Tyranny

Kiss the First Amendment goodbye, because it's gone, baby, gone -- in the one setting where it should be absolutely sacrosanct.  But the PC lunatics have taken over the higher (than what?) education asylum.  As usual, the enforcers of this destructive nonsense are (surprise!) Federal regulatory agencies, which means everybody's a political appointee, nobody stands before the voters for election.

I send money to FIRE every year; I'm going to double the amount.


FEDERAL GOVERNMENT MANDATES UNCONSTITUTIONAL SPEECH CODES AT COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES NATIONWIDE

Among the forms of expression now punishable on America’s campuses by order of the federal government are:

•     Any expression related to sexual topics that offends any person. This leaves a wide range of expressive activity—a campus performance of “The Vagina Monologues,” a presentation on safe sex practices, a debate about sexual morality, a discussion of gay marriage, or a classroom lecture on Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita—subject to discipline.
•     Any sexually themed joke overheard by any person who finds that joke offensive for any reason.
•     Any request for dates or any flirtation that is not welcomed by the recipient of such a request or flirtation.

There is likely no student on any campus anywhere who is not guilty of at least one of these “offenses.” Any attempt to enforce this rule evenhandedly and comprehensively will be impossible….

Ah, but to the Controller Mentality that last bit is the beauty of it, a key feature, not at all a bug.

The purest power to wield over your subjects is Prosecutorial Discretion, the freedom to pick and choose who's in your crosshairs.

An actual conviction isn't necessary, because the target is personally and financially ruined by the process itself, no matter what.

Worse, these ridiculous speech codes are enforced by Kampus Kangaroo Kourts made up of Progressive-Activist students and faculty, with arbitrary punishments meted out without any of the procedural protections a defendant has in a real courtroom. This is 'Darkness at Noon' territory, a Kafka-esque nightmare for anybody caught up in it; all that's lacking are the torches and black hoods.

A professor friend of mine:  "If the Government was an animal, you'd take it out behind the barn and shoot it between the eyes."

I haven't spoken to him lately, but I suspect by now that he'd be advising a double-tap.

Byron