The Political Correctness Screw Makes Another Turn

March 11, 2013

Pop tarts are dangerous—or at least they seemed that way to faculty at Park Elementary School in Baltimore and ended up as such for 7-year-old Josh Welch. He was suspended for two days after shaping his toaster-pastry into an approximate gun-shape; the school’s official letter said the “student used food to make an inappropriate gesture.”

Before you laugh—or cry—ask yourself if it would be more or less absurd if it had been a college student who was suspended for chewing a Danish into a sideways ‘L’ and saying “bang.”

Additionally, imagine that instead of shooting imaginary bullets with a pop tart, the college student had made a YouTube dance video based on the viral “Harlem Shake” meme. Such was the case for several students in student programs, who put a video of themselves, gyrating hips and all, on YouTube. Apparently the clip was “offensive” to certain staff members; it was promptly removed from YouTube and the students who participated had to write letters of apology about the incident to the assistant dean of student programs. Everyone in Student Programs has maintained a tight-lipped silence about the whole issue, since, as one member put it, “it’s no longer in [our] hands…we want to protect the student’s due process in case it becomes a bias incident.”

Wait, apologies for what? How can they get in trouble for a YouTube video? Why is this bad, even supposing it was as offensive as it has been portrayed? No one is forcing anyone else to go watch a video. There are countless YouTube videos that are far more disgusting than a Harlem Shake redux, videos that I choose not to watch because they bother me. I don’t ask for them to be removed; I just don’t watch them. Is that so hard?

The problem is two-fold. First of all, an extraordinarily large part of our society has been convinced that people have a right not to be offended. This is most tellingly proven by our own school’s bias incident policy. A bias incident, for those who aren’t familiar, is “conduct, speech, or behavior motivated by prejudice or a bias toward another person that does not rise to the level of a crime.” These are inherently subjective standards, of course. I might be offended by non-organic food, or by petroleum-based products or any number of other things but that doesn’t give me a right to take away other people’s rights to use these things. Like shooting pop tart guns, creating a less-than-perfectly politically correct video for YouTube is a “victimless crime.” Or, to be more accurate, is simply “victimless.”

Riding off of this non-existent right, the second part of the problem is that people have become convinced—sometimes even taught!—that they are victims. I’ll never forget interviewing a student earlier this quarter who said that another student had made him “feel inferior,” by bumping him in passing when the other student was trying to walk away from a verbal altercation. This sentiment is only reinforced by Bellevue College, which claims in its “Don’t Let the Haters Win” pamphlet that, “The college’s highest concern is for the emotional and physical well being of a person affected by a bias-motivated incident…” Really? I would have thought it would be education. I certainly can’t speak for everyone, but I think it’s more than a little condescending that the school wants to protect me from having my feelings hurt, and I say this as someone who has been verbally attacked solely on the base of my race and gender. I can take care of myself, thanks, and I’m paying for an education, not for therapy.

Part of growing up is learning to live with other people, people who look differently, talk differently, think differently and find different things humorous. If people didn’t hear this as a child, it’s never too late to learn the old adage, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” It would be one thing if students were jumping out of the screen and attacking people, but we walk a dangerous line in imposing “our” idea of what’s appropriate or inappropriate on others. What would the school do, I wonder, if someone claimed to be offended or hurt by these inescapable policies? The claim of offense at unconstitutional rules would certainly be more justified than someone claiming offense over a YouTube video they could just as easily not watch.

Remember, the Medium is the Message

March 4, 2013

The student rally at Olympia last week was great. We all met with legislators and their assistants and appeared to make generally positive impressions. They seemed to agree with us about the importance of putting more money into colleges and universities, or at least not making any additional cuts. We made lots of noise, we endured the cold, windy weather and most importantly, enjoyed some great boxed lunches together. One of our most important tasks, however, was to send a solid, coherent and true message to the people in charge of our state’s budget, and while Bellevue College and the rest of the schools present didn’t do a terrible job, we certainly could have done better.

First and most importantly, choosing your friends is as important a job in lobbying as it is in the realm of the more mundane social sphere. Note to lobbyists, anarchists are not your friends. Nothing sends the message, “Money spent on us is money wasted,” stronger than dressing up as and acting like the Irish Republican Army on the steps of the state capital. Even if BC students weren’t wearing the black bandanas and balaclavas themselves, waving black flags and distributing literature advocating “plundering” from the establishment, accompanied with sinister lines about how “cops aren’t invincible in the street,” standing in solidarity with this kind of company is bad. Very bad. To give you an idea, the website of the group that was distributing this literature was bragging just last week about the number of security cameras they destroyed. Associations with groups like this not only empowers them, but also undermines the agenda and goals of the more high-minded students trying to make good things happen. Taking part in a parade led by these people is something BC should avoid repeating in the future, for both pragmatic and moral reasons.

