Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
The movement to ban hate speech, especially on campus, reminds us that the political pendulum swings both ways.
At the time of the Revolutionary War, Britain’s laws were so strict that the Founders put Freedom of Speech first on the list of protected activities in our new country. Then the pendulum swung so far that pornography became protected speech. Now it’s swinging back again.
What would help is a more coherent explanation of WHY the more restrictive speech codes are required. I’d like to hear a college president say:
“In Victorian times, women were considered too delicate for harsh and unseemly conversation. Speech was curtailed, lest it bring on spells of fainting and nervous agitation in women of tender sensibilities. For a time, American women were thought to be made of sterner stuff and regulations on speech were loosened to the point that nude dancing and cross burning were protected by “freedom of expression” but now, on college campuses everywhere, we see that American women are more like their Victorian ancestors than previously thought: unable to suffer the savagery of seeing the word “Trump” written in chalk; incapable of hearing English teachers read the title of Dick Gregory’s famous novel, “Nigger;” in desperate need of strong men in positions of authority to protect their fragile emotional state by punishing anyone who says anything that offends anyone. I call on faculty and students here at Cocoon U. to cloister women, to keep their mental virtue untested, to pamper their feelings so they never have to grow to be strong, independent women who are fully equal to men.”
Joe Doakes
It’d help if public education did a better job – or any job at all – of explaining what “rights” are.
In turn, it would help if our public education system knew.
“unable to suffer the savagery of seeing the word “Trump”
perhaps in the interest of sparing the womenfolk the necessity of confronting the unpalatable unprepared at the ballot box we should admit that the 19th amendment was a mistake and repeal it.
Taking logic from one arena and using it to understand something in another realm used to be called “critical thought.”
Is that being rationed? Or, just ignored? Do today’s brood of educrats remember critical thought? Were they ever taught?
TBS, IMNSHO it’s been a long process of dumbing down the whole educational system over the last 100 years, but exponentially accelerating that dumbing down over the last 3 generations or so. Ironically, or maybe not so ironically, that coincided with the social “revolution” of the 60s.
Karl Marx is laughing his ass off in his grave over the success of his plank #10.
I can’t remember where I read it but it was so prescient: “They want people to be smart enough to run the machines, but not so smart that they consider their station in life and yearn to advance.”