Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense....
Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance. Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a microaggression to ask an Asian American or Latino American “Where were you born?,†because this implies that he or she is not a real American. Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response....
This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. During the 2014–15 school year, for instance, the deans and department chairs at the 10 University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of microaggressions. The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity†and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.'
The press has typically described these developments as a resurgence of political correctness. That’s partly right, although there are important differences between what’s happening now and what happened in the 1980s and ’90s.
That movement sought to restrict speech (specifically hate speech aimed at marginalized groups), but it also challenged the literary, philosophical, and historical canon, seeking to widen it by including more-diverse perspectives.
The current movement is largely about emotional well-being. More than the last, it presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psychological harm.The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces†where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable. And more than the last, this movement seeks to punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally. You might call this impulse vindictive protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse....
But vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong....
We do not mean to imply simple causation, but rates of mental illness in young adults have been rising, both on campus and off, in recent decades...
Emotional reasoning dominates many campus debates and discussions. A claim that someone’s words are “offensive†is not just an expression of one’s own subjective feeling of offendedness. It is, rather, a public charge that the speaker has done something objectively wrong. It is a demand that the speaker apologize or be punished by some authority for committing an offense...
Claims of a right not to be offended have continued to arise since then, and universities have continued to privilege them. In a particularly egregious 2008 case, for instance, Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis found a white student guilty of racial harassment for reading a book titled Notre Dame vs. the Klan. The book honored student opposition to the Ku Klux Klan when it marched on Notre Dame in 1924.
Excerpts of lengthy but revealing article (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/), though the source is not that conservative.
Other examples: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/
http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format=go&jsonp=vglnk_145063981781111&key=da53d7416ed606366eff5a3c28e0b6bb&libId=iiewzu6x01010mgr000DA9ysdnkf2&loc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.christianforums.com%2Fthreads%2Fyale-students-totally-cool-with-repealing-the-first-amendment.7923897%2F%23post-69015885&v=1&out=https%3A%2F%2Freason.com%2Fblog%2F2015%2F12%2F17%2Fyale-students-eagerly-sign-petition-to-r&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.christianforums.com%2Fthreads%2Fyale-students-totally-cool-with-repealing-the-first-amendment.7923897%2F&title=Yale%20Students%20Totally%20Cool%20With%20Repealing%20the%20First%20Amendment%20%7C%20Christian%20Forums&txt=https%3A%2F%2Freason.com%2Fblog%2F2015%2F12%2F17%2Fyale-students-eagerly-sign-petition-to-r
it is ultimately the devil that is to blame. Notice the selective nature of it. Nothing offensive to Islam etc. is to be allowed in the liberal campus life (which predominates, and manifests their vision of future America) but traditional Christian beliefs and morality are far game, and even promoted. Imagine the outcry if even an ad for a "Muhammad has two mommies" was displayed on a campus bulletin board.
Thus "intolerance" is railed against while excluding tolerance of traditional Christian beliefs and morality, and opposing views on such things as Israel (being villainous), Climate Change (not novel or happening or ultimately not dangerous), and abortion and homosexual relation being wrong are censored.
This paradoxical political correctness is consistent with their basic animus against the principle of benefits being gained by the merit of work and competence, and moral obedience, and of authority being merited thereby, while imagining that they have the right to power and dictate what is right and wrong, since they are the intellectual elite. Which both war against traditional morality while imposing false guilt.
Thus the 60's student activists would take over the admin building, and later such took organized "Occupy movements" and today seek to drive out those who commit even such offenses as proposing rules on how to dress for Halloween may be wrong since it tells student what to do (which was opposed since the liberals want to avoid offending adopted client cultures, not because it promotes the Dark side). (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics...tolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/)
For the goal of such liberal elites is that they alone sit in power by "climbing up some other way" than actual merit, and create an alternative society under their dictatorship. The method, as in Communism which these sympathize with, being to portray those who earned benefits and position as being oppressors, whom the liberal elites are their saviors from, despite the failed record of such. Yet as in Communism, the end of this Utopia is that of this selfish saviors oppressing all.
Of course, the first "Occupy movement" was that of the devil seeking to "climb up some other way" (cf. Is. 14; Jn. 10:1; note overcomers will sit with Christ: Rv. 3:21) since he thought he was worthy, and being cast down for his selfish presumption (note that God does not need anything, (Acts 17:25) but worship of the infinite immutable Creator is enjoined as right and to man's benefit), he next worked to seduce Eve with his "victim entitlement mentality," inferring God was her selfish insecure oppressor unjustly keeping her back from what she should have.
