I trust that Dr. Sowell is talking about a time in the not-too-distant past when universities really had differences in their "marketplaces of ideas" to explore and compare and contrast, yes? Obama is not much older than I am, and when I got around to college, a hefty majority of faculty at the state school I went to wouldn't have much problem with Obama's world-view. Probably be the toast of a lot of post-grad parties.
Instead, ever since so-called "progressives" began their steady and ongoing censorship of the ideas of liberty from which America's Declaration of Independence and Constitution were derived, students have been abandoned to seek out sources for such ideas in remote and dusty library stacks, or in rare book stores.
Those who called themselves "progressives" have worked like termites to erode and destroy America's foundations in liberty by censorship of school textbooks, laws to prohibit such ideas from public political discourse, and in various other ways--an effort more far-reaching that 1933's "burning of the books."
But for the advent of computer technology, they might have succeeded.
Now, every senior citizen and every school child with a computer can read the great writings which make up the literature of freedom. A movement called "the Tea Party" may be the result of that technology's impact on ordinary citizens.
Once again, a fresh breeze of ideas is blowing around us, and the "planners," "redistributors" of the earnings of others, and arrogant small minds will feel that breeze as it awakens both young and old to a conviction that "our life, rights, liberty and laws to protect them" come from a Creator, and that makes them "unalienable" by any temporary power we allow to our elected officials. That was the idea encapsulated in our D of C and structured into a document which limited our grants of power.
"The laws of nature are the laws of God, whose authority can be superseded by no power on earth. A legislature must not obstruct our obedience to Him, from whose punishment they cannot protect us. All human laws which contradict His laws we are in conscience bound to disobey." - George Mason, Delegate from Virginia & Signer of the Constitution
Congratulations to Ryan and Romney as they remind us of the Source of our rights, and we must hold them to the underlying premise of our election of them to uphold that central idea underlying their duties under our Constitution.