In an American High School in Longmont Colorado, this week, displaying the flag of the U.S. of America - and other flags - was temporarily banned.
Student groups, rallying in protest of U.S. immigration policies, were displaying and waving the Mexican flag.
A separate group of students attempted to show the U.S. flag and school authorities intervened and banned the display of all flags on school property.
Their contention was that displaying and waving of the American flag, while the protest group was waving the Mexican flag, was a direct form of harassment and was an act of bigotry and would not be tolerated.
from USA Today :
“Skyline High School Principal Tom Stumpf said American flags were brazenly waved in the faces of Hispanic students and in one case a Mexican flag was thrown into the face of another student.
“When it involves the American flag and its abuse in vilifying other people, we simply will not tolerate it,” Stumpf said. “They were using the symbol derisively as misguided patriotism.”
One has to wonder why it was only the waving of the American flag which was considered vilification of other people, since the concurrent waving of the Mexican flag had apparently gone on uncontested by the school administration.
Isn’t multiculturalism wonderful. Minorities can perform any actions they wish regardless of their impingement upon the general sensibilities of the majority, and any response other than silence and acquiescence, any disagreement (non-violent disagreement), is treated as harassment and bigotry.
From the student handbook of Skyline High School:
” FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION”
“Students may freely express their points of view so long as they do not seek to coerce, intimidate, or offend others.”
Coercion and intimidation should certainly to be precluded as legitimate expression, but when schools publish speech policies which arbitrarily disallow free expression on the basis of possibly giving offense to another, then they are by fiat, banning simple disagreement, simple difference of opinion.
Freedom of speech is abrogated, reduced in scope, the First Amendment is violated and this county and society further succumbs to the dictates of “political correctness”. (In Russian - “politicheskaya pravil’nost’” , a phrase used in early writing by Vladimir Lenin in requiring rigid adherence to the party line.)
Related Blogging-M.Malkin and others.
Post a Comment