Orwellian Speech Codes & Cultural Marxism

I recently read an anti-harassment policy in place at an ivory tower institution across the pond. It is hardly unique - there are countless such policies in place at institutions on this side of the pond.

By its terms, the anti-harassment policy defines “harassment" as "unwanted conduct" touching upon to a "relevant protected characteristic, which has the . . . effect of violating an individual’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that individual." There is a laundry list of "protected characteristics," essentially anything to do with a favored victim class of the left. The list includes race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, gender reassignment and gay marriage.

Amazingly, the standard for determining harassment is a subjective one: "It is not the intention of the harasser, but the conduct itself and the impact on the recipient(s) that determine what constitutes bullying and harassment." Thus it doesn't matter how a reasonable person would respond to certain speech or conduct, nor does it matter whether the speech was non-discriminatory and legitimate. Driving that point home, the policy does not contain an exemption for expressing facts nor opinions grounded on fact.

Because of the subjective standard and lack of any exemptions, this is not a policy designed to reasonably protect against harassment or actual discrimination. It is a wholly unreasonable weapon to be used by those pursuing a left wing agenda to stifle any speech they don't like. It is cultural marxism, where any criticism of a victim class or a person in a victim class, no matter how justified by fact, is in effect criminalized and subject to official sanction by the institution. There are countless examples of such policies being used to punish legitimate speech (see here, here and here)

To put it into perspective, what would happen if I said that FBI crime statistics show that half of all homicides in the U.S. where the criminal is identified have been committed by black men, even though blacks as a whole represent only 13% of the population. And what if I further inferred that this is evidence that the culture of lower socio-economic blacks is severely violent and dysfuntional. Or what if I pointed out that in the UK, most of the gang rapes are committed by Muslim men whose religion (or at least certain sects, such as Wahhabi and Deobandi) sanctions the rape of non-Muslim women and casts them as third class citizens. Thus there is a real problem with Islamic religion and "civilized society" as we in the Western World define that term.

Nothing that I have said in the paragraph above is in any way discriminatory. My merely stating those truths does not mean that I believe in the inherent inferiority of blacks or Muslim culture. And the fact that a black or a Muslim or a person of the left may not want to hear those truths does not mean that raising them is unreasonable (which should always be the baseline standard for harassment). Those truths are legitimate societal problems that at some point need to be faced. Yet I would probably be savaged and brought up on harassment charges were I employed by an institution with a pc speech code. Should I be?

Leaving aside the First Amendment which is peculiar to the U.S., in any institution where the standard for official sanction is "reasonable cause," the argument must be that there is an implied right to speak fact and opinion with an objective basis in fact as a complete defense to charges of harassment or discrimination. If that standard applies, then - and only then - will such anti-harassment policies as the ones I've described begin to come close to their purported purpose - to protect employees from actual harassment and discrimination. Otherwise, such codes, with their subjective standards, are merely a political and cultural weapon to force new left wing moral absolutes on employees.

Update: An interesting exchange on O'Reilly last night, where left of center Kirsten Powers that the left is less tolerant of any dissenting views. Another guest on the show, "Kate Obenshain, agreed with Powers, saying that when conservatives on college campuses openly disagree with liberal orthodoxy, they are charged with “violating the campus speech codes.”

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A Lot Of Insanity Across The Pond (Updated)

The socialists running Britain are nuts. How nuts? Well, here are some of the news items in today's Daily Mail. Decide for yourself:

1. Health & Safety Nazis: A town hall has been banned by a health and safety inspector from flying the Union Flag on Armed Forces Day as climbing 8ft to reach the pole is 'too dangerous'. Story here.

2. A Right To Gay Sex In Public Areas: A local resident was upset that gay men were having sex in a nearby public area where families and children congregate. When police did nothing in response to his complaints, he filmed some of the gay men and posted it to a website. For that, he was arrested and, today, sentenced to four months in prison - suspended for a year and a half - and ordered to do 200 hours of community service. At trial, he was labeled "homophobic" by the prosecutor and was told by the Judge, "'Your actions were premeditated and quite deliberate in targeting a group of people we would describe as vulnerable." Story here.

3. And In A Related Story: "Dozens of police stations lowered the Union Flag and replaced it with a gay rights banner to mark a day of action against homophobia." That kind of puts the story above in a bit more perspective. The socialists in Britian have, as their current cause celebre, gays as a victim class and thus, entitled to special and unequal treatment. This is nothing more than a variant of the radical multiculturalism the left is using to destroy traditional British society. Story here.

