The Bullying Era

How ironic that in this era of anti-bullying campaigns in schools from coast to coast, that we live in an era of unprecedented bullying in our culture.

Not a day goes by where we don't hear about another speaker who is disinvited to an event because someone doesn't like their politics, about another word that we're told we can't say because it's offensive to someone, somewhere in the world, or where a given belief or opinion, is squashed because it's not in line with a particular point of view.

We learned in the last couple of weeks that invited speakers Condi Rice, Aayan Hirsi Ali, and Christine Lagarde were disinvited to address commencements due to a few outspoken critics of their politics. And this, in universities, once hailed as institutions of open-mindedness and new learning; instead they have become places of close-mindedness and political correctness. We learned of the brainwashing going on at the annual White Privilege Conference, in which educators and students were taught that all white people are racist and that our capitalist system maintains white supremacy. And if that isn't bad enough, we learned that Harvard's Kennedy School will be making it mandatory for students to take a class on White Privilege.

This week we learned that a 7 minute film in the new 9/11 museum uses words like jihad, terrorists and Islam, which some left-wing and Muslim groups claimed is insensitive; pressure was put upon the museum to edit the film. We learned that the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota cancelled a "hump day" event, as it was deemed racist. The plan was to bring a camel on campus and some viewed it as racially insensitive to the Middle East culture.

We learned that the Benham Brothers recently lost a new HGTV show on real estate they were signed to do because of their conservative viewpoints on abortion and gay marriage. Now it seems that SunTrust Banks is cutting ties with them as well, by pulling all of its listed properties with their business. We learned that Dolphins football player Don Jones, in reaction to Michael Sam's gay kiss after being drafted by the Rams, tweeted "horrible" in reference to the kiss on TV and was fined and suspended until he receives 'training' for his comments.

We learned too, this week, that distinguished climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson, was bullied into resigning the Global Warming Policy Foundation, where his fellow climate scientists threatened they would refuse to collaborate with him if he stayed on the advisory board. According to Matt Ridley, this is reminiscent of the Climategate scandal of 2009, in which skeptics were to be threatened and blackballed, according to the emails that were leaked.

These recent examples are just that.  There are hundreds, if not more, of examples of speech we 'shouldn't' use, of opinions we 'shouldn't' have, of people we 'shouldn't' listen to. We are reaching critical mass. A free society cannot sustain such infringements. It seems a cultural civil war has already begun. The question is, who will emerge the victor? Freedom is powerful stuff. Let's put the bullies in their place.