The president of the University of Oklahoma expelled white members of a fraternity that had been captured on video chanting what could be the last of the English language\u2019s \u201cfour letter words\u201d recognized by our society. Some remarks are in order.<\/p>\n
First, as black civil rights activist Michael Myers, among an ever increasing number of commentators, has observed, the decision of the President of a public <\/em>institution to expel students who threatened no one<\/em> amounts to nothing more or less than an assault on the latter\u2019s freedom of speech<\/em>.<\/p>\n Second, Thomas Sowell once remarked that no issue taps man\u2019s irrationality as much as that of race. Whether this statement is true of \u201cman\u201d generally is questionable. Considered as a judgment on contemporary Western men and women<\/em>, however, it couldn\u2019t be more accurate. The situation in Oklahoma is but the latest piece of proof of this.<\/p>\n But it isn\u2019t just sheer irrationality that\u2019s on display here. As is normally the case, the reaction on the part of the chattering class tells us infinitely more about the commentators than anything that it reveals about the phenomenon on which they are commenting.<\/p>\n And what the coverage of this <\/em>event in Oklahoma tells us is that the prevailing Zeitgeist and its impeccably Politically Correct guardians in the media are awash in an abyss of moral confusion and hypocrisy.<\/p>\n For decades, it has been standard operating procedure for colleges and universities around the nation to enthusiastically, indeed, zealously, <\/em>create whole programs\u2014like, say, \u201cWomen\u2019s Studies\u201d and \u201cAfrican American Studies\u201d\u2014that are nothing more than overt exercises in identity politics. <\/em>More to the point, students enrolled in these courses are forced fed a regular diet of anti-white, anti-male, anti-heterosexual, and anti-Christian stock phrases and clich\u00e9s cloaked in an academic veneer. The University of Oklahoma is no exception in this respect.<\/p>\n Nor have any of the traditional disciplines in the humanities and social sciences been immune to the politicization of race, gender, and sexual orientation that is so obviously on display in such recently invented courses like \u201cWomen\u2019s Studies\u201d and the like: philosophy, literature, history, and political science, to say nothing of sociology, anthropology, and psychology, have all been exploited in the service of a worldview that allows for only Oppressors and the Oppressed. Even such hard sciences as biology have fallen prey to the machinations of ideologues invested in suppressing research that threatens to shatter their racial and gender fictions.<\/p>\n The point is this: Contrary to President David Boren\u2019s remarks, it isn\u2019t the drunk, foolish, white fraternity students on a bus who are responsible for having created a \u201chostile learning environment.\u201d It is the faculty<\/em> of humanities and liberal arts departments throughout America, and, by implication, administrators like himself, who hold that distinction.<\/p>\n This is no hyperbole. Tragically, academia is not <\/em>anything at all like the bastion of free thought or the thriving marketplace of ideas that David Boren and his ilk would have us believe it is. In fact, if a visitor from another world surveyed 21st<\/sup> century America, our intergalactic spectator would discover that there is considerably more intellectual conformity among academics than exists among the populace generally. Moreover, there is enormous pressure<\/em>\u2014intimidation and coercion\u2014to conform to the academic\u2019s orthodoxy.<\/p>\n It is sheer hypocrisy for Boren, his faculty, and their comrades throughout the rest of the academic universe to point their collective finger at anyone, much less those whose intellects have been entrusted to their care, for the racial straightjacket\u2014the hostility to learning\u2014with which they\u2019ve been constraining their students\u2019 minds for far too long, for this is a device of their own making.<\/p>\n But we would be sorely mistaken if we assumed that the left had a monopoly on hypocrisy in this case. Self-avowed \u201cconservatives\u201d on talk radio and Fox News, ever eager as such folks always are to prove to their leftist detractors that they aren\u2019t the ruthless \u201cracists\u201d that the latter are forever accusing them of being, spared not a moment to denounce the students and demand their expulsion.<\/p>\n Mike Gallagher and Sean Hannity are but two examples of \u201cconservatives\u201d who refused to be bested in the hand-wringing contest that began to rage until Michael Myers, to his eternal credit, reminded them of a precious little thing called liberty. <\/em>Even the liberal Washington Post <\/em>was quick to remind the public of the unconstitutionality of expelling students from a public university for speech\u2014even \u201cracist\u201d or \u201coffensive\u201d or \u201ctasteless\u201d speech.<\/p>\n When a young black thug\u2014think Trayvon Martin or the original \u201cGentle Giant,\u201d Michael Brown\u2014gets himself killed upon acting violently, mainstream commentators of both a recognizably leftist and a \u201cconservative\u201d bent, even when they (eventually) concede his guilt, wail and weep over what they decry as the tragic death of a young<\/em> man or teenager<\/em>. Everyone from the President of the United States on down look beyond the incident to the \u201croot causes\u201d that magically\u2014but all so predictably\u2014transform the victimizer into the victim.<\/p>\n But when it is white \u201cyouth\u201d<\/em> that are guilty of doing what college \u201ckids\u201d throughout the land are known for doing\u2014drinking and acting sophomorically, i.e. harming no one save themselves\u2014there is no mercy. There is no quest for \u201croot causes\u201d (like, namely, the profoundly inhibitive \u201clearning\u201d environment that their racially-correct professors and other movers and shakers in various media and politics created).<\/p>\n Has anyone who has thoughtlessly demanded the expulsion of these students considered for a moment how this may affect the rest of these young people\u2019s lives? Talk radio hosts and Fox News celebrities who call for the guillotine as a fitting penalty for drunken stupidity\u2014after all, there was no crime here\u2014strike the impartial observer as being more interested in moral posturing than they are interested in preserving liberty and combatting the flagrantly racial double standards that are their enemies\u2019 weapons of choice.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The president of the University of Oklahoma expelled white members of a fraternity that had been captured on video chanting what could be the last of the English language\u2019s \u201cfour letter words\u201d recognized by our society. Some remarks are in order. First, as black civil rights activist Michael Myers, among an ever increasing number of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n