by
Doug Patton
“Woe to those who call evil good and
good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put
bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
- Isaiah 5:20
Just when I think I have seen all the silliness that
political correctness can wreak upon society, another dose of reality
lands on the front page of my local paper.
In recent years,
the media and other self-appointed arbiters of our social mores have
forced upon us such inanities as the celebration of so-called alternative
lifestyles, while simultaneously ridiculing all things Christian. Any
depiction, in movies or on television, of men or women involved in
same-sex relationships is invariably portrayed as positive, and the trend
toward sensitivity training in corporate America has become almost a
given. Contrast that with the prevailing attitude toward monogamous,
married Christians, who usually are depicted as backward rubes with boring
lives.
Lazy, able-bodied
welfare recipients who produce nothing for themselves or for society are
pitied, while business owners, who risk everything to produce capital and
create jobs, are scorned as greedy and taxed into oblivion.
Walking clichés of
anti-Americanism like Cindy Sheehan are promoted as thoughtful and
newsworthy, while young men and women serving in uniform are represented
as suckers at best and war criminals at worst.
Illegal aliens
have free run of our country, and those who dare to point out the porous
nature of our borders are labeled as racists.
And then there are
the contradictory and hypocritical attitudes regularly displayed toward
criminals on one side of the law versus law-abiding gun owners and police
on the other. Because liberals tend to view criminals as “basically good,”
they like to explain away anti-social behavior as society’s fault.
Conversely, since they believe that guns, not people, do, in fact, kill
people, they distrust the motives and behavior of anyone who professes to
want to own or use a firearm for peaceful, constructive reasons.
The latest example
of this kind of PC stupidity is the policy of disarming campus police
officers at three out of the four University of Nebraska campuses. In
Kearney, at the Omaha campus and at the university medical school (also in
Omaha), officers are required to face potentially armed criminals using
only Mace and a baton. Only in Lincoln are campus police officers
permitted to carry sidearms.
“I feel that my
safety is jeopardized, as well as the safety of the students,” Officer
Dawn Adams of the Kearney campus said recently. “Each year we have to
qualify with firearms. We know how to handle them. I don’t understand why
they (administrators) don’t want their officers to have them.”
This sounds like
plain common sense from a commissioned law enforcement officer certified
in the use of handguns. But the university administration sees it
differently.
“We believe we are
doing the best for our students and our community without carrying
firearms,” said an administration official.
Samuel Walker, a
criminal justice professor at the Omaha campus, says that firearms are
“unnecessary” for campus safety officers.
“I think it
creates an image that it is a dangerous place,” Walker said, adding that
campus lighting and keeping shrubbery too small for criminals to hide
behind were more important to security.
No, really. I’m
not kidding. That’s what he said. And therein lies the problem.
The propensity to
assume the best about the dregs of society while assigning the worst
possible motives to honest, law-abiding Americans must be countered with
common sense by people of good will who simply are not willing to allow it
to continue. Otherwise, as Isaiah warned, woe to all of us.
Doug Patton is a freelance columnist
who has served as a political speechwriter and policy advisor for federal,
state and local candidates, elected officials and public policy
organizations. His weekly column can be read in newspapers across the
country and on selected Internet web sites, including
www.TheConservativeVoice.com and
www.GOPUSA.com, where he also serves as the Nebraska editor. Readers
can write him at
dpatton@neonramp.com.
