University Begins Displaying American Flag in Classrooms

BigB.

You are a great debater! I will try to address your points. Please recall that in my post I referred to people reacting against the flag because they felt the things I listed below that. I was trying to describe the antipathy towards ROCK's proposal by putting it in context.

You are right to point out the ambiguities in the word "tolerance." I have written about that word and its ambiguities at great length. My point is that we are all "intolerant" of some things, and that society as a whole must be intolerant of certain things in order to function. There are "unassimilable elements" to society that, if left alone, will destroy that society. For instance, I assume that the U.S. has deemd Al-Qaeda an illegal organization and would not let it function openly. I agree with this position.

My view of tolerance (I don't know to what extent it is shared by "the left") is that a society should be as tolerant as possible. When I see a society refuse to accept any self-criticism, that worries me. Then I say that society is intolerant.

I fear that the flag mania expressed here is a way of deflecting legitimate criticism of the direction of U.S. society, and as such it is a form of unacceptable intolerance. My belief is that anyone can display a flag on their private property, but that the classroom is a space that should be free of flags so that we can be free to be critical.

By "justice" I mean a set of abstract principles by which desisions are handed out evenly. If I see that someone goes to jail without trial (as is the case with suspected "terrorists") but that suspected corporate criminaly like Ken Lay get off free, I say that there is injustice.

By "civil discourse" I mean "a space for public dialogue" open to many points of view. You are correct in your criticism of the people you name (although I haven't checked all the quotes myself) if what you say they said is true. But, for instance, at least 30% of the U.S. population was opposed to the war in Iraq, yet only 1-3% of the discourse on television during the war was made available to anti-war viewpoints. And those viewpoints were visciously attacked.

Compassion means following through on commitments to those less fortunate. In the case of Bush, he promised to help New York City rebuild after the terrorist attacks, but then only delivered 55% of what he promised. He also failed to deliver full funding for his "Leave no child behind" program. I would say that failure to live up to one's social commitments shows a lack of compassion.

My. Burke said that nearly all Palestinians may need to be eliminated before there can be peace in the Middle East. I take calls for genocide as a sign of racism. His homophobia is apparent to me whenever I hear his show.

I think that the opposition to flags in classrooms is a sign that the opponents are insecure, legitimately so. They are worried about their future. On the other hand, why do the so-called "patriots" need flags in the classroom if they weren't insecure about being "American" enough?

My reference to ROCK as Brown Shirts may be a bit extreme. They haven't killed anybody. Still, they brought Ann Coutler to campus. Ann Coulter has said that liberals should be killed, and has called for killing and converting Moslems (as a new kind of "crusade"). She has also tried to paint Joe McCarthy, one of the worst demagogues in American history, as a hero. Does she scare me? Yes she does. Could a group of people following Coulter's words carry out mass hate crimes the way the Brown Shirts did? Of course. Who's sure it would never happen here?

I am not attempting to silence anyone's views. And if a conservative faculty group decided to form, they should feel alright to do so.

The PFF is not that radical a group. Our main purpose is to help articulate the University's existing values more clearly, and to point to cases in which the university's behaviors deviate from its declared values.

I think hate speech is a fuzzy concept, but I would say that threats are probably hate speech, as are calls for genocide.

As for the article on Krugman you pointed out, it seems to rely very heavily on the words of Grover Norquist to make its case. I see nothing wrong with that per se, but there are a lot of more balanced voices one could consult with about Krugman.

Best,

Barry

61 posted on 09/16/2003 2:29:35 PM PDT by bmauer

Yes, you sound like such a nice and intelligent prof. Now why don't you get off your silly ego trip and give credit to the nation that has given you succor? To our military that has defended you and your fathers? To our noble origins? To our founding fathers?

What skin is off your ass to fly the American flag in a classroom? After all this is America and not some 3rd world hole where you probably should have born to learn the life lesson of humility.

Or are American universities supposed to emulate the UN?

62 posted on 09/16/2003 2:32:35 PM PDT by dennisw (G_d is at war with Amalek for all generations)

To: justshutupandtakeit

Let's see. The Republicans control the presidency, house, senate, and supreme court. Delay is requiring lobbyists on capital hill to be Republican. Pro-Republicans such as Rupert Murdoch own huge swaths of the media. The companies making the new voting machines are all owned by Republicans. I could go on . . .

