[MD] Free Speech

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Platt]
Didn't you say you supported freedom to use "nigger?"

[Arlo]
Sure I support the freedom to use the word. I don't recall making a claim that
it may potentially lead to Dynamic growth, as you seemed to. Do you feel
"cracker", "spic" and "kike" also posses Dynamic potential to usher in growth?

[Platt]
And all along I thought you supported freedom of speech.

[Arlo]
You have the right to say whatever you want. But that doesn't make it
"intellectual".

[Platt]
Not so -- just speech that meets the static, elite requirements of the Church of
Reason. Oh well, I'm not surprised. Just another example of liberal hypocrisy.

[Arlo]
That's like condemning the Academy for "elitism" because we teach the Earth
revolves around the sun and not the other way around. Or worse, that we have
the utter gall to deny that the earth rests on the back of a giant tortoise.
Yes, damn those "elitists" and their adherence to reason. 

The "elite" static requirements of the Academy are intellectual. Positions must
be constructed and defended by intellectual reasoning. Research must be
thorough and public. Alas, no more.

Your assualt debases these positions to political allegiances, demolishing
reason, research and intellectual superiority to social patterns. Which is why
your debasement of them to serve social-political static patterns is immoral.
Relativism wins the day. The only measure of truth is now "the Party says so".
(Of course, for some it has always been so.)

"The state of Montana at this time was undergoing an outbreak of
ultra-right-wing politics like that which occurred in Dallas, Texas, just prior
to President Kennedy’s assassination. A nationally known professor from the
University of Montana at Missoula was prohibited from speaking on campus on the
grounds that it would "stir up trouble." Professors were told that all public
statements must be cleared through the college public-relations office before
they could be made.

Academic standards were demolished. The legislature had previously prohibited
the school from refusing entry to any student over twenty-one whether he had a
high-school diploma or not. Now the legislature had passed a law fining the
college eight thousand dollars for every student who failed, virtually an order
to pass every student." (Pirsig, ZMM).

And so the right-wing assault on academic standards continues...