4. Get Them While They Are Young: BBC unveils animated, yoga-loving hippies that teach children to get in touch with their emotions. Just what kids need today, lessons in narcissim and how to be as screwed up as the 60's generation now doing so much to screw up Western Civilization. Story here. As Lenin said: Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.

5. Petty Bureaucrats Out Of Control: A woman was forced to leave a public pool when she began breastfeeding her baby. The baby and the teet were under cover so that nothing was exposed. Nonetheless, she was tossed because . . . . no food or drink was allowed in the pool area. Story here.

6. The British Army Can Now Pack Up - They Are Done As A Fighting Force - Why is that you might ask. Because the looney left has now decided to allow civil suits to be brought in court to challenge wartime decision making. "The judgment . . . makes the Ministry of Defence liable to civil prosecutions by families who claim that the treatment of soldiers who have died on operations overseas might have breached their human rights." This is beyond insanity, really. See story.

7. (Update) - A True Orwellian Nanny State: This one is a few days old, but I have to add it. Local Councils are recruiting and training children as young as seven to become snoops for any violation of local laws, such as neighbors having an overfilled trash bin or putting the bins out on the wrong day (both of which are now heavilly fined - about an equivalent of $200). Somebody tell these nuts that Orwell wrote fiction as a warning, not as a blueprint. Story here. A hat tip for this one to Dinah Lord.

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Interesting Posts From Around The Web - 17 March 2008

Art: The Muses Clio, Euterpe and Thalia, Eustach Le Sueur, 1655

Spc. Monica Lin Brown, 19 years old from Lake Jackson, Texas, 4th Squadron, 73rd Cav, has done something only a very few female soldiers in American history have ever done. She’s been awarded the Silver Star.

Of winter soldiers and real soldiers, two valuable posts from This Ain’t Hell.

From Consul at Arms quoting VDH on the suicidal canard of multiculturalism: "So ingrained is the notion among our elite that there are no absolute standards of ethics and morality, that we have lost the ability to apply abstract moral judgment without exception." And to see multiculturalism’s conjoined twin in all of its destructiveness, one need only turn to the surreal world of modern Britain.

Of course, things can get pretty damn surreal over here amongst our holier than thou lefties – like librarians refusing to notify authorities about visitors downloading kiddie porn over concern for their First Amendment rights.

Hillary’s imaginary achievements.

An Alpocricy commercial.

The question now is, what did Obama know and when did he know it? Remember Obama saying two days ago he had never heard Rev. Wright light into his racist vitriol at any time during his 20 years of attending Trinity United? Documentary evidence to the contrary is starting to roll in. And the video of Obama heaping praise on Rev. Wright has been scrubbed from YouTube, but not from the Jawa Report.

Barking Moonbats has a video that will tell you all you need to know about Obama. And now Obama’s church is trying to claim that Rev. Wright is the victim of character assassination. If you put the words "suicide by" in that description, I might buy it. And have you seen the Trinity United’s proposed revisions to the National Anthem?

The top 9 Obama campaign slogans suggested by Rev. Jerimah Wright. Heh. My favorite: Defeat racism; kill a cracker. And Rev. Wright will soon be bringing his social gospel into children’s programming. His initial work will be to tell the biblical story of "institutional racism in housing policy, when there was ‘no room at the inn.’"

Fact checking – it is not Reuters’ strongsuit. Far easier just to repeat the anti-gun accusations.

Free trade and Economics 101.

The Paris Book Fair this year is honoring several Israeli writers. Muslim authors have called for a boycott, and wholly unsurprisingly, there has been a bomb threat. For a psychological perspective on suicide bombers, go here. Meanwhile, some very bad things are happening to those who have filed official complaints against a radical Salafi Imam in Canada.

Time to break out the ham sandwiches and run the bath, we have a new guest at the Caribbean retreat. Heh. Meanwhile, what should we do with those guests guilty of plotting 9-11? Off with their heads? Nah, only the Saudis do that, such as for the crime of writing that other religions should not be considered "unbelievers." Apostacy.

So what exactly is the intersection of Islamic lawfare, Tibet’s riots and a Caribbean crimewave?

Whither the chainmail bikini?" And it’s the Medieval Tech Help Desk. Heh.

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Interesting Posts From Around The Web - 13 March 2008

Interesting posts from around the web, all below the fold:

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Art: Sisyphus, Vecellio Tiziano, 1549

A Rose By Any Other Name: A fallen hero.

Dinah Lord: Kidnapped Iraqi Archbishop found dead.

