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Wendy McElroy, Stop Making Sense! Oh Wait.
Will Colleges Respect Your Child's Rights?. Pro-choice ad against John Roberts reveals intellectual bankruptcy of debate. By foxnewsonline@foxnews.com. [FOXNews.com - Views]
Proving, I suppose, that smart people tend to be liberals?
Just kidding. No, that's not what the article is about. It's about the increasing trend on college campuses to enforce standards of civility and tolerance---and to penalize incivility and intolerance. The writer, Wendy McElroy---a self-styled 'feminist' who isn't--- generally annoys me so very much when she flaps her right wings at Foxnews.com. But now and again, she will write something that reels me right in.
And occasionally I find myself agreeing under protest with part of her opinion. For example, I basically agree with this quote from the above-cited article.
The trend rests on a specific definition of "tolerance". For many, tolerance means being broad-minded. It means acknowledging the legal right of others to a dissenting opinion, religious belief or peaceful lifestyle such as homosexuality.
The foregoing definition of tolerance does not require stifling your own opinions or preferences, which have an equal legal status. Nor does it require you to personally accept what you tolerate. Defending people's right to be different doesn't involve taking them out to dinner and a movie.
The current campus definition of tolerance inverts the more traditional meaning and demands personal acceptance. Tolerance becomes the active celebration of 'diversity' and toleration requires the suppression of the speech, views or peaceful behavior that supposedly hinder diversity by making 'diverse others' uncomfortable. The 'others' are usually members of a group that has been historically oppressed, such as women, and are deemed to now deserve special legal protection.
Thus, a bizarre scenario occurs: advocates of tolerance call for censorship. Champions of diversity narrow the range of expressible attitudes....
Oh, Wendy McElroy, I beg you: stop making sense. When I find myself quoting you---which has now happened twice---I feel the ground wavering under my feet.
Never mind! She stops---in the next sentence. No, W-Mc and I aren't on the same wavelength.
This is a form of Newspeak — the fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four that depicts a totalitarian future. Orwell explained the purpose of Newspeak: to reduce the very ability of people to express subversive ideas and attitudes ("thoughtcrimes"). (The links are in the original article).
Okay, we're not even in the same universe. W-Mc inhabits a plane in which the greatest fear is that the guardians of enforced civility will take over the world and make Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter shut up. I inhabit a plane in which the greatest fear is that the religious right will start wars in order to force the End Times to begin so they can get Jesus's autograph and get taken up into that Great Golf Course in the Sky. Maybe both our nightmares sound like science fiction, but mine is already happening. And it's way, way scarier.
No one who is really concerned about freedom would be rabbiting on about civility codes when we have weekly convocations of religious nutjobs who believe Jesus wants them to eliminate separation of church and state (not to mention separation of powers).
Still---and there's not getting away from this----there is a part of me that agrees with some of W-Mc's conclusions in this particular article even though I don't buy into her premises. I think it's not only wrong but also unwise to legislate civility. For one thing, if you shut down the people who hold deplorable opinions and prevent them from expressing them, how do you know who your enemies are?
I think it is extremely important, for example, for bigots who hate all ethnic groups besides their own to be heard---I want to know who they are. The same goes for those who claim to enjoy the special favor of God or who righteously bash the gay population over the head with Leviticus in the name of Jesus. Let them have at it. If the people who hold wrong ideas aren't allowed to speak up publicly, I assume they are still going to find ways to do so privately which is really dangerous because then no one can answer back. It's especially counterproductive on a college campus. Young adults-in-training ought to be exposed to as many kinds of people and as many ways of being wrong as possible. They need to learn to deal with it and respond to it, not be sheltered from it.
The bad ideas are out there. The thing to do is talk back to them, shout back if you need to, cut them off at the knees with logic, cold contempt, and a heaping helping of ridicule. We shouldn't be training young people to be thin-skinned and touchy about ideas that offend them or to protect them from hearing anything that might hurt; we should be training them to attack back. Legislating civility and being terrified of giving offense or of being offended makes intelligent, articulate people weak. It makes them ineffectual. And that, I do think, is one of the ways in which some of us who are leftward leaning are hurting our own cause---instead of training young people to fight back with intelligence and grace, we're training them to get in self-righteous snits and sue for damages when they're forced into proximity with people who aren't bothered about civility or political correctness.
Anyway. Despite a temporary meeting of the minds, I don't think W-Mc and I really are sisters under the skin.
After all, this is the same woman who, rightly outraged by a horrific domestic murder case., used it as a springboard for an impassioned argument that more women should own guns and be trained to use them. Quoting from the Foxnews.com opinion piece now:
A third position cries out: Given the court's position that the police are not obliged to protect us, responsible adults need the ability to defend themselves. Thus, no law or policy should impede the access to gun ownership.
Responsible adults — both male and female — have both a right and a need to defend themselves and their families, with lethal force if necessary. If domestic violence advocates had focused on putting a gun in Jessica's hand and training her to use it, then the three Gonzales children might still be alive. After all, Jessica knew where her husband was. Indeed, she informed the police repeatedly of his location.
Hey, I know that's what my vision of a better world would look like: more moms toting assault rifles and training to use 'lethal force' to defend themselves and their families. Of course! I see it now: the solution to senseless violence is... more. If more guns had been involved in the hideous and tragic case to which she refers, we might have had a happy ending---with Mommy single-handedly kicking in the door like the Terminator and blowing Daddy away right before the children's eyes. Just like in the movies! Yes, what these 'domestic violence advocates' need to do is to stop pussyfooting around and start actually advocating some actual violence. A woman's best friend is her assault rifle.
