Mixed Feelings About a Recent Podcast Promoting Freedom

On a recent Mindset Mentor podcast of his, Rob Dial examined the notion of freedom and how his audience needs to exert more of it in their lives.  To the extent that each of us already has the freedom to make significant choices in our lives and only need to recognize it and begin to change our self-defeating habits that hold us back, I agree with his premise.  I especially related to his claim that surrounding people expect one to be the same from day to day and that sudden changes...even for the better...are often seen as threats to be put down. But before one goes off and starts behaving in ways detrimental to others, oneself, and his or her relationships, it's a good idea to sit down and understand that freedom only works within a framework of standards and laws.  Once when I was a kid in elementary school, a few of my classmates (and I) often chanted the mantra "It's a free country!" when objecting to our teachers' policies on matters we didn't agree with.  Fast forward to 2020 and across the country in the middle of a dangerous pandemic is an explosive growth of self-styled "libertarians" who think they're some kind of heroes by refusing to wear a protective mask around others while proclaiming the sovereignty of private property.  But I saw one of those self-proclaimed libertarians walk into a privately-owned grocery, with its own mask mandate, without a mask...and with a big grin plastered on his face: hypocrite, he expects everyone else to follow "his" rules in his own workplace!  I'm also a little hesitant about endorsing an attitude about freedom that focuses on present feelings and diminishes the significance of past commitments.  I remember a great old movie, You Can't Take It with You, in which an entire family "drops out" to pursue their own interests and skirt working for a living.  But their patriarch had already amassed a small fortune to support them, and they had no problem with having two paid housekeepers working at their home.  Which brings me to an important principle about freedom: is my attitude toward the subject such that if everyone else in the world adopted it, we'd be better off or worse?  A mature attitude that acknowledges personal responsibility and respects work...especially that of a menial nature...is, in my opinion, an indispensable prerequisite to asserting one's freedom.  How does that old beer commercial go? Yes...you only go around once in life: make your choices and feel free.  And if those choices are hurtful to others, I suppose you're also "free" to fabricate an ideology to buttress your behavior and make yourself feel "principled"...

Reported Discrimination Against Conservatives Speaking at Some Public Colleges

I was watching one of the C-Span channels this morning and there was a program featuring lawyers representing conservatives who claim to have been discriminated against at some public universities regarding speaking engagements.  Two colleges in particular...California @ Berkeley and Washington...were cited by the attorneys for stifling the free speech of conservatives who had been invited to speak on campus by student groups, usually the campus Republican group.  The college administrators' tactics were similar with politically right-leaning speakers: (1) charge an exorbitantly high security fee that is much lower or completely waived for liberal speakers, (2) force the conservative speaker to make his or her presentation in a remote location, often off-campus far from public transportation, (3) place a "curfew", often around 3 pm, as the mandated finishing time for the speech (which inherently creates a schedule conflict with students attending classes), and (4) impose a gag rule prohibiting the student group from promoting the event in the media.  The lawyers noted that speakers for liberal groups and causes were not treated in this manner, and they showed as an example how differently conservative and liberal guest speakers were treated during a calendar period.  I was impressed by the program, but so far haven't found it on the network's webpage...

Free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment is NOT designed to protect speech that people want to hear: it's aimed at protecting speech that they DON'T want to hear.  If you're a professor, administrator, or student at one of these publicly-funded universities and can't handle someone with a different point of view expressing themselves, then why should you realistically expect those who disagree with your viewpoints and philosophies to respect you when you want to communicate them?  There are two forces going on that are making our society more and more divided and full of hostility.  One is the resurgence of racism and hate groups and the other is runaway political correctness, the adherents of which automatically slap "racism", "sexism", "hate", and other labels on people who don't fit the accusations but who have a different way of seeing things nevertheless.  It's a shame that so many folks idolize their own set ways so much that they are incapable of tolerating another perspective to the point where they fight to prevent its expression...