The Transatlantic Conservative: John McCain and the Pledge of Allegiance. Its quite a moving story.

Classical Values: "Wright is raw. Obama is smooth. Different sales pitch. Same product." Watch the video.

Ironic Surrealism: Much more on Obama’s racist Reverend Wright.

Q&O: Hillary gets fact checked with predictable results.

The New Editor: Per Instapundit, Hillary plays the Dork Card.

Winds of Change: Evaluating Geraldine Ferarro’s comments on Obama.

Redstate: Quid pro crook - Obama, earmarks, and his wife’s salary.

This Ain’t Hell: Code Pink suffers mission failure . . . and yes, that dress makes you look fat.

Red Alerts: The good and bad news about the economy from an interview with legendary economist Anna Schwartz, who co-authored the revolutionary "Monetary History of the United States" with Milton Friedman.

A Western Heart: Our economic woes are wholly self-inflicted. This is not the normal business cycle.

Vast Rightwing Conspiracy: Obama pulls a Kerry on the issue of mail in voting.

The Irish Elk: "Ho No," it’s a good Spitzer round-up.

An Englishman’s Castle: The UK has granted an asylum to a rouge’s gallery of people who have no business in the West whatsoever. Now, in the case of a young gay man from Iran who faces execution for his homosexuality, where there should be no question that asylum is appropriate, the UK is inexplicably dragging its feet.

Fulham Reactionary: Indeed, as to illegal immigrants, it seems but for the odd Iranian homosexual, the police aren’t even really trying anymore.

Seraphic Secret: Israel releases its annual intel report and Iran puts a bounty on Irsraeli leaders.

Shrinkwrapped: Has Israel lost the will to live?

The Shield of Achilles: I thought this was answered several millenia ago. Should incestuous marriages be declared illegal?

Liberty Corner: Taking on the arguments against teaching intelligent design.

Sigmund, Carl & Alfred: PC Manspeak. Heh.

The Dhiveistan Report: "[T]he penis of the Elected never softens, the erection is eternal. The sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious . . ." Surprisingly, this is not out of Eliot Spitzer’s journal. It is more insidious than that.

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Interesting News - Super Tuesday Edition

This is it. Super Tuesday is here.
Big Lizards Guide to Uber Tuesday for the Perplexed is a where to go for your scorecard. And pundits are using their columns to try and influence the vote. E.J. Dionne has found his personal savior in Obama. Can we have a "hallelujah" Indeed, we now know the debate is over and the only ones who consider it otherwise are racists. Could they be as racist as the head of Trinity United, however? On the right side, Andres Martinez leads with the question of whether McCain has accepted Jesus as his personal savior, while Rick Moran ponders the redefining of what it means to be a Republican. I happen to share the view of the Glittering Eye on McCain.

John Bolton ponder how our spy chief, Mitch McConnell, can undue the tremendous damage of the NIE on Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program when he testifies before Congress this week.

David Aaronovitch ponders the horrendous ramifications of a withdrawal from Afghanistan. As does a professor in Pakistan. America will not abandon it, but NATO is shaky indeed, compliments of the cowardly and disloyal Germans who have refused to provide combat soldiers that would actually fight in the NATO operation.

As I have blogged previously, Gordon Brown plans to get upwards of 30% of the UK’s energy through a massive construction of wind turbines throughout Britain. It was nuts to begin with, and now its worse. "Nato has begun an investigation into British findings that wind farms make overflying planes invisible to radar . . ." Meanwhile, Labour has given £1 billion in tax receipts to energy companies to start building them – which the companies have pocketed while energy prices in the UK skyrocket.

More insane PC silencing of free speech in Britain. "Schools are being ordered to drop the term "mum and dad" in case it offends pupils from a single-parent, homosexual or turkey-baster ‘family.’" And if its not the PC crowd, it’s the bureaucrats doing in the quality of life.

"A new study says that mandatory diversity training backfires: After looking at data from 830 workplaces, researchers discovered that sensitivity seminars and their ilk led to declines in the number of women and minorities in management."

What will you do to celebrate Waitangi Day tomorrow, take a Mori tribesman to dinner?

Sleaze goes Goracle green. He is the modern version of a war profiteer.

More on the travesty of justice in the Maldives following the gang rape of a 12 year old girl by members of the religion of peace.

Gloria Steinem editorializes at TNOY as to the many accomplishments of the "womyn’s" movement in America. You will find a few of the accomplishments surprising, beginning with the more equal distribution of STD’s

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