I have often had rather long and involved conversations with anyone who happened to have the misfortune to be around me when I got riled up by the way fictious stories and facts seem currently to be used interchangeably within our media, much to the chagrin of my significant other, Amber. While she does try to keep abreast of current issues, and does occasionally like to debate, more often than not she would prefer me not monopolize the conversation with talk of things we have little power to affect. Though a long-time avid reader of townhall, I only recently discovered this blog functionality, and decided, for the benefit of those sore ears around me, to try using this medium to vent my frustrations, express my ideas, and (hopefully) have others critique and debate them with me.
I would like to start off by introducing myself a little better, to give an idea of who I am and where I come from. I was born in New Orleans, LA in 1983, to a couple that met in the Music Department of Northwestern State University in Nachitoches, LA, where they both earned a Bacchelor's degree in music. Since then, they've both earned Master's Degrees in music, and my mother has earned a primary education teaching program. When I was in 2nd grade, we moved to south-western AR, to a town named Nashville. My father is the Minister of Music at the First Baptist Church there, a Southern Baptist establishment. My mother is the music teacher at Nashville Elementary School, the public school. My parents are both registered Democrats, but it would probably be fair to characterize them as more conservative than liberal on most issues. They taught me to approach what I read and hear with skepticism, to try to read between the lines, and to think for myself before accepting someone else's analysis or interpretation.
As I mentioned above, I was raised in a small town in Arkansas: a town dominated by local high school football and Bible-belt morals, a town with more local than chain businesses, a town where everyone pretty well knew everyone else. Nashville is also racially diverse, with 35% African-American, 10% Hispanic, 1-2% Asian, and the rest Caucasian. During my tenure in the public schools, everyone either attended the school or they were homeschooled, as there were no private schools in the area. My school had a number of very good teachers, but the only adequately funded department in the school was the football program. Our AAA school (with ~130 people graduating each year) suited out a senior high school football team of 70-80 players, with around 10 trainers (high school students), and 6-8 coaches. Our field was better cared for than the greens at the local golf course, and our school had a 40 yard indoor practice field constructed during the late 1990s. Nashville has won numerous state championships in recent years, and has at least made it well into the play-offs every year that I can remember. But only within the last few years (well after I graduated) has the school implemented an Advanced Placement program, and this only after state school officials threatened to cut funding if such a program was not started. In spite of this, I was able to learn enough to make it to college, and do well enough on the ACT to get the scholarships to afford it.
I attended Hendrix College, starting in fall of 2001. For those who might not be familiar with it, Hendrix College is a small private liberal arts college in Conway, AR, with a loose affiliation with the Methodist Church. It was founded in 1881 as a men's Methodist college, and later merged with a Methodists women's college before moving from Altus, AR to Conway (located in dry Faulkner County) when a group of immigrants moved in and began producing wine. Up until 40 or 50 years ago, the College was a dry campus, but now represents the only campus in Arkansas where a student (of legal age) is permitted to have alcohol within his/her dorm room. I realize that there is plenty of alcohol imbibed within the dormitories of state colleges and universities within Arkansas, but in none of these does the official policy allow the residents to openly have up to 3 gallons of beer and up to 1 gallon of hard liquor within the room to consume without reproach. Also, Hendrix has been known as one of the most gay-friendly colleges anywhere in the South, or in the greater Bible Belt region. I mention this to paint an accurate picture of Hendrix as liberal, even for a liberal arts college.
While I know Hendrix would like to think of itself as tolerant, and most definitely aspires to be, I would characterize it as particularly well inline with most of current American mainstream Academia – that is, more than tolerant towards Liberal ideas and ideals, but rather stifling towards Conservative or Libertarian values. A student could be commanded to attend "tolerance" classes for telling jokes or making joking remarks that in any way cast a negative light towards the chosen minorities (namely, African Americans, Hispanics, women, homosexuals, and Muslims, but not including Asian Americans or Jews), but could make as many derogatory comments as desired about Christians, Caucasians, and straight men, with impunity. During my first year at Hendrix, I was troubled by the double standard being imposed by people who espoused equality and unity. If truly these people wanted equality, why was it kosher to make a crack about a Jew hoarding his money, but sacrilege to make a similar remark about a black person having another baby to keep the welfare check rolling in? Why was it ok to make a joke about Jesus being popular with ladies because he promises a second coming, but you landed in an after-hours indoctrination class if you made a comment about Mohammed wanting only virgins because the 5 minutes he could last would seem like eternity to them? If making jokes about one stereotype or religious figure is wrong, then they both should be wrong, right? I myself never became a mandatory guest of these re-education sessions, but I saw several of my vocal equal-opportunity-offender friends receive such invitations, and it bothered me.
