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Has Political Correctness Gone off the Rails in America?
http://www.spiegel.de ^ | 1/5/17 | Philipp Oehmke

Posted on 01/13/2017 4:01:02 PM PST by BBell

Few terms are as divisive in today's United States as "political correctness." A concept that was intended to create greater freedom in the country may instead have resulted in the opposite. It also helped strengthen the right wing.

It's a Friday afternoon in Oberlin, Ohio, around one month before the country heads to the polls to elect Donald Trump as its next president. The final classes and lectures of the week have just ended, and a young woman comes walking by in bare feet with a hula hoop gyrating around her waist while others are performing what seems to be a rhythmic dance to the African music that's playing. Two black students are rapping.

It's the kind of scene that could easily play out on a beach full of backpack tourists, but this is unfolding at one of the country's most expensive universities.

Many female students here have dyed their hair green or blue, they have piercings and their fashion sense seems inspired by "Girls" creator and millennial star Lena Dunham, who, of course, also studied here.

In such a setting, it seems almost inconceivable that this country could go on to elect Donald Trump as its president only a few weeks later. Yet pro-Trump country is just a few miles away. Oberlin is located in Ohio, one of the swing states that made Trump's election possible. Drive five miles down College Road toward town, and you start seeing blue "Trump Pence 2016" signs on people's lawns.

Places like Oberlin are the breeding grounds of the leftist elite Trump's people spoke so disparagingly of during the election campaign.

Only a few months earlier, a handful of students claimed they had been traumatized after someone used chalk to scrawl "Trump 2016" on the walls of buildings and on sidewalks at Oberlin and at other liberal

(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...


TOPICS: Education; Society
KEYWORDS: correctness; pc; political; snowflakes
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To: BBell
But at Oberlin, one student complained to the university administration and requested a trigger warning for Sophocles' "Antigone." The student argued that the suicide scene in the play had triggered strong emotions in him and that he, as someone who had himself long been on suicide watch, should have been warned. In an article he wrote for the Oberlin Review, the student, Cyrus Eosphoros, compared a trigger warning to the list of ingredients on food items. "People should have the right to know and consent to what they're putting into their minds," he wrote. Eosphoros has since dropped out of the school.

He should drop out of life if he is so fragile.

He needs to become a cloistered monk or a hermit and isolate himself from the world.

He would be much better off hiding away in a mountain cave studying scripture and meditating. Although some of the passages in the Bible would be too traumatic for such a fragile psyche as his.

21 posted on 01/13/2017 4:34:29 PM PST by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit.)
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To: marktwain; TigersEye; Grimmy
The second page of the article mentions Bettina Aptheker , a communist who is a professor of feminist studies at UC Santa Cruz, and yes Bettina now thinks there should be limitations on free speech.

I really hate the hypocrisy of some of these old 60's protesters.

22 posted on 01/13/2017 4:34:34 PM PST by BBell (calm down and eat your sandwiches)
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To: Pontiac; LucyT; ADemocratNoMore; Akron Al; arbee4bush; agrace; ATOMIC_PUNK; Badeye; Bikers4Bush; ...

Ohio PING!!!

Political correctness on Oberlin’s campus

Article and comments, esp # 6, #9. #11, #12, revolving around this quote:

“Political correctness is tyranny with manners” - Charlton Heston.

Thanks, Pontiac!


23 posted on 01/13/2017 4:35:45 PM PST by Whenifhow
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To: Grimmy

It’s a dirty damned lie and to make things worse I fail to see how restricting speech could increase freedom.


24 posted on 01/13/2017 4:36:32 PM PST by relictele (Principiis obsta & Finem respice - Resist The Beginnings & Consider The Ends.)
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To: BBell

Oemke is flat out wrong about a good many things, not the least of which is his asinine assertion that Americans did not have free speech until 1968.

Has this guy never heard of the first Amendment? Does he not know that the Bill of Rights precludes the Federal government from interfering with our God given right?

Does he not know that “free speech” to the left has always meant shouting down opposing viewpoints? And never more so than in Berkeley during the late 60s.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Many other odd misapprehensions are included. For instance his use of the term “leftist mainstream.” Never heard that before. Mayne he meant ‘leftist “mainstream”,’ in which case it would make sense.

But most egregious perhaps is the message that opponents of the left use speech for insults.

Well, Mr. Oemke how about this of your right to speak freely (even though it is false and insulting) “the country has elected a president who stands for racism and sexism.”

Jackass.


25 posted on 01/13/2017 4:37:35 PM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: BBell

The stupid and evil will always be with us. We tolerate them to live among us.

Good men do nothing, so of course evil prevails.
So, who’s fault is it, really?


26 posted on 01/13/2017 4:41:37 PM PST by Grimmy (equivocation is but the first step along the road to capitulation)
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To: BenLurkin

That’s one of the reason I posted this. It shows how some Jackass in Germany doesn’t know anything but will write about the U.S. anyway. It shows the mindset of a lot of Europeans. They don’t have free speech over there but they sure have a lot of muzzies.


