This comes via the Harvard Crimson… which will surely be shut down do to it violating the feelings of a minority of students (h/t to Twitchy & Truth Revolt):
I used to believe that open discourse was a value all Americans hold dear. I presumed that when asked about what makes America so unique, many Americans would respond that our pluralistic society is the foundation of so much of our success. That it was understood that without a marketplace of ideas, our society simply could not flourish.
But then I started college.
Since the beginning of my freshman year, I have come to believe that a more fitting way to describe the current culture on college campuses is a culture defined not by open expression—but by sensitivity. This undue focus on feelings has caused the college campus to often feel like a place where one has to monitor every syllable that is uttered to ensure that it could not under any circumstance offend anyone to the slightest degree. It sometimes feels as though pluralism has become an antiquated concept. Facts and history have been discarded, and instead feelings have been deemed to be the criteria that determine whether words and actions are acceptable.
It is important to have organizations and movements on college campuses that work toward protecting individuals’ identities. The past few decades have witnessed an explosion of new identities, and students should become aware of and respect the plethora of new identities that have recently emerged. But many of these movements have gone too far.
Take the University of New Hampshire’s “Bias-Free Language Guide.” The list was compiled to inform students of words that are considered offensive in conversation. According to the guide, which was removed from the school’s website a few months ago after it incited controversy, the word “American” is unacceptable, for it fails to recognize people of South American origin. “American,” it argues, should be replaced with “resident of the U.S.” The words “senior citizens,” “older people,” and “elders” should also be eliminated, and instead replaced with “people of advanced age” and “old people.” If we’re at a point where it is offensive to say that your 90-year-old grandparent is a senior citizen, it seems that pretty soon, there may not be any neutral words left.
[….]
In a class I attended earlier this semester, a large portion of the first meeting was devoted to compiling a list of rules for class discussion. A student contended that as a woman, she would be unable to sit across from a student who declared that he was strongly against abortion, and the other students in the seminar vigorously defended this declaration. The professor remained silent. In a recent conversation with peers, I posed a question about a verse from the Bible. A Harvard employee in the room immediately interjected, informing me that we were in a safe space and I was thus not permitted to discuss the controversial biblical passage. And these are just stories from the past three months.
The assaults on free expression have dire consequences. The rise of the microagression movement has been reported to be detrimental to mental health on campus. Students’ emotional distress is increasing as educators presume that fragile undergraduates need to be protected from any form of dissent. Administrators must recognize that the current restrictions are incompatible with the very premise and goal of an education.
It is time to stop focusing on feelings as the criteria for speech and actions on the college campus.
While we are on the topic of censorship… Dennis Prager gives us an update to Marquette University’s Censorship of Professor John McAdams and other students:
This next video brings a damning aspect to university campuses in that it speaks to the worst countries for freedom of speech:
To me, this is an example of the left eating itself. This hippie-dippie kid is probably left-wing, and this BLM styled activist is a leftist… and one is telling the other to groom themselves a certain way. I guess she is an employee of the university, but we will soon (like Iran) have a dress code police. Something Walter Williams coined as “lifestyle Nazis” (one and two). The positive thing that may come out of these types of experiences is that we will get more Republican voters as they leave the crazy left.
People were in a tizzy over Mitt Romney’s forced haircut on a fellow student. The Left said this prank was enough to disqualify him from the Presidency. Yet, here, we see the Left wanting to forcefully cut hair due to “cultural appropriation.” Breitbart notes:
…The video begins with the woman threatening the man by asking her friend whether he has a pair of scissors.
An argument ensues as the student insists on his right to have dreadlocks regardless of the style’s cultural origins.
“You’re saying I can’t have this hairstyle because of your culture? Why?” asks the student.
“Because it’s my culture,” responds the student.
The woman proceeds to grab him as he begins to walk away from the situation. When the white student pushes back, she accuses the man of putting his hands on her….
An instructive call into the Dennis Prager show from a larger interview (below) exemplifies how well the university brainwashes young people. Amazingly sad.
Here is the fuller interview:
Dennis Prager interviews Olivia Legaspi of Haverford College about her recent column, “What Working At McDonald’s Taught Me About Privilege.” Some interesting calls into the show cause great insights by Dennis Prager.
This is some excellence in air time explaining what the colleges are doing to young people.
Not via amnesty Mexicans, or La Raza Mexicans, or Lazy Mexicans. Via SOOPERMEXICAN!
Sooper says: “We’ll be rolling out new videos with Dinesh D’Souza, so if there’s anything you want to be sooper-esplained let me know in the comments, and for your mexy reparations I demand you share and tweet this video!”
“Those three cherished texts all count as ‘historical influences that allow sexism to continue,’ according to a presentation prepared by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, whose mission is to give a ‘world-class human relations education.’”
