[MD] Free Speech

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting ARLO J BENSINGER JR <ajb102 at psu.edu>:

> [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?

I don't know, but I wouldn't rule it out as you want to do. If you read Pirsig
would know that DQ is neither definable nor predictable. It resists static views
like yours as to what will and what won't 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".

And what you say is "intellectual" doesn't make it so. 

> [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.)

You sound just like a Pope defending the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. 
But, of course, being inside the academic club, you cannot see its stifling
static patterns.

> "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...

Now it's the left-wing assaulting academic freedom -- the reason for the policy
changes at Temple and Penn State.

  




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