How Liberals Ruined College

The Daily Beast ^ | 05/12/2015 | Kirsten Powers

[SeekAndFind]

College should be a place of new ideas and challenging views. Instead, liberals have made it a place of fear and intimidation.

The root of nearly every free-speech infringement on campuses across the country is that someone—almost always a liberal—has been offended or has sniffed out a potential offense in the making. Then, the silencing campaign begins. The offender must be punished, not just for justice’s sake, but also to send the message to anyone else on campus that should he or she stray off the leftist script, they too might find themselves investigated, harassed, ostracized, or even expelled.

If the illiberal left can preemptively silence opposing speakers or opposing groups— such as getting a speech or event canceled, or denying campus recognition for a group—even better.

In a 2014 interview with New York magazine, comedian Chris Rock told journalist Frank Rich that he had stopped playing college campuses because of how easily the audiences were offended. Rock said he realized some time around 2006 that “This is not as much fun as it used to be” and noted George Carlin had felt the same way before he died.

Rock attributed it to “Kids raised on a culture of ‘We’re not going to keep score in the game because we don’t want anybody to lose.’ Or just ignoring race to a fault. You can’t say ‘the black kid over there.’ No, it’s ‘the guy with the red shoes.’ You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.” Sadly, Rock admitted that the climate of hypersensitivity had forced him and other comedians into self-censorship.

This Orwellian climate of intimidation and fear chills free speech and thought. On college campuses it is particularly insidious.

[tanknetter]

Exactly.

Progressives have a deeply ingrained hatred of Conservatives.

What “mainstream” Progressives like Powers are realizing is that to the new generation of Progressives THEY are “conservative”

And thats scaring the hell out of them.

[tanknetter]

Well, that was weird. Pulled out my phone and my post was still up, it didn’t look like it had submitted. So I hit submit, again.

[JoeFromSidney]

Thank God I left Academia twenty years ago. Nowadays they'd crucify me.

[same old song]

I knew this ten years ago.. Ten years ago I transferred out of an extremely liberal .. you guessed it .. liberal arts college.

I knew it wasn’t the place for me when the College Republicans were harassed constantly, and they tried to silence us. We brought in the great Phyllis Schlafly to speak, and all of our materials were vandalized repeatedly. They even protested and tried to get the college to uninvite her.. Yay, free speech.

(Perhaps the MOST disturbing was the ridicule she received from the LGBT crowd for having a gay son with her political views. While yes, her son is gay - he didn’t deserve to be brought up as a political pawn of the LGBT group. Not to mention, he supports his mother.)

Being conservative is exhausting sometimes.

[DeweyCA]

Kirsten Powers has become an evangelical Christian through Tim Keller’s church in NYC. She still has her liberal views on many subjects, but it seems that she is gradually opening her eyes to the ugly reality that liberalism has wrought.