Here’s a screen shot of one of the slides:
Here I will add to some of the good commentary by Godfather from my own chapter via my book where I challenge in-class ideas from a CSUNprofessor who was a self-proclaimed Gnostic and feminist. In this excerpt I will show that women, for the first time in history, were looked at as EQUAL to men and their endeavor to spread the Gospel message. NO pagan belief system to date allowed such thinking, and this was the basis for the future suffrage movements, coupled with the freedoms enumerated in America’s Founding documents:
Another reason that Christianity succeeded over that of the other ideologies of its day is partly due to – I believe – the high regard given to woman as compared to the pagan religions of the day, Gnosticism included. This topic is dealt with in the book How Christianity Changed the World, by Alvin J. Schmidt. His chapter entitled “Women Receive Freedom and Dignity” is very revealing.[76] [See his image below.] Paul, for instance, had a high regard for women as coworkers, which is amply demonstrated in other letters.[77] Barbara Geller points out that “during the Byzantine era, female leadership was exercised largely within the hierarchical structures of women’s monastic communities.” She continues, however, that,
…the letters of Paul and the Book of Acts suggest that in the earliest phase of emerging Christianity, the opportunities for women were far greater. The closing chapter of Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, following the epistolary conventions of that period, includes greetings and personal commendations. Paul mentions ten women, the first of whom is Phoebe, described in Greek as diakonos and a prostates, correctly translated in the New Revised Standard Version as “deacon” and “benefactor” (Rom 16:1-2). Older translations erroneously rendered these words as “deaconess” and “helper”; thus, generations of translators ignored the plain sense of the text because of their assumption that women could not have exercised significant roles in the early church. Ancient Inscriptions suggest, moreover, that prostates was not only a benefactor or patron, but also frequently the president or head of an association.[78]
As is common, persons today with an agenda misinterpret Scripture to bolster a political position or to live comfortably within their own worldview. Paul, in his letters, interprets the role of women more liberally than his antagonists say he does. Even the Gospels portray women as being more spiritually perceptive than men.[79] So it is hardly surprising that early Christianity proved to have a deep appeal for women, as one scholar observes:
“It is probable that Jesus’ teachings attracted women in part because of the new roles and equal status they were granted in the Christian community. There were many cults in Greece and Rome that were for men only, or at best, allowed women to participate in very limited ways [as prostitutes, for instance, in the fertility cults within ‘goddism’]…. Judaism offered women proselytes a circumscribed place at best, for they were faced with the Jewish restrictions that limited participation in religious functions. While women were not allowed to make up the quorum[80] necessary to found a synagogue, nor to receive the Jewish covenant sign (circumcision), these limitations did not exist in the Christian community.”[81]
The Book of Acts is another indicator of the early church’s emphasis on the important role of women. In fact, Peter’s speech to the Pentecost crowd included portions of the Old Testament book of Joel: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, your sons and your daughters will prophesy…. And on My menservants, I will pour out my Spirit in those days…” (Acts 2:17-18). In the beginnings of this new church founded by Jesus of Nazareth we find women mentioned at the very beginning of Christianities historical book, Acts. In 1:14 of Acts we find the disciples were constantly in prayer “along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus.” The first convert in Philippi, for instance, was Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth (Acts 16:14). The Philippi church meets first in her home (Acts 16:40). Then Priscilla is introduced (18:2), who was a Jewish evangelist! Together with her husband, Aquila, she is mentioned four times in Acts, always being the first mentioned.[82] Likewise, In Romans 16:3 we find Paul mentioning first Priscilla and then her husband, Aquila – mentioning that both are equal in Christ: “Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus.” In fact, Priscilla is always mentioned prior to her husband except for once, another key to the overturning of patriarchal customs up to that point.[83]
Luke makes mention of when Paul visited the evangelist Philip in Caesarea, that he had four daughters who prophesied. Far from Paul and the church being oppressive to women, this type of universality that included women was a departure from both Jewish norms as well Roman norms. The Romans in fact, could have used this early equalizing as being socially subversive to their social order, in this case to the patriarchy. Likewise, the Jewish leaders who rejected Jesus and the teachings of the early church, including Paul at first, severely restricted the role of women.[84] Paul and the other writers of the New Testament telling men that they should cherish their wives (Ephesians 5), that marriage is a financial partnership (I Timothy 5:8), that the husband is to honor his wife (I Peter 3:7), and that the male should be a part of raising their children within the family unit was essentially unheard of until then. In contradistinction, the Gospel of Thomas “is clearly influenced by the kind of Gnosticism we know was prevalent in the second and third centuries, but not in the first.”[85] For example, we find Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas responding to Peter, let’s read:
114: Simon Peter said to them, “Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.” Jesus said, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
“This demeaning view of women was common within Gnosticism, but utterly foreign to the historical Jesus.”[86] The fact that the canonical Gospels were written a century or two earlier than those of Gnosticism is at least a good preliminary indication that they could possibly also be more authoritative. O. C. Edwards agrees:
“It is precisely as history that I find her [Pagels] work most unsatisfactory. Nowhere, for instance, does she give the impression that the basic picture of Jesus given in the New Testament gospels did not arise contemporaneously with the Gnostic portrait, but antedated it by at least a century. As historical reconstructions [go,] there is no way that the two can claim equal credentials.”[87]
To ignore the century before Gnosticism started, seems to me, like a tell in poker. That is when the opposing player does something or makes an odd move to show the other players that he or she is bluffing, verbal or not. In this case, the total disregard for pre-Gnostic history and roots is telling.