Secondly, metaphors and   symbols are an important part of communication. The Princeton psychology professor and famed author Julian Jaynes even went so far as to say that metaphor “is the very constitutive ground of language.” According to Jaynes, even basic words like “is,” and “to be,” are metaphors derived from Sanskrit: asmi, “to breathe,” and bhu, “to grow,” respectively. So what kind of message was a parade of students marching around with a 10 foot tall ball and chain supposed to send? Or a giant sign that read, “EDUCATION IS A HUMAN RIGHT?”  As it turns out, the enormous black ball was supposed to represent student debt, and the sign was supposed to represent a kind of obligation on the part of the legislators that they weren’t fulfilling.

Unfortunately, there are three problems with this image. Most obviously, education is not a human right, and even if it were, there are plenty of ways to educate oneself without going to school. Going to a library or surfing the more educational parts of the web doesn’t require any money from Olympia. As for the debt, hauling around the giant inflated black ball doesn’t do anything. Legislators didn’t put students in debt—students put students in debt. No one forces college students to take out loans. Trying to pass the burden of responsibility from the people who took out the loans to a group of dedicated public servants who are desperately trying to dig our state out of a budget deficit is not merely counter-productive; it’s reprehensible.

The final issue is what all of this together is trying to convey. At the first rally, on Feb. 8, the crystalline message was, “We are the future, don’t cut the future!” College is an investment in the future of not only the citizens of the state, but the state itself—culture, economy, businesses, society and everything else. It was a message of mutual benefit and argumentation: “here’s why this is important, and it’s in everyone’s interest to put money into our education.” By contrast, the message of the rally on Feb. 18 was one of coercion and entitlement: “we deserve this money, it’s our right, and we’re going to dress up in a threatening manner and play Rage Against the Machine to prove it.” The Canadian philosopher of communication Marshall McLuhan famously said that, “the medium is the message,” that the metaphors and symbols we use define how the message is perceived. If you were a legislator, what sort of message would these kinds of demonstrations send? Would it really seem like something positive to invest more money in?

The Nothing Man

The Nothing Man does his the best;
Doing nothing, like the rest
For as he sits, though life goes by,
He can't let all the others try.

The Dark Tower in our Midst

Brian LaFrance, Society of Digital Artists

The stronghold of tyranny has but one rifle, and we, its enemies, are many. We imagine ourselves lined up in ranks and files, ready to do battle with the evil forces of bigotry and intolerance, but it is only in the anonymity and safety of the crowd that we declare our moral strengths. Over time, we have become accustomed to this anonymity and safety, and when the rifle settles on us, we lose our courage.

The tyrants have learned a trick; if they point the gun at the nearest person, the one stepping farthest out of line, everyone is quick to ensure that someone else is closer than them. All of the brave defenders of liberal democracy and freedom make sure they are not at the front of the line and in the sights of the rifle. Thus, the outnumbered enemy has kept us in constant retreat, and even convinced some that if only we would remove the more outspoken and aggressive critics of hatred and oppression ourselves, they would leave us alone. The old tactic of divide and conquer is conquering us, and in our never ending race to the bottom, so-called liberals are turning against each other in the hopes that they won’t be seen as a threat by the enemy. In doing so, some have even managed the double-think of convincing themselves that the enemy isn’t really the enemy; that the true enemy is the one the tyrants point their angry fingers at, the ones who step out of line.

These are the people, we are told, who threaten peace and harmony. A peace upheld by submission to those who daily denounce the core principles of our nation: freedom of speech and the secular state.

But the enemies of liberty and truth cannot hide forever. Intolerance of gays and lesbians, mistreatment of women, bigotry against Jews and other religious faiths, and murderous contempt for any criticism are not the hallmarks of the critics of militant, reactionary Islam, but of militant, reactionary Islam. This is a fact that must be acknowledged if our values of freedom and democracy are to survive. These are values that benefit all people, no matter their gender, ethnicity or religion, and they really, truly are under attack.