27 posted on 01/13/2017 4:43:18 PM PST by BBell (calm down and eat your sandwiches)
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To: BBell

Yes. Oemke is indeed to whom I was referring.


28 posted on 01/13/2017 4:45:23 PM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: BBell

“Few terms are as divisive in today’s United States as “political correctness.” A concept that was intended to create greater freedom in the country may instead have resulted in the opposite. It also helped strengthen the right wing.”

Huh? I had to read that several times and I am still doing double-takes!

“A concept that was intended to create greater freedom”?????

Dear Mr. Philipp Oehmke, please sell to me some of whatever you are smoking, ok?


29 posted on 01/13/2017 4:48:08 PM PST by spel_grammer_an_punct_polise (Note to all foreigners: Please.....GET OUT and STAY OUT!)
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To: BBell

These young people will soon find themselves in Trump’s America. They will need CRASH COURSES in BASIC survival skills—i.e., how NOT to get “triggered”, how to get used to and even enjoy a environment with people who have more traditional ideas, opinions, and experiences. And how to LEARN!!!!

This even includes living well with people who enthusiastically supported Donald Trump, and those who love our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ and who pray and worship regularly.

By the way, the aggressive-looking muslim woman with the pink hijab has to go!!!! It is those things that “trigger” me, and since islam is working to conquer us, they should!!! The “snowflakes” are so clueless that they are very easy prey for islam, and would have been killed or been made slaves very quickly if we had not elected Donald Trump!!!!


30 posted on 01/13/2017 4:49:11 PM PST by Honorary Serb (Kosovo is Serbia! Free Srpska! Abolish ICTY!)
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To: BBell

Yes. Years ago. That is one of the reasons we are in such a mess.


31 posted on 01/13/2017 4:50:10 PM PST by mulligan
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To: BBell

In my mind PC is as dead as CNN and BUZZFEED
Any Sparks of Life that PC has is as old and decrepit as Hillary is.


32 posted on 01/13/2017 4:54:55 PM PST by TexasTransplant (Idiocracy used to just be a Movie... Live every day as your last...one day you will be right)
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To: Politically Correct

As a manager...I see Oberlin, or any other of the myriad of leftist hellholes on a resume’... they are gone. I won’t even consider them.

I don’t need some idiot going to HR because I called diagonal cutters as a pair of dykes. Hand me those dykes,


33 posted on 01/13/2017 4:56:23 PM PST by Ouderkirk (To the left, everything must evidence that this or that strand of leftist theory is true)
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To: BBell
They are so bad that the protesters from the 60's can't deal with or understand them.

The protesters from the 60's laid the ground work for today's snowflakes, and seem to be encouraging them even if they don't understand them.

34 posted on 01/13/2017 4:56:45 PM PST by Major Matt Mason (Those that can, do, those that can't, work in the Beltway.)
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To: BBell

Ping


35 posted on 01/13/2017 4:57:10 PM PST by sphinx
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To: Honorary Serb

You are not allowed to be “triggered” by muzzies. It’s politically in correct.


36 posted on 01/13/2017 5:10:33 PM PST by BBell (calm down and eat your sandwiches)
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To: BBell
The "Free Speech" movement in the 70's was never about actual freedom of speech, a point the late Nat Hentoff made repeatedly. Even then they shouted down anyone with a viewpoint other than their own. There is nothing in the least ironic about the PC extension of it except that certain of the original demonstrators are dismayed that the suppression they once used so enthusiastically on others could now be used against them.

It is thought control through language control, a technique that the Left has held dear as a religion and that is seldom questioned despite a clear historical record of failure. It is very common for language totalitarians to ascribe resistance to their power as fascistic; it is, on the contrary, anything but. Rebellion against that sort of suppression is not the hallmark of the extreme Right, but a perfectly natural reaction among free men and women of every political stripe. The Soviets could not kill samizdat in three quarters of a century of militant and violent effort.

It is this that has led many social commentators of the Left to term that resistance to their suppression as "Alt-Right", equating that with the usual progressive shibboleths of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, etc ad nauseum. In fact, it is nothing of the sort. It is a perfectly natural reaction against "You can't say X" to go ahead and say it anyway, even if it happens to be otherwise reprehensible, a trap the Left sets repeatedly but has, by now, lost its force entirely. The issue isn't X at all, but the right to say it. And the issue isn't triggering and safe spaces at all, it's the ability to use them to gain political power sufficient to suppress one's chosen enemies. That's all PC is about and it's all it was ever about.

37 posted on 01/13/2017 5:12:21 PM PST by Billthedrill
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To: BBell

Ha-ha!!!!


38 posted on 01/13/2017 5:19:12 PM PST by Honorary Serb (Kosovo is Serbia! Free Srpska! Abolish ICTY!)
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To: Pontiac

He would have an even tougher time as a Monk!!!!


39 posted on 01/13/2017 5:22:10 PM PST by Honorary Serb (Kosovo is Serbia! Free Srpska! Abolish ICTY!)
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To: Responsibility2nd

I said, “Now that’s what I call liberal thinking!” As in “free wheeling, unrestrained” you see.


40 posted on 01/13/2017 5:23:41 PM PST by dr_lew (I)
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