FOOTNOTES
[76] The following list, “The Role and Status of Women” (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004), 120-121.
[77]Dale & Sandy Larsen, 7 Myths about Christianity (Wheaton, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), see chpt. 2, “Christianity Suppresses Women”; also all one has to do is read 1 Corinthinas 7:1-16, here Paul puts the male and female on equal terms and status, unheard of in the ancient pagan world… until that is, the New Testament and the Christian community. In fact, Wayne Grudem makes this new distinction apparent when he points out the role of women in the early church:
Perhaps the best example of a woman well trained in knowledge of the Bible is Priscilla. When Paul went to Corinth, he stayed with Aquila and Priscilla: “because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade” (Acts 18:3). Paul stayed a year and six months at Corinth (Acts 18:11), and we may ponder just how much Bible and theology Priscilla would have learned while having the apostle Paul as a house guest and business partner during that time! Then Priscilla and Aquila went with Paul to Ephesus (Acts 18:1819). It was at Ephesus in A.D. 51 that Priscilla and Aquila together “explained” to Apollos “the way of God more accurately” (Acts 18:26). So in A.D. 51 Priscilla knew Scripture well enough to help instruct Apollos. After that, Priscilla probably learned from Paul for another three years while he stayed at Ephesus teaching “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27; compare 1 Cor. 16:19, where Priscilla is called Prisca, and Paul sends greetings to Corinth from Aquila and Prisca and the church that meets “in their house”). By the end of Paul’s three-year stay in Ephesus, Priscilla bad probably received four and a half years of teaching directly from the apostle Paul. No doubt many other women in Ephesus also learned from Paul—and from Priscilla! Aquila and Priscilla went to Rome sometime later (Rom. 16:3, perhaps around A.D. 58), but they returned to Ephesus, for they were in Ephesus again at the end of Paul’s life (in 2 Tim. 4:19, Paul writes to Timothy at Ephesus, “Greet Prisca and Aquila”). Now, 2 Timothy was probably written in A.D. 66 or 67 (Eusebius says that Paul died in A.D. 67), and 1 Timothy a short time before that, perhaps in A.D. 65. In addition, before he wrote 1 Timothy, Paul seems to have been in Ephesus and it seems he had told Timothy to remain there when he left for Macedonia (see 1 Tim. 1:3: “As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus…”). Therefore, both because 1 Timothy is near in time to 2 Timothy, and because Paul had recently been in Ephesus to know who was there before he wrote 1 Timothy or 2 Timothy, it seems likely that Aquila and Priscilla were back in Ephesus by the time Paul wrote 1 Timothy, about A.D. 65. This was fourteen years after Priscilla and Aquila had explained the way of God to Apollos in Ephesus.
Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 175-176.
[78]Michael D. Coogan, ed., The Oxford History of the Biblical World (2001 paperback edition; New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998), 429-430.
[79] Compare Mark 4:40 and 6:52 to Mark 5:25-30. See also Mark 7:24-30 and 12:41-44.
[80]“The number of members of a group or organization required to be present to transact business legally, usually a majority.” Random House Webster’s Unabridged CD-ROM Dictionary, (1999).
[81]Ben Witherington, Women and the Genesis of Christianity (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 246. For those who are not familiar with the Gospel and assume this to reference female circumcision, it does not. Just a quick perusal of Colossians shows that there is freedom found in Christ (Colossians 2:9-15; 3:11-12, NIV):
For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross…. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
Circumcision was not a sign of salvation or status. We are set free to love and live for Christ Jesus. Freedom is a wonderful thing, both spiritually and economically, and this is the point, modern-day feminism lacks the understanding for both, as we shall see.
[82]John W. Mauck, Paul on Trial: The Book of Acts as a Defense of Christianity (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2001), 56.
[85]Gregory A. Boyd, Jesus Under Siege (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1995), 118.
[86] Ibid., 118.
[87]O. C. Edwards, “A Surprising View of Gnosticism,” New Review of Books and Religion, May 1980, 27. Quoted in, Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, MS: College Press, 1996), 107.
Theologian/professor Wayne Grudem has this nugget tucked away in his wonderful seminary-level treatment of culture and the Bible:
Historian Alvin Schmidt points out how the spread of Christianity and Christian influence on government was primarily responsible for outlawing infanticide, child abandonment, and abortion in the Roman Empire (in AD 374); outlawing the brutal battles-to-the-death in which thousands of gladiators had died (in 404); outlawing the cruel punishment of branding the faces of criminals (in 315); instituting prison reforms such as the segregating of male and female prisoners (by 361); stopping the practice of human sacrifice among the Irish, the Prussians, and the Lithuanians as well as among other nations; outlawing pedophilia; granting of property rights and other protections to women; banning polygamy (which is still practiced in some Muslim nations today); prohibiting the burning alive of widows in India (in 1829); outlawing the painful and crippling practice of binding young women’s feet in China (in 1912); persuading government officials to begin a system of public schools in Germany (in the sixteenth century); and advancing the idea of compulsory education of all children in a number of European countries.
