Posted on 11/21/2018 10:05:36 AM PST by Kalamata
Much of today’s incivility and contempt for personal liberty has its roots on college campuses, and most of the uncivil and contemptuous are people with college backgrounds. Let’s look at a few highly publicized recent examples of incivility and attacks on free speech.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, were accosted and harassed by a deranged left-wing mob as they were leaving a dinner at Georgetown University. Sen. McConnell was harassed by protesters at Reagan National Airport, as well as at several venues in Kentucky. Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife were harassed at a Washington, D.C., restaurant. Afterward, a group called Smash Racism DC wrote: “No — you can’t eat in peace — your politics are an attack on all of us. You’re (sic) votes are a death wish. Your votes are hate crimes.” Other members of Congress — such as Andy Harris, Susan Collins and Rand Paul — have been physically attacked or harassed by leftists. Most recent is the case of Fox News political commentator Tucker Carlson. A leftist group showed up at his house at night, damaging his front door and chanting, “Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!” “Racist scumbag, leave town!”
Mayhem against people with different points of view is excused as just deserts for what is seen as hate speech. Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray discovered this when he was shouted down at Middlebury College and the professor escorting him was sent to the hospital with injuries. Students at the University of California, Berkeley shut down a controversial speaker and caused riot damage estimated at $100,000. Protesters at both UCLA and Claremont McKenna College disrupted scheduled lectures by Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has discovered so-called bias response teams on hundreds of American college campuses. Bias response teams report to campus officials — and sometimes to law enforcement officers — speech that may cause “alarm, anger, or fear” or that might otherwise offend. Drawing pictures or cartoons that belittle people because of their beliefs or political affiliation can be reported as hate speech. Universities expressly set their sights on prohibiting constitutionally protected speech (http://tinyurl.com/y7jo75dg). As FIRE reported in 2017, hundreds of universities nationwide now maintain Orwellian systems that ask students to report — often anonymously — their neighbors, friends and professors for any instances of supposed biased speech and expression.
A recent Brookings Institution poll found that nearly half of college students believe that hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment. That’s nonsense; it is. Fifty-one percent of college students think they have a right to shout down a speaker with whom they disagree. Nineteen percent of students think that it’s acceptable to use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking. Over 50 percent agree that colleges should prohibit speech and viewpoints that might offend certain people (http://tinyurl.com/yayxt45u). One shouldn’t be surprised at all if these visions are taught and held by many of their professors. Colleges once taught and promoted an understanding of Western culture. Today many professors and the college bureaucracy teach students that they’re victims of Western culture and values.
Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech.” Much later, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said, “Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.” From the Nazis to Stalinists to Maoists, tyrants have always started out supporting free speech, just as American leftists did during the 1960s. Their support for free speech is easy to understand. Speech is vital for the realization of their goals of command, control and confiscation. The right to say what they please is their tool for indoctrination, propagandizing and proselytization. Once the leftists gain control, as they have at many universities, free speech becomes a liability and must be suppressed. This is increasingly the case on university campuses. Much of the off-campus incivility we see today is the fruit of what a college education has done to our youth.
Yes. More and more, the thugs are wearing masks.
But the snowflakes have such lofty opinions of themselves because they are “college educated”.
I cannot imagine why FOX wouldn’t pay him to be a guest during one of the evening shows, he’s quite good.
The leftists who complain about the deficiencies of western civilization may have a point. Any society, like ours, that allows a group of people to flourish, like we allow leftists to flourish, who have as their primary objective the destruction of the society that enables them, without defending itself, has some kind of inherent defect.
i do not dispute that colleges often do this to people, but I would submit that some of the public screwAlls (K-12) do it, too
the sociopath-training problem begins long before college, imho
The answer is quite simple. Immediately stop all taxpayer funding of all colleges and universities. Close all state universities.
And especially stop all student loans backed by the gubmint.
It starts with sesame street.
Ha!
Yes, no doubt about that. It starts in Kindergarten and/or PreSchool.
Any who do not believe that, by 1775, such was true, should read Sir Edmund Burke's 1775 "Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies" before the British Parliament, in which he details economic statistics showing how the American Colony already was feeding the Old World. He attributed it to many factors, primarily to what he called their "spirit of liberty." Once a for of government for a free people was formed, America continued on its progress through freedom of individual enterprise, with little government interference.
The Liberal/Progressive ideology which has dominated education of youth for the past several decades has effectively erased such ideas from the textbooks and teachings of youth. Little wonder that they now are propagandized in ideas of redistribution and socialism they have little basis for understanding the true meaning of FREEDOM.
Dr. Williams is a fav.
It will be interesting 10-15 years from now to see where all the SJWs end up after the rubber hits the road.
See the tag.
Walter E. is one of all-time favorites. He is brilliant, but speaks plainly. I miss hearing him on the radio as a fill-in host. Mark Steyn is the closest I have found to an equal pleasure in recent times.
Hey Ho, Hey Ho, Western Civ Has Got To Go...
Wisdom of the Month.
“We are all Republicans — we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address March 4, 1801
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