Only in today’s America, a nation predicated/birthed on freedom and liberty, is it acceptable to dictate what is “tolerable/acceptable” and what is not. Mind you, the issue is not whether or not one is free to violate civilized societal norms, but whether one can even advocate on behalf of America’s fundamental foundations. Its moorings. Oh dear…how far the national discourse has sunk – straight into the cesspool.
Whereas leftist imbued academia offers “safe” places/zones to advocate on behalf of every “ism” acceptable in their radical milieu, America’s founding documents are verboten. Internalize what this really entails: students who wish to OPENLY exhibit their sexual confusion are free to do so. Okey dokey. In fact, monies are thrown their way to “explore” this or that, and the freakier the sideshow the better. How’s that for (parental) bang for your (educational) buck? Personally, having spent several hundred thousand dollars to educate 2 sons (at MIT & Caltech…schools where there is little time to sleep, let alone agitate over this or that) , there is a sensitivity/understanding of the exorbitant costs paid for a private university education. As such, this issue does not quality as a minor annoyance. A blip on the radar. It’s an investment of huge proportions.
NOT only that, if a student voices an iota of criticism in the direction of the faculty or the administration all hell breaks loose. One is relegated to campus purgatory, if one dares/deigns to voice any dissent to their PC mandates. Talk about (mental) boot camp. In effect, freedoms for thee (radicals), but not for conservative students on America’s non-free campuses. And little offends them more than those who espouse any allegiance to Constitutional ethos. The nerve of these soon to be grown up “bitter clingers”! What are they thinking, bringing Constitutional fealty onto America’s campuses? Have they fallen on their heads?
The question becomes: why the preference for one subset and the prejudice against the other, if in fact academia is supposed to be a place where a free exchange of ideas is the “common core” denominator?
Simply put, the most non-free places in America (and elsewhere, particularly in Israel) is within the confines of the college campuses. Seriously. Consider the damage accrued: if not for leftist academia, the havoc wrought by (im)moral relativism would be negligible. Coupled with an open season on Jewish students who dare to support Israel, or speak up against blatant antisemitic diatribes from their profs, well, what else is needed to prove the above outrageous facsimile of higher education?
And even in Israel, the nation where supporting its raison d’etre should be a given, students are vilified (by their profs and their leftist back benchers…from inside and outside the country) for supporting the nation’s moorings. Post-Zionist academics further Israel’s delegitimization and this is a (tragic) fact.
Back to America’s academic cesspool…
The Constitution guarantees the right to free speech, but don’t try to pass out copies of it at Modesto Junior College in California.
A student at the school who tried to pass out pocket-size pamphlets of the very document that memorializes our rights got shut down on Sept. 17 – a date also known as Constitution Day.
Campus authorities told 25-year-old Robert Van Tuinen, who caught the whole thing on videotape, he could only pass out the free documents at a tiny designated spot on campus, and only then if he scheduled it several days in advance.
“Watching the video is a combination of depressing and nauseating, to see what rigamarole students have to go through just to express themselves on campus,” said Robert Shibley, senior vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which has taken on campus speech codes around the nation.
Van Tuinen, who said he’d read up on the school’s regulations and expected to get chased away from outside the student center, went to FIRE with the video. The foundation penned an email letter to the school’s administration on Van Tuinen’s behalf early Thursday, but Shibley said there had been no response later in the day.
A spokeswoman for the college tells FoxNews.com that students and the general public are permitted to pass out materials in areas on campus that are generally available to the public, as long as they do not disrupt the orderly operations of the college.
“In the case of the YouTube video, it does not appear that the student was disrupting the orderly operations of the college and therefore we are looking into the incident,” Modesto Junior College Marketing and Public Relations officer Linda Hoile said.
In the video, Van Tuinen is confronted by an unidentified campus police officer within minutes of passing out the pamphlets. When he protests, he is told “there are rules.”
“But do you know what this is?” he asks. “What are the rules? Why are the rules tied to my free speech?”
Van Tuinen explains that he wants to start an organization called Young Americans for Liberty.
“That’s fine, but if you’re going to start an organization like that you have to go through the rigamarole,” the police officer tells him.
“It was a tense situation,” Van Tuinen, who is from Modesto, told FoxNews.com. “To be told I can’t do something as basic as handing out the Constitution was frustrating.”
Eventually, the police officer escorts Van Tuinen into an administrative office, where an unidentified woman shows him a binder with rules she says govern free speech on campus. She explains that there is a designated place “in front of the student center, in that little cement area
,” where free expression is allowed, but then notes that two people are already using it.
“You’d have to wait,” she says. “You could go on (Sept.) 20th, the 27th or you can go into October.”
Eventually he is advised to make an appointment with Brenda Thames, vice president of student services, who can explain the policy.
Shibley said he was angered by the video, but not surprised.
“One of the revealing things about this particular case is what students have to go through just to express themselves on campus,” Shibley said.
He said the very idea of speech codes on campus ought to be troubling to Americans.
“They are imposed in an attempt to sanitize the public space of anything that might offend somebody,” he said. “The fact is, no school specifically needs a speech code. They have the ability keep order on campus . Of people are too loud, harassing people, or blocking traffic they have the means to address that.”
NONE of the above is happenstance, nor simply a question of mean spirited nitpicking by profs and their (open and hidden) supporters. Not at all. Their Omerta – on anything outside the realm of radical causes/politics – is purposefully designed to destroy America and to bring it to its knees. What better way to do so, than to deconstruct future generations and their “normative” behavior? The queerer the better.
Alas, budding Conservatives are treated worse than persona non-grata. Like the devil incarnate.
Adina Kutnicki 