Politically correct and eroding rights

Editorial by Jacksonville Daily News, November 22, 2015.

If you want to know what the movement that has been rattling cages on college campuses is all about, go to YouTube and watch a video titled “#ConcernedStudent1950 vs the media.”

And if you really want to see someone stand up for his rights, watch the young Asian man with the camera fight to take photos in a public place.

He’s pushed, threatened and intimidated — not by police but by protestors. Protestors wanted to dictate who could be on the campus of the University of Missouri and what they could do there. At one point, a woman called for “muscle” to have a person shooting video removed.

Interestingly, that woman was Melissa Click, a professor who was attached, until this episode, to Missouri’s famed journalism program. This is someone who should be teaching future journalists that when they are on public property, they have a right to do their job. She should be teaching them to stand firm in the face of intimidation. Instead, she was calling for muscle like some kind of Chicago mobster.

Protestors say they are standing up for the rights of the marginalized. But they seem to have a distinct lack of regard for the rights — well establish constitutional rights — of those who don’t share their poorly defined agenda. The aim seems to be to indoctrinate all students — and everyone else for that matter — with a particular point of view that furthers a radical agenda regarding politics and culture.

Protestors, with only vague accusations of institutional racism and uncorroborated reports of racist incidents by individuals managed to force the University of Missouri system president from office along with the chancellor of the main campus at Columbia, Mo. They did so by enlisting the University of Missouri’s black football players, who threatened to refuse to play.

At Yale University, protestors called on the administration to fire a professor who questioned a directive warning against “offensive” Halloween costumes. It said that costumes that could be construed as racially and culturally insensitive should be avoided.

The professor who came under fire merely said that in a college environment, students ought to have the freedom to be “obnoxious” and even a bit “offensive.” Anybody who didn’t like it should simply avert their eyes.

That’s because just about anything can be construed as offensive to someone. And when you start restricting one person’s freedom of speech and expression — well there’s a little consideration in the U.S. Constitution called “equal protection under the law.”

Adherents to political correctness believe in all take and no give. The problem is that they will discover too late that what they take, they will eventually take from themselves.

The “victory” at Missouri will no doubt embolden others with a similar mind set around the country. The question is, will people automatically yield to an onslaught of political correctness in hopes of avoiding “trouble.” Or will they push back and say “no” to the madness?

This editorial first appeared in the Tuscaloosa News, a Halifax Media Group newspaper.

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