Laying Down the Lawton
As the progressive war on free speech wages on, some strange schisms in the left-wing mindset are being revealed.
You’ve seen all the stories by now: students are reprimanded for not minding their male privilege, white privilege, heteronormativity, cisgender privilege, and all the other phrases that seem to have been created by a random drawing of Scrabble tiles. As is so often the case, yesterday’s satire is today’s reality, making it particularly important to pay attention to what happens on society’s fringes.
Radical left-wing activists have prioritized identity politics above ideas, but this is only convenient for them when people in their chosen groups are adhering to progressive orthodoxy.
Anything less and things get messy.
A student club at the University of Northwestern – St. Paul in Minnesota invited a black, female speaker to address its members about an issue devastating the black community. That sounds like the perfect subject for social justice-minded campus administrators, but there’s a catch. The speaker was Star Parker, a conservative commentator. And the issue she says is causing a “moral crisis” in black America? Abortion.
Yet her pro-life advocacy was blocked by the school’s administrators, who said her “radical” beliefs don’t “educate and expand worldviews.”
I’m unclear how silencing one side of a debate does.
The most egregious part of this decision is that the University of Northwestern is a private, evangelical Christian school. If pro-life views aren’t welcome there, there’s no hope for the public, secular institutions.
It isn’t deemed “racist” or “misogynistic” if the minority female who is denied a speaking platform was going to use it to advocate Christian, conservative values, however.
Pro-choice activists love to say men aren’t entitled to have an opinion about abortion, but this only applies to pro-life men. Of course free rein is given to “male allies,” like the one who roundhouse kicked Campaign Life Coalition’s Marie-Claire Bissonnette at a pro-life rally last year.
Despite her womanhood, Bissonnette’s perspective isn’t welcome to the Left. Just as pro-life MP Rachael Harder’s wasn’t on the House of Commons status of women committee.
Skin colour, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and all the rest of these superficial identifiers are only trump cards when you hew to the liberal party line.
This is the same mindset that led to so many people accepting without question actor Jussie Smollett’s account that he was the victim of an attempted lynching by white nationalists wearing “Make America Great Again” hats outside a Chicago Subway at 2:00 am. The implausibility of the scenario took a backseat to the deliciousness of the narrative.
This identity politics double standard isn’t just imposed against the right—it cannibalizes people who are, themselves, allies of left-wing causes.
Liberal feminist actress Debra Messing was forced to apologize for a photo she posted to Instagram for International Women’s Day in March. The photo was of a batch of vagina cupcakes (don’t ask, and for your own sake don’t Google it), but this was deemed transphobic. She faced immense backlash, and apologized for not recognizing “there are innumerable beautiful, unique and powerful women who don’t have a vagina.”
There’s a certain element of schadenfreude someone who eschews this identity politics game can embrace, knowing that this apparent revolution is devouring its own. The problem with this mindset is that no one will be left standing at the end of it.
Whether it’s comedians, political leaders, musicians, or anyone else subjected to the mob, no one can survive.
Not that I’m one for the ‘safe space’ mythology to which campuses purportedly should strive, but I find it interesting that fewer spaces are immune from this mentality.
Liberty University, which in name and reputation is an institution standing up for free speech, was the site of a protest by dozens of students earlier this year when school president Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife said, partially in jest, that they’d be raising their granddaughter as a girl.
The quip was a response to the wave of celebrities and bloggers virtuously taking pride in raising their children without gender, but students still picketed Falwell for daring to claim that sex and gender are related.
This is not a uniquely Canadian or American phenomenon, but a cultural one that spans the Western world. Like all cultural phenomena, the antidote will be people stepping out and speaking up, despite the consequences such acts of defiance can bear.
You all know how that famous Martin Niemoller poem ends.
s the progressive war on free speech wages on, some strange schisms in the left-wing mindset are being revealed.
You’ve seen all the stories by now: students are reprimanded for not minding their male privilege, white privilege, heteronormativity, cisgender privilege, and all the other phrases that seem to have been created by a random drawing of Scrabble tiles. As is so often the case, yesterday’s satire is today’s reality, making it particularly important to pay attention to what happens on society’s fringes.
Radical left-wing activists have prioritized identity politics above ideas, but this is only convenient for them when people in their chosen groups are adhering to progressive orthodoxy.
Anything less and things get messy.
A student club at the University of Northwestern – St. Paul in Minnesota invited a black, female speaker to address its members about an issue devastating the black community. That sounds like the perfect subject for social justice-minded campus administrators, but there’s a catch. The speaker was Star Parker, a conservative commentator. And the issue she says is causing a “moral crisis” in black America? Abortion.
Yet her pro-life advocacy was blocked by the school’s administrators, who said her “radical” beliefs don’t “educate and expand worldviews.”
I’m unclear how silencing one side of a debate does.
The most egregious part of this decision is that the University of Northwestern is a private, evangelical Christian school. If pro-life views aren’t welcome there, there’s no hope for the public, secular institutions.
It isn’t deemed “racist” or “misogynistic” if the minority female who is denied a speaking platform was going to use it to advocate Christian, conservative values, however.
Pro-choice activists love to say men aren’t entitled to have an opinion about abortion, but this only applies to pro-life men. Of course free rein is given to “male allies,” like the one who roundhouse kicked Campaign Life Coalition’s Marie-Claire Bissonnette at a pro-life rally last year.
Despite her womanhood, Bissonnette’s perspective isn’t welcome to the Left. Just as pro-life MP Rachael Harder’s wasn’t on the House of Commons status of women committee.
Skin colour, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and all the rest of these superficial identifiers are only trump cards when you hew to the liberal party line.
This is the same mindset that led to so many people accepting without question actor Jussie Smollett’s account that he was the victim of an attempted lynching by white nationalists wearing “Make America Great Again” hats outside a Chicago Subway at 2:00 am. The implausibility of the scenario took a backseat to the deliciousness of the narrative.
This identity politics double standard isn’t just imposed against the right—it cannibalizes people who are, themselves, allies of left-wing causes.
Liberal feminist actress Debra Messing was forced to apologize for a photo she posted to Instagram for International Women’s Day in March. The photo was of a batch of vagina cupcakes (don’t ask, and for your own sake don’t Google it), but this was deemed transphobic. She faced immense backlash, and apologized for not recognizing “there are innumerable beautiful, unique and powerful women who don’t have a vagina.”
There’s a certain element of schadenfreudesomeone who eschews this identity politics game can embrace, knowing that this apparent revolution is devouring its own. The problem with this mindset is that no one will be left standing at the end of it.
Whether it’s comedians, political leaders, musicians, or anyone else subjected to the mob, no one can survive.
Not that I’m one for the ‘safe space’ mythology to which campuses purportedly should strive, but I find it interesting that fewer spaces are immune from this mentality.
Liberty University, which in name and reputation is an institution standing up for free speech, was the site of a protest by dozens of students earlier this year when school president Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife said, partially in jest, that they’d be raising their granddaughter as a girl.
The quip was a response to the wave of celebrities and bloggers virtuously taking pride in raising their children without gender, but students still picketed Falwell for daring to claim that sex and gender are related.
This is not a uniquely Canadian or American phenomenon, but a cultural one that spans the Western world. Like all cultural phenomena, the antidote will be people stepping out and speaking up, despite the consequences such acts of defiance can bear.
You all know how that famous Martin Niemoller poem ends.
