OFF TOPIC BUT TIMELY and good reading. Extracts from Jonah Goldberg's commencement address at Hillsdale Academy.

Instead I'd like to give you some advice I think might be useful for anybody going to college.

First, don't ever date anybody in your dorm for at least the first semester. It won't work out and it will make your life really complicated.

Second, don't buy a mini-fridge until you're sure your roommate hasn't got one.

More important: Understand the difference between clichés and wisdom. Kids today, for good or ill, are pretty well-trained when it comes to finding the deficiencies of ideology. But clichés are not only accepted without question on campuses today, they are far too often deemed to be a substitute for actual thinking.

We've all heard something along the lines of "better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished." This sort of thing is spouted on campuses across this country as if it is an argument, as if it's a self-evident argument. It's not. Maybe it's a sentiment. Or an expression of principle or even a priority. But more often it's a copout for kids — and professors — who wish to sound intelligent rather than be intelligent.

Why is it better that ten guilty men go free? Ten career criminals will do far more damage to society out of prison than the price society will suffer with one innocent man in jail. By the way, we call them "career criminals" for the same reason we refer to "career accountants" — they make a living out of being criminals. A strict utilitarian might say, better to punish the one innocent man for the sake of the larger society. On the other hand, a civil libertarian may ask "Why ten men? Why not 100? Or 1,000? Why not let them all go?" After all, we can say with pretty high confidence that somebody in jail today is innocent. We just don't who he is. So why not let them all go in order to make sure the innocent aren't punished? In other words, if you want to say that you'd prefer to err on the side of protecting the rights of the innocent, fine. But that's easy to say, and more important, it's not an argument.

Read the whole thing here.