Re: PC Culture vs. Culture of Umbrage

You know what worries me more than America's PC culture? Like Muslims in the Mideast, Americans have developed a hair-trigger sense of personal affront. This phenomenon certainly reinforces PC culture, but it's not the same thing. For example, your conservative friend wouldn't call MSU's Prof. Wichman "PC," (and after all, it is conservatives' prerogative to define what is PC), even though Wichman exhibits the same eager readiness to be offended as MSU's Muslim Students' Association.

The gist of Wichman's letter wasn't so much "Muslims are hypocritical, so your protests are meaningless" it was "Muslims are hypocritical," and it "offends me" (quote). His taking offense at people who were ridiculous to take offense in the first place is ridiculous.

(As somebody who frequently comments on current events -- often with much feeling and ire -- I do support one's right to get angry and argue, but that is not the same as sobbing, "You're wrong, and it offends me!")

Certainly, America's craven and lawsuit-abiding Lib'rul Media, Left-Wing Academia, and Lib'rul Activist Judges enable this "Culture of Umbrage" (to coin a term). Yet conservatives seem to have no problem competing for the title of "America's Most Offended" as they try equally hard to co-opt the media, public universities, and the courts to protect them from all forms of "disrespect" -- personal or impersonal, real or unintended.

Americans -- left, right, and middle -- are becoming a nation of petulant crybabies who collapse in whining tantrums when anybody points a finger in their faces and says, unapologetically, "you're wrong!" We can't stomach or tolerate real debate anymore, so we attack our opponents' backgrounds, their religion, or their "hidden meanings" to shut them up and tear them down.

Debate, get angry, protest -- but don't ask me to pass the Kleenex when I disagree with you! When it comes to political debate, don't expect me to give a damn about your precious feelings!

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From:
Date: Jun 27, 2007 1:20 PM
Subject: Fw: Hooray for Michigan State University
To: Undisclosed-Recipient

This is a true story... check it out at snopes.com


Tells Muslims to Leave Country Hooray for Michigan State University!

Well, what do we have here? Looks like a small case of some people being able to dish it out, but not take it.

Let's start at the top.

The story begins at Michigan State University with a mechanical engineering professor named Indrek Wichman. Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student's Association. The e-mail was in response to the students' protest of the Danish cartoons that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. The group had complained the cartoons were
"hate speech."

Enter Professor Wichman. In his e-mail, he said the following:

Dear Moslem Association:

As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest. I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the
latest in Turkey), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called "whores" in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France. This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many of my colleagues. I counsel your dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile "protests."

If you do not like the values of the West - see the 1st Amendment - you are free to leave. I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option. Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

Cordially,
I. S. Wichman
Professor of Mechanical Engineering

As you can imagine, the Muslim group at the university didn't like this too well. They're demanding that Wichman be reprimanded and mandatory diversity training for faculty and a seminar on hate and discrimination for freshman. Now the chapter of CAIR has jumped into
the fray. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, apparently doesn't believe that the good professor had the right to express his opinion.

For its part, the university is standing its ground, saying the e-mail was private, and they don't intend to publicly condemn his remarks. That will probably change. Wichman says he never intended for his e-mail to be made public, and wouldn't have used the same strong
language if he'd known it was going to get out.

How's the left going to handle this one? If you're in favor of the freedom of speech, as in the case of Ward Churchill, will the same protections be demanded for Indrek Wichman? I doubt it.

Send this to your friends. Tell them to keep passing it around until the whole country gets it. This political correctness crap is getting old and killing us.

Let's hope that the Mechanical Engineering School at MSU continues to support mechanical engineering professor Indrek Wichman!