Law Faculty Members at American University Freak Out Over ‘All Lives Matter’ Message
Is it really so offensive to say all lives matter? Some people at American University think so.
Powerline reports.
American University Law Faculty Members Disgrace Themselves
Recently, a student at American University Washington College of Law put a note on the door of a law professor stating “All Lives Matter.” This expression of what ought to be truism caused the AU law faculty to freak out.
Nearly sixty faculty members and staff signed a letter calling this an “incidence of intolerance.” A sounder position would hold that objecting to the statement “All Lives Matter” as a response to the statement “Black Lives Matter” smacks of intolerance because it places one racial group on a higher level than others.
The letter claims that “in context, the message appears intended by the messenger to be an attempt to silence and intimidate an opposing viewpoint, not an effort to communicate a different perspective” But how does saying “all lives matter” constitute an attempt to silence and intimidate people with an opposing viewpoint? The only rational sense in which the statement could be construed that way lies in the fact that it’s untenable to argue that all lives don’t matter. The note “intimidates” only because its logic is unassailable.
The letter suggest that because the sign was placed in the vicinity of “a flyer for a training program on police violence” and “near flyers for other social justice and racial equality events,” it should be viewed as intimidating. But the professors make no attempt to defend this non sequitur. If students are encouraged not to make certain political statements near flyers about “social justice,” then it is the flyers, not the statements (which may or may not be a response) that are tending to silence and intimidate expression.
Comments
“All lives matter” is intolerant? maybe they would prefer, “No lives matter.” Good grief!
“Black Lives Matter” smacks of intolerance because it places one racial group on a higher level than others.”
Silly, things the ruling class likes, like Black Lives Matter, can’t be bad in any way, much less intolerant, for the simple reason that good and bad are a function of whether a certain movement finds favor with the ruling class. If the ruling class, operating through their subsidiaries the schools and the media, say that it is OK for one racial group to be on a higher level than another, then such a conclusion is by its very nature both good and virtuous. And since tolerance is generally associated with virtue, it must be tolerant as well. See how ruling class logic works?
Those poor deluded souls who imagine they live in a society where the common man has a say in such things are to be pitied for their ignorance. In time they will come to grasp the truth.
I’m afraid this is all misdiagnosis. It’s not merely liberal hysteria or the fundamental illogic of immature minds. This is a deliberate program.
It’s an adaptation of an old technique used to break the resistance of political prisoners.
Badger (or torture) the prisoner until he agrees with you that something obviously false is, in fact, true. A classic example is a simple line of text, or an arrangement of several objects. Keep telling the prisoner that the correct text is not what he can clearly read, or that the arrangement or quantity of objects is not what he sees, and exert suitable punishment when he insists that what he himself sees is real. Eventually he’ll agree with what his interrogator tells him, and, ideally, begin to doubt his own perception of reality. This was the secret behind the dramatic “confessions” of the Stalinist show-trials. Not that we can pin it all on Stalin or his malignant homunculus Beria; Lenin was intrigued by the possibilities revealed by Pavlov’s work in conditioned responses.
If this is so, the way to handle it is not logic or argument; that’s a dead end, maybe even a trap.