During the history of the church, Christians have had a decisive influence in opposing and often abolishing slavery in the Roman Empire, in Ireland, and in most of Europe (though Schmidt frankly notes that a minority of “erring” Christian teachers have supported slavery in various centuries). In England, William Wilberforce, a devout Christian, led the successful effort to abolish the slave trade and then slavery itself throughout the British Empire by 1840.
In the United States, though there were vocal defenders of slavery among Christians in the South, they were vastly outnumbered by the many Christians who were ardent abolitionists, speaking, writing, and agitating constantly for the abolition of slavery in the United States. Schmidt notes that two-thirds of the American abolitionists in the mid-1830s were Christian clergymen, and he gives numerous examples of the strong Christian commitment of several of the most influential of the antislavery crusaders, including Elijah Lovejoy (the first abolitionist martyr), Lyman Beecher, Edward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin), Charles Finney, Charles T. Torrey, Theodore Weld, William Lloyd Garrison, “and others too numerous to mention.” The American civil rights movement that resulted in the outlawing of racial segregation and discrimination was led by Martin Luther King Jr., a Christian pastor, and supported by many Christian churches and groups.
There was also strong influence from Christian ideas and influential Christians in the formulation of the Magna Carta in England (1215) and of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Constitution (1787) in the United States. These are three of the most significant documents in the history of governments on the earth, and all three show the marks of significant Christian influence in the foundational ideas of how governments should function.
Wayne Grudem, Politics According to the Bible [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010], 49-50.
Godfather has this great point about both the Constitution and the Bible being “forward thinking documents”:
“The fact is, however, that women were not left out; they have always been included in all of the constitutional protections provided to all persons, fully and equally, without any basis in the text for discrimination on the basis of sex. How were they included without being mentioned?
“The place to start is that famous provision we considered previously, Article I, section 2, clause 3, describing who will be counted for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives. The phrase ‘the whole number of free persons’ is chiefly where the women are, but they are also among ‘those bound to service for a term of years,’ and even among taxed Indians and ‘all other persons.’ It is quite remarkable that they are not excluded from any one of these groups because, in 1787, women did not vote or hold office anywhere in the United States and were excluded from every level of government. What would be unremarkable, and typical of the time, would be a clear exclusion of women.”
Compare the Constitution to the Northwest Ordinance, which was drafted in the same year as the Constitution, where the phrase “free male inhabitants, of full age, in the district . . . shall receive authority . . . to elect representatives . . . to represent them in the general assembly. . . . Provided also, that a freehold in fifty acres of land . . . shall be necessary to qualify a man as an elector of a representative.”2
Goldwin continues in his very informative article that everybody should read, especially those at the Defense Department:
“In the original Constitution, unlike the Northwest Ordinance, the words ‘man’ or ‘male’ do not occur, nor does any other noun or adjective denoting sex. By not mentioning women or men, speaking instead only of persons, the Constitution must mean that every right, privilege, and protection afforded to persons in the Constitution is afforded to female persons as well as male persons, equally.”
The Bible and the Constitution are very forward-thinking documents…
Not only are these documents forward thinking, for instance, in the early church you had for the first time slaves and slave owners being made equal. NOT in the “workplace,” but when they went to the same place to worship, the slave may have better works-kills as well as task setting for running a meeting place. SO in fact, the slave may have been relied on more and in a leadership position of asking his master to do certain tasks to help the meeting run smooth.
Some of the early letter to the church dealt with this new [first time in history] interaction (see: The Bible and Slavery).
Other issues here is that the Left and class warfare type courses simplify history in order to make a point they are making, stick. It is similar to taking a verse from the Bible out of it’s historical setting, the surroundings, the people it was meant for, the language and idioms/colloquial understandings used in the text — and forcing 21st-century typology onto it (eisegesis).
We see for instance that the early history of our natiuon was more complicated than the Defense Deptartment’s slide and the details in the course. Professor Thomas West points this out in his excellent book, Vindicating The Founders:
It is not only radical feminists who deplore the Founders’ supposed indifference to women’s rights. Mainstream textbooks also paint a gloomy picture. “When Jefferson spoke [in the Declaration of Independence] of `the people,'” writes Lorna Mason in her eighth-grade history textbook, “he meant only free white men.” Cummings and Wise’s Democracy under Pressure, a college political science text, says, “And today, two centuries later, . . . women in America are still struggling for the full freedom and equality denied them by the framers.” No effort is made in these books to understand how the Founders could have viewed women as equal without guaranteeing them the right to vote. Instead, it is assumed that the Founders were insincere or confused when they professed that all human beings have the same rights. Or else it is denied that they believed in equality at all
[….]
