Liberal closed-mindedness
A comment below from a student majoring in journalism at Whitworth University in Washington State, a Presbyterian liberal-arts college
“I hate being political. I hate the separation it causes between people of different ideologies. I hate the blind despising it causes towards those of a different political party than your own.
For four years at Whitworth I have remained apolitical for the sake of peacekeeping, my own sanity and conflict avoidance. I’ve sat amongst friends while they called members of my own ideology retarded, racist, Nazi, uneducated, uninformed, morally inferior, anti-feminist, elitist and many other less than pleasant names.
Since I am from Alaska, almost everyone I know pestered me about Sarah Palin and Ted Stevens during last year’s elections. They would ask me where I’m from in Alaska, in the hopes that my answer would be Wasilla and that I would join them in the glee of bashing her. They would start a long-winded speech about how Palin loves shooting wolves from airplanes for sport, how she’s ignorant because people claimed she said she could see Russia from her house and how Stevens is an ancient, corrupt politician who deserves to be hung out to dry.
After a while I just stopped responding to their questions. I stopped answering, not because I didn’t have answers to their claims, but because they wouldn’t ask me about Palin or Stevens for my insight or opinion. They asked me simply as a precursor to judging and bashing these people and issues.
The intolerance for any viewpoint other than their own was so impassioned that it was hard at times to be cordial while spending time with them. They were my friends, though, my closest friends. They spent hours loathing the intolerance of some fundamentalists, never stopping to think that being intolerant of those who are intolerant is still intolerance.
I am conservative. I am educated, I am not racist, I am not anti-feminist, nor am I any of the other things they claim that members of my ideology, and thus myself, are. The characterization of conservatives as mindless drones does nothing for this country except keep genuine debate from occurring between opposing views.
Below is the concluding sentence of Whitworth’s “mission” statement:
“Through its history, Whitworth has held fast to its founding mission to provide an education of mind and heart through rigorous and open intellectual inquiry guided by dedicated Christian scholars”.
Whitworth is obviously a failure at its own mission. Is anyone there concerned about that? Unlikely.
I might send a link to this post to the President of Whitworth. Want to bet that his response is to start criticizing me rather than taking the beam out of his own eye? (Matthew 7:5). Nothing that he could say to his students would shift Leftist bigotry anyway so I suppose he might as well abuse me.
I myself was born and bred a Presbyterian and attended the recent Easter service at my local Presbyterian church but I can recognize nothing about Whitworth that sounds Presbyterian. The least they could do is drop the hypocrisy and erase all mention of their alleged Presbyterian connections.
Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here
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Posted by JonJayRay on April 20, 2009 9:26 am
» Filed Under 1st Amendment, Conservatism, Education, Hypocrisy/Situational Ethics, News, Political Correctness, Politics As Usual, Racism, Religious Humanism, Social Engineering, Viewpoint discrimination, liberalism, religion
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4 Responses to “Liberal closed-mindedness”
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This article should be required reading for all Journalist Majors,as well for the Admissions Department at Whitworth College.
Until your eighth paragraph, I was moved by your impassioned plea against the sense of separation and “blind despising” of others based on the political ideologies they are presumed to hold. In that paragraph, everything unravles as you clearly reveal your own self-righteous biases, intolerance, and hypocrisy when you simply assume that the University President will “criticize” and “abuse” you “rather than taking the beam out of his own eye.” Have you ever actually spoken to him or her about this issue to learn what he/she actually thinks? If you really are sincere about this, grow some cohones and quit hiding behind your elegant sounding words on an obscure blog. Maybe you’ll actually learn that your University President doesn’t actually hold the ideologies and beliefs that you assume he/she does.
It’s not so much about politics as writing the difference between right and wrong.
I agree with Wesley. Having met the current President, heard him speak on several occasions and as an alum, regularly read his newsletter, I think he would definitely want to know about this person’s experience at Whitworth, and definitely not attack the messenger.
I constantly search in vain for conservatives willing to have conversations and debates, rather than smackdowns and competitions of one-upmanship. I’d gladly sit down with this student who I can empathize with and have an exchange of ideas. I know it’s difficult not to, but we simply must stop painting everyone within a group with the same brush.