All Beliefs Welcome, Unless They are Forced on Others [Lefty Prof says Palin not a Woman]

Belief in god, like getting pregnant, is a private matter between consenting adults (or one consenting adult and one or more deities) and is no one else's business. I am on record in this blog (and have not budged an inch) as not objecting to any candidate's religious views.

But I object strongly when anyone (and especially anyone with political power) tries to take their theology out in public, to inflict those private religious (or sexual) views on other people. In both sex and religion (which combine in the debates about abortion), Sarah Palin's views make me fear that the Republican party has finally lost its mind.

As for sex, the hypocrisy of her outing her pregnant daughter in front of millions of people, hard on the heels of her concealing her own pregnancy (her faith in abstinence applying, apparently, only to non-Palins), is nicely balanced by her hypocrisy in gushing with loving support of her teenage daughter after using a line-item veto to cut funding for a transitional home for teenage mothers in Alaska.

Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman. The Republican party's cynical calculation that because she has a womb and makes lots and lots of babies (and drives them to school! wow!) she speaks for the women of America, and will capture their hearts and their votes, has driven thousands of real women to take to their computers in outrage. She does not speak for women; she has no sympathy for the problems of other women, particularly working class women.

"But I object strongly when anyone (and especially anyone with political power) tries to take their theology out in public, to inflict those private religious."

How I despise you that think only godlessness is permitted in government. Have you ever heard of freedom of speech, you dictatorial moron? What about my right to self determination, you nazi? If I desire this great country to be led by a Christian, I'm guaranteed that right. Only socialists like you would deny masses of citizens to be governed by leaders the led prefer. I cannot describe in words how disgusted I am with people that believe as you do. I'm sure you claim the United States of America is a "democracy". Well, if America was a democracy, as I think you believe, the true majority would probably draw and quarter you publicly. If they did, it sure would not hurt my feelings since I view you as a traitor to our freedom loving union. Like me, you're guaranteed your right to self determination so you're safe under the Constitution you so despise. Look up "constitutional republic" and "democracy" and try your hardest to understand the difference. It's a difference that permits you to live in safety from people that despise how you think. I doubt you'll give it a second thought but there is an enormous difference.

Sorry for the rant, I guess I not only despise these types but am angered by them as well.

I penned a response on her blog, and I wrote to the Dean of her “Divinity School”. You can find his link raroseng@midway.uchicago.edu

at: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/about/contact.shtml#staff

The following is what I said to her dean.

Dear Dean Rosengarten:

I invite you to read the Washington Post article written by a member of your faculty, Wendy Doniger, which can be found at the Washington Post website at: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/wendy_doniger/2008/09/all_beliefs_welcome_unless_the.html.

I also invite you to read the posts that have been written in response to what Ms. Doniger wrote.

I acknowledge that Ms. Doniger is free to express her own opinions, in print and, to some extent (if not contradicting facts - as she does) in her classrooms. The issue I present is not even one of academic freedom, hers or anyone else.

Why I write is not because anything Ms. Doniger said surprises me at all, it does not; even though I consider most of what she said as hate-filled, vitriolic, unintelligent, religiously bigoted and not worthy of a dime of parents hard earned money on tuition for her classes.

I write because she so correctly epitomizes the extremely low state that academia in America has fallen to, across the board.

At one time tenure and “academic freedom” combined to insure that political bias did not drive the mission of the academy, the curriculum or the selection and retention of teachers.

But, growing millions of American’s are starting to realize that the application and use of those concepts has morphed and developed into means that insure political orthodoxy in academia: Marxist, or Liberal, or Progressive or politically correct political orthodoxy. It is through the morphing of those terms to establish a political norm in academia that the worst, like Ms. Doniger, rises to the top.

I write to you because Ms. Doniger has helped to show millions of American’s why institutions like yours do not deserve the constant, extravagant tuition that the education industrial complex demands.

Ms. Doniger will likely become a “poster child” for why, when Congress says it wants to do something about the cost of “college tuition”, more and more Americans will demand that something about that cost should be done, it should be reduced not retained and just passed on to the taxpayers.

Mounted against inflation and all other segments and industries in the economy, over recent decades, only education and one other industry (health care) have the distinction of sharing these qualities:

increases in government regulation and mandates, above all other segments;

increases in taxpayer support, direct and indirect, at every level of government, above all other segments;

and increases in the unit cost (per capita and per student) above all other segments of the economy,

along with with the public’s correct perception of constantly diminished quality of the product produced.

The obvious, massive increases in “government” and government support, far beyond any other industry or segment of the economy has, also obviously done nothing, zero, nada about the cost, other than to accept your industry's demands and pass the cost, as is, to the taxpayers, with various direct and indirect supports. That cannot continue, and it will not. As long as every demand to the parents must be made and as long as every demand from the parents to the taxpayers is demanded as just as unassailable, education costs will never be more economical and will continue to be forever less economical. In the next few years, the American people will start to say: “the buck stops here”; NOT to “education” but to the demands of the education industrial complex.

What can you do? Do not presume to suggest I am asking that Ms. Doniger’s job should be in jeopardy, I am not.

She is not the problem.

She is just what is a patently obvious example of what the problem - the state of academia today - produces; garbage in garbage out.

I suggest you listen to what the American people think of the thinking of Ms. Doniger and understand they are not idiots. The idiots are in the supremely elitist academia and more and more the people know it.

Sincerely,

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.