A Forum for Vigorous Debate, Cornerstone of Democracy

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A FORUM FOR FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND VIGOROUS DEBATE, CORNERSTONES OF DEMOCRACY
[For the journal--guidelines, focus, etc.--go to www.theamericandissident.org. If you have questions, please contact me at todslone@hotmail.com. Comments are NOT moderated (i.e., CENSORED)!]
Encouraged censorship and self-censorship seem to have become popular in America today. Those who censor others, not just self, tend to favor the term "moderate," as opposed to "censor" and "moderation" to "censorship." But that doesn't change what they do. They still act as Little Caesars or Big Brother protectors of the thin-skinned. Democracy, however, demands a tough populace, not so easily offended. On this blog, and to buck the trend of censorship, banning, and ostracizing, comments are NEVER "moderated." Rarely (almost NEVER) do the targets of these blog entries respond in an effort to defend themselves with cogent counter-argumentation. This blog is testimony to how little academics, poets, critics, newspaper editors, cartoonists, political hacks, cultural council apparatchiks, librarians et al appreciate VIGOROUS DEBATE, cornerstone of democracy. Clearly, far too many of them could likely prosper just fine in places like communist China and Cuba or Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Russia, not to mention Sweden, England, and Austria.
ISSUE #45 PUBLISHED MAY 2023. NOW SEEKING SUBMISSIONS FOR ISSUE #46.

More P. Maudit cartoons (and essays) at Global Free Press: http://www.globalfreepress.org

Sunday, December 18, 2011

hass

It was sad to discover, in Kevin Kiley’s “Occupy Someone Else” article, which recently appeared in Inside Higher Ed (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/12/09/public-universities-question-why-they-not-lawmakers-are-protesters-target), that the Occupy Cal and other Occupy university and college movements were apparently nothing more than protests about MONEY.  It was sad to note Kiley didn’t even evoke or think about that low-point in academe.   Might it be cocoon living—far from the edge—that blinds so? 

Nevertheless, perhaps I shouldn’t have been at all surprised by the Occupy Cal and other university protests over tuition-rate increases,  since most citizens—students and professors certainly included—seem only willing to stand up (albeit in herd formation) when MONEY is concerned.   

Regarding the ivory tower, students ought to be protesting instead against the dubious see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil ostrich-head-in-the-sand behavior of the large majority of their sinecured professors, not to mention the rampant intellectual corruption, including the widespread professorial-effort to restrict, if not kill, the First Amendment on public campuses and spread PC multiculti-ideology like a noose round the neck of truth and democracy. 

Mention those free-speech restricting codes, censorship of ideas and comments, and rampant self-censorship to students and most—the very large majority of them—will likely be uninformed and simply uninterested.  The same goes for their professors, at least those not directly involved in instituting the codes of civility and good taste.    

Financial concerns always motivate.  Threats against democracy rarely seem to do that.  Why didn’t students protest against the University of California’s 1.6 million dollar political contribution to the Obama presidential campaign in 2008?  Should a public-university system be manifesting such egregious Democrat Party bias as Obama’s number-one donor?   Indeed, in doing so, how can it possibly argue that it is a partisan of diversity of thought and opinion? 

In fact, if the Occupy movements were to have had any tangible success at all, they should have been focused 100% on Obama.  They should have put the president to the fuckin’ wall, make him either fulfill his hollow campaign promises of transparency, ending corporate lobbying, and war, or make him fully understand that Occupy would then campaign 100% against his re-election.   They should have put him and Pelosi to the wall to get legislation to end corporate bailouts, congressional insider trading, reduce the high salaries of multi-millionaire senators and congressmen, reduce their high pensions and favorable health-care benefits, and otherwise stop the influence the megawealthy Wall Street financiers continue to have on the Democrat-Party regime.  

4 comments:

Tim said...

Your second paragraph here pretty much sums it up.

Tim said...

"Ignore the corruption behind the curtain, put more money in our pockets".

Similar in many ways, to those that they are protesting against.

Tim said...

Here the archetypical student protester reminds me of the noble savage who everyone thinks is more benevolent. Bah, he just wants money and power too.

G. Tod Slone said...

On target, Tim!