Flags have not been "routinely displayed" in classrooms at UCF. They have not been permanently mounted in classrooms ever in its 40 year history. They are fine in courtrooms, high schools etc. I keep saying this over and over and over . . . I do not hate the flag. I do not hate the U.S.

63 posted on 09/16/2003 2:37:14 PM PDT by bmauer

I can't keep up! I will probably only return posts to a few more people.

Again, I love the U.S. That's why I am concerned about it. Can't one love something and still be critical of it? Is there a contradiction there?

I am disturbed by permanent flags in classrooms.

I reject ROCK's proposal on the grounds that it will degrade the teaching environment.

I am not opposed to flags in the classroom, as long as they are there on a temporary basis and can be part of a Socratic dialogue. I am opposed to PERMANENT flags in the classroom because they would be counter to the purposes of Socratic dialogue, which is one of my classroom methods.

I think a lot of the pressure on the university to install the flags permanently in the classroom comes from people outside the university who don't understand what a university is for -- or maybe they do understand it
and just don't like it. A university, as opposed to a technical school, is not just teaching people a salable skill. It goes way beyond that. It's goals are to teach the methods that lead to self-knowledge, critical thinking skills, citizenship defined in its broadest sense (meaning responsibility for one's locality, state, nation, and globe), and literacy, which is the ability to read and write at a disciplinary level. These skills are essential for leadership in a Republic, Plato argued. By no means are these goals easy to achieve. There is no shortcut to achieving them. Socratic dialogue is one of the primary methods we use at the university for achieving our goals.

2500 years ago, Socrates invented dialogue as it is still practiced at the university today. Who was he? Socrates was identified by the oracles as the wisest man in ancient Greece. He was confused by this because he
admitted that he knew nothing. How could he be the wisest man if he only knew that he did not know anything? He went to find out -- what he discovered was that everyone else thought they knew something, but they had not examined their beliefs and when their beliefs were scrutinized, they fell apart. So Socrates was the wisest man because he didn't hold on to
beliefs that went unexamined. One of our tenets at the university is "The unexamined life is not worth living." That comes from Socrates.

Dialogue was Socrates' method for testing beliefs. It was a mutual search for the truth among lifelong friends who trusted one another and were willing to exchange views without embarrassing each other about it later.

One of the questions I raise in Socratic dialogue (in my Visual Literacy class, where we study flags) is: what is a flag? Is it a symbol? A piece of fabric, the picture on the fabric? Is a picture of a flag on the Internet a flag? If someone changes the colors on the flag to green and gold, is it still a flag? Is a painting of a flag a flag? What's the difference between a "real" flag and one that's not real? Views on these questions get
exchanged as clothing was in the Eleuzinian Rites (I wear your views, you wear mine). It doesn't matter if you disagree with it; you try it on and model it for others, and they model your views for you. You can make comments about their modeling of your views, indicating if the modeling is inaccurate, but in principle you have to cede control.

Socrates frequently went outside the city gates for his dialogues. One of the reasons for this is that he knew that if people overheard the dialogue it could be embarrassing for the participants. At UCF, we can't go outside the city gates very easily with 42,000 students, so we go inside the classroom. The classroom has to be a safer place to exchange views than any other place -- safer than home, workplace, church -- all places which demand that people stay within defined roles and where deviation from prescribed views may be met with ridicule.

Dialogue is not debate and it's not dialectics (the clash of ideas) in which you hold onto your "truth" with everything you've got and try to defeat any opposing views.

The classroom is a liminal space, which means an "in-between" space where things are in a state of flux. When someone or something enters the classroom to play a part in a dialogue, he, she or it dissolves into pieces (not literally, but figuratively) and these pieces get recombined in different ways. You can't have too many things in the liminal space that people don't want to see transformed, because that destroys the process.
Everything in a space must be allowed to become part of the dialogue, and thus the dialogue is very sensitive to the space.

Dialogue is very fragile. It needs the proper conditions in order to work and it needs certain constraints, but if you try to apply the wrong constraints, it fails. The flag, if it were a permanent and officially sanctioned part of the classroom would have a "chilling effect" on dialogue.
Not because the flag equals censorship or anything like that, but because it would mean that the state was visibly represented in the space of dialogue, to remind people people we are American or at least in America. Dialogue can't be "in America" because the liminal space must be temporarily "outside America" for us to safely consider the values OF America. The space of dialogue has to be temporarily free from control of national identity. This doesn't mean it's a free-for-all.

