Adam B. Kushner has a great piece in the Washington Examiner about Sen. John McCain’s commencement address at Columbia last week that was “cloaked in a terrifically condescending homily about the arrogance of youth.”

NEW YORK - Last week, as they sat in the pouring rain, John McCain insulted Columbia’s graduating class. He also delivered praise, a paean to freedom, a denunciation of relativism (“a mask for arrogance and selfishness”), and a plea for civility in disagreement — all of which was movingly and rightly argued. But it was cloaked in a terrifically condescending homily about the arrogance of youth.

There had been a good deal of hubbub at Columbia in the weeks since his announcement as graduation speaker. Those left of center — more than half of the graduating class, although not all are politically active — were disappointed that the graduation-day advice about how to enter the world would not reflect their own values. Fair enough. And those on the far left — a small minority but a very vocal one — were disgusted that somebody with McCain’s worldview could even be invited to address Columbia, which they had spent their undergraduate years trying to move leftward. (This was silly; one of the best things about a liberal arts education is that exposes you to different strains of thought — if only to strengthen your own.)

Protests were organized. Fliers were circulated. And pins were distributed saying, “McCain Does Not Speak for Me.” Many graduates affixed them to their gowns, and some parents followed suit. All of this seemed a bit hasty to me, given that nobody yet knew exactly what McCain would say. And, in the end, most of what he said was conciliatory and ingenuous. With regard to their arguments against him, he said, “It’s your right and your obligation. I respect you for it.”

But he pre-empted this with a nasty oration. “When I was a young man,” he told the graduates, among whom I count my brother, “I was quite infatuated with self-expression, and rightly so, because, if memory conveniently serves, I was so much more eloquent, well-informed and wiser than anyone else I knew. It seemed I understood the world and the purpose of life so much more profoundly than most people. I believed that to be especially true with many of my elders, people whose only accomplishment, as far as I could tell, was that they had been born before me, and, consequently, had suffered some number of years deprived of my insights. I had opinions on everything, and I was always right.”

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