By: Ted Nugent
Free speech can be ugly, vile, repugnant and racist. While I don’t advocate that type of lingo, I stand firmly for the rights of the Rev. Wright, Al-Not-So Sharpton and other racist windjammers to let it rip.
Young people, especially college students, should be encouraged to speak their minds and engage in open debate, not silenced because some topics are considered to be inflammatory or taboo.
But sadly, today that’s not reality. The self-inflicted curse of political correctness has blanketed our college campuses and silenced many students by making them believe if they speak their minds they will be pilloried as racists, bigots or whatnot and run out of town.
Some colleges have even gone so far as to create free speech zones or policies that effectively either limit or ban free speech. What’s next, arm bands and book burning parties?
Colleges are largely controlled by big-government liberals, the very group of people who supposedly support free speech. But they don’t. They only support free speech if and when it sings the liberal dogma. Any speech that doesn’t agree with liberal drivel is labeled as hate speech in an attempt to silence opposing voices. And it’s working.
You may recall when comedian Jerry Seinfeld told ESPN: “I don’t play colleges, but I hear a lot of people tell me, ‘don’t go near colleges. They’re so PC.’ They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist’; ‘that’s sexist’; ‘that’s prejudice.’ They don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Enter the University of Missouri where the president and chancellor have now resigned for reasons that have yet to be made clear. As best I can tell, they resigned because some students made presumed allegations and forced them to resign. They essentially shouted down these two guys. They demanded the president admit his “white privilege.”
Of course, no one wants a university or business that ignores or advocates obvious or veiled racism, which is essentially the charge levied at the University of Missouri, even though no evidence has been presented to substantiate the charges. It wouldn’t surprise me if the University of Missouri celebrated Black History Month, had a black studies degree, endorsed and celebrated black fraternities and other black student organizations, etc., during the tenure of the two administrators who resigned.
This isn’t going to end well. The resignations of the two administrators will only embolden other leftist radicals to make spurious claims about college campuses endorsing racism, sexism, etc.
While this fake firestorm of political correctness was forcing out the two University of Missouri administrators, just a week or so before it was reported by Terence Jeffrey of CNS News that in the Detroit public school district, 96 percent of eighth graders are not proficient in math, and 93 percent are not proficient in reading. Predictably, you may have noticed that there were no protests, there was no parent on a hunger strike, there was no movement to have the Detroit superintendent of schools removed, and there was no media coverage.
Somebody really ought to tell our school systems that black lives matter.
The stage has been set, the precedent established and the lie confirmed. Inevitably, the jackboot of political correctness will stomp on the throats of other college administrators and force administrators to resign and universities to establish so-called “diversity programs,” which are code programs to snuff out people and programs they don’t agree with.
Meanwhile, our colleges and universities will continue to fail kids by offering meaningless degrees that don’t prepare our young people for the incredibly competitive and rough and tumble business world where only the strong are supposed to survive.
In the end, it will be the very students who make claims about racism and sexism on college campuses that will be screwed by the very thing they genuflect to and endorse: political correctness.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see students protesting, launching hunger strikes and demanding entire administrations be removed because our colleges and universities haven’t created tough enough curricula that will actually prepare our young people for the future and make America strong again?