Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Too many offended by free speech

(My Clovis News Journal column for November 13, 2015)

Once upon a time, people would hear someone say offensive things and life would go on.

Now, every word that offends someone gets brought before some authority. All too often, authority coddles the overly sensitive and punishes the speaker.

Freedom of speech has never been less popular.

Universities protecting their students from hearing- or seeing- things which upset them aren't helping the students. In fact, they aren't helping anyone, other than lawyers and psychiatrists. The bubble-wrapped students will not be prepared for the real world, unless the world is only for people unable to think or handle reality. If that's the case, beam me up now.

If you are skeptical about anything the control freaks want to promote, many of them want you silenced. Maybe that's not as ominous as it sounds, but I wouldn't count on it.

Skepticism over "Anthropogenic Global Climate Change" ("Global Warming") being real-- caused by humans, causing more harm than good, unstoppable without going back to a pre-industrial society for everyone but the elites, and only fixable by laws-- will be shouted down. As will questioning whether it's okay for physically male students who "identify" as female to be showering with girls in the school shower.

If you speak truth to people who have carefully constructed a magical realm of fantasy and wishfulness in which to exist, you are a big meanie!

Saying anything these delicate flower people feel "triggers" their fears, or which they consider "micro-aggression" (the imaginative term showing they don't understand what aggression is), they will pull out all the stops to get you punished, perhaps fired, for daring to stray from the path they have dictated.

And yet, freedom of speech has also never been so popular.

If you are saying the "correct" things about the right people- things aimed at people with politically unpopular opinions whom you are trying to shame into silence- you'll have plenty supporters on campus and among the "social justice" flock. To them, nothing is too offensive to be said about their opponents and their beliefs.

The First Amendment only binds the hands of those who would make up "laws"; no one else. A person who isn't acting as government can ban any speech he doesn't want being spoken or written- on his own property.

Listen to others, or don't. If freedom of speech doesn't cover things which make you red in the face, there's no point to it. Who bothers to forbid popular speech?
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GoFundMe?

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Medical stuff

This morning I am going in for a "procedure". I hate medical stuff (even knowing it is sometimes necessary).

Oh, and if interested in helping with this stuff: GoFundMe

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I've been "triggered"

For the first time in my life I am experiencing being "triggered". You know, the experience where mere words or ideas can make you upset.

My daughter's recent death is the cause.

When someone says "I was dying!" or references death in some other trivial way I want to scream. Or lash out.

But, I know the problem is inside myself. If I coddle this problem it will grow worse.

I would never dream of begging for "trigger warnings" or other such enabling nonsense because I want to get over it. At least as much as humanly possible. My reactions make me feel stupid, and I don't like feeling stupid.

It's disturbing to me how many people are perfectly comfortable wallowing in their "triggering", to the point of going public and asking everyone else to change to protect their delicate feelings.

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