Teachers 86 Kid's Obama-Masked Talent, Fear Of 'Offending People'

Greg Hengler | March 15, 2009 7:51 PM

Tolerance is a puzzling virtue because the whole point of it lies in putting up with some things that are immoral, offensive, erroneous, in poor taste, or in some other sense bad. In the “old school” years of Bible-believing/God-fearing folk there was tolerance shown to those who broke an objective standard rooted in Judeo-Christian values. This idea of an objective reality rooted in Judeo-Christian standards of right or wrong has given way to the “it’s all good” generation of people trying to “keep it real” (see real stupid). How do they keep it so “real”? Their feelings tell them how real it tiz. So we got what we have here in the video. Someone’s delicate feelings were scratched and that was enough to shut the kid out of the school's talent show. A perfect example of liberal “tolerance.”

As we see here, the most formidable obstruction to free speech on campus, however, is not the direct censorship code but a political and social environment in which people with politically incorrect opinions are downcast, slandered, ostracized, and ignored. Even though they do not constitute a majority, politically correct campus activists (especially teachers) do make up a kind of “moral majority,” enjoying tremendous leverage within an environment that is already hypersensitive to any indications of racism or bigotry. In several instances, some highly publicized and others relatively unknown, professors/teachers who have opposed politically correct nostrums have found themselves unemployed, or shamed by administrative reprimands and sanctions. Numerous other professors and students have received the message: rather than jeopardize being pulled into a vortex of allegations, sensitivity indoctrination, or censure, they naturally refrain from articulating unpopular sentiments; they censor themselves. This kid will quickly learn to follow the party line or simply shut up.

In this country, for the foreseeable future, the chief danger to moral, cultural, and religious toleration arises not from our avowed religions (as many on the Left adhere to) but from the unavowed and illiberal religion of liberalism itself.