduction of Austrian economics to an Austrian.   This story explains my complex, attitude towards "Old Europe" -- the intellectual forefathers to whom we are so indebted.   I'm quick to chastise it but also hella quick to spend my vacation dollars there.  Of course, I'm sure many Europeans feel the same about the US.   Whether by Sword or by Suasion, I am a Westerner but in the spirit of the Renaissance rather than the rot that has set into European intellectual life and finds its way into our Academy's today.  And I often wonder to what degree America is the West's strongest bastion.

Finally - what a world it was when the humanities academic elite could be counted on to impart lessons on liberty, free markets, and man as an ends to himself to our captives!  Assuming we made the mistake of even letting 'em near, any guesses what our current humanities profs would want to teach Islamo-fascists in our prisons?