Permanent flags on campus are fine in general, but there are some places where they may not be appropriate. They may be appropriate in common areas of college campuses or even in primary and some secondary school classrooms, as well as technical institutes and so on, because the students there, generally, are not engaged in dialogue.

I love America and one of the things I love most about it is that the state doesn't intrude on your life everywhere as it does in countries like North Korea, where devotion to flag and leader are mandatory.

64 posted on 09/16/2003 2:43:51 PM PDT by bmauer

Rupert Murdoch is no Republican. Try another bogeyman, how about Andrew Mellon Scarfe? Fox News is ONE cabel network desparately trying to get a little truth out while the blaring cacaphony of lies from NBC,ABC,CNN, NYT, WP, AP, UPI, Reuters continue. And that is something you are distressed about? My point is totally verified from your own remark.

Republicans have been elected to control the presidency, house and senate. The Court has AT MOST three conservatives: Scalia, Reinquest and Thomas perhaps you recall there are NINE justices. Thus, at best (or worst for you) this is a moderate court.

DeLay is NOT requiring lobbyists be republican. Where did THAT nonsense come from, DU?

Don't worry the traditional vote stealing RATS will not be deterred for stealing votes even with Republican made machines. Funny how, up here in RAT machine central, Chicago, our voters have used the same methods Florida used for years yet there have been NO COMPLAINTS about errors, mistakes, fraud. Wonder why THAT is? Any suggestions?

Those who are upset by American flags in America can pound sand or complain about the fascism at the next Free MUMU rally.

65 posted on 09/16/2003 2:48:17 PM PDT by justshutupandtakeit (America's Enemies foreign and domestic agree. Bush must be destroyed.)

I am disturbed by permanent flags in classrooms.

GET OVER YOURSELF!!!!!!

This is America which has given you so much. You could have been born in some impoverished 3rd world nation and died at age three from typhus. Where is the respect and honor? Is America a nation worth honoring? Just think about it all rather than answer me.

Sorry but you have to get past all your irony tower bllsht. This is a young practical pioneer nation. This is not France where intellectuals strangle themselves on Galois in dark cafés while debating being and nothingness.

66 posted on 09/16/2003 3:01:58 PM PDT by dennisw (G_d is at war with Amalek for all generations)

To: justshutupandtakeit

I didn't call Murdoch a Republican, but a pro-Republican. Actually, he's just pro money, but he knows where his bread is buttered right now. I hardly think the other media outlets you named are radical hotbeds. In fact, if you compare them to "centrist" media outlets throughout the world, you will find them fairly partisan to the right.

5 of the Supremes were appointed by Republicans.

You're right that the Chicago Democrats have a long history of vote stealing. They are very bad! Still, I read about Jeb Bush's purging of the voter registration lists before the 200 elections -- over 100,000 non-criminals were scrubbed according to race (mostly) For more info read Greg Palasts' The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

The voting machines are very prone to abuse. See http://verify.stanford.edu/

Here's a story about Delay and the lobbyists. It's not the most recent story I could find but I'll keep looking. http://www.congressproject.org/ethics/delacom3.html

67 posted on 09/16/2003 3:02:21 PM PDT by bmauer

America is worth honoring, of course. I do my best to honor it by teaching its citizens to think critically. Democracy as an institution is founded on the principle of independent thinking.

68 posted on 09/16/2003 3:04:05 PM PDT by bmauer

I appreciate the response. I shall write more in a little while. I'm looking forward to continuing.

69 posted on 09/16/2003 3:05:59 PM PDT by TheBigB (I don't believe in Astrology. We Scorpios are skeptical.)

To: ucfdeltagirl

If they don't love America and our flag, then they need to get out.

70 posted on 09/16/2003 3:06:09 PM PDT by goodseedhomeschool (returned) (Evolution is the religion for men who want no accountability....1 JOHN 2:19)

To: justshutupandtakeit

What exactly is the university disrupting?

71 posted on 09/16/2003 3:07:44 PM PDT by bmauer