James MacGregor Burns’s Government by the People has gone through fifteen editions, but it still mistakenly claims that “All states [in 1787] barred women from voting.” Other textbooks mention that some women voted, only to dismiss the fact as irrelevant. But it is of the highest importance for understanding the Founders’ view of the matter.
The most remarkable case was that of New Jersey. It shows that, on this question at any rate, the Founders were hardly the bigots they have been made out to be. Women voted in large numbers in that state during the late 1790s and early 1800s.
The New Jersey state constitution of 1776 stated that “all inhabitants of this colony, of full age, who are worth fifty pounds proclamation money,… and have resided within the county… for twelve months… shall be entitled to vote.” Some historians speculate that this language was accidental, and that those who wrote it meant males. This is guesswork. There is little evidence on either side. We do know that New Jersey’s 1790 revision of its voting law dutifully implemented the constitution’s literal “all inhabitants” by referring to voters as “he or she.” A 1796 law governing voting in federal elections, used the same language: “No person shall be entitled to vote in any other township or precinct, than that in which he or she doth actually reside…. Every voter shall openly, and in full view, deliver his or her ballot….” Neither of these laws aroused any particular opposition or controversy.
We must pause briefly and note the extraordinary character of this event. For the first time in history, the women of a political community shared with men the right, stated in public law, to select their rulers. There can be only one explanation of why it happened in the United States at this particular time, and in no other country at any previous time. Most Americans, including the members of the New Jersey legislature, believed in the fundamental principle of the Revolution, that all men are created equal. No other government had ever been grounded on this idea. This belief by itself was not enough to bring about female suffrage. But it made it thinkable as an option, while it had been unthinkable for most of human history. Historians have shown that partisan calculations led New Jersey politicians to take advantage of the gender-neutral wording of the state constitution and bring women to the polls in growing numbers. But partisan motivations over the previous three thousand years of Western history had never led to such a result. Clearly, a new idea—the equality idea—changed the terms of what was politically possible. A further sign of this is that female voting generated little controversy in New Jersey for some years.
We know that at least some New Jersey women voted in the year of the Constitutional Convention. Historian Richard McCormick writes, “A Burlington poll list of 1787 contained the names of Iona Curtis and Selve-ria Lilvey, presumably women.” The first newspaper discussion of female voting in New Jersey did not occur until 1797, when the Federalist candidate in a hotly contested election to the state legislature was supported (unsuccessfully) by the women of Elizabethtown. In the Adams-Jefferson presidential election of 1800, and in other subsequent elections, women voted in large numbers throughout the state.
Strictly speaking, only women (and men) who owned property were eligible to vote under the New Jersey law. That meant single women or widows. Married women were not counted as property owners because property within a marriage was legally credited to the husband. In practice, however, the property qualification for voting was carelessly enforced. Married women and even female slaves were often admitted to vote.
In 1800 the New Jersey Assembly considered a law that would have stated, “the inspectors of elections shall not refuse the vote of any widow or unmarried woman of full age:’ One representative wrote: “The House unanimously agreed that this section would be clearly within the meaning of the [New Jersey] Constitution, and as the Constitution is the guide of inspectors, it would be entirely useless to insert it into the law. The motion was negatived. Our Constitution gives this right to maids or widows, black or white It was later said that the votes of two or three women of color swung the election of a state legislator in 1802.
Female voting came to an end in 1807. A close electoral battle between Newark and Elizabeth over the location of a new courthouse inspired massive voting fraud on both sides. Women (and of course men) were in the thick of it. “Women and girls, black and white, married and single, with and without qualifications, voted again and again.” This episode became the excuse for an 1807 law that restricted the franchise to free white males. This law directly violated New Jersey’s constitution, which the courts thereafter dishonestly refused to acknowledge. The representative who promoted the new law most vigorously was the same Jeffersonian Republican who had nearly been defeated in 1797 by the Federalist women of Elizabeth. One partisan pamphleteer had complained that “towns and populous villages [where Federalists had greater strength] gain an unfair advantage over the country by the greater facility they enjoy over the latter, in drawing out their women to the election.”
Women also voted elsewhere in America during the founding era. Robert Dinkin, a historian of early American voting, writes, “Records from a few Massachusetts towns show that a number of widows who owned substantial property did exercise the franchise on occasion” during the colonial period. A New York newspaper reported that “two old widows tendered, and were admitted to vote” in 1737. Records are sparse, so it is likely that other incidents of female voting occurred in these and other states, both before and after the Revolution.
Thomas G. West, Vindicating The Founders: Race, Sex, Class, And Justice In Origins Of America (New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 71, 75-77.
I could go on, but the ideas portrayed in the course will surely fall apart under inspection of history without the lens of cultural Marxist ideology blinding the course writers.