The solution to the prisoner’s dilemma, the dilemma of the group having a single rifle aimed at their midst, is simple in theory. Without courage, however, it can become lethal for those who attempt it. One need look no further than the likes of Salmon Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Theo van Gogh, Maajid Nawaz, Lars Vilkes, Geert Wilders and, more recently, Lars Hedeggard to notice this. These are the brave soldiers who marched forward, sure that their line was advancing with them. Perhaps too late, they noticed they’d been left to advance against the fortress alone.

Three things must happen.

First, we must acknowledge that there are tyrants—backwards, violent theocrats—who do exist in the world today. They’re not “just” a vocal minority, they’re not doing what they do because they’re victims of Western imperialism and they really do kill people. We must admit to ourselves and proclaim and repeat that there really is something objectively, morally wrong people killing other people for being homosexual, for leaving their faith or for criticizing these practices too loudly. This requires the courage to face harsh realities, or as Orwell once put it, the “power of facing unpleasant facts.”

Second, we must stop submitting to the demands of the tyrants and shooting our own in the back with nonexistent labels like “Islamophobe,” and putting such people on trial for “hate speech,” as if an idea or a religion had feelings one could hurt, or a reputation one could destroy. The double-standard is clear if we consider what we would think if a politician were put on trial for hate-speech for saying blaming a political party for an economic downturn or accusing members of discrimination. This requires the courage of reconciliation, of admitting we might have been wrong about some things and that people we may have strongly disagreed with in the past might have been right.

Third, we must turn and join the charge against tyranny. Tolerance not a virtue when it tolerates intolerance, and that is precisely where we are and where we will remain if we do not find the solidarity and the courage to put an end to an enemy that isn’t unwilling to throw battery acid, rape, shoot, behead, and bomb whomever they like, and all the while to call for tolerance of its most grotesque crimes. This requires the greatest courage; the courage to acknowledge and accept that the rifle-sight may fall upon you in its sweep across the soldiers of the enlightenment. Many have died, and it is all but certain that many more will join their number before we can declare that we are through this dangerous chapter of history.

But the price of victory over the imposition of totalitarianism is worth it, for a life without freedom is, arguably, a life not worth living. We as a society face a choice: we can choose to accept a tower of death to stand unchallenged in our midst, destroying whom it pleases when it pleases, all the while growing stronger day by day, or we can choose to be intolerant of those who openly and incessantly call for the death of our culture and civilization, and laugh with delight at every sign of this visions’ progress. It is not a choice we may have for much longer.

The privilege of calling out "male privilege"

February 19, 2013

If you are reading this article before 12:30 p.m., you can attend a lecture right here at Bellevue College in D-106 today about the pervasiveness of a somewhat ambiguous blight on our liberal culture known as “male privilege.” In theory, “male privilege” embodies the social, economic and political advantages granted to men on the basis of their gender. We are incessantly told we live in a binary world of first and second-class citizens, where men are institutionally treated better and afforded more opportunity while women are broadly oppressed. In reality however, we live in a more complex and gray world, where mistreatment happens in both directions. The phrase “male privilege,” in practice, is simply a conversational trump card to end debate, drawn from historical guilt and confirmation bias.

I’m not merely speaking from personal experience here. While I have been repeatedly told I don’t have a right to have an opinion on particular issues because of my own race and gender, my major concern is the general acceptance and dissemination of this idea, particularly in academics. When the educator and author Warren Farrell went to give a lecture about the crisis of boys in educationat the University of Toronto, for instance, he was warmly greeted by about a hundred students ripping down posters, threatening and insulting him yelling, “You should be fucking ashamed of yourself, you fucking scum!” to Farrell, his audience and the police (male and female) attempting keep relative order. Farrell’s crime was to have written a book titled, “The Myth of Male Power.”

The very word that is used to defend this kind of behavior—“feminism”—betrays part of the problem here. Everyone I’ve talked to about the word has defined it as, roughly, equality between the sexes. If that’s all there is to it, then I proudly call myself a feminist. What a wonderful concept…but why call it that? Why limit this equality to the feminine by calling it feminism? Isn’t that a form of inequality in itself? Why not just call it “equality?”

It is because, as far as I can tell, many of these so-called feminists don’t want equality. The assumption that feminism is working off of is that in the status quo, women are treated as inferior to men, so their goal isn’t equal treatment in the legal sense, but the elevation of women. They cite things like gender stereotypes about driving ability, higher numbers of men in politics and expensive, uncomfortable clothing as absolute proof that this is the case.

