USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

Main: normal long no graphics Contact Log archives Best log entries Other articles Site Search

Stardate 20011027.1232 (On Screen): The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is a body which is monitoring, and attempting to fight, the decay of free speech rights on campuses in the US. When you read their list of responses, it's interesting to see that campus thought-police have been censoring both extreme left-wing and right-wing opinions. It turns out that they're not trying to censor any particular viewpoint; it becomes obvious that what they're trying to do is to avoid controversy no matter what its cause. This is gutlessness of the first order, and ironically by attempting to avoid controversy they create an even deeper controversy. By suppressing extreme viewpoints, they assault the most important value we all hold: the idea that people should be free to express their opinions no matter what they are.

Somehow the commitment to sensitivity has been taken to an extreme; anything that could conceivably offend anyone is attacked. When people put up stickers on their cubicles that said "Proud to be an American" they were ordered to take them down for fear of offending foreign students. But why should that offend people from outside the country? What, exactly, is wrong with being proud of what you are?

I think the problem is that there is a false dichotomy here: the assumption is that if someone is proud to be American, then they necessarily must be contemptuous of anything non-American. But that doesn't follow. I am proud to be an American, but I'm not contemptuous of Canadians or Brits (unless they deserve it); I'm not even contemptuous of Arabs -- unless they deserve it. I'm not contemptuous of those people simply because they're non-American; when I am contemptuous of them it's because of specific things they've done or said that I think are worthy of contempt.

The act of flying an American flag has been treated in some instances as "hate speech" -- which takes the concept well over the line of rationality. There's a difference between making a speech advocating lynching anyone wearing a turban, and simply flying a flag. The flag doesn't hate, and loving the flag doesn't indicate hatred for anyone.

And even if it did express contempt, what of it? Where, exactly, did this idea come from that no-one should ever hear anything they don't like? When did it become canon that no-one should ever be exposed to ideas they find offensive? Free expression must include the ability to express unpopular, even offensive, ideas or it is a mirage. If I'm only free to say things which my neighbors approve of, then I am not free at all. It's time for the Universities to cease teaching "sensitivity", and to start teaching "insensitivity". One of the things students need to learn is how to not get offended by things they don't like, because once they leave the womb of the university system, they will surely be exposed to a great deal of it. (discuss)