Thoughts On Recent News Stories

1-Conservative columnist Ann Coulter and I don’t agree often, but I just knew –when I wrote last week about how today’s students do not understand free speech and what it means---and used the Berkeley campus at Cal as my main example, that she would be next. Sure enough, students there threatened a riot if she was allowed to speak. The university buckled, then relented and said she could talk at another time and place. Ms. Coulter demurred, and may sue...and UC still doesn’t understand what Free Speech or Academic Freedom means.

   

You may get a better idea from 2 recent books: "Free Speech: 10 Principles for a connected World," by Timothy Ash; Yale U press, and even more so from “The Soul of the First Amendment," Floyd Abrams, also Yale Press. Mr. Abrams, a long time Free Speech stalwart, was also the counsel for the big corporations who won the Citizens United case...a rare fall from grace—but that’s my opinion, and that’s what the First Amendment is all about.

 

2—America is not the only country having problems with these issues—the individual vs. Society. Australia, a country entirely descended from immigrants, (except of  course for the original inhabitants who the newcomers pushed out) is about to revise its test for new citizens in a way  designed to keep immigrants out, especially Muslims.

 

Vice-president Pence just visited Australia, as part of his Pacific tour, assuring the PM there of our support---on foreign policy matters, but given the President’s views on such things, maybe on immigration, too.

 

3—on that same official state tour, Mrs. Pence got off Air Force 2 in Seoul wearing leggings. Some of you may remember that  before United Airlines dragged a Kentucky doctor off a plane for Louisville, it had turned away two young ladies who showed up for boarding wearing leggings.  Somehow I think Mrs. Pence would not have had any trouble.

 

4—And, as some wiser person said years ago, “the Past is always with us.”  Western Kentucky University's student government voted for reparations due to slavery and for “full and free access for all black people” and other groups. Is this carrying Political Correctness too far??? President Gary Ransdell said WKU will not follow the student resolution, but then he’s retiring soon.  Look for this topic to come up again and elsewhere in Kentucky.

 

5—Speaking of Kentucky’s history, some Lexington tv newswriter last week wrote of “the fictitious” Colonel Sanders.” Dead he may be, but “fictitious,"no. ...but it got on the air. One wonders how?

 

I'm just sayin'...