Most
people I know and with whom I associate embrace free speech, even when they
disagree with its message. It’s a
founding value on which the country is based.
People are free to verbally bash the president, praise socialism
or communism, and basically say whatever they want with limited exceptions. I would never dream of
trying to shut down such speech, even when I think it’s nonsensical.
Yet
that’s not the view of the Left. The
Left loves to suppress speech that doesn’t conform precisely to today’s “woke”
messaging, and they’re doing it in corporations, on sports teams, at universities,
and, perhaps most alarmingly, even in government. (And you might even be punished for someone else’s speech.) Let’s take a look across
our land to see what’s happening at a couple of colleges and in one west coast city.
Starting
on the east coast, a division of Penn
State University
called Penn State Liberal Arts (PSLA) tweeted out a well-intended, but childish
message that everyone is welcome at PSLA.
It then breaks down the specific groups that are welcome by their race, sex,
sexual practices, and other identifying factors. (Remember the day when these kids would have
simply been “Penn State
students” or even “Nittany Lions”?) To
its credit, the tweet even included a line that read “Dear conservative
students: Your viewpoints are important.”
Well, that set off a firestorm.
The mob was not happy about it, and responded with all sorts of absurd
nonsense that you can read about in this article. (My favorite: because the list did not also
include rape victims among those welcome at the school, PSLA was elevating
conservatives over “survivors.” My choice
for runner-up: allowing conservatives to speak threatens the “physical safety”
of others.)
PSLA’s
response? Instead of debunking these
claims and citing the importance of free speech—for everyone, not just for the
unpopular speaker—PSLA caved to the mob.
Because of “the sensitivities of the matter,” it removed “conservative
students” from their list of those who are welcome. It explained that it removed “conservative
students” because its original tweet “was not being received well.” And that’s exactly how it works at colleges:
only speech that is “received well” by the mob is permitted. And if conservative students still dare to
attend PSLA, and, braver still, attempt to speak out when there, the mob will literally
shout them down and possibly even physically attack them. You can find countless examples of that
behavior, including here, here, and here. Professors even get circled and verbally
attacked merely for suggesting that speech should be allowed. (You can watch the monsters at Yale go on offense in this shocking video.)
As
we make our way from the east coast to the Midwest , things
get more interesting at my alma
matter, Marquette University (MU). MU made
the mistake of somehow admitting a conservative student to its incoming
class. And when she posted a picture of
herself with a Trump sign, the mob went nuts.
There were the usual calls, of course, for violence, such as “I hope you
get shot.” (Not very Jesuit or "inclusive," is it, MU “community”?) And
even though she already paid for housing and got her class schedule for the
fall, MU is now deciding whether to revoke her admission based on her support
for Trump. As the student reports in
this article, the MU bureaucrats are investigating:
“They
also asked me hypothetical questions regarding Dreamers,” she said. “How would
I respond if a Dreamer who lived down the hall from me came up to me and told
me she didn’t feel safe or comfortable with my views and me being on campus.”
Let
me help this would-be MU student out.
How about this for a possible answer?
“I would tell the Dreamer that I pose no threat to their safety. Further, I would tell the Dreamer that the
world does not revolve around him or her, and that he or she needs to be more
tolerant of viewpoints with which he or she disagrees. Being exposed to differing views is, or at
least used to be, one of the benefits of college.”
One person then offers his/her help on “social media” to
ensure that MU rescinds this young woman’s offer of admission. The little helper put it this way (with the
typical incorrect capitalization and lack of punctuation that has become acceptable today):
“i love love LOVE conservatives getting their school offers revoked”
Finally, let’s jump to the west coast and the Seattle
city government. It is going one (or two
or three) steps further than merely suppressing speech. It is even telling you what to say, what to
think, and with whom you should associate!
White city employees only were “invited” to anti-whiteness training. Here’s a taste:
In conceptual terms, the city frames the discussion
around the idea that black Americans are reducible to the essential quality of
“blackness” and white Americans are reducible to the essential quality of
“whiteness” . . .
Once the diversity trainers
have established this basic conceptual framework, they encourage white
employees to “practice self-talk that affirms [their] complicity in racism” and
work on “undoing [their] own whiteness.” As part of this process, white
employees must abandon their “white normative behavior” and learn to let go of
their “comfort,” “physical safety,” “social status,” and “relationships with
some other white people.”
Well, the city should
be telling the African-Americans of Seattle to get ready to “let go of their
comfort [and] physical safety,” as the Seattle City Counsel has agreed to
defund the police by 50 percent—all based on what some cop in Minnesota did to
George Floyd. I guess they didn’t learn
from the chaos, crime, shootings, and death that occurred in the short-lived
CHAZ / CHOP autonomous zone takeover of downtown Seattle . (Which, I’m sure, was lovely for the
residents and business owners in that part of town.)
But back to free speech. The question is whether PSLA, Yale, MU,
and the city of Seattle are just anomalies? I think not.
How many examples from major colleges, universities, corporations, and
even governments does it take before people have had enough? How long before they breakaway from the Left
in order to better ensure their own free speech rights in the future? Or do people want their schools, employers,
and governments to control them and tell them what to do and think and say, and
tell them with whom they should associate?
We should have an answer to these questions in November.
We are witnessing the rise of the American Taliban.
ReplyDelete