Tag: “dissent” as a civic virtue

‘University: “No Such Thing as Free Speech”‘ (2015)

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tape over mouth photo: tape-over-mouth tape-over-mouth.jpg

Yes, the 2015 Rutgers student handbook actually said, “There is no such thing as free speech.” And you’ll remember that if you know what’s good for you.

University: ‘No Such Thing as Free Speech’

What a contrast! When I went to Rutgers in the Sixties, “dissent” was all but worshiped as a god.. Wait a minute–it was worshiped. You were fully expected to “dissent”–only not from any of the stuff that they were selling. Even then, “diversity” only meant an enforced uniformity of thought.

The university is not good for America. To say it’s actively hostile to our country is no overstatement.

When ‘Dissent’ Was an Idol

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Florida Memory • Students demonstrating against Iran at Miami-Dade Community College south campus during hostage crisis - Kendall, Florida

Today’s weather somehow made me remember the 1967 freshman orientation program at Rutgers. They sent us a summer reading list; and every book on it had “dissent” for its theme.

They were big on Dissent. It was an idol to be worshiped. It was the whole point of college. It was the highest virtue of citizenship to which any student could aspire.

It was baloney.

What they were really after was to gin up opposition to the war in Viet Nam: we were all expected to oppose it, and heaven help you if you didn’t. It was very small potatoes, compared to the Woke conformity insisted upon by colleges today: but then they were only getting started, and had a lot to learn about making students’ minds right.

You were supposed to “dissent” from everything they told you to dissent from–but not from them! Woke hadn’t been invented yet, but it was on its way. Even as conformity was always The First Lesson taught in public schools, so it was in “higher education,” too. It was not unknown for wildcat “tribunals” to be set up by leftist students to “try” and ostracize those few students who weren’t aboard the bandwagon. Back then, they had no power to punish you for “dissenting” from their program. Now, of course, they do.

“Dissent” was already a one-way street in 1967. It has only become much narrower since.

‘You Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Say That!’

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Image result for images of gagging free speech

My Newswithviews column this week, “Republican Cowards,” had to do with… well, Republican cowards.

Republican Cowards

I got a lot of emails about this, almost all of them enthusiastically agreeing with me. But there was one bad apple in the barrel.

This guy said he hoped the FBI would swoop down on me for sayin’ these bad, bad things. Free speech is one thing, he said, but… this? Way out of line! You just can’t say things like that!!! Unless, of course, you’re a Democrat and the president is Donald Trump. Then there’s absolutely nothing you can say that’s out of bounds.

I grew up thinking I lived in a country in which I had a God-given right to free speech, that the government had no power to take away from me. Why did I think that? Because everybody said so. Because the First Amendment to the Constitution, the law of the land, said so. Right there in black and white, for anyone to see.

Now we’ve got all these characters out there–almost all of them Democrats–who think the government should restrict the content of Americans’ speech. They think you should be free to say only things approved by the government. And woe unto you if you don’t!

This is alien to America, it is not American, it has crept into our culture from somewhere outside, then hatches into a parasite that attacks us from within.

But hey! That’s what President Trump’s no-longer-in-office “impeachment” trial is about, isn’t it? Show the proles you can’t buck the ruling class, even if you’re a billionaire like Donald Trump. Throw a scare into us! If they can do this to him, what chance have I got?

How things change! When I was undergoing “orientation” to prepare for Rutgers University, every other word out of their mouths was about the glory, the glamor, and the absolute sheer necessity for… Dissent! It was an end in itself, it was the highest civic virtue, and anyone who doesn’t dissent is a villain and a dastard. Etc., etc.

Let’s see how much dissent they tolerate, now that they’ve got their monkey in the White House.