Several years ago, I read a comment by an American university student who said that the confusion in academia resulted from God being left out of the educational process. (He wasn’t talking mandatory school prayer, but God vis-à-vis the pursuit of truth.) What I found ironic was the observation and comment were made by a Muslim student.

“It should be a warning for what is in store for the country should the leftists of tomorrow ever get to have it their way.”

I agree, but part of the problem is the average citizen has not a clue that “alternative, humanistic, secular progressive, diversity celebrating, social-justice-driven utopian” ideas are being hatched in the academy. The only hint some might get is when their kids come home for Thanksgiving after being away for the first time and start spouting the party line.

Take care, Phil

I'm not mocking VL as a person (sadony), I'm mocking his ideas (irony). Besides, saying that sadony is lost on a sadist can lead to some unintended imagry. [That's a joke].

Take care, Phil

As to the points about speech codes, such oppressive rules are possible because the leftists who are in charge trust themselves to enforce them as they see fit, and they see them as a sort of affirmative action device.

To be offended one has to be offendable, which means you have to be a victim. White, conservative Christians are not only not victims, they are part of the ruling class victimizers who should have no expectation of protection.

This is particularly true if they are targetted by the "underclass" or a minority, something always viewed by leftists as an understanble bit of spontaneous and expected righteous justice.

As applied, it ends up being school officials holding the conservaive Christian by his arms while his "justified" attacker, be he a minority or a social justice driven leftist, punches him in the stomach until he is satisfied.

It's an orgasmic fantasy moment for the victim doing the punching, who is high on the power he now has in the just, utopian world on campus. For the adminstrator who did the restraining, it was secretly relished, a glorious mini scene in which the Bolsheviks take their revenge on the bourgeois.

Hyperbolic ranting?

Perhaps, but look for the kernel of truth and look at how our universities are being turned into alternative, humanistic, secular progressive, diversity celebrating, social-justice-driven utopian societies that aim to restore equality not by balancing the scales, but by righteously tipping them as they see fit.

It should be a warning for what is in store for the country should the leftists of tommorow ever get to have it their way.

isn't it sadony (the mocking of an individual, in this case, VL by he universe at large…) rather than irony (using words to express something other than the literal intent — usu. in an inverted fashion)?

English isn't my native tongue — fine language that it is. [if irony is in correct usage] I thought I had that one nailed down ;)

And people say *my* native language is hard!

- mao ma4 ding

You have a good point. Where I work, we called this duplication “boilerplate”. There is also something else at work. Everyone (both inside and outside the academy) wants to appear enlightened and educated, so ideas that originate in the academy tend to migrate out to the whole society. I can usually tell when someone in upper management has recently taken another graduate course by the assignments that are handed down to perform some unusual study or other.

In the case of the academy, I would wager that this duplication is the result of the accrediting process requiring schools to toe the PC line. Whether the accrediting agencies originated it, or just picked it up from a university, is probably lost to history. (As a sidebar, this is an interesting article http://www.goacta.org/publications/Reports/accrediting.pdf on accrediting and how it is not living up to what prospective students and their parents expect.)

I have not read the UVT speech code nor its mission statement, but based on this “boilerplating” I’d wager they say something like, “We seek to improve social justice, and we value diversity as our strength;” and “Speech will not be tolerated that prohibits anyone (read: favored minority member) from receiving full benefit of the educational experience.” Yet, they tell incoming freshmen (read: Christians) to “be ready to have your most cherished beliefs challenged.” Because of their selective enforcement of these codes, it would be difficult indeed to find a school that isn’t an “Animal Farm” where some are more equal than others.

It reminds me of the way things work on the job. Nobody wants to do anything from scratch, so errors just get perpetuated infinitely as person B copies the errors of person A's document, and so on, and so on. I think Phil wrote about this in his essay on how things work at the graduate school level where nothing real original happens…you just perpetuate the errors of your elders in the form of your thesis' bibliography.

So, somebody, somewhere wrote some idiotic you-can-say-whatever-you-want-as-long -as-nobody-finds-it-offensive-in-which-case-it-will-be-construed-as unprotected-hate-speech policies, and then the geometric progression of plagiarism began.

I'm not surprised either.

Keep up the good work.

I took your advice. Code Red. Why am I not surprised?