Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Life Imitating Literary Horror: "Politically Correct Universities Killing Free Speech," and "Inclusive Terminology Guide at Mizzou Raises Awareness of 'Adultism'"...

...It rather reminds me of a passage from a most depressing book (written almost 70 years ago) that seems to resemble, increasingly, the direction where things are heading this century:

"With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother -- it was all a sort of glorious game to them. 

All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak -- 'child hero' was the phrase generally used -- had overheard some compromising remark and denounced his parents to the Thought Police."  [All emphasis added]

And if that ain't a cheerful holiday thought to brighten your Xmas week, then my name ain't Ebenezer.  But never forget, kids: Group-think and authoritarianism, whether they come out of the right or the left, are the incessant enemies of free human beings.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/college-president-blasts-millenial-students-being-overly-sensitive
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/12059161/Politically-correct-universities-are-killing-free-speech.html
http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/19/inclusive-terminology-guide-at-university-of-missouri-raises-awareness-of-adultism/