Closed ears, closed minds

Last week during a homeschool lesson, my 8-year-old plugged his ears his with his fingers. He was done. He didn’t want to pay attention. He had decided that silence was preferable to useful information.

Luckily, we worked through the obstruction, communication reconvened, and the knowledge of how nouns can become adjectives was finally imparted to my headstrong son. On his own accord, he eventually apologized, saying he was sorry for not listening. Let me reiterate, he is 8.

Compare that with a recent web search I did on “things white people can’t say.” You’d be astounded at the plethora of writers advising … no, more along the lines of strongly urging … hmm, really, they’re just downright demanding that people take their marching orders from them, without question and without provocation.

And then these self-proclaimed etymological geniuses want to assert that their calls for censorship somehow foster unity and dialogue. Consider Sierra (and her 317 shares … gasp).

Now, I’m not providing this “caricature” to be a “smug asshole,” as writer Sean Blanda might assess. I mean, when did using an example to illustrate a larger point become taboo? I guess right around the time people started pronouncing that disagreement is divisive.

And I’m certainly not calling “the other side” dumb. In fact, I think the loud and forceful opposers to the free exchange of ideas are extremely savvy. If they weren’t smart, I wouldn’t feel the need to write about this very real and worrisome issue, right?

You see, through years of careful grooming and relentless indoctrination, this youngster has learned that it’s acceptable to tell others what they are allowed and not allowed to say, all while doing a little cultural appropriating herself. Let’s face it, the PC purveyors are not really known for their robust consistency.

For instance, Beatniks were saying “dig it” in the ’50s and hippies were “trippin” in the ’60s. Pirates’ were plundering “swag” back in the 1600s. The first “ghetto” dates back to 16th-century Italy and housed the Venetian Jews. And our Creator has been “giving life” since the beginning of time; last I checked, God is the life-giver, not Beyoncé.

Sierra then makes a phony plea for a “productive and receptive conversation.” Translation: “Let me talk at you, while you sit silently and self-flagellate to make up for your innate racism and hate.”

“Check your privilege” means “We’re always right – simply by virtue of our skin color, or sexual orientation, or gender, religion (only applicable to non-Christians), or insert aggrieved victim status here – so you’re always wrong by default.” “Educate yourself” is code for “Let us benevolent leftists tell you how it is.” Sounds more like to reeducation to me.

Even MLK said that whites must “reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance.” I would argue that it is today’s social-justice warriors (SJWs), with their self-inflated “sense of superiority,” who “believe they have so little to learn.”

“Just because you don’t think you’re a racist, doesn’t mean you’re not,” explains activist Melody Moezzi. “I know it’s hard for some to accept, but white people don’t get to determine what is and isn’t racist.” In other words, self-appointed progressive priestesses like Moezzi are the only ones entitled to enlighten the masses about systemic hatred, of which she and her co-religionists are obviously exempt.

“Censorship is the height of vanity.” — Martha Graham, mother of modern dance

There’s also no shortage of well-intentioned folks who say, “Let’s come to the table and have a conversation.” In the modern context, though, one side is prohibited from speaking his mind. He’s demeaned and dehumanized, and his thoughts and experiences deemed worthless. His words are deconstructed, categorized, and labeled by some self-important PC parser of language. His spirit is broken in order for him to accept as truth things that are false, and confess to a crime he did not commit.

There there. Just let the other side do all that talking. Submit yourself to an idea or action that doesn’t have your family’s best interest at heart. Go on, engage in this Stalinist show trial … er, I mean, dialogue. Seriously, how can sincere people be expected to “build bridges” under those conditions? Seems a lot less like racial justice to me than it does revenge.

“Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.” — Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos and Community”

Social justice stands in direct opposition to love. It censors diversity of thought, suppresses autonomy, decreases understanding, diminishes real communication, fosters both the victim-mentality and self-loathing, and spreads discord and enmity among all humankind. It pushes anger, covetousness, and un-forgiveness, and the patently un-Christian belief that some people have more worth than others.

I’m an inquisitive person by nature. I suppose that’s why I became a journalist. I listen. I query. I read. I research. I’m an open-minded woman, who is willing to discuss and debate. After all, how do you think this once feminist-atheist-socialist came to be a Christian libertarian?

Even during my most militant years, I actually took the time to hear other people’s points of view. Sure, I’d get angry sometimes (after all, I was a feminist), but I never tried to silence anyone. Even my 8-year-old son grasps that he must eventually take his fingers out of his ears to have a meaningful conversation. Otherwise, it’s just soliloquy, a homily intended only to edify one’s own doctrine.

Black feminist Audre Lorde once advised: “If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” And when PC totalitarians are defining the parameters of the “conversation,” thereby, putting all competing perspectives at an immediate disadvantage, being consumed out of existence is indeed what will happen, that is, if clear-thinking people don’t reclaim their humanity and boldly speak up.

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” — George Orwell

The puritanical zeal of which progressives promote censorship goes way beyond the hubris of the self-proclaimed sage, Sierra. She is simply a symptom of the bigger problem of privileged speech rights for some, and none for others. And let’s be honest, black leftists haven’t cornered the market of dictating language and restricting speech.

The speech-police business is booming. Feminists bludgeon free expression with allegations of “sexism,” the disabled with “able-ism,” LGBTs with “heteronormativity,” Muslims with “Islamophobia,” Jews with “anti-semitism,” statists with “un-Americanism,” and even plus-size chicks with “fat-shaming.”

Evangeleftists will go so far as to question a Christian’s salvation, should he not be sufficiently pro-SJW. And when all else fails, you can always utilize the absurd “Logic is a tool of the white patriarchy” as a stopgap conversation-killer, at least until reinforcements arrive.

During my aforementioned internet search, I found that many of the white-people-shut-up posts are written in list form, I suppose, for the convenience of your average self-hating American. Maybe someone can come up with a phone app that sends an electric shock to its user, if he’s somehow remiss in conforming to the left’s stringent and ever-evolving newspeak dictates.

This app might actually come in handy, since much of the language repression comes in the form of self-censorship. Take the safety pin trend, its myriad of virtue-signaling organizations and their disciples, like Safety Pin Box, which is for “white people striving to be allies in the fight for Black Liberation.” The pin seems like an easy olive branch to prove your solidarity not as an ally, but as a co-conspirator, yet you still hear SJW cries that “Your whiteness scares me!”

It may appear to be silly slacktivism, but it’s sinister because it requires that white folks somehow cope with their cancerous inferiority complex while simultaneously purging their supposed white supremacy. One must learn to truly repel his whiteness. Much like the old “celebrate diversity” flimflam was really code for “promote everything that’s non-white,” let’s get real, “white anti-racism” really means “anti-white.” So, you may as well just shut up, nilla.

But if you have a bully pulpit, by all means, please do the bidding of your post-modern masters, as did DNC chair candidate, Sally Boynton Brown: “It is my job to shut down other white people. It’s my job to shut down other white people when they interrupt. It is my job to shut down white people when they say they’re not prejudiced.” Good, good, lick the jackboots of the cultural-Marxist leaders, comrade, and let your white guilt flow!

I’m willing to break bread and have a real conversation, y’all. But when the progressives have such closed ears and closed minds – not to mention having a penchant for encouraging white men and all white folks to commit suicide, calling for the murder of white people, or wishing for a genocide – man, they sure do make it hard.