Posted on 02/11/2009 5:24:20 PM PST by pissant
I write today regarding the College's decision to invite a particular speaker to our campus. This decision to invite her on behalf of the College is one that involves our whole campus and signals that we as a whole will receive her openly.
Unfortunately, I am certain she will not receive many of us so kindly. I'm speaking of Ann Coulter, and I am advising you to rescind her invitation.
The United States is a nation that prides itself on acceptance and diversity and refuses to accept any less. The same holds true for the College. We are proud of the fact that ethnically diverse students comprise more than one third of our campus population, that 60 percent of our students are females and that we have a multiplicity of students of different religions, political views, abilities and sexual orientations.
Yet, Coulter has insulted people in each of these groups. On women, she has said, "It would be a much better country if women did not vote."
On Muslims, she has said, "News magazines don't kill people, Muslims do."
On homosexuals, Coulter has said, "I thought gays just wanted to get married to one another and settle down in the suburbs so they could visit each other in the hospital."
On Judaism, Coulter has said, "We just want Jews to be perfected."
The list of her odious quotations continues, and while she may not have been talking to students at the College, she was certainly talking about them. She has insulted the majority of our students directly and the remainder of us by extension because those whom she insulted are our friends.
Coulter has insulted our intelligence, and she has denigrated the work of those who strive for tolerance and equality. Her appearance encumbers all that the College has striven for in its implementation of courses and educational events on race, religion, homosexuality, gender equality and differing abilities.
How can we reconcile our attempts to shape a new generation of students who are tolerant, accepting and aware of those who are different from us when we invite as a guest a person who refers to our students as she does?
Coulter is no more welcome here than would be any other racist or sexist or homophobe. Yet, we are welcoming her to the College and embracing her visit with one the campus' largest venues, Kendall Hall.
My question is this: What does it say to our students by inviting her here, someone who has at one point or another blatantly insulted at least half of those enrolled here? Even more fundamentally, what does it say about us?
Um, that you're tolerant of the views of others in a free society? Oh, that's right, it's only when the views agree with your own that you're tolerant.
TCNJ is supposed to really be improving academics wise, you have these types on every college.
I wonder if they teach what “out of context” means anymore? It seems liberals are unable or unwiling to understand the concept.
I made SURE my children know it- so they can spot the pitfalls.
I told them this: “If you get bad grades and think we are going to florida then you are sadly mistaken.” Out of context would be hearing only the words “we are going to florida”
They got BOTH messages.
“In many cases it would be better if women did not vote. They vote their feelings. Feelings is hardly what government should be concerned about”
The correct wording of your sentence should be “Feelings ARE hardly...”. But besides that, your comment is ignorant and insulting. Can you imagine, for example, Condoleeza Rice not voting? How about Sarah Palin? I would like to think you’re joking, but I somehow doubt it. There are plenty of tough women right on this board.
Liberals are for diversity in everything except diversity of opinion. Their idea of diversity on campus is a faculty with only one conservative professor. Through some strange alchemy of time liberals have become the most intolerant ideologues on earth, save a few Islamic extremists (say, one billion, perhaps).
“My question is this: What does it say to our students by inviting her here, someone who has at one point or another blatantly insulted at least half of those enrolled here? Even more fundamentally, what does it say about us?”
It says that somewhere, somehow, there are folks who believe you can tolerate an opinion differing from your deep indoctrination without peeing in your pants. It says that there is this system of thinking called “rationality”, that, while it calls upon you to do the arduous work of utilizing some of those neurons allegedly being cultivated between your ears, does not rely upon your fearfully rejecting any differing opinion by reflexively calling it “racism” as a crude defense mechanism. Indeed, it is just a variation of the “tolerance” you speak of, except of a different opinion than one you may now have. And the idea is that by using those neurons, like biceps and leg muscles, over time and with continued use, you might just become what we call a “thinking person” instead of a victim of your own fearful reactions. And developing this trait in you is the general idea of why your parents spend between $6,000 and $40,000 a year sending you to an institution of higher learning. See how it works?
The bottom line is: There are those who have more faith in your inherent intellectual worth than you yourselves do. This function is called “learning”, and one of the prerequisites to this learning is that you cease believing that you, at your just-over-pubescent age, have all the answers. You’ll just have to take that part on faith. And it may be uncomfortable for a minute, this mental expansion opportunity you’re being afforded, but many people before you, for thousands of years, have gone to schools, advanced their educations, and bettered themselves. Now, isn’t America great, to give you that special chance? How’d you like to be a part of it or what it could be if it wasn’t filled with fearful drones who cannot think for themselves?
Oh cry me a river, Loretta.
This is America, deal with it. And we won’t be silenced especially during this administration.
So grow a thicker skin or get psychotherapy.
Nobody ever pays attention to those guest speakers on college campus anyway. At least I never did.
I take that back. I went to see carrot top when he came to my campus. But that was just to make fun of him. He was still skinny back then.
By being tolerant and accepting of Ann Coulter. Who is definitely different than you and your gay friends.
Apparently, the author believes that there isn't a single conservative in this oh-so-diverse campus that wants to hear a voice in the wilderness.
Al Qaida good, Ann Coulter bad!!
sounds like the little pantywaist who wrote this piece isn’t tolerant. what a bigot.
I’m not berating women for the fact they primarily are driven by feelings and emotion. That’s how most of them are designed by God to be. They are the complement to the man, who is driven primarliy by logic and reason (again except for our metrosexual wimps). But government is not set up to be charity or welfare, it is best when it does the least (defense, justice systems, citizen safety).
Google “Sockdolager” and you will find out exactly what I mean. Using government to “help” people - ie welfare, pay them money for things, to give the money collected from some to other people to take care of them - that is an idea that inherently appeals to the nature of a woman. Because it is about feelings, taking care of people who are in trouble, using government to do it rather than the private institutions that should be doing it - family, volunteers, private charities, private groups, churches. When we all sit back and say government can do it we give government power it should not have and allow it to do “charity” - something government never had the authority to do in the first place - check the Constitution. It’s not in there.
And you know what? If Ann was gay and liberal and outspoken, they would all be fawning over her calling her hot and wanting to hit that so hard...
Hypocrites they are.
SINGLE women also overwhelmingly vote for Uncle Sugar Daddy,
most while proclaiming how independent they are and how they “don’t need a man”.
White people are the only non-ethnic ethnicity.
Last time I checked, “Muslim” is not a race. Further, her comments about Jews were not about the Hebrew race, but the Jewish religion, so that’s not racist either. I’m not quite sure it speaks well of a college to have editorials that don’t even contain an understanding of a simple term like “racist”.
I agree with you, but for different reasons.
Women, generally, are more willing to trade freedom away in exchange for security than men are. That trait makes the typical woman a dangerous leader, and a dangerous voter.
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