The Wall Street Journal‘s Thursday Notable & Quotable contains an excerpt from a Times Literary Supplement piece in which the piece’s writer recounted a classroom incident in which he had touted a free market society and the instructor had written on his paper, “Are you Margaret Thatcher?” and left the paper ungraded. The classroom boy was mortified.

[T]he comparison shocked me into a more thoughtful politics and provided an early lesson: if you don’t like the fact that you share a view with someone objectionable, consider revising that view.

And

That doesn’t mean that every person with [fill in that disagreeable person’s identity] views endorses those links, but some soul-searching is surely called for.

Of course. It isn’t the merits of the message that’s important; rather, it’s the merits of the person carrying that message.

This is what has passed for teaching our children for too many years.