In honor of the 228th birthday of the U.S. Constitution, let’s hear it for the First Amendment! Although, in some circles, the freedom of religion, speech, the press, to assemble, or to petition the government are not cause for celebration. National Constitution Day is designated as September 17. On this day in 1787, George Washington, president of the Constitutional Convention, signed and dated the proposal that the new constitution be submitted to the Convention of Delegates for each state in the union. The Bill of Rights was not adopted until December 15, 1791.
The erudite Founders, men and women of strong intellect and moral discipline viewed free speech as a natural right. In their fallible humanity, they were the greatest generation of Americans.
My, how times have changed, as well as the notions of “rights” and “education” and “truth.”
In the landmark philosophical treatise, The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck defines mental illness as the denial of truth. A dedication to truth is the pathway to mental health.
By that definition, a professor at Washington State University has reached his/her destination of mental illness and is in need of some serious truth therapy. In a course titled “Women in Popular Culture,” the professor states in her/his syllabus that points will be deducted from a student’s final grade for using “oppressive and hateful language.”Parents, that sounds like a good class policy, right? You didn’t raise your children to be oppressive and hateful adults. Read on as you write your $24,000 tuition check.
Oppressive and hateful language now includes the adjectives “male” and “female.” Students will also be punished for “not deferring to non-white students,” because they must “recognize how white privilege functions in everyday day social structures and institutions.” Rationalizing racial preferences in the name of social justice is an acrobatic feat in logic.
Free speech seems to be a threat to the arbiters of political correctness in American culture. What is acceptable and what isn’t seems to be the realm of a few self-appointed regulators.
Higher education is the seedbed of much of the intolerant, closed-minded speech regulation promoted in popular culture and by intelligentsia these days.
What began decades ago as an attempt to bring awareness to multicultural sensitivities, a result of politically correct immigration policy, has spread like kudzu in the American lexicon. Silliness such as saying “Oriental rug” is acceptable, “Oriental person” is unacceptable.
Politeness is a virtue. Political correctness is a tyrant.
Simple, descriptive qualifiers are being struck down by the P.C. regulators at a rate so fast, most of us have a hard time keeping up with the latest taboo words. While most Americans are working and nurturing peaceful, fulfilling lives with relatives, friends, and neighbors, some amongst us are fighting the good fight against adjectives and personal pronouns.
According to the University of Tennessee, students are no longer“he” or“she.”They are “ze.”No longer are possessive pronouns “his”and “hers,” but the nonsensical “zir.” (Imagine newlywed bath towels embroidered with “zir”and “zir.”) Let’s think through this. Using “they”instead of the proper singular pronoun is grammatically offensive enough. Teachers throughout the English-speaking world struggle to teach proper English as it has been known since Beowolf was first translated from Old English.
The feminist in me strives to explain why the universal “he”is more convenient and traditional, but “s/he”is very acceptable, even preferable when the sex of a person is unknown or both sexes are included. However, the feminist in me also wants to be acknowledged as female whenever possible –thank you very much!
Men will be men and women will be women regardless of our choice of pronouns, or the trendy refusal to accept the truth regarding the duality of sexual identification. “[M]ale and female He created them,”Genesis 1:27 says. The Babylonian womb-goddess created seven male bricks and seven female bricks. While Hindu and Greek mythology include hermaphroditic gods and goddesses, representing both masculine and feminine qualities, these symbolic figures are a reflection of their inclusive pantheism, not a literal categorization of human sexual identity.
With the full intention of shattering their delusional political correctness, haters of sex-specific personal pronouns would do well to baptize themselves in a Biology 101 course. The section on sexual reproduction should be especially enlightening and provide further anatomical proof of the need for separate, public men’s and women’s facilities. A visit to the Abnormal Psychology class would aid in their education of sexual identity crisis and the simple truth that a transsexual identity disorder is not as glamorous as Bruce Jenner pretends.
A young, high school male student dressed in drag can pretend to be female, but when the time comes to choose which bathroom door to enter through, natural hormonal determinations will direct him to the urinal. The Politically Correct Police would have us pretend along with him that his feelings of feminity are valid, deny the laws of nature, and assist him along his path to mental illness.
Religion and science aside, freedom of thought is no less than the foundation of a free society. Free speech is the natural offspring of free thought. Destructive forces behind thought control are not interested in freedom, and, if not checked, will be the judge and jury of our consciences with due process of character assassination.