Eugene Volokh has an awesome site where he discusses what I think is the biggest threat to free speech in our country--sex harassment law. The newest move by the federal government is to mandate speech controls in all universities.
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.
11 comments:
liberty is chipped away in small batches (except of course with violent revolution, coups and the like). When I was teaching I carried a one million dollar liability insurance policy, because if you were a man, you stood no chance in academe.
Saint Croix--IMO what makes the government able to do this is the availability of federal money. Only one college I am aware of, Hillsdale College, refuses to accept federal money. Remove the money and the speech codes will go away.
This has been the purpose of PC (and its related "hate" legislation) all along, the regulation of speech.
And I agree with Roger about the influence of Federal money, although the hard Left bent of most schools makes that almost superfluous, as college campi are where the frontiers of PC are defined.
It was actually unelected judges who started all this censorship, by allowing corporations to be sued based on speech offenses by employees.
Thus corporations are forced to create all these speech codes in order to avoid any lawsuits. But it's the government that's (obviously) behind this censorship in the first place.
Now, after normalizing this fascism in the workplace, they're moving it over to speech codes at the university level.
They're getting pushback now because the speech controls are more obvious.
And consider too all the hidden costs that are involved. Instead of corporations providing health insurance to its workers (for instance) they are forced to spend money on EEOC horseshit. Diversity training, diversity conferences, harassment boards, indoctrination. There's a whole regulatory apparatus that corporations (and universities) are forced to adapt. This costs money. And it's essentially waste.
Good article here on administration bloat at the university level.
After all, somebody's got to read these 2000-page laws! The amount of bureaucracy and red tape is insane, and there seems to be no end in sight.
It reminds me of the Tom Clancy book, The Hunt for Red October. The Soviet submarines had to have a political officer on board. And this officer knew nothing about running a submarine. He was just there purely to enforce the party line.
We have a similar situation now in this country! Diversity enforcers in every corporation and university, who have nothing to do with the actual work being done in the corporation or the university. The only reason they are there is to make sure all the workers and students are saying the right things.
Saint Croix said...
It reminds me of the Tom Clancy book, The Hunt for Red October. The Soviet submarines had to have a political officer on board. And this officer knew nothing about running a submarine. He was just there purely to enforce the party line.
It goes farther back than that. There was an NKVD political commissar in every Soviet military unit going back to the 30s.
At best, they served a capacity as chaplains, particularly during WWII, but their main role was finding "disloyalty".
Saint Croix and Ed--you all correct about the infiltration of the military by the party--There were always three: the kgb guy (the cook in Red October), the political officer, and the commander--and to ensure the system worked no one knew the KGB guy was.
Roger J.....didn't that cadre of three pretty much define and outline most military organization in communist nations?
Saint Croix ... autocracy is being established as we speak now. Our form of government is changing and forming cadres in every aspect of life to assure permanence. Word have power, so redefine them to give power only to the government. You aren't predicting the future here, you are describing the present.
Aridog--Indeed it did--it used, for example in cuba, where the KGB folks are replaced by informers recruited en masse.
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