Soapbox

Attention everybody who went to college here in Ohio, has kids who do, or just gives a darn:

“Intelligent Design” in the schools and Jerry Springer as the best candidate the dems can field for governor isn’t bad enough… the grinning Ken Blackwell as his Republican theocracy isn’t enough of a black eye for the Buckeye state….oh no.

Now an Ohio legislator has introduced a bill designed by the David Horowitz mind-control cult. Ironically called the “Academic Bill of Rights”, it prohibits professors, at both public and private universities in Ohio, from talking about certain controversial subjects. (Cause ya know, too much book-larning can be a dangerous thing)

Larry Mumper, R-Marion, claims the goal of this bill is to prohibit professors from discriminating against students based on their beliefs, but goes on to add that “80% or so of them (professors) are Democrats, liberals or socialists or card-carrying communists” who are trying to “indoctrinate” students. Mumper says he has been considering this for months, and hey, he heard from a student who says she was discriminated against because she supported Bush for president!

Oh…the poor dear thing. Dang- my kid got discriminated at a basketball game by the refs, who made dozens of calls in favor of the Christian school she was playing against. Can we have a bill outlawing Christians from playing sports?

No, I don’t suport someone being discriminated because of whom she supports for president, no matter who it is. But if that truely happens, there are procedures in place to deal with it. Go to the ombudsman and file a complaint. Write to the college newspaper. It is insane to advocate duct-taping ALL college professors’ mouths just to prevent a few from spouting off!

The language of this bill is so vague as to be ridiculous. It says that professors may not discuss “controversial issues” in class or use their class to push political, ideaological, religious or anti-religious views.”

So that leaves what that you can teach? Accounting 101, girls volleyball, CPR… that’s about it! A student could claim that geology class violates this law because the professor insists on “pushing” the idea that the earth is millions of years old, and that is controversial to them!

I would like to remind everyone that abolition of slavery was once a controversial subject. So was voting rights for women. The pro-democracy movement in China sprang in large part from” controversial ideas” in universities there. Yet this is the very kind of thinking that would be prohibited by Mumper’s bill.

Until all humans come from the same cookie-cutter there will always be topics some find controversial, and I can think of no better place to explore and validate or invalidate them than in college. How else will we learn and grow and develop new ideas if we don’t push the boundaries a little?

I’m not sure how this dip-wad thinks he can restrict what a private college can teach anyway. If a private school like Bob Jones university can teach students that race-mixing is a sin, why can’t a political science prof at OU teach that the U.S. has supported brutal dictatorships that have resulted in the deaths of millions? At least we have evidence that the latter is true!

This steaming pile of Regressive Thought-police mind-control is not new, having been introduced in Colorado and Indiana previously. This is a “bill of Rights” the way the “Clear Skies” initiative brings clear skies! It sounds like a joke…but no one with any brains is laughing!

It would be nice to just say “Oh please- this will never pass! This is ludicrous!” Yeah, well, so is “Defending” marriage by refusing to let some people get married, and teaching one group’s religious views in science classes, but here we are!

The scary thing is that a lot of the people of Ohio are such sheeple that the irony of a “bill of Rights” that takes away rights, a bill promoted as “restoring academic freedom” that takes away everything but your freedom to be conservative, may be lost on many of them.

“Holy s***: card-carrying communists!” they’ll think. “It’s true that when my boy went off to college, he got all sorts of crazy ideas, like how the United States doesn’t have the right to tell the whole world what to do. I believe I’d like to see this bill passed!”

I plan to let the Ohio legislature know that if this thing passes, there is no way we are sending our kids to college in this red-neck, homophobic, vote-suppressing, regressive backwater of a state! We’ll find the extra money somewhere! If they think the state is hemmoraging jobs and $$ now- just watch if even a watered-down version of this thing passes!

If it does, we’ll need a new State Slogan: Ohio is for Morons!

Shame on the Columbus Dispatch’s editorial writers.

Shame on you for deliberately misleading readers in your editorial “Throwing a Fit” . When you characterized Stephanie Tubbs-Jones and Barbara Boxer’s attempts to light a fire under the issue of voting reform as a childish temper tantrum, you crossed the line.

Did you actually listen to what was said that day? Either you didn’t, and so have no business commenting on it, or you did, and chose to engage in yellow journalism. The democrats who objected on Thursday made a point of saying that they were not trying to overturn the election of 2004 or cast aspersions on the results, but only to demand that real reform be made at last, before the next election is upon us and its too late! In what way is this childish?

To say that the party leadership should have “shut them up” to avoid looking bad shows an appalling lack of understanding of the concept of free speech and what the democratic party stands for.

After the election debacle of 2000, big reforms were promised by those in power. 4 years later, we find many were never even begun, probably because no one made a big enough fuss. It has become clear that someone must stand up and shout “The emperor has no clothes!” to convey to the entrenched bureaucracy of Ohio how urgent it is that meaningful changes are made now.

Maybe you think it is too much to ask that a person who stands in line in the rain for hours feels confident afterwards that his or her vote was cast and counted. Perhaps you don’t think fair voting is an important part of democracy, but is it good journalism to belittle those who do?

There are indeed people in Ohio and elsewhere who feel that George Bush stole a second election from America and would like to overturn the results; however, Senator Boxer and Rep. Tubbs-Jones do not count themselves among this group. If you cannot stick to the facts in the future, I suggest you change your name to “The Columbus Enquirer”.

I respond to the letter of 1/6/05 about American aid to tsunami victims in which the author complained that all the world hates the U.S. but loves our money. When he asks “where is the UN when we need their support?” I assume he means that if they want our money, they must agree to our wars, even if they think they are wrong. He closes by saying, “If you want to play with our ball, you have to play by our rules”.

With those kind of conditions, doesn’t that make our money not aid, but extortion?

The US loves to remind the world that it is the only superpower. Well, of those to whom much is given, much is expected. It is fitting that America should lead the way in assistance in times of global crisis, and after a slow start, we are doing just that. Good for us. What does the writer want- a medal? Oh that’s right- he wants the UN to back everything we do.

While the U.S. provides more in raw dollars to foreign aid than any other single nation, we are far from being the “most generous nation on earth” that we like to label ourselves. Other countries do not give as much total cash but are more generous as a percentage with what they have. We would do well not to look down on them or diminish their contributions. This is not supposed to be a competition to see who can look more generous (Australia, with 1/100th of the U.S.’s GNP would be currently be winning, if it were) but a race to save human lives.

What difference does it make how much money Egypt or Libya is donating? Do we measure ourselves by their yardstick? Should we help only if others do first? And France, by the way, immediately sent a team of over 100 doctors and other specialists to the area and has now pledged over $57M. The writer should check his facts before attacking America’s favorite whipping boy.

Finally, did Jesus say to care for others only if they agree to follow your rules, to feed the poor only if they’ll sit through your church service first? Should we help starving children only if their governments agree to run things our way, or if other governments give as much as we do? Of course not. We help because when you have so much more than everyone else, it’s just the right thing to do.

At least that should be why we do it. Perhaps the writer has a different agenda for his “charity”. I guess some people demand recognition and applause for doing the right thing- others just do it.