I wonder why it is that men are forced to sign up for selective service and die by the thousands in combat, why women are treated with more leeway in court cases involving domestic abuse and child custody then men, why the prison population (which is so often cited as proof of racial discrimination) is 85% male, why our public schools undeniably favor women and why medieval notions of manhood—what it means to “be a man”—are to this day infused into our expectations of men; men are, after all, expected to pay for and protect their women. I wonder why, during all of this, comparatively minor issues in the opposite direction are sobbed over.

More importantly than any of that, I wonder why men who bring this up whenever women claim they are “oppressed” are immediately labeled as sexist. It is said that the beginning of all wisdom is calling things by their proper names and the name of this culture, the one that responds to disagreement by alleging “male privilege,” is nothing short of misandry.

It is true that women are victims of inordinately high levels of sexual crime, a subject I am in fact quite passionate about. Historically, sexism was the prevailing social norm in Western culture. In some non-Western societies, this remains the case to this day. These are extremely serious problems that warrant all of our support, and it’s an enormous step forward that the Violence Against Women Act has been making such headway this last week, but these problems aren’t any kind of warrant for shutting people out of conversation based on their gender by labeling them as “privileged.” That kind of discrimination is precisely what we’re all against, after all. At least in theory.

Put Personal Safety First on Valentines Day

February 11, 2013

www.internations.org

In a relatively safe and affluent area like Bellevue, it is easy for students to forget scary numbers.For example, in 2011 there were on average more than 392 violent crimes per 100,000 people in the United States. Statistically speaking, 27 of those 392 incidents were cases of forcible rape. These are numbers that are important for people to know and understand, particularly college-aged people and, unfortunately, particularly women.

While it is a natural instinct for people to think, ‘that’s what the police are there for,’ I challenge you to look at your surroundings. If you can see a cop, then congratulations, you might be safe presuming a potential predator is particularly unobservant. If not, then your first line of defense is you. I used to assist in teaching “stranger safety” seminars for a martial arts school in Sammamish, and it was always a ghastly point of interest that the instructor was able to tell numerous stories of his own students who had had to use skills we taught to protect themselves from abduction or worse. It is simply a fact that police cannot be everywhere at once, and when thinking about crime statistics, it is worth bearing in mind.

Valentine’s Day represents a predictable spike in incidents of date rape around the world. With understanding about the real nature of these types of crimes, it might be possible to better avoid them this coming Feb. 14 and beyond.

First, to clarify a few misconceptions. Many women seem to imagine rape as a threat peering out of dark alleys and dingy bars. While it is certainly possible, vastly greater numbers of sexual assault occur within the confines of a known, “safe” environment like the perpetrator’s home or a hotel. On a similar note, the statistically normal stalker or rapist is not a creepy stranger in his 50s, but an acquaintance the victim has known for less than six months. Often, this is a classmate, friend or even a boyfriend.

Thus, the most difficult part of dealing with a stalker or potential rapist is identifying them. While these people are sometimes difficult to pick out, there are some indicating manipulative behaviors that should raise red flags.Unusually assertive charm and niceness, unsolicited help or promises with expectations of reciprocation and “typecasting,” a self-deprecating insult designed to obligate acceptance (You’re probably too cool to spend time with a loser like me), are three such examples. The refusal to accept “no” as an answer is another particularly strong example that should set off immediate mental alarm bells. You are under no obligation to be polite and observe normal social niceties if you feel that your safety is in danger.

Most importantly, trust your instincts. Your sympathetic nervous system has been keeping your ancestors alive for millions of years and your gut readings of people are the cumulative result of those thousands of generations of tweaking and perfecting your brain. Your body is smarter than you think it is, so if you get a creepy “vibe” about someone, it isn’t worth testing your amygdala’s judgment for the sake of social graces. Be smart, stay safe and have an enjoyable Valentine’s Day.

For more detailed information, Sam Harris gives an excellent basic guideline for avoiding violent situations and protecting yourself here, and I can't recommend Gavin de Becker's book "The Gift of Fear" highly enough. It is long, repetitive, and at times boring, but is perhaps one of the best investments in your own safety someone can make, particularly for law-enforcement agents, military personnel, and women.

"It's Not-So-Great Britain"

It is easy, listening to intelligent and forward-thinking Muslims like Tariq Ramadan and Maajid Nawaz, to forget the real-life problems facing our society from radical Islam; the foremost being the normalization of things that should strike us as quite radical indeed. Before following the example of the recently replaced Archbishop of Canterburry Rowan Williams and agreeing to Sharia "zones," as they are called, I wonder how many Americans would be willing to live alongside this kind of behavior:

The video was taken Jan 17, 2013 in downtown London.

