Better Put a Trigger Warning on This One!

—November 16, 2015

You know what? I think it’s time to let loose with some hate speech….

Yeah, I’m going to spew out some vile, vituperative vitriol….

Are you ready? Here goes:

I despise you activist purveyors of political correctness with your demands for safe spaces, trigger warnings, speech codes, gender neutrality, social justice, and abject conformity to your views. I despise your ongoing calls for tolerance and inclusiveness, which really only apply to your politically correct brethren and the marginalized segments of society you purportedly protect from the rest of us. I despise your hypersensitive, holier-than-thou whining about micro-aggressions, and all the countless everyday words and actions that are so quickly described by you as “demeaning to” (insert marginalized victim of the day here).

I don’t despise you as people—honestly do not care if you are black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Muslim, female, gay, trans, obese, disabled, or whatever supposedly marginalized group you care to identify with—nor do I necessarily repudiate your specific causes.

But I despise your emerging ideology and methodologies. The former akin to Marxism, but instead of trying to extinguish class differences, it appears that you are trying to eliminate personality differences in your quest to homogenize the human race to conform to your ideals. The latter ironically fraught with divisiveness and intolerance.

And I especially despise how you seek to stifle freedom of speech and thought—how easily you are offended and ready to erupt in outrage until the offending subject matter is removed or censored. Your efforts in this regard are starting to reach a crescendo, as evidenced by the recent explosion of politically correct student activism on college campuses across America.

Take the University of Missouri in just the past few days:

Media studies and journalism professor Melissa Click physically tried to block the press from covering student demonstrations on the quad. During the altercation the professor called for “muscle” to help her remove an offending journalist.

Professor Melissa “I need some muscle over here” Click is a disgrace to the profession, and any and all journalism credentials should be stripped from her forthwith.

Meanwhile the vice president of the school’s student association, Brenda Smith-Lezama, expressed her disdain of freedom of speech when she told MSNBC that “I personally am tired of hearing that first amendment rights protect students when they are creating a hostile and unsafe learning environment for myself and other students here.”

Really? How did this woman ever get into university? I mean, as an African-American minority student Ms. Smith-Lezama surely must realize that she would never be student association vice president, let alone even have been admitted to the university, were it not for the First Amendment rights that allowed her forebears to push for civil rights.

And the campus police have entered the PC war, sending out a message on social media encouraging Missouri students to report any and all instances of hateful or hurtful speech, noting that while not against the law, the Office of Student Conduct can take disciplinary action.

So, if your feelings are hurt, call the police….

Over at Yale University, PC students are calling for the head of a professor who dared criticize school efforts to encourage students to wear politically correct costumes during Halloween. The professor suggested that students should not take offence when seeing insensitive Halloween costumes, but should instead be tolerant of them and debate why a particular costume might be offensive.

“Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society,” the professor said.

Apparently not for the students at Yale….

And we’ve got speech codes and trigger warnings—all the rage across U.S. campuses. It appears that today’s college students are so sensitive that just about any content offered in class that might be offensive or even mildly controversial needs to come with warnings so that students can opt out so that the material does not upset their delicate sensibilities.