For the devil opposes the Divine principle of earned benefits, and disobedience being punished, and seeks glory and worship thru proxy servants preaching his message. Which is in essence of the anti-capitalist pro-socialist, anti traditional morality message of liberal elitists today, which works toward a society eventually being wholly dependent upon their government, under these proxy servants requiring the obeisance of all, even if N. Korea light.
But vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong....
We do not mean to imply simple causation, but rates of mental illness in young adults have been rising, both on campus and off, in recent decades...
Emotional reasoning dominates many campus debates and discussions. A claim that someone’s words are “offensive†is not just an expression of one’s own subjective feeling of offendedness. It is, rather, a public charge that the speaker has done something objectively wrong. It is a demand that the speaker apologize or be punished by some authority for committing an offense...
Claims of a right not to be offended have continued to arise since then, and universities have continued to privilege them. In a particularly egregious 2008 case, for instance, Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis found a white student guilty of racial harassment for reading a book titled Notre Dame vs. the Klan. The book honored student opposition to the Ku Klux Klan when it marched on Notre Dame in 1924.
Excerpts of lengthy but revealing article (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/), though the source is not that conservative.
Other examples: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/
http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format=go&jsonp=vglnk_145063981781111&key=da53d7416ed606366eff5a3c28e0b6bb&libId=iiewzu6x01010mgr000DA9ysdnkf2&loc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.christianforums.com%2Fthreads%2Fyale-students-totally-cool-with-repealing-the-first-amendment.7923897%2F%23post-69015885&v=1&out=https%3A%2F%2Freason.com%2Fblog%2F2015%2F12%2F17%2Fyale-students-eagerly-sign-petition-to-r&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.christianforums.com%2Fthreads%2Fyale-students-totally-cool-with-repealing-the-first-amendment.7923897%2F&title=Yale%20Students%20Totally%20Cool%20With%20Repealing%20the%20First%20Amendment%20%7C%20Christian%20Forums&txt=https%3A%2F%2Freason.com%2Fblog%2F2015%2F12%2F17%2Fyale-students-eagerly-sign-petition-to-r
it is ultimately the devil that is to blame. Notice the selective nature of it. Nothing offensive to Islam etc. is to be allowed in the liberal campus life (which predominates, and manifests their vision of future America) but traditional Christian beliefs and morality are far game, and even promoted. Imagine the outcry if even an ad for a "Muhammad has two mommies" was displayed on a campus bulletin board.
Thus "intolerance" is railed against while excluding tolerance of traditional Christian beliefs and morality, and opposing views on such things as Israel (being villainous), Climate Change (not novel or happening or ultimately not dangerous), and abortion and homosexual relation being wrong are censored.
This paradoxical political correctness is consistent with their basic animus against the principle of benefits being gained by the merit of work and competence, and moral obedience, and of authority being merited thereby, while imagining that they have the right to power and dictate what is right and wrong, since they are the intellectual elite. Which both war against traditional morality while imposing false guilt.
Thus the 60's student activists would take over the admin building, and later such took organized "Occupy movements" and today seek to drive out those who commit even such offenses as proposing rules on how to dress for Halloween may be wrong since it tells student what to do (which was opposed since the liberals want to avoid offending adopted client cultures, not because it promotes the Dark side). (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics...tolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/)
For the goal of such liberal elites is that they alone sit in power by "climbing up some other way" than actual merit, and create an alternative society under their dictatorship. The method, as in Communism which these sympathize with, being to portray those who earned benefits and position as being oppressors, whom the liberal elites are their saviors from, despite the failed record of such. Yet as in Communism, the end of this Utopia is that of this selfish saviors oppressing all.
Of course, the first "Occupy movement" was that of the devil seeking to "climb up some other way" (cf. Is. 14; Jn. 10:1; note overcomers will sit with Christ: Rv. 3:21) since he thought he was worthy, and being cast down for his selfish presumption (note that God does not need anything, (Acts 17:25) but worship of the infinite immutable Creator is enjoined as right and to man's benefit), he next worked to seduce Eve with his "victim entitlement mentality," inferring God was her selfish insecure oppressor unjustly keeping her back from what she should have.
For the devil opposes the Divine principle of earned benefits, and disobedience being punished, and seeks glory and worship thru proxy servants preaching his message. Which is in essence of the anti-capitalist pro-socialist, anti traditional morality message of liberal elitists today, which works toward a society eventually being wholly dependent upon their government, under these proxy servants requiring the obeisance of all, even if N. Korea light.