I submit two main points from this. First, that no one would suffer more under this kind of precedent of legal exemption than the very people liberals think they would be assisting in giving in to this kind of barbarism: moderate Muslims. Secondly, I would assert that acquiescing to this kind of "zone" is not only contrary the principles of freedom and liberty that I hope all rational Americans could agree to stand together in support of, but that this kind of 'tolerance' is self-destructive. It opens the gateway to intolerance of apostates, Jews, Christians, Hindus, atheists, women and, don't forget, the wrong kind of Muslims.

Should the United States entertain the notion of parallel Sharia laws in certain urban zones, following the example of much of Western Europe? The question seems nearly self-answering in the light of what this would inevitably entail.

Douglas Murray on Religion

The journalist, outspoken critic of Islam and recent Anglican "de-convert" I've been following quite closely recently gave a brilliant defense of the values of organized religion at Cambridge a few days ago. While I don't think he was entirely correct (there was a bit of equivocation between the values of the message and the belief in the truth of the religion itself), I think his points were admirable and enlightening; certainly more eloquent than my own positive views on faith.

It's definitely worth watching, particularly for those more hard-core atheists and anti-theists.

Misogyny v. Autonomy: Women in Combat

 February 5, 2013

“Don’t send our daughters into combat,” proclaimed Kathleen Parker in last Monday’s Seattle Times, describing the decision to allow women to work in combat roles within the military as an “abandon[ment] of all reason.”

Her obnoxious tone turned to a two-faced tirade of tiresome inanity after she attempted to defend her stance as a “feminist” view. Apparently words don’t mean anything anymore, or else she would have taken a pragmatic approach instead of defending her unequal treatment of the sexes in the name of equal treatment. Her reasons were essentially that women are physically inferior to men in combat, that including women poses a threat to unit cohesion and that women are more at-risk in prisoner situations. On the same line of thinking, she makes a rather teary emotional appeal, asking the reader to “hold the image of your 18-year old daughter, neighbor, sister or girlfriend” in mind when discussing combat. I’ll save that one for last.

For starters, it is true that on average, women don’t have the same upper-body strength that men do. Conceded. Fine. What you must say, however, isn’t that women in general don’t have the same physical strength—you must say ALL women lack the constitution to be good soldiers. We have physical standards to weed out unfit soldiers, male and female, so why add superfluous gender restrictions? This attitude of generalization isn’t just the very definition of stereotyping and gender discrimination; it’s patently untrue as well. If you care to disagree, I’m sure you could settle that score in a parking lot somewhere with Ronda Rousey; the number one female MMA fighter and judo gold-medalist would handily take down most military men in a heartbeat. Limiting the ability of minimally and equally qualified, let alone exceptional, individuals from participating in combat roles because of sweeping gender generalizations is morally indefensible. Saying so under the banner of feminism merely adds irony.

On to the issue of unit cohesion.

What’s wrong with saying we shouldn’t integrate blacks and whites in uniform? Is there something intrinsically bad about segregating platoons and brigades by ethnic and national origin, as was done in early 20th century combat? What’s so terrible about keeping gays out of the military? After all, a change to any of these standards might cause strife and disunity within the respective group.
The fear of damage to morale and unit cohesion is such a definitively destroyed argument that I can’t help but speculate on the motives of those who offer it in a serious manner. As for women, they’re already integrated in the rest of the military, including the many groups like the Naval construction battalions (SeaBees) that carry weapons, suffer mortar fire and enemy attacks and are working under combat-like conditions. Shockingly, damage to unit cohesion doesn’t seem to be threatening our borderline-overpowered military’s combat readiness in any way. To say, “oh, but it’s different this time,” would require a much higher burden of proof than the sexist hunch of a misogynistic military tradition.

As for the claim of increased vulnerability to exploitation in prisoner situations, everything that’s wrong with the argument is summed up by Parker in an appended parenthetical in the paragraph. On the heels of a snide comment deriding the “adult” designation of 18-year-old girls, she says “parents know better.”