I am going to start this post with a very STRONGLY WORDED rant on the asinine political correctness found on the professional Left. Again, language warning, but you should be just as flabbergasted as these men (via THE BLAZE):
Jonathan Turley (via THE WASHINGTON POST) gets into the mix in his now patented warning from the left about the excesses of government size, growth, and overreach. Some of which I have noted in the past HERE. But here is the column from which Dennis Prager touches on, and Goldberg’s will follow:
…It didn’t matter to the patent office that polls show substantial majorities of the public and the Native American community do not find the name offensive. A 2004 Annenberg Public Policy Center poll found that 90 percent of Native Americans said the name didn’t bother them. Instead, the board focused on a 1993 resolution adopted by the National Congress of American Indians denouncing the name. The board simply extrapolated that, since the National Congress represented about 30 percent of Native Americans, one out of every three Native Americans found it offensive. “Thirty percent is without doubt a substantial composite,” the board wrote.
Politicians rejoiced in the government intervention, which had an immediate symbolic impact. As Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said Wednesday: “You want to ignore millions of Native Americans? Well, it’s pretty hard to say the federal government doesn’t know what they’re talking about when they say it’s disparaging.”
For the Washington Redskins, there may be years of appeals, and pending a final decision, the trademarks will remain enforceable. But if the ruling stands, it will threaten billions of dollars in merchandizing and sponsorship profits for NFL teams, which share revenue. Redskins owner Dan Snyder would have to yield or slowly succumb to death by a thousand infringement paper cuts.
The patent office opinion also seems to leave the future of trademarks largely dependent on whether groups file challenges. Currently trademarked slogans such as “Uppity Negro” and “You Can’t Make A Housewife Out Of A Whore” could lose their protections, despite the social and political meaning they hold for their creators. We could see organizations struggle to recast themselves so they are less likely to attract the ire of litigious groups — the way Carthage College changed its sports teams’ nickname from Redmen to Red Men and the California State University at Stanislaus Warriors dropped their Native American mascot and logo in favor of the Roman warrior Titus. It appears Fighting Romans are not offensive, but Fighting Sioux are.
As federal agencies have grown in size and scope, they have increasingly viewed their regulatory functions as powers to reward or punish citizens and groups. The Internal Revenue Service offers another good example. Like the patent office, it was created for a relatively narrow function: tax collection. Yet the agency also determines which groups don’t have to pay taxes. Historically, the IRS adopted a neutral rule that avoided not-for-profit determinations based on the content of organizations’ beliefs and practices. Then, in 1970, came the Bob Jones University case. The IRS withdrew the tax-exempt status from the religious institution because of its rule against interracial dating on campus. The Supreme Court affirmed in 1983 that the IRS could yank tax exemption whenever it decided that an organization is behaving “contrary to established public policy” — whatever that public policy may be. Bob Jones had to choose between financial ruin and conforming its religious practices. It did the latter.
There is an obvious problem when the sanctioning of free exercise of religion or speech becomes a matter of discretionary agency action. And it goes beyond trademarks and taxes. Consider the Federal Election Commission’s claim of authority to sit in judgment of whether a film is a prohibited “electioneering communication.” While the anti-George W. Bush film “Fahrenheit 9/11” was not treated as such in 2004, the anti-Clinton “Hillary: The Movie” was barred by the FEC in 2008. The agency appeared Caesar-like in its approval and disapproval — authority that was curtailed in 2010 by the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United.
Even water has become a vehicle for federal agency overreach. Recently, the Obama administration took punitive agency action against Washington state and Colorado for legalizing marijuana possession and sales. While the administration said it would not enforce criminal drug laws against marijuana growers — gaining points among the increasing number of citizens who support legalization and the right of states to pass such laws — it used a little-known agency, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, to cut off water to those farms. The Bureau of Reclamation was created as a neutral supplier of water and a manager of water projects out West, not an agency that would open or close a valve to punish noncompliant states….
Here is the article from THE NATIONAL REVIEW — in part — that has Jonah Goldberg likewise raising alarm about the bureaucracy that Turley speaks to in the above article.
…Now, I don’t believe we are becoming anything like 1930s Russia, never mind a real-life 1984. But this idea that bureaucrats — very broadly defined — can become their own class bent on protecting their interests at the expense of the public seems not only plausible but obviously true.
The evidence is everywhere. Every day it seems there’s another story about teachers’ unions using their stranglehold on public schools to reward themselves at the expense of children. School-choice programs and even public charter schools are under vicious attack, not because they are bad at educating children but because they’re good at it. Specifically, they are good at it because they don’t have to abide by rules aimed at protecting government workers at the expense of students.
The Veterans Affairs scandal can be boiled down to the fact that VA employees are the agency’s most important constituency. The Phoenix VA health-care system created secret waiting lists where patients languished and even died, while the administrator paid out almost $10 million in bonuses to VA employees over the last three years.
Working for the federal government simply isn’t like working for the private sector. Government employees are essentially unfireable. In the private sector, people lose their jobs for incompetence, redundancy, or obsolescence all the time. In government, these concepts are virtually meaningless. From a 2011 USA Today article: “Death — rather than poor performance, misconduct or layoffs — is the primary threat to job security at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Management and Budget and a dozen other federal operations.”
