At least one high-profile conservative activist group wants to continue smashing "left-wing scum," and they're not afraid to admit it.

When Campus Progress first reported on Campus Reform, the right-leaning social networking Web site funded by the conservative Leadership Institute to confront “leftist abuse” in higher education, it was discovered that one of the organization’s staff members had written on the site that one of his goals was to “smash left-wing scum.”

Shortly after the report, the comment was removed, and when asked about the incident, Campus Reform’s national director, Bryan Bernys, chalked the incendiary rhetoric up to the nature of social networking. “I don’t know where that is on the site or anything,” Brenys said. “Obviously with all Web sites you can post anything. Nobody at CampusReform can go through every single post.”

But now a few months after the incident, smashing left-wing scum is apparently back in fashion for Campus Reform—in fact, it’s alive and well on the group’s own YouTube page.

A video, posted four days ago, shows a group of Campus Reformers holding a “Global Warming Beach Party” to protest a speech by New York Times contributor Thomas Friedman that was taking place at George Washington University. (Yeah, I still haven’t quite figured that one out either.) Anyway, along with a furrie dressed up as polar bear and the backing of the archconservative Young America's Foundation, there was also a sign that encouraged others to—that’s right—“Smash Left-Wing Scum.”

Look, obviously students shouldn’t be discriminated against because of their political beliefs. But really, if Campus Reform’s goal is to combat what it perceives as “leftist bias” in classrooms, and the organization’s mission is to bring more ideological diversity to educational institutions, then how, exactly, is that accomplished by such a confrontational and polarizing statement like “smash left-wing scum?” Is that kind of rhetoric really supposed to make anyone empathic to the plight of the young Reaganites?

Either way, there’s a chance that the video—like the last incendiary comment—may mysteriously disappear from the Web site. After all, it was just a few days ago that somebody at Campus Reform tried to remove praise of James O'Keefe from the Web site, shortly after the former Leadership Institute employee and some of his friends were arrested by the FBI for allegedly plotting to illegally enter the downtown New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) under the guise of repairing the building’s telephones.

Everyone’s favorite mustachioed New York Times columnist received a less-than-warm welcome at Brown University this Tuesday. According to Inside Higher Ed,

Brown University is condemning the actions of two people — at least one of whom is a student — who threw a pie-like substance Tuesday night at Thomas Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times who was speaking on the campus. Friedman took a few minutes to clean himself up, but continued his talk…The Providence Journal reported that the incident involved paper plates with shamrock-colored whipped cream.

Shamrock-colored pie-like substance, eh? Along with the pie, protestors threw fliers in the air to explain their pastry-based attack:

Thomas Friedman deserves a pie in the face because of his sickeningly cheery applause for free market capitalism’s conquest of the planet, for telling the world that the free market and techno fixes can save us from climate change. From carbon trading to biofuels, these distractions are dangerous in and of themselves, while encouraging inaction with respect to the true problems at hand.

Fair enough.

UPDATE: Via Matt Yglesias, check out this video of the dastardly pastry incident.

It's less funny than the anonymous pie-from-the-audience scenario I pictured in my head, and decidedly less fulfilling than publicly besting Friedman's arguments.

Seriously, someone needs to alert Thomas Friedman as soon as possible. The over-mustachioed and under-informed pundit has made a name (and fortune) for himself as the prophet of a glorious future in which globalization makes all things possible and all things wonderful. The thing is, no matter how appealing and optimistic, his overly simplistic tripe is just wrong.

Pankaj Ghemawat, a professor of global strategy at IESE business school, has written a brilliant and concise piece in Foreign Policy that eviscerates the idiocy that has become conventional wisdom. Ghemawat shows how the vast majority (typically 90%) of “globalization indicators,” like investment and communication, continue to operate within a nation’s borders. But this isn’t just a matter of being wrong. With something as nebulous as globalization, the assumptions made by academics and public figures are taken as truth, not theory, and have powerful implications for policy. For example, the decades long assault on welfare expenditure has operated under the assumption that it is incompatible with globalized competition.

 As Ghemawat sharply observes:

“The champions of globalization are describing a world that doesn’t exist. It’s a fine strategy to sell books and even describe a potential environment that may someday exist. Because such episodes of mass delusion tend to be relatively short-lived even when they do achieve broad currency, one might simply be tempted to wait this one out as well. But the stakes are far too high for that. Governments that buy into the flat world are likely to pay too much attention to the “golden straitjacket” that Friedman emphasized in his earlier book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which is supposed to ensure that economics matters more and more and politics less and less. Buying into this version of an integrated world—or worse, using it as a basis for policymaking—is not only unproductive. It is dangerous.”