This is paternalism if there ever was such thing. As if these women weren’t adults! As if women couldn’t make decisions for themselves! If you were to meet a woman who was physically fit, who was mentally steeled, and knew the implications of combat, to tell her “you can’t go because I feel uncomfortable” is undermining her right to self-determination in defense of a personal view on defined gender roles. Without seeing it, I wouldn’t have imagined a writer for a publication like The Seattle Times could seriously take such a condescending and disrespectful position.
Are there dangers in combat for women? Absolutely. Hygiene challenges, boredom, psychological damage, injury, rape, torture and death are possible problems for both sexes, and the burden is not shared equally. Women know this better than men. This is precisely why a willing and qualified female soldier who desires a role in combat should be granted their request with all of the expediency and support afforded to their male counterparts. If Parker and like-minded people, men or women, don’t have the guts themselves to serve their country on the front line, that’s fine. I’m sure no one will hold that against them, particularly those they’d be serving alongside. But they should keep their worries about other people’s welfare to themselves, at least where legislation is concerned. Let adults (yes, they are adults) make their own decisions without other people’s confusion over what “equality” actually means infringing on their right to do so.

Don't Embrace "Multiculturalism" Under the Guise of "Diversity"

February 4, 2013

“We have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream. We have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong[…]We have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run counter to our values.”

These were the words of British Prime Minister David Cameron, in Feb. 2011, speaking on the failures of the British state’s support of “multiculturalism.”  Recently, Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Angela Merkel of Germany uttered similar public confessions, all speeches delivered after decades of support for the inclusive policy. What is “multiculturalism,” and what’s wrong with it?
Multiculturalism is more than a mere tolerance of cultural differences; it is a positive and proactive accommodation of differences, accomplished through Will Kymlicka’s “group-differentiated rights.” It’s the application of exemptions and exceptions for certain groups from the normal social and legal expectations of society, such as allowing certain religious groups to be exempt from the no-hats rule in drivers license photos.

What’s so harmful about that? Doesn’t this promote tolerance and a pluralistic society and the beautiful mosaic of human diversity?

The short answer is simply ‘no.’ The long answer would take a full volume, like “The Closing of the American Mind,” to fully answer, so I’ll stick with the short.
As with all flawed theories, the fundamental issues are worth pointing out first.  Multiculturalism arose as an idea in the wake of a generation characterized by ethnic and racial strife, both at home and abroad, and the philosophy grew from within the political movement doing most of the ideological combat, those whom we would today call “liberals.” Against discrimination in spirit, multiculturalism is, at its essence, the proposition that we should treat people differently based on their racial or ethnic background.

Notice a problem?

A deeper issue lies in the movement’s proclivity towards what is known as moral relativism, the idea that moral truths are subjective and that no one is really in a position to praise some action as “good,” or to decry another action as “bad,” in any kind of binding fashion. Sam Harris gave an example of just such a mindset in his TED talk, describing how many modern intellectuals couldn’t bring themselves to say there was anything objectively wrong with throwing battery acid in the faces of women suspected of less-than-perfect chastity.

“Who are we to pretend that we know so little about human well-being that we have to be non-judgmental about a practice like this?”

It’s a distinction of Western academia in recent years to be unable to distinguish, in the words of Winston Churchill, the firefighter from the fire. Such is the case with such outspoken dissidents as Noam Chomsky, who to this day proudly claims that 9/11 was not the result of radical religious extremism, but rather defends the actions of Al-Qaeda as justified acts of retribution against American terrorism in the Middle East in prior years.

For decades now, American and British journalists, philosophers and social critics have warned of the dangers of multiculturalism, and the threat it poses not merely to the national identity, but to the very soul of the nations’ people. Such is the case in much of Europe, where anti-semitism is back on the rise, where different cultural groups are treated differently and where hate speech laws are becoming increasingly broad in scope and rigorous in application. If an 18-year old white girl vanished for a week to have her genitals sawed off, for example, there would be a national outcry and harsh justice rained down on the perpetrators of such a heinous crime. Not so if said 18-year-old girl happened instead to be Pakistani. The tragedy isn’t that this is happening—it’s that the intelligent, educated citizens have been robbed of the ability to see the evil lurking in their midst, and worse, have been convinced that those who notice these problems are themselves the evil ones. Usually, this manifests in accusations of racism or intolerance.

The harbingers of such a mindset have been in place in the American intellectual culture for a while now, and the natural outcome is slowly beginning to come to fruition, albeit slightly behind Western Europe. A brow-beating attitude towards “tolerance” and “diversity” is one such sign. We should support diversity, given the value of different perspectives and experiences to our shared future, but we should be extremely wary and suspicious of the newfound obsession with diversity that is creeping into universities and colleges more forcefully, both at Bellevue College and elsewhere around the country. The difference in mindset is subtle but important, not merely for ourselves, but for the future of our nation.