Remembering “Self” in Ivory Tower Land

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 11:58 am by Neal
Liberals — such as these college administrators — are pack animals who long ago abandoned a belief in self.

As herd animals, liberals despise the concept of the individual and the responsibility that implies. This is why one never hears liberals espouse classical concepts of individuality such as self-defense or self-control:

Liberals do not believe in self! You know, “It Takes a Village” and all that nonsense.

The massacre at Virginia Tech this week highlights the folly that college campuses — paradises of libtopia if ever there were any — can be declared “safe zones” by leftist administrators, and peace-and-harmony will magically ensue. It also exposes the myth that “self-defense” is some antiquated, conservative notion that doesn’t apply when there are “hundreds of highly trained officers” protecting everyone in paradise.

Michelle Malkin’s column, “Wanted: A culture of self-defense,” explains the costs associated with the eradication of intellectual and physical self-defense in Ivory Tower Land:

There’s no polite way or time to say it: American colleges and universities have become coddle industries. Big Nanny administrators oversee speech codes, segregated dorms, politically correct academic departments and designated “safe spaces” to protect students selectively from hurtful (conservative) opinions — while allowing mob rule for approved leftist positions (textbook case: Columbia University’s anti-Minuteman Project protesters).

Instead of teaching students to defend their beliefs, American educators shield them from vigorous intellectual debate. Instead of encouraging autonomy, our higher institutions of learning stoke passivity and conflict-avoidance.

And as the erosion of intellectual self-defense goes, so goes the erosion of physical self-defense.

The back story: Virginia Tech had punished a student for bringing a handgun to class last spring — despite the fact that the student had a valid concealed handgun permit. The bill would have barred public universities from making “rules or regulations limiting or abridging the ability of a student who possesses a valid concealed handgun permit . . . from lawfully carrying a concealed handgun.” After the proposal died in subcommittee, the school’s governing board reiterated its ban on students or employees carrying guns and prohibiting visitors from bringing them into campus buildings.

Late last summer, a shooting near campus prompted students to clamor again for loosening campus rules against armed self-defense. Virginia Tech officials turned up their noses. In response to student Bradford Wiles’s campus newspaper op-ed piece in support of concealed carry on campus, Virginia Tech Associate Vice President Larry Hincker scoffed:

“[I]t is absolutely mind-boggling to see the opinions of Bradford Wiles. . . . The editors of this page must have printed this commentary if for no other reason than malicious compliance. Surely, they scratched their heads saying, ‘I can’t believe he really wants to say that.’ Wiles tells us that he didn’t feel safe with the hundreds of highly trained officers armed with high powered rifles encircling the building and protecting him. He even implies that he needed his sidearm to protect himself . . .”

The nerve!

Hincker continued: “The writer would have us believe that a university campus, with tens of thousands of young people, is safer with everyone packing heat. Imagine the continual fear of students in that scenario. We’ve seen that fear here, and we don’t want to see it again. . . . Guns don’t belong in classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same.”

Who’s scratching his head now, Mr. Hincker?

Neal Boortz likewise laments the fact that liberal philosophy turns individuals into lambs for slaughter (see picture above), and that it’s not just limited to policies on college campuses:

How far have we advanced in the wussification of America? I am now under attack by the left for wondering aloud why these students did so little to defend themselves. It seems that standing in terror waiting for your turn to be executed was the right thing to do, and any questions as to why 25 students didn’t try to rush and overpower Cho Seung-Hui are just examples of right wing maniacal bias. Surrender — comply — adjust. The doctrine of the left.

Amazing, isn’t it? Even the suggestion that young adults should actually engage in an act of self defense brings howls of protest.

I’m reminded of the episode at the discount store in Florida. A shoplifter has a store employee down on the floor and is attacking that employee with a knife. A woman … a woman who had a concealed carry permit … steps out of a cash register line, pulls a gun out of her purse, and orders the attacker to put his knife down or “I’ll blow your head off.” The attacker complies and is held for police. When the TV crews show up a witness whines “I can’t believe that woman can go around with a gun in her purse like that.” 100 to 1 odds the whiner was a Democrat. How dare anyone fight back!


“Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all.”
— Nikita Khrushchev

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