Tolerant Leftist Academia Tries To Impose ‘Thought Reform’ On Christian Student

The funny thing is that all of these incredibly radical and fundamentally intolerant university faculty almost certainly support the construction of the Islamic mosque/community center right next to Ground Zero. That very much seems to be the liberal position, after all.  Even though the central imam in the Ground Zero mosque advocates the extremely intolerant Sharia law.

Islam is, after all, “The World’s Most Intolerant Religion.”  And it is no shock to history that progressive liberals would be the useful idiots of radical Islam.  Particularly given the fact that both movements are fundamentally if not rabidly intolerant toward any who think differently from themselves.

So one can only wonder if the American secular humanist liberal is advancing the cause of Islam out of fanatic hatred for Christianity, or whether like-minded intolerant fascists merely think alike.

Thought Control at Augusta State University
August 11, 2010 – Herbert London

It often seems as if political correctness hasn’t any boundaries. Recently an Augusta State University counseling student filed a lawsuit against her university claiming it violated her First Amendment rights when she was allegedly told to change her traditional Christian views on homosexuality or leave.

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) filed suit on behalf of Jennifer Keaton seeking to prevent the expulsion from her master’s degree program.

According to David French, the ADF attorney representing Keaton, “They (college officials) made a cascading series of presumptions about the kind of a counselor she would be and have consequently… tried to force her to change her beliefs.  It’s symbolic of an educational system that has lost its way.”

The suit claims that program officials were upset that Ms. Keaton stated her belief that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice and not a “state of living.” According to the suit, the university wants her to undergo “thought reform” intended to alter her perception. Most significantly, she faces expulsion unless she complies.

To exacerbate matters within the department, Ms. Keaton argued the “conversion therapy” for homosexuals should be entertained, a point of view that departed significantly from accepted norms within the program and according to program officials, from “psychological research.”  It is noteworthy that the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) defends the practice Keaton advocates and notes opponents of conversion therapy are often criticized by politically motivated biases, albeit, in fairness, the reverse accusation might also be made.

The Augusta State University counseling program required Ms. Keaton to attend at least three pro-gay sensitivity training courses, read pro-gay peer reviewed journals and participate in Augusta’s gay pride parade. She was also asked to familiarize herself with the Association of Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Issues in “Counseling” webpage, which defines homosexual behavior as healthy and an appropriate way of life. In addition, her professors required “a two page reflection” each month on how her participation in pro-gay activities “has influenced her beliefs” and how future clients might benefit from her experience.

Without getting into the merits of the case and the claims in the lawsuit, it seems to me that if even a portion of the allegation is accurate the Augusta counseling program is engaged in a form of thought control that hasn’t any place in the Academy. As I see it, if there are diametrically different positions on the nature – nurture argument regarding homosexuality both points of view – with empirical evidence marshaled for each side – should be entertained and given a fair hearing. It is not as if one position is dispositive, notwithstanding the position taken by the counseling program.

In far too many instances a university orthodoxy is confused with the rational exegesis of an idea. Proponents of the orthodoxy act as if they are the American version of the Red Guard, incapable of even giving a fair hearing to an alternative point of view; in fact, often going to the extreme of requiring a reeducation program.

Here is the rub: university life predicated on the free and open exchange of opinion has often become a filtering mechanism for politically correct ideas. Those who do not share this view are chastised or, in Ms. Keaton’s case, put through a thought control exercise.

It is interesting that Ms. Keaton’s religiously based view of homosexuality is disregarded, even though one could argue her First Amendment rights are being violated. In the way the university is constituted today, some designated groups have more rights than others. You don’t need a program to know which groups fall into that category; the university catalogue is likely to offer that information.

Liberalism = communism = fascism.  Pure and simple.  What do you even say about a faculty of a university – which at the same time prides itself on its openness – demanding that a student undergo “thought reform” that could well have come right out of a program by Chairman Mao?

Being politically correct is not just an attempt to make people feel better.  It’s a large, coordinated effort to change Western culture as we know it by  redefining it (or, to put it into Obama’s terminology, by “fundamentally transforming” it).  Early Marxists designed this tactic a long ago and continue to execute it today — and now liberals are picking up the same game plan: to control the argument by controlling the “acceptable” language.  Those with radical agendas understand the game plan and are taking advantage of an oversensitive and frankly overly gullible public.

The left – and increasingly the radical left – that so dominates our education system is incredibly hostile to the religious worldview, and seeks to purge it much the way that Stalin sought to purge those who disagreed with him:

“How can we ever know how many children had their psychological and physical lives irreparably maimed by the compulsory inculcation of faith?  Religion … has always hoped to practice upon the unformed and undefended minds of the young…  If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.” – Christopher Hitchens

“If scientists can destroy the influence of religion on young people, then I think it may be the most important contribution we can make.” – Steven Weinberg

How much do we regard children as being the property of their parents?  It’s one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children?  Is there something to be said for society stepping in?  What about bringing up children to believe manifest falsehoods?  Isn’t it always a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought out?” – Richard Dawkins

“[S]ome children are raised in such an ideological prison that they willingly become their own jailers… Parents don’t literally own their children the way slaveowners once owned slaves, but are, rather, their stewards and guardians and ought to be held accountable by outsiders for their guardianship, which does imply that outsiders have a right to interfere.” – Daniel Dennett

“Parents, correspondingly, have no god-given license to enculcate their children in whatever ways they personally choose: no right to limit the horizons of their children’s knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstitition, or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith.” – Nicholas Humphrey

Kenneth Miller admits that “a presumption of atheism or agnosticism is universal in academic life…  The conventions of academic life, almost universally, revolve around the assumption that religious belief is something that people grow out of as they become educated.”

And philosopher Richard Rorty argued that secular professors in the universities ought “to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like their own.”  He noted that students are fortunate to find themselves “under the benevolent Herrschaft of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents.”  He said to parents who send their children to college, “we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than reasonable.”

Only a true fool would be unable to see how dangerous and corrosive this building trend is.  Christianity created the very idea of the university (universities emerged from the monasteries).  Oxford, Cambridge, and all the great universities of Europe had their beginnings as Christian monasteries.  And yet fundamentalist atheists are trying to purge universities and society of the intellectual and creative spirit which were these institutions’ foundations in the first place.  And in doing so, they corrupt, pervert and destroy the very meaning of the open university system that they now deceitfully claim to defend.

We are entering a world in which teachers and professors no longer believe that parents have a basic right to educate their own children.  We are entering a world in which students no longer have a right to their own worldview if it is not the worldview of the left.  And if a student tries to express or stand up for his or her religious worldview, well, to quote another leftist totalitarian ideologue named Nikita Khrushchev, “We will bury you.”

See my articles on “How Postmodernism Leads To Fascism” (part 2, part 3).

See also my article “The Intolerance Of Academia Creating Modern-Day ‘Galileos’.”

See also my article “Leftist Thought Led To Fascism – And Is Doing So Again.”

See also my article “Fascism Thriving In ‘Democratic’ America.”

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