Some time during my undergraduate career (I'm not sure what year), my father introduced me to Thomas Sowell's column. It was through this column that I became increasing interested in the greater society in which I lived. I began looking into the stories mentioned within the column, reading through the media coverage where I could find it. I became increasingly disgusted with the way that so many stories are misrepresented within most major news sources, such as ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSN, the list goes on. One of the earliest stories I remember getting me rather worked up was the severe backlash against the then-president of Harvard when he mentioned that there was some evidence to indicate that there were actual gender differences between men and women that made men, on average, better at some areas of academic study and worse at others, and that this was in line with the observation that women were under-represented within the higher academic tiers of the Natural Sciences. A side note: I have since become of the opinion that "under-represented" is one of many liberal buzz words with much substance, this one used to infer that the system is somehow rigged so as to disadvantage the "under-represented" group and thus prove discrimination; however, the root premise behind "under-represented" is that the percentage of each different group (whether ethnic/racial, gender, age, etc) should be the same as the general population. This is a rather absurd premise, as each of these groups (if they are in fact distinct sub-populations within the population as a whole, and not simply arbitrarily defined sub-groups that are actually just random samples of a homogenous population) would have different values and goals, and thus would prize different sets of accomplishments. If these liberals truly believe that under-representation equals active discrimination, why do you never hear them calling for quota systems in high school or collegiate sports? "Let's see, your state is only 5% African American, but 58% female, so only 5% of your basketball players can be African American, but 58% of them have to be female." The really sad thing to me about the whole situation here is that the only system within America that is really truly 100% talent/merit-based is our sports system – a system that, in the grand scheme of things, really doesn't matter, as it is only entertainment.
Back to the topic at hand: this man was basically fired and his career ended because he cited credible evidence to support a plausible hypothesis (and incidentally even went so far as to state that he hoped further evidence would prove him wrong). I had previously been under the impression that demonstrable facts were the bedrock of academic pursuits, but apparently facts are only acceptable insofar as they agree with the pre-conceived notions that are currently in vogue within the Intelligentsia. To my knowledge, not since Galileo's confrontation with the Church have a group of know-it-alls – in this case the pro-feminist Leftists who comprised the faculty – been so overcome with emotion at a statement of objective and reproducible fact and reasonabale theory explaining the fact, that they sought not only to deny its truthfulness out-of-hand but also to destroy the career of the one who dared utter such heresy.
So, to finish off (yes, I am one to extensively trouble myself with ensuring smooth and logical segues), I am currently in my last year at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, in the College of Medicine, and mere months from the next big step in my career – being able to sign M.D. after my name. While I am decidedly anti-Democrat in most cases (since I believe that only by requiring people to grow up and take responsibility for themselves can you ever hope for them to do so), and often find myself siding with most Republicans on many issues, I would not consider myself a member of the Republican Party. I disagree with the Party system at all, and believe it often effects more harm than good, especially when it leads to an "us against them" mentality and causes normally thoughtful people to turn off their brains and follow blindly where their party leaders go. I often find myself surrounded by people who base all or most of their political decisions on little-to-no information about the issues at hand, and I believe that this is probably not an isolated case here in Little Rock. I strongly believe that voting is currently worth very little. A person is given the right to vote essentially for free, not for accomplishing anything other than turning 18 years old. We don't let people drive simply because they've been alive long enough – they must demonstrate that they know how the road system works and can responsibly operate the car within the system. Why then do we let them vote? More on this topic in later post.
