Header Image (book)

aowheader.3.2.gif

Monday, May 17, 2021

Higher Education?

Found in a stash of blog-posts drafts in my Blogger dashboard. True then, true now?
From The College Fix (October 4, 2020), we have this "speech guide."  The list is from Virginia's James Madison University, where the 2020-2021 undergraduate tuition along with other fees, including room and board, for in-state students is $23,918 and out-of-state tuition plus fees and room and board, is $40,818.

 Dated October 4, 2020. 2020-2021 Undergraduate tuition, along with other fees, including room and board at JMU = https://www.jmu.edu/admissions/tuition-financial-aid-and-scholarships.shtml Entering Students (2020-21) - Per year In-state tuition: $7,250 Comprehensive fee: $5,080 Room and board*: $11,588 Total in-state: $23,918 Out-of-state tuition: $24,150 Comprehensive fee: $5,080 Room and board*: $11,588 Total out-of-state: $40,818 The full list of 35 “dumb” expressions is (emphases mine): 

1. “Some of my best friends are …” 

2. “I know exactly how you feel.” 

3. “I don’t think of you as …” 

4. “The same thing happens to me too.” 

5. “It was only a joke! Don’t take things so seriously.” 

6. What do ‘your’ people think.” 

7. “What are you?” or “Where are you really from?” 

8. “I don’t see color” or “I’m color blind.” 

9. “You are so articulate.” 

10. “It is so much better than it used to be. Just be patient.” 

11. “You speak the language very well.” 

12. Asking black people about their hair or hygiene. 

13. Saying to LBGTQ people “what you do in the privacy of your own bedroom is your business.” 

14. “Yes, but you are a ‘good’ one.” 

15. “You have such a pretty face.” 

16. “I never owned slaves.” 

17. “If you are going to live in this country, learn to speak the language!” 

18. “She/he is a good person. She/he didn’t mean anything by it.” 

19. “When I’ve said the same thing to other people like you, they don’t mind.” 

20. Calling women “girls, honey, sweetie pie” or other familiar terms. 

21. When people of color say, “It is not the same thing.” 

22. When people of faith say, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” 

23. When white men say, “We are the ones being discriminated against now!” 

24. Referring to older people as “cute.” 

25. Asking a transgender person, “What are you really? A man or a woman?” 

26. Referring to the significant other, partner, or spouse of a same gender couple as their “friend.” 

27. “Why do ‘they’ (fill in the blank) always have to sit together? They are always sticking together.” 

28. “People just need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps.” 

29. People with disabilities are “courageous.” 

30. “That’s so gay/queer. That’s so retarded.” 

31. “I don’t see difference. We are all part of the same race, the human race.” 

32. I don’t care if you are pink, purple or orange, I treat all people the same.” 

33. Asking a transgender person, “Have you had the operation.” 

34. Saying to a Jewish person, “You are so lucky to have ‘your’ Christmas spread over a week!” 

35. “Here’s another book on political correctness.”

The entire document is HERE, and each individual item has an "explanation" or "supportive material."

Mind you, I wouldn't utter most of the above statements.  As a young person, however, I would have.

Besides, a university is supposed to be, by definition, a place where students are exposed to new and different ideas and opinions.  

Back in the days when I attended university (1968-1973), I was exposed to plenty of different ideas.  I evaluated those ideas ("Keep the best, lose the rest") — that was my job as student.

Today, students at so many of our institutions of learning are being turned into Leftism-spouting automatons.  Weep for America. Weep for our  Bill of Rights.

65 comments:

  1. The image of the burning bill of rights is a bit overwraught imo. This isn't censorship, nor is it academic material, this is guidance to help students socialise more easily in their new environment. Not much different to this instructional film to help WW2 soldiers get along with people in England. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltVtnCzg9xw

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Teaching people how to socialize is the parent's job. If the parents didn't do it, that doesn't mean the university should step in and become parent.

      The child should simply suffer the consequences of having been raised by non-parents. Harsh, but then maybe the next generation will do better. If you keep correcting for one set of people's mistakes, the next set of people make the same mistakes.

      Delete
    2. What did you think of the army film?

      Delete
  2. Please, Americans live in a hypereality three steps removed from reality. Nobody goes hungry. Everyone has a place to sleep. If you don't need worry about that, then your already one step away from reality.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ...and besides. There's no conspiracy. The world is run by corporate machines, not politicians in DC or Brussels.

      Delete
    2. My hyperreality doesn't NEED a UNIVERSITY. I get all the education I need for free on Instagram.