In 2010, the 168,000 federal workers in Washington, D.C. — who are quite well compensated — had a job-security rate of 99.74 percent. A HUD spokesman told USA Today that “his department’s low dismissal rate — providing a 99.85 percent job security rate for employees — shows a skilled and committed workforce.”
Uh huh.
Obviously, economic self-interest isn’t the only motivation. Bureaucrats no doubt sincerely believe that government is a wonderful thing and that it should be empowered to do ever more wonderful things. No doubt that is why the EPA has taken it upon itself to rewrite American energy policy without so much as a “by your leave” to Congress.
The Democratic party today is, quite simply, the party of government and the natural home of the managerial class. It is no accident, as the Marxists say, that the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents the IRS, gave 94 percent of its political donations during the 2012 election cycle to Democratic candidates openly at war with the Tea Party — the same group singled out by Lois Lerner. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents the VA, gave 97 percent of its donations to Democrats at the national level and 100 percent to Democrats at the state level…
★ If you are a Republican, you need not speak at a university commencement or convocation. ★ If you are a conservative Republican you need not apply for a job, as a waiter or an CEO
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
True for You, But Not for Me: Overcoming Objections to Christian Faith
True Tolerance: Liberalism and the Necessity of Judgment
Coloring the News: How Political Correctness Has Corrupted American Journalism
The Intolerance of Tolerance
The New Tolerance
Natural Law and Public Reason
Natural Law, Liberalism, and Morality: Contemporary Essays
Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality
Clash Of Orthodoxies: Law Religion & Morality In Crisis
Natural Law and Natural Rights
The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values
The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society
Liberalism: Fatal Consequences
Death by Liberalism: The Fatal Outcome of Well-Meaning Liberal Policies
At War with the Word
Political Correctness The Cloning of the American Mind
Muzzled: From T-Ball to Terrorism-True Stories That Should Be Fiction
Are You Politically Correct?: Debating America’s Cultural Standards
Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air
A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist
Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics
Moral Apologetics for Contemporary Christians: Pushing Back Against Cultural and Religious Critics
The Assault: Liberalism’s Attack on Religion, Freedom, and Democracy
The Liberal Contradiction: How Contemporary Liberalism Violates Its Own Principles and Endangers Its Own Goals
Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media
The Left has a propensity for totalitarian thinking. Leftist movements throughout the twentieth century are harbingers (http://youtu.be/iQcUkd1w_TY) to the idea that inside every progressive/liberal there is a tyrant waiting to get out. Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh City, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, etc., these were men not pushing a conservative ideal, but a leftist ideology. A “total” way of thinking.
They just didn’t — overnight — come and take Jews, priests, pastors, gypsies, and the like and kill them in NAZI Germany. [NAZI means: National Socialist (Nationalsozialismus) Party of Germany — again, leftist ideology.] There was years of demonization, firing from jobs, shouting down of rather than dialogue, and the like.
History is a harbinger, who will stand up on the Left and say, “Whoa, enough-is-enough?” Black sports writers cannot dissent from the liberal mantra (http://youtu.be/LKXKccyb2e8), to Democrates changing names of fish [the Asian Carp, which came from Asia] to the “Evasive Carp,” because it is somehow less derogatory.
Democratic Senators on the floor of the Senate calling for the name of the Redskins to be changed (why not Oklahoma? That is Choctaw for “Red-Man”), to saying swastika flags were at T.E.A. Party rallies (http://youtu.be/M58Wewdaurc), to yet others saying opposition to Obama-care is racist (http://tinyurl.com/mmad43o) — or that Obama-care, the term, should be outlawed (https://vimeo.com/20273419).
This is some older commentary by me explaining What Fascism Is:
…a librarian at Ohio University recommended the book, The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom, and was voted on by his fellow professors 21-0 [with nine abstentions, so kinda like 30-0] as being a sexual harasser for recommending a conservative book. Sounds somewhat fascist to me.
The political commentators of the same political philosophy, when on campuses are shouted down and threatened with bodily harm (Ann Coulter), when opposing viewpoints are not shouted down on university campuses, and the guests dont need bodyguards (Cindy Sheehan).
Let us look at what we are told is suppose to be the political landscape if it were to be put into a line graph. Again, the following graph is wrong:
Really this is misleading. For one, it doesn’t allow for anarchy, which is a form of governance (or lack thereof). Also, it places democracy in the center… as if this is what one should strive for, a sort of balance. (The most popular — college level graph — is wrong and misleading as well):
[….]
The following graph includes all political models and better shows where the political beliefs lie e.g., left or right is the following (take note, this graph is from a book I do not support nor recommend… but these visual insights are very useful):
In actuality, during WWII, fascism grew out of socialism, showing how close the ties were. I would argue that the New Left that comprises much of the Democratic Party today is fascistic, or, at least, of a closer stripe than any conservative could ever hope to be. I will end with a model comparing the two forms of governance that the two core values (conservatism/classical liberalism versus a socialist democracy) will produce. Before you view the below though, keep in mind that a few years back the ASA (American Socialist Association) on their own web site said that according to the voting record of United States Congressmen and Women, that 58 of them were social democrats. These are the same that put Hitler and Mussolini in power.
