Free speech rights must be enforced

The screed below by Professor Stonebook must be the most manic text I have ever read but he makes good points. Only his allusion to turtles escaped me

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)-driven leftist-lamasery Stanford never seems to miss an opportunity to undermine free speech.

Recently I wrote about the Cardinals' little red DEI-to-English dictionary. Stanford's now-removed remedial reader harvested such wisdom pearls as don't say "black box" or "white paper," because they're somehow racializing--actual evidence, had it even been sought, demonstrating the contrary.

Now, the latest news discloses Stanford's Gestapo-inspired bias- reporting system, wherein students turn in classmates for such hateful acts as reading (not out loud) offensive books.

The Wall Street Journal details that controversy erupted at the West Coast crimson collective when a student was anonymously reported through the school's "Protected Identity Harm" system (seriously?) for reading "Mein Kampf," Adolf Hitler's maniacal manifesto. The whole story reads like a sequel to Mel Brooks' "The Producers."

Life can be disturbing. But ostriching won't change reality. And free-speech rights are only meaningful if enforced. Otherwise, they're merely pablum for the masses being subjugated by kleptocratic overlords.

Free-speech rights solely for nursery rhymes, politburo-preferred parlance, or other over-boiled under-salted farina of individual expression are gossamer veneers of psuedo-protection camouflaging a chimera of bygone guarantees that Americans nobly died for.

We must restore the primacy of these rights by rejecting institutional censorship and Stalinist snitching. Irrespective of whether one chooses to read verboten texts like "Mein Kampf" for legitimate or illegitimate reasons, both must remain protected--or neither will be.

My father, a Jew who lived under Nazi occupation and Soviet control during WWII, became an autodidactic expert on the Nazis--likely to better understand the Lord of the Flies savagery that engulfed the then-world. He read "Mein Kampf."

Offended by a book title you spied across the quadrangle? Here's your panacea: Grow up!

Don't feel better? Here's your next cure-all: Grow up!

It's turtles all the way down.

But, alas, someone also might read racist propaganda because he is, in fact, a bigot. So be it.

The alternative of a society of self-appointed sensitivity Stasi is far worse. Does it really matter whether crackpots create themselves their pseudo-confirmation sources or find those elsewhere?

Carroll O'Connor, who starred as iconic racist Archie Bunker in "All in the Family," said he suspected a minority of his viewers didn't see the irony of his character. So be it.

Could you imagine living in a world deprived of laughing at the Smithsonian-celebrated crank, created by a Jew (Norman Lear) who fought the Nazis, simply to satisfy the sensibilities of Stanford students?

Sadly, the answer is yes. That's our world.

And our academic institutions are the grand marshals goose-stepping in this parade of despotic-progressive expurgation--all while proclaiming the pretext of happy feelings, unicorns, and rainbows. As The Wall Street Journal reported: "The [Protected Identity Harm] system is designed to help students get along with one another, said ... a Stanford spokeswoman."

Be afraid of that crypto-martinet--or just take the blue pill for some soma-induced somnolence. Nurse Ratchet is happy to give you that choice.

It wasn't long ago when Arkansas State University maintained unconstitutional "free-speech zones" and used its police to bum-rush Ashlyn Hoggard away from her outdoor card table advertising Charlie Kirk's conservative group Turning Point USA.

I saw Hoggard at a free-speech forum at the Bowen Law School recently. She recounts that ASU never apologized for its unconstitutional behavior. Its spokesman recently claimed that ASU "prevailed" in the litigation Hoggard brought, notwithstanding that the court found ASU's actions unconstitutional and unlawful, because she wasn't paid damages due to qualified immunity. Bill and Hillary must be so proud of their lexical legacy.

The pathology is pervasive. Another panelist at the free-speech forum described the terror conservative University of Arkansas at Fayetteville students felt when sharing their opinions inside or outside of class. In one class, the professor declared this student's views "wrong" and denied her participation credit for her heterodoxy.

As long as the education-industrial complex is given unchecked reign to cement its unfree-speech environment, the contemporary-information monopoly of leftist indoctrination defining higher education will harden.

Conservative stalwarts Dan Sullivan and Rick Beck seek to arrest this dive into DEI darkness through their bill SB125, which modestly maps existing outdoor free-speech guarantees onto indoor common areas on campuses. SB125 explicitly grants universities control over the time, place, and manner of indoor speech and prohibits unlawful disruptions.

How could higher education object (he says naively)? With an onslaught of Chicken Little pretexts designed to disguise higher education's desperate desire to decree everything students hear and say inside the buildings you pay for, that's how. Watch as myriad university mouthpieces--handsomely paid with your precious tax dollars--advocate against your interests. Pure hubris.

For this intellectual carnage to end, higher-education's self-entitled culture must be compelled to change. In Arkansas, let's start with ASU apologizing (in public) to Hoggard for its unlawful (and unkind) actions towards her.

Don't settle for the sad socialist standard of free speech stopping at the thresholds of higher education's castles of conformity. Call your legislators. Demand they pass SB125 to protect free speech indoors on our campuses.

This is your right to know.

https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/mar/05/free-speech-rights-must-be-enforced/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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