      Delete
    3. Brick and mortar board Schools are so last century "disciplinary society"

      Delete
    4. ....and don't forget. We need to ALL keep wearing our masks It's FOR THE CHILDREN!

      Delete
    5. Such is life in this, the Faustian Age! After all, we all have a choice whether or not to sign our agreement with Mephistopheles.

      Delete
  3. Steven Hayward at Powerline posted the commencement address that he gave to a graduating class, where the money shot was: ".....but the plain fact is that the “modern” university—mirroring our larger culture—no longer knows its purpose with any clarity or confidence, or, at the very least, today’s institutions of higher education have added new and contradictory purposes that make them incoherent, listless, and in some cases dangerous."

    https://tinyurl.com/j92rr49d

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The purpose is to maintain corporate machine profits. We don't need any independent entrepeneurs or inventors out there capable of competing with us and who can make our products obsolete or who can put us out of business.

      Delete
    2. ...and corporations need a diverse market. Social Justice is just the corporate mean of making sure that there is always a niche market for Afro-Sheen and Afro-combs.

      Delete
    3. Now be a good little consumer and buy yourself a cold filtered Kenyan coffee grande.

      Delete
    4. Do it for the African coffee growers! 0.01% of Stabucks profits are set aside to provide healthcare for Kenyan coffee pickers.

      Delete
  4. Never tell people how to talk. The world will teach them. Or not.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Who would have imagined 20 years ago that the left would construct an entire culture-consuming industry of minefields and baited traps.

    I am still hopeful all of this will collapse upon the perpetrators.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. '68 gave birth to cultural capitalism. IMO, it's now institutional. We're all working for 'B' Corporations serving one or another of the many "identities" at it's core.

      Delete
    2. You really need to work on your brand, sf. It needs to be ALL "positivity"... not "negativity". ;)

      Delete
    3. "I am still hopeful all of this will collapse upon the perpetrators."
      Hoisted by their own petard.
      Like Wily Coyote and an ACME missile launcher.

      Delete
    4. Ed, We can hope. I can't tell for sure, but this really looks like the point where the wild-eyed revolutionaries have taken over and begin denouncing, punishing and guillotining each other.

      Delete
    5. The problem is exaggerated. How does it compare with the Read Scares of the 20th century?

      Delete
    6. Well, I think they were but that's not my point. What I'm asking is, do you think that modern-era "political correctness" is anywahere near as stifling as the old 40s blacklists were?

      Delete
    7. Machines are stifling us today. You can't argue with them. You can't convince them to let something "slide". It's ABSOLUTE censorship.

      Delete
    8. What part of the "control" as in a "society of control" don't you think is stifling?

      Delete
    9. You may not think it, but <a href='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System">this</a> is not a "future" threat. It's the "present" state of American society for "conservatives".

      Delete
    10. You may not think it, but this is not a "future" threat. It's the "present" state of American society for "conservatives".

      Delete
    11. 'Equality' before the law no longer applies in DOJ or federal law enforcement.

      Delete
    12. A Comedian like Crowder can't even make jokes w/o being banned.

      Delete
    13. ...and an entire social movement can at a moment's notice have their "platforms" bought out from under them (ie Drudge/Facebook/Twitter/Youtube) and market/audience disrupted requiring months to re-locate in order to continue their speech.

      Delete
    14. How open to argument was the HUAC?

      Delete
    15. Open enough to be fooled by the likes of Bertolt Brecht.

      The point is that w/o the "technic" of "social media", everything that makes man "exceptional" is denied to those to whom media is also denied (Stiegler, "Technics and Time")... start @ 8:30). We are all cyborgs.

      Delete
    16. You deny the possibility of a conservative version of Instagram... there are no "conservative lifestyles" that are allowed to become imaged and/or imagined.

      Delete
    17. Shows like Big Love or gets cancelled a priori. No "Breaking Amish".

      Delete
    18. ....only endless snooty/snarky Jon Stewart reboots.

      Delete
    19. ...and so "influencers" like Crowder or Donald J. Trump get shadow banned, then banned from the platform... then bought on the cheap and discarded on lesser platforms. Capiche?

      Delete
    20. It's time to get rid of the Internet's Hays Codes. Rate me PG or R if you want to. But shadow bans and outright censorship need to stop.

      ...and no, conservatism isn't the porn of the 21st century.

