Discriminating Tastes: A Masquerade

I've recently started reading another politically "right" rag, The American Spectator, and I chose it primarily because the Clinton Administration decided to send the Justice Department after the magazine – something the rag likes to brag about. Anyway, there was a nice article praising the president of San Diego State University (SDSU) for his judgment to let undercover DEA investigators on the campus. The result was the remarkable drug bust mentioned in recent news stories. More remarkable are his comments to the press about his actions:

Weber, the university's president, said he did not hesitate to allow undercover officers on campus, even if that decision sparked ire. [Earlier versions of the story quoted Weber as specifying faculty ire.]

"We did the right thing," he said. "I think, frankly, more universities should step up and take these kinds of actions."

The Spectator article continues by describing typical actions universities take to ensure their paying customers are healthy, wealthy, and appropriately dumbed-down to current societal standards. Clinton Taylor's paragraph is worth reproducing:

UNIVERSITIES TODAY BUILD mushy cocoons around their students to insulate them from the consequences of their actions. They throw contraceptives at entering freshmen like latex confetti, and then subsidize abortion services if things don't work out. They police for political incorrectness, to defend students' sacred right not to be offended by opinions too far outside the campus political mainstream. Colleges regard their students both as fully enfranchised adults, encouraged to experiment with sex and (tacitly) drugs, and yet at the same time as children who need to be protected from those decisions. What exacerbates the problem is that this license is usually granted in a climate hostile not merely to traditional morality, but to the very concept of judgment and discrimination.

The entire article is a great read, but I set the word police out in red because it highlights a common misperception. Campus police generally ARE peace officers, not "rent-a-cops." Yet these duly constituted law enforcement agents often seem to be paid to look the other way when certain classes of laws are broken – especially if the crime would embarrass the college administration and/or reduce likely admission goals. Take a quick Google search with "college, rapes, crime, and cover-up" as the search terms.

A substantial portion of the article deals with the serious lack of able teaching concerning reasonable judgment. Because the word discriminate has taken on some rather unusual connotations it is rarely used in its most common meaning; that is,

1 a : to mark or perceive the distinguishing or peculiar features of b : distinguish differentiate ‹~ hundreds of colors›

2 : to distinguish by discerning or exposing differences ; esp: to distinguish from another like object (Merriam Webster's Dictionary).

I'll close with another section of Taylor's excellent article – just in case you didn't follow the link to read it yourself – because it highlights a bedrock problem in our institutions of higher learning… ok, even our high schools have similar problems:

One of the most memorable passages of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind dealt with Bloom's surprise that his colleague at the University of Chicago saw his professorial mission to be removing all the prejudices from his students. Bloom saw his role as instead inculcating the right prejudices in his students, moral lessons drawn from the best works civilization had to offer. An educated person should discriminate -- between good and evil, false and true, success and failure, for starters.

Otherwise, what's the point of all this expensive education? You can learn "who are you to judge me?" on daytime television, and skip the tuition.

Being politically correct, non-judgmental, and possessing a culturally diverse mindset have essentially removed the ability of our population to make reasonable decisions about their own actions. Yet we shake our heads in wonder when a kid is surprised that he is in trouble for striking another student. It's worse than that…

Taylor reports that Ralph Partridge, one of the DEA officials, said, "A sad commentary is that when one of these individuals was arrested, he inquired as to whether or not his arrest and incarceration would have an effect on his becoming a federal law enforcement officer." That is a sad commentary.

Stay safe and well all – and reinforce to your kids that discrimination extends beyond issues of race and gender, and yes, it extends even beyond matters of taste.