More Leftist Thinking

The University of Tennessee has an Office of Diversity and Inclusion. I suspect most/all universities do today. You can tell from the title that no good could come from such a bureaucratic entity. While claiming not to be official university policy, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion is quite concerned about the use of pronouns. Specifically, pronouns that identify one's sex.

In order to not "offend" anyone, they are encouraging the use of gender neutral pronouns, rather than pronouns such as "he" or "she" or "him" or "her." Here are some of their suggestions (no, I am not making this up): ze, hir, zir, xe, xem, xyr. Being from the east coast, I think I prefer dat, dem and dose.

This leftist need to make sure that no one is ever offended by anything is eerily similar to another group - Muslims. Recall the effort by the Organization of Islamic States to get a binding resolution at the UN to ban all offensive and derogatory speech against Islam. (Criticize the other religions all you want.) So, rather than protecting the exercise of free speech, we see an ever growing movement to protect overly sensitive people from speech.

But let's be honest, these people are taught to be overly sensitive, because they are "victims." To the left, everyone is a victim of something or other, except, of course, for white males.

Former star pitcher and then commentator for ESPN, Curt Schilling, found himself on the wrong side of the speech police. Tweeted Schilling: "It's said only 5-10 percent of Muslims are extremists. In 1940, only 7 percent of Germans were Nazis. How'd that go?" I have had discussions with liberals who tell me that only 5-10% of Muslims are radical. I point out that even 10% is 160 million people.

However, I have also pointed out that all Germans did not wake up the same morning and decide it would be a great idea to kill all the Jews. Rather, it was what Hitler and a small number of initial followers were able to get an entire country to do. Which was Schilling's point. But the truth does not prevail against the word police. So Schilling was suspended.

The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union has 37,000 members, and is apparently the first US union to join the BDS movement (Boycott, Divest and Sanction Israel). The anti-Semites who run the union have adopted all the lies and propaganda put forth by the Palestinians. They want the US to cut off all aid to Israel in order to "pressure Israel to end its apartheid over the Palestinians." Not surprisingly, these people have no understanding of what true apartheid is. (See my 5/9/13 post entitled "An Open Letter to Professor Stephen Hawking.")

Said one union delegate: "It's absolutely disgusting what is going on. Free Palestine." I am not sure what is disgusting to that speaker, as Arab residents of Israel have better lives and more freedoms than do Arabs in Arab countries. What is disgusting, however, is the ongoing persecution, displacement and murder of Christians throughout North Africa and the Middle East - in Muslim countries.

Said Ron Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress: "When hundreds of thousands of Christians - men, women and children - are killed, this isn't a war, this is genocide." But Obama and other Western leaders have little to say about it. I wonder what, if anything, this union has to say about it.