      Delete
    21. Dunno if Brecht "fooled" anybody: he immediately returned to Europe, and there was still a blacklist, right?
      Let Trump and the rest of the shadowbanned write plays, that freedom is still afforded to them!
      Who or what conservative viewpoint has Instagram repressed?
      I notice big love was on for 5 seasons.
      Jon Stewart reboots are cheap to make and people like them, or at least watch them on the off chance they'll approach JS' quality.
      I do capiche, and i also capiche the difference between what you've described and actual censorship.
      I can see similarities with porn, figures like Candace Owens rewarded heavily for telling conservatives what they want to hear... The comparison applies to punditry Jon Stewart's heirs too maybe. Surely we want the media, traditional or social, to deliver more nourishment than this.

      Delete
    22. Surely if you're going to censor people you wouldn't do it in favor of Kim Kardashian-like "influencers". Capitalist ideology is for big corporate "purists".

      Delete
    23. ps - Big Love and Breaking Amish were intended to MAKE FUN OF and render REPULSIVE the beliefs of the Mormons/Amish.

      Delete
    24. The censorship you ignore and endorse is "big Corporate" positivism that supercede the Constitutional Rights of Individuals.

      Delete
    25. Corporations now have rights. States and Individuals, not so much...

      Delete
    26. ps - Did you know that "International Treaties" supercede Constitutional guarantees? No wonder the globalists were so eager and anxious for the US to sign the TPP (with all its' "Secret" Annexes).

      Delete
    27. Censorship reveals the "absence" negative liberties for individuals granted under the Bill of Rights (and increasingly un-enforced by the Government) and the creeping corporate "positive" liberties being granted to them by Government to "censor" and thereby create a marketplace supportive of, conducive to, and conservative of the expanding global corporate interest.

      Delete
    28. ^ this is the kind of shenanigans I'm complaining about when I rag on conservatives. I'm reasonably confident you and me could have a pleasant drink together.

      Delete
    29. I'm sure we could, once we understood where we were coming from. Trump's ideology is NATIONALISM not GLOBAL CAPITALISM like the so-called "principled conservatives" (aka - Neocons).

      Delete
    30. It's long past time to END the post-WWII "world order". The days of "re-building Europe" and the Bretton Woods system are OVER.

      Delete
  6. What does the Bill of Rights have to do with it?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Benghazi. It could NEVER happen under OUR Bill of Rights...

      You have the RIGHT to a free and fair election system, except in Arizona, where you are NOT allowed to question election outcomes.

      Delete
    2. In other words, the Bill of Rights defines area's where Government is NOT supposed to go... it defines our "negative liberties". What we now have is a government imposing a positive vision of liberty for our society, in which there are no "negative liberties" retained by the individual or States. A place not where everyone has an opportunity to participate and enjoy, but a DUTY to do so in the prescribe and pre-ordained fashion..

      Delete
    3. Schools now prescribe "What" we must think and "How" we must act. Multiculturalism is a strength. Individualism is selfish. Justice is for Groups, not Dividuals.

      Delete
  7. Apologies to the blog management. I'll get off the soap box now.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I think these are largely straw men. People looking to pick fights over things virtually no one says or means as they describe and who are looking for ways to support feeling aggrieved. I am genuinely interested in peoples' stories and have asked a number of people where they came from during friendly conversations. I don't plan to change that. Every one was delighted to talk about their journey. The last one 4 months ago just blossomed up with enthusiasm. (Admittedly, I was the first ‘American’ she ran into who knew that the “Oriental” geographic designations in the Philippines were for the east sides of islands.)

    #17 (speak the language) is something I've heard one foreign import tell another from his same country, once it was established she had been here 10 years, answered the family phone but spoke not one word of English. This is entirely valid, but their explanation of it is bunk.

    ReplyDelete
  9. a quote I detest, and so many use it when lamenting a shortcoming of their own "I'm just the type of person who........." I want to say "Then STOP being that type of person and do what you'd like to do...work on it, don't pigeon hole yourself and complain about it!'



    ReplyDelete
  10. @ Suzanne:
    As you can plainly see, this blog is playing open and was only shut down in the sense that, AOW actual, had reached a point of exhaustion due to personal matters. SF or I could have posted any time we wished and chose not to do so. That was only a few days.
    #1. We refrain from allowing comments unrelated to bloged topics, in our comment section but allow some off topics at discretion of the post author.
    #2. We do not allow blog gossip or tattletaling as it accomplishes nothing.
    #3. We, as a group of bloggers do not give a rats ass about what, Shaw, has to say. We don't do pharsitic virtue signaling.

    In a personal aside; why would you even want to post there?

    ReplyDelete
  11. Damned Auto Correct!
    "Playing" isn't supposed to be there

    ReplyDelete

We welcome civil dialogue at Always on Watch. Comments that include any of the following are subject to deletion:
1. Any use of profanity or abusive language
2. Off topic comments and spam
3. Use of personal invective

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

!--BLOCKING--