Seriously, Wendy McElroy: grow up. In the real world, evil is almost never impeded by the use of force---as you'd know if you were paying attention to the reality behind the statistics you cite. In shoot-outs between the goodies and the baddies, everyone ends up dead. Confrontations involving armed domestic partners are unlikely to end well for either. Certainly something went terribly wrong in that dreadful case----but the thing that went wrong wasn't the mother's failure to spend more time on the target range. Don't believe everything you see in Schwarzeneggar movies.
And of course, this is the same woman who wrote an entire article reframing as a valid (well, to her) concern that Spongebob-is-secretly-gay "Focus on the Family"flap. Remember that? Apparently someone from the 'Focus on the Family' organization was concerned that schools airing a Spongebob video were pushing a 'diversity' agenda that might include, or conceivably might be seen as embracing, a value system that recognizes homosexuality as an acceptable life choice. I don't know what the man said; if I ever knew, I've forgotten.
W-Mc loftily refuses to consider the implications of an adult getting this exercised about the secret messages transmitted by The Spongebob Code, but I won't. I love to talk about cartoons. "Spongebob" is certainly 'diverse' (squirrels, starfish, crabs, sponges, and lobsters mingle freely in Bikini Bottom). Consider the Spongemeister. I wouldn't say that he is exactly effeminate, but he's not exactly not either. He's so tender, so childlike, so fey. He lives in a pineapple.
And consider the other inhabitants of Bikini Bottom. Consider the lumpish and none-too-bright Patrick the Starfish, Spongebob's very 'special' special friend....Sandy the Squirrel, a virile biodome-dwelling gal from Texas with a black belt in karate and occasional anger management problems who can kick everyone else's ass and sometimes does..... wee Mr. Plankton with his disturbing monomania, his robot wife, and his endless and elaborate schemes to steal the secret of making a "Krabby Pattie"... Mr. Krab with his pegleg, his yo-ho-ho West Country accent and his daughter Pearl who is a whale (and how'd that happen?)......and finally, consider the quite fabulous, culture-seeking and undeniably limp-tentacled clarinet-playing haughty Squidward with his snarky asides and his longing for a more beautiful life. (Squidward's one of my favorite cartoon characters in history). Yes, Bikini Bottom is 'diverse' all right, though there is also a great deal of contention and also occasional non-PC "Squirrel" jokes at Sandy's expense
W-Mc actually doesn't go into that because she didn't really want to talk about Spongebob or the comment on Spongebob, but whether public schools should present material that represents a life orientation not shared by all parents. From the article:
The snickers directed at the ultra-conservative James Dobson of "Focus on the Family" -- the man ‘credited’ with questioning how square SpongeBob’s pants actually are --seem intended to obscure the issue and vilify the man.
The issue is: should the public school system be used to encourage sexual attitudes in children, especially attitudes to which their parents might object?
No, the issue is Spongebob. But oh, all right.....should the public school system be used to etc? You know from the Socratic framing of the question what she thinks the answer ought to be, right? And actually I've no idea what her argument was here: something to do about how the public schools shouldn't be promoting any values not shared by 100% of the parents, or should only be promoting what she thinks are 'majority views,' or something equally tedious. Possibly she knows of some completely value-neutral and presumably content-free literature that doesn't promote any world view at all that they could use in the schools. I'd like to see that reading list.
But as I say, I didn't really work through the convolutions of this particular argument; my attention got snagged on, then derailed by, the following quote. Quoting from the article: "Frankly, I doubt he [James Dobson] would protest Winnie the Pooh being used to advance the traditional family or the choice of women to become mothers and housewives."
Maybe W-Mc was being ironic here. If not? It's been a long time since W-Mc paid a visit to the house at Pooh Corner. W-Pooh and his little pal Piglet are all about the diversity, though it's diversity of a certain sort. You've got a donkey, a small pig, a tiger, an owl, and a rabbit, all male, all sharing the same woods. Plus, the main character is an amiable bear called 'Winnie' who is always walking hand in hand with his best pal Piglet (also male) through the woods counting the snowdrops and singing annoying showtunes. And even Christopher Robin can't stop hippity hoppity hopping around even when the old man 'politely' asks him to stop it.
As for reinforcing traditional choices of women to become wives and mothers, I don't remember a single thing in any of the Pooh books that you could say promotes family values. I don't even remember Christopher Robin's mum showing up in the books. If she did, she was just a passing phrase in a sentence about something else. The only female I remember is single mom Kanga, mother of little Roo. Her Baby-Daddy is nowhere in sight.
So I fail to see any arguments for or against the 'traditional family' in the esteemed Pooh Cycle. Like Spongebob, it wasn't about the family, but about friendships, to the extent that either is 'about' anything.
Though I hope no one will tell the Focus on the Family guy. What if he convinces people to stop reading 'Winnie the Pooh' to their kids? I suppose kids with severely Right-leaning parents could still watch The Flintstones. That's a good old traditional family values-type family, though even in Bedrock there was that snide little Martian or fairy or whatever he was that only Fred and Barney could see who for some reason used to help them out of jams with much ill grace and sneering at their boorishness and stupidity. He wasn't exactly what you'd call 'blue collar.' So maybe even Bedrock has a pinkish side..
As for my anxiety over finding a couple of Wendy McElroy offerings that I agreed with? All gone now.
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Image drawn by Mr. Tenniel; painted by Damozel!
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