Debate, discussion and healthy disagreement used to be part of college learning.
But now, disagreement is something to be punished and silenced, especially if it conflicts with liberal ideology like global warming, gay marriage or abortion.
Dissent is simply not going to be tolerated.
Like Sen. Doug Eriksen, a Republican and chairman of the Senate Energy and Telecommunications Committee who was recently targeted by students from Western Washington University because he wouldn’t support mandated compliance to cap and trade programs and low carbon emission fuel standards.
So some whiny students wanted the university to pull his degree — the one he earned and paid for.
The president of WWU strongly defended the good senator and his right to take the position he did as an elected legislator.
The students, however, said “Sen. Doug Eriksen is welcome to have whatever political views he wants, (I guess as long as they approve his views) but misinforming the public on the science of climate change is undermining the credibility of our own degrees and reflecting poorly on the caliber of education students receive here.”
So much for free speech I guess.
But to me there are many other things showing up on college campuses that undermine the “caliber of education” students get and it sometimes involves a tenured professor. Like the one in Santa Barbara whole stole the pro-life sign from the young women who were legally exercising their free speech rights on campus. I guess that’s what college debate looks like today.
Or the recent racist babble by professor Saida Grundy, an assistant professor of sociology and African-American studies at Boston University.
She tweeted that she attempts to avoid shopping at “white-owned businesses” and also posted that “white men are a population problem” on Twitter.
The university initially supported her right to be stupid until alumni objected and threatened to withhold future donations.
Once it looked like it would cost them money, they rethought her thoughtful comments and thought maybe they weren’t really appropriate after all.
Not a very principled decision, but hey, money talks even in liberal Boston.
To me, however, these examples, and others like them, “reflects poorly on the caliber of education” students receive, much more than the principled stand Eriksen took as the elected representative of his voters.
•••
In another inspiring climate change story, our president spoke to the Coast Guard Academy graduates telling them the most dangerous thing they will deal with is climate change.
Not ISIS, or a nuclear-armed Iran, not a crazy man leading North Korea, but climate change?
President Barack Obama must have inspired the heck out of those folks and they are out buying hybrid cars right now.
I’m a veteran and remember being inspired by my leaders to protect the U.S. from enemies foreign and domestic, not carbon dioxide or carbon footprints.
Although now that Bigfoot is apparently also settled science, like global warming, they could help find his footprint. But then that’s another story.
Do these new young leaders wear recycled boots? Stop flying their aircrafts, driving their boats and simply walk where they are sent? Are they to protect our coastline by floating around in big red PFDs?
Or just not protect our coastline at all?
It’s foolishness like this, (but not just this), that lead to me to purchase a hat recently that reads “Proud of my country, ashamed of my leaders.”
Whether it’s the treatment of vets by the VA, IRS targeting and illegally releasing sensitive personal information for political reasons, conflicts of interest, deleting emails, secret servers and emails, or Chicago-style politics by personal destruction, the statement on that hat, sadly, applies to them all.
•••
John McCroskey was Lewis County sheriff from 1995 to 2005. He lives outside Chehalis, and can be contacted at musingsonthemiddlefork@yahoo.com.
