House of Eratosthenes

I wish that every now and then, we had some public opinion polls about general principles instead of about specific political events. In fact, I’m of the opinion that if this were to be done, the exercise would yield surprising and positive revelations about how much we have in common with each other.

For example, I bet if you drilled a thousand randomly-selected respondents about the idea of different classes of people living by different rules, three-quarters of them would say this is a bad idea under any circumstances no matter what previous events in history make it look appealing. And an additional 20% would say it might be a good idea in some specific cases, but sure they can definitely see the problem with it, and absolutely it should be a purely temporary thing.

A good-sized chunk, between 40 and 50 percent, would say it’s purely anti-American, and if we’re going to do that what is the point of having an America anyway?

Okay, I’m making that last one up. It would be just me saying that.

But I do think we still have it ingrained in our culture, that when you get ticketed for jaywalking and have to pay fifty bucks, and then I get caught jaywalking but my eyes are blue…or I have an innie belly-button…or I can’t stand Seinfeld because it’s a boring show…or I have German and Irish blood in me but I’m mostly Scandinavian…guess what? I have to pay 50 bucks. Not fifty cents, not a thousand bucks.

And if I have the right to demonstrate peacefully and promote the message that invading Iraq was a great idea that came far too late, and Iran should be next, you have the equal right to demonstrate peacefully with the usual bullshit…war never solved anything, peace at any price, soldiers are butchers and rapists, blah blah blah. Neither one of us should be required to file special permits and pay special usage fees that the other one gets to skip around, based on the content of our messages.

Affirmative action policies meant to “diversify” the color of an accepted group of people, subject to promotions, enrollment, hiring or contracting? Americans are united in opposing that. Those who favor such things, can certainly see the problems in having them — even if some of them would be personally helped, over the short term, by them. In seeing what the problem is, we are united. But that’s a message that never quite gets out.

Well on the same subject, how committed are colleges to “diversity” and “freedom of expression”? College Republicans at Penn State University wanted to enter the debate about the nation’s borders by playing a “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Game.” People would be invited to “catch” group members wearing orange shirts symbolizing illegal aliens. Well, hold the phone here, back up the truck. Can’t have that! It’s insensitive! The orange-shirt-chasers were invited by the administration of the University, to “re-think their approach as a step toward fostering civility on campus.”

Huh. You know, I can’t think of the last college protest I’ve ever heard of, that wasn’t apt to offend somebody. I wonder if all protesters are invited to re-think their approaches.

That’s essentially what this sophomore said…

“You have to be creative to get students to listen to you,” sophomore Chuck Knight wrote in a letter to the editor published recently in the student newspaper, The Daily Collegian. “For that matter, you have to be creative anytime you are trying to raise concern about something.”

Mr. Knight doesn’t restore my faith in younger generations just because he agrees with me. He restores my faith in younger generations because he’s taking a couple steps back, and looking at the bigger picture. He’s doing what I recommended in the first couple of paragraphs at the beginning of this post. Take the emotions out of it by taking the specific issue out of it, just look at the social concepts. Go ahead and paint with a broad brush, so long as your words stay somewhat true…any time you raise concern about something, you have to be creative.

It fits. We may disagree about whether that justifies the protest, but he’s speaking to the way people work when they think. When you see something that’s everyday-humdrum, for whatever reason, you ignore it. So when you raise awareness, you have to blast the message out in all directions, so it reverberates where it is well-received, as well as where it is not.

The trouble with campus environments like this one, which are “committed to fostering diversity of viewpoints” as they say, is that invariably they end up slanted because — and this is an ugly truth that seldom gets mentioned — everybody’s got a melting point. Get enough heat going, and the campus administrator who just yesterday was bragging about promoting diversity of viewpoints, will be backpedaling and saying “whoah, whoah, hold it, we’re not quite that diverse.”

I’ve never seen it fail. And yet, when that happens, the much-lauded “diversity” of viewpoints turns into something quite a bit worse than non-diversity. It turns into filtered diversity. Diversity…so long as certain classes of people are not offended.

Some people think that’s a good idea. Like this guy, and, since the story exists, no doubt hundreds who agree with him…

Similar events staged by conservative students on other campuses, including the University of North Texas, have stirred emotions. And that was true at Penn State yesterday as protesters like alumnus Michael Benitez called the event unfit for his alma mater:

“If we’re supposed to be a place that promotes diversity and social intelligence, why is this happening?”

See, I’m sure Mr. Benitez would respond to my poll the way the majority would — no special privileges for any class of people. And yet, he commented on this the way he did, not because he disagrees, but because he fails to correlate the specific social event with the higher concept. If we promote diversity and social intelligence, why is this happening?, he says, as people freely express a diverse opinion they’ve developed through their social intelligence.

I guess we’re committed to championing diversity in all forms, but it happens that some people are more diverse than others.

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More Diverse Than YouSaturday, April 15th, 2006

More Diverse Than You
Saturday, April 15th, 2006