Tim Wise is an extreme left-wing Cultural Marxist. Despite living in a ritzy all white neighborhood in Nashville, one of America’s whitest metro areas, he constantly spews venom at white people. On November 5th, 2012, he has even publicly called on his followers to murder members of the Florida TEA Party [tweet below]. Despite his public call for murder, CNN continues to put him on the air. Tim Wise writes books saying that white people make too much money and should share with black people. Wise, who has make a fortune with this schtick, is substantially wealthier than most Americans of any race. Apparently, sharing your money with black people is only for the little guys!
Recently Tim Wise spoke at Indiana University. Before his speech, several of his fanatical supporters turned violent and attacked a group of protesters with pepper spray and other weapons. Police apprehended one of the thugs and he is being charged with a felony.
…”Here’s the reality,” Wise said. “The image of a white Jesus has been used to justify enslavement, conquest, colonialism, the genocide of indigenous peoples. There are literally millions of human beings whose lives have been snuffed out by people who conquered under the banner of a white god.”
Moreover, he said, “black folks can think Jesus is black and view Christ as black, but at the end of the day, the image that has been used to dominate Christianity in this world and on this planet is the white image.”
“The white Jesus, white god imagery has resulted in death. That’s something folks ought to deal with,” he added.
Filmmaker Rochelle Oliver accused Kelly and others of racism against black people for believing Santa Claus is white, Hadro added.
“[P]eople who think like Megyn Kelly believe it’s more comfortable for them to believe that there is a white man flying around the earth with magical reindeer than to believe that a black man in the year 2013 can actually be kind, can be loving and can actually be caring toward children,” Oliver said.
Defense attorney Mel Robbins said Kelly had nothing to apologize for and called Oliver’s statement “absurd.”
“Well, I can’t imagine Christmas morning at your house, Tim,” Robbins said.
Ultimately, Wise said, it was the billions of advertising dollars spent that helped propagate the image of a white Jesus.
Ironically, the White House used a white Santa at Michelle Obama’s reading of “The Night before Christmas” at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. on Monday.
One would have to ask: Does Oliver think Michelle Obama is racist for using a white Santa?
“….Imagine a homosexual videographer being forced to video a speech that a conservative makes against homosexual behavior and same sex marriage. Should that homosexual videographer be forced to do so? Of course not! Then why Elane Photography?” ~ Gay Patriot
At least Oregon is applying its anti-discrimination laws evenhandedly. Interesting story out of Gresham: The Oregonian is reporting that Bruce Bottoms – a homosexual baker and owner of “Cakes By Cupcakes” – has been charged with anti-Christian discrimination by the Oregon Ministry of Human Rights (OMHR).
Mr. Bottoms and his partner, Lance Limpkowski, recently declined to bake a cake for the notoriously anti-”gay” Westboro Baptist Church (WBC). As a result, they’ve been forced to shut down their business.
It seems that, in another tired attempt to be provocative, representatives from the attention-starved WBC demanded that Bottoms and Limpkowski bake a cake for a Westboro fundraiser with the group’s trademark slogan, “God Hates Fags,” emblazed in rainbow frosting across the top. Mr. Bottoms, who reportedly moonlights as a part-time blogger for the homosexual activist “Human Rights Campaign,” was understandably appalled. He refused.
“Look, I’ll serve anybody, Christian or otherwise,” said Bottoms. “I just refuse to bake a cake that endorses an ideology that I find obscene. If Westboro came in and asked me to bake a birthday cake with the words ‘Happy 120th, Papa Freddy,’ it’d be my pleasure,” he said. “I didn’t decline to bake the cake because the customers defined themselves as ‘Christian’; I refused because nobody should be forced to lend their talents to endorse – whether directly or indirectly – a message or event that they find repugnant.”
Tolerance Enforcement Commissioner Brad Avakian disagreed: “We are committed to a fair and thorough investigation to determine whether there’s substantial evidence of unlawful discrimination,” he told the Oregonian. “The goal is never to shut down a business. The goal is to rehabilitate. For those who do violate the law, we want them to learn from that experience and have a good, successful business in Oregon. Everybody is entitled to their own beliefs, but that doesn’t mean that folks have the right to discriminate,” he said.
Meanwhile, churches and Christian groups across America organized a boycott of Cakes By Cupcakes, picketing the business and threatening to target other businesses that associated with Bottoms and Limpkowski. The two men have additionally reported multiple death threats, with one Presbyterian preacher leaving a voicemail: “Die bigots! You anti-Christian haters need to keep your Christophobia to yourselves!” he said.
Just kidding.
Sort of.
Although the “Cakes By Cupcakes” incident didn’t actually happen, something quite similar is happening across America. It’s a photo negative of the above scenario, but it’s equally absurd. Homosexual activists and “progressive” government officials are targeting Christian business owners – true Christians, not hateful Westboro-types – for real anti-Christian discrimination. And they’re doing it in the name of “non-discrimination.”
