American Thinker | Gary Larson | Nov. 14, 2008
Intolerance on modern college (and even high school and junior high) campuses is not new, it is plainly clear, in these supposed bastions of free inquiry. They’ve become politicized to the core. Free speech itself is imperiled by their codes. Professors rule. Conservatives are muzzled. It runs one-way on most campuses, fiercely anti-Republican and, in general if not more so, wildly against all conservatives. What happened to 18-year old Annie Grossmann was perhaps a double whammy, of racism and ideological hate. Either way, or both, it’s reprehensible to its heart-of-darkness core, banality of evil to be deplored by all right-thinking Americans.
[…]
Years ago youthful thugs murdered a young man for his high-priced sneakers. Decent, law-abiding folks wondered again What Is This Country Coming To? In another case, not long ago in Minneapolis, a youthful thug was murdered for his designer sports jersey. Evil happens, its very banality — as political philosopher Hanna Arendt wrote in 1963, coining the phrase “the banality of evil” — is taking on the mantle of practically normalizing once unthinkable events in a civilized American society.
On election night in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a blue state, comes a criminal horror story short of murder, but no less disturbing. It happened at Augsburg college, a private liberal arts school named after a place in Germany the reformer monk Martin Luther served in the 1500s.
After taunting 18-year old freshman Annie Grossmann for wearing her McCain-Palin campaign button at an election night get-together, and “getting in her face,” four women beat her for political views which, obviously, they did not share. Grossmann took verbal abuse at the party, then left for her dorm after it was clear, about 10 p.m., that her candidates had lost. She was followed by the four women into the shadows of a nearby skyway.
There she was beaten. The four women, all black, called Grossmann a “racist.” She knew none of them. Nor did they know her, to her knowledge. It was that damn campaign button that evidently caused their frenzy. Their earlier taunts proved that. They were, Grossmann said, “rubbing her face in Obama’s win.”
“Why do you call me a racist when you don’t even know me?” she screamed. Made no difference. Grossmann was felled by the largest of the four. She hit her head on the brick wall, and staggered back to her dorm. The other three black women at the beating chucked at this dark manifestation of partisan evil. They walked away laughing, offering no help to their victim. The banality of evil had asserted itself. And at four-to-one, it was also a cowardly act of mindless violence which, presumably, the four thought “normal.”
Right here, right here in these United States, it happened, in my home state. A cruel re-awakening to the excesses of partisanship, in this case mixed with racism. That it happened on a college campus is hardly surprising. Not today. Campuses ooze with crazed partisan intolerance, places mostly where left-wing academia hold forth, along with politically correct staff, inculcating students with staunch, impenetrable biases, often leading to violent confrontation.
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Yup it’s started. Now watch when members in Congress oppose Obama they’ll be labeled “racists.”
My search for “Annie Grossman” in the archives of our local metro newspaper turned up nothing. If the races or political affiliations of the people involved in this beating had been reversed, I’m sure we would have read about it for days on end. Another self-reinforcing instance of political correctness.
I think that political correctness grows into — and is intended to grow into — full-blown, violent, political repression. The line between not speaking truth to avoid hurting others’ feelings, and not speaking truth out of fear for one’s job or physical safety is very thin. Movement across the line is in one direction. Once the line is crossed, it is hard to go back to the earlier, more naive situation. Among the many vicious-circle trends in our culture, I think political correctness is the worst. It is worst because it makes it uncomfortable (and then fearsome) to talk openly about the rest of the trends.
This is not isolated, there was a kid who had the crap beaten out of him in Tyler, Texas for his McCain/Palin button. Republican convention goers had urine, feces, and one elderly woman ended up in the hospital after a protester threw bleach on her. Welcome to change. But in the world of the Jena 6 I guess its is racist to prosecute a group of kids for nearly beating another kid to death.