Robert Tracinski - The Paradox of Dogma: How the Left Is Crippling Itself

If you try to shut down public debate, is this a way of ensuring that you win—or an admission that you have already lost?

The question seems relevant today, because the most remarkable characteristic of our current national debate is that one side wants desperately to stamp it out whenever it occurs.

Recently, for example, a gay New York businessman had the temerity to sponsor a “fireside chat” with Republican presidential candidate and arch-conservative Ted Cruz. He was, of course, required to repent the error, calling it “a terrible mistake” to actually talk to a politician who disagrees with him about gay marriage. We can assume that no gay businessman or activist will repeat that error any time soon, which is the whole point.

More recently, the actress Alice Eve got into trouble for stating the obvious fact that Bruce Jenner is not a woman. She, too, was forced to recant, concluding: “I felt confused and now I feel enlightened and like I know what education I need to move forward.”

What gives this a creepy totalitarian feel is the way she found it necessary, not only to change her views, but to express gratitude for her re-education.

College campuses have long been on the forefront of this kind of “speech code,” and Judith Shulevitz recently wrote an eye-opening description of the latest innovation: the campus “safe space.” In this case, the safe space was created in response to that most troubling of events: a debate (in this case, between a feminist and a libertarian).

http://thefederalist.com/2015/04/29/the-paradox-of-dogma-how-the-left-is-crippling-itself/

The safe space, Ms. Byron explained, was intended to give people who might find comments “troubling” or “triggering,” a place to recuperate. The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma. Emma Hall, a junior, rape survivor and “sexual assault peer educator” who helped set up the room and worked in it during the debate, estimates that a couple of dozen people used it. At one point she went to the lecture hall—it was packed—but after a while, she had to return to the safe space. “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said.

ROFL

Quote :: cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies

Let's sneak in and:

Cookies: Lace with hallucinogens
Coloring books: Hanged commies
Play-Doh: Laced with Rohypnol
Calming music: Replaced with BB's atonal 'symphonies'
Pillows: Sprinkle with blood and use to smother
Blankets: Use to move bodies
Video of frolicking puppies: To end in their drowning
Sexual assault peer educator: To give tips on how to sexually assault peers

Robert Tracinski - The Paradox of Dogma: How the Left Is Crippling Itself

Robert Tracinski - The Paradox of Dogma: How the Left Is Crippling Itself

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