Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Good point

From Protein Wisdom

So much of leftist rhetoric is an attempt simply to shame opponents into compliance — you don’t agree with race-based affirmative action as policy? You are a racist. You don’t support legalizing same-sex marriage as a civil right? You are a homophobe — followed by an effort to redefine terms (”racist”, “homophobe,” “masculine”) in the social vacuum created by that shaming mechanism.
It's not a trait unique to the Left. It was an essential feature of McCarthyism and a favored tactic of the Birchers. The neocons were quite willing to play the "you're an anti-Semite" card when it suited their purposes.

It seems indisputable that the Left-version has taken firm root in out colleges. Institutions that claim to value free inquiry and dialogue provide a home to ideologues who are not interested in either.

We saw this at Duke with the Gang of 88. They hurled their rhetorical thunderbolts but refused to engage any one who offered a differing view.

Yaeger and Pressler quote lacrosse player Kyl Dowd who cuts to the heart of the Gang's hypocrisy.

The only problem is, you are willing to start a dialogue but now you refuse to speak to the media, you refuse to speak to us, you refuse to speak to other professors. So you've actually decreased the dialogue about these topics, which is in complete contradiction to your original goal. No matter which way you look at it, they've failed.

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