The Age Of Offense

I wonder what anthropologists in the future will think, looking back on 2015 and reading our newspapers. If there is anything that has stood out this year, it’s that the year can be called the Year of Offense. American liberals have fallen all over themselves in an effort to be offended and to scream about their offense, to the point where it seems to overrun the real news all too often.

It was bad enough when the #BlackLivesMatter movement started, raising an outcry only drowned out by their own violence every time a black criminal was killed by a white police officer.

Then it started getting ridiculous when they got offended by the southern Civil War Battle Flag. That led to offenses for every monument and reminder of the Civil War that ever existed. Now, it’s reached a point where students in colleges and universities are being offended by anything said, which doesn’t agree with their narrow world view.

These claims of “microagressions” have reached a point where universities are at the brink of not being able to operate anymore. The University of Missouri has been all but shut down, by students protesting a combination of racial prejudice and offense from contrary viewpoints. The football team refused to play, ultimately leading to the President of the university resigning.

In my opinion, the university president was wrong to resign. All he did was prove in the minds of the students that they were right. But the only cases of racism that were brought up as “evidence” that the university was racist, were things done by individuals, not the university itself. Those aren’t the fault of the university, although resigning over them makes it look like the president took responsibility for them.

What he should have done is to kick all the striking football players off the team; but he apparently didn’t have the guts to do so. Their scholarship contract specifically states that they have to participate in all team activities, or lose their scholarships and their places on the team. Had he stood up to the football team, instead of caving to their demands, the situation may have ended.

But he didn’t. So now we have a hunger strike by a student who claims that he is the victim of racial discrimination. Of course, he and the mainstream news media is hiding the facts that his dad made over six million dollars last year and his net worth is over 20 million.

I guess that just doesn’t fit their picture of a poor, disadvantaged black student, who is being mistreated by the horrible white establishment of the school.

True or Not True?

So much of this anymore is about creating images that support the progressive left’s agenda. Truth is no longer an issue in news reporting or even in life. As long as it supports their agenda, it’s okay, regardless of what that means has to be done.

Apparently there are two issues being complained about in Missou. One is the racial discrimination and the other is microagressions causing offenses. The two seem to be intertwined, but each can stand on its own as well.

It doesn’t really matter, as it’s all about having the right buzzwords and the right image anyway. Apparently they think that if they can make themselves out to be the mistreated underdog, then they will win. Nothing else matters.

This has been coming for quite some while. I mentioned how liberals have been seeking offense everywhere they turn. It’s almost become a game with them, seeing who can come up with the newest thing to call “racist” or to be offended about. Both are the same, considering that the word “racism” now means whatever they want it to mean in order to back up their point.

Racism has become the liberal trump card. In their minds, all they have to do is play that card and they’ve automatically won. So, they play it as frequently and as loudly as they can. Unfortunately, this has scared many conservatives, who are thinking of what “racism” used to mean and don’t want to be branded with that name.

The students at Missou have been effective enough in their demonstrations that they’ve managed to spread their offense off campus. There are now at least three other campuses which have decided that they have the same grievances as the University of Missouri, even though those grievances haven’t really been clearly stated. That doesn’t matter though, as they are in agreement and standing together with their fraternal brothers and sisters at Missou.

So, what are their grievances? I haven’t been able to get much of a handle on them, but there are a couple of things that have stood out.

The first is that the President of University of Missouri was white. Apparently since all whites, especially white males are racist, that makes the university racist. To go with that, there aren’t enough black college professors on campus to make the black students feel comfortable. Obviously this is a crime of the highest order and must be addressed.

If we assume for a minute, that the university was avoiding hiring black professors, could it be that not enough blacks applied for those positions? I have no idea of how many black college professors there are, but maybe there aren’t enough to go around. Could it be that this horrendous crime is more an indictment against the black community than against the university? Oops, we’d better not go there.

The other big issue that has come up is the whole issue of offenses. Apparently modern college students have evolved to the point where they can’t stand a contrary opinion. Anything that opposes their world view, spoon fed to them by their liberal professors, causes them to go running and screaming back to their “safe zone” where they don’t have to hear such disturbing things.

This is an indictment on our entire educational system, especially at the secondary and pre-graduate levels. If there is anything that college students should be exposed to, it’s contrary opinions. How else are they ever going to be able to make a rational decision for themselves, about what they believe?

Or have our institutions of higher learning turned into institutions of higher indoctrination? Has the idea of making sure that the next generation be politically correct overcome the need to educate them? Are college professors so afraid that a contrary idea might actually be more attractive to their students than the liberal milk they’ve been feeding them? If their liberalism is so great, then why can’t it stand up to those contrary ideas?

The real danger here is that by shielding those children from other ideas, the universities are keeping them children. They are unable to think for themselves. Even worse, they are unprepared for facing real life, when they get out of college. How is a young man or young woman going to face a boss, when that boss tells them to do something that they don’t want to do? Are they going to cry and run to their safe zone? Will they quit?

Or are they going to file a law suit against their boss for offending them? I’m pretty sure that I’ve been offended by every boss that I ever had, how are these oversensitive children going to fare in the workplace?

It’s sad that our society has been reduced to this point. One of our founding principles is freedom of speech. That concept is enshrined in the very First Amendment to the Constitution. Not that it was added later, for the Continental Congress refused to vote it into law, without the Bill of Rights, the first ten Amendments to the Constitution. That’s how far back our right of Freedom of Speech goes.

Where the Real Danger Lies

Yet Freedom of Speech is in real danger today. Political correctness is striving to destroy it. Left-wing politicians are talking about limiting Freedom of Speech, so that people not be offended.

Of course, the only ones they are concerned about protecting from offense are their left-wing supporters. As they have so clearly demonstrated, they couldn’t care less if those on the right are offended. That’s immaterial, because those on the right are automatically labeled “racist.”

Freedom of Speech means that people will be offended. It means that contrary opinions will be raised up. That’s good. For it is in the crucible of discussing and debating those different opinions that great ideas are formed.

Ideas that cross political boundaries and bond us together into a society that works for all of us, rather than just for some of us. Without that discussion, only the ideas of the ruling party are allowed and freedom is lost.

Perhaps that’s the idea; perhaps the whole PC argument is nothing more than a way of taking away our freedom and making us bow down to the inevitability of liberal control. We need our Freedom of Speech, just as much as we need to be offended by other people’s ideas.

For through that offense, we can begin to see their viewpoint, their lives and their struggles. Only then, can we become part of the solution in finding a system which works for all.

This article has been written by Bill White for Survivopedia.

References

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/09/missouri-football-players-and-the-untapped-political-power-of-the-college-student-athlete/

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/11/report-university-missouri-hunger-strikers-family-american-success-story

Main picture source: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/missouri-football-players-boycott-protest-president-n459381