Jonathan Haidt said it perfectly: “If you haven’t been on a college campus since 2013, you have no idea how bad it’s gotten.” Listen to the radical stuff happening at today’s institutions of higher learning.

Show Notes

• Doing a series of podcasts called “PC Culture and You” [1:25]
• What’s been happening on American college campuses is reshaping what’s happening in the macro culture at large [2:15]
• College campuses have always been a hotbed of what’s next in the larger culture. What’s new is the very serious tone of political correctness [3:00]
• Multiple recent incidents: Missouri, Yale, etc. [4:00]
• Defining political correctness. This is how Merriam Webster defines it: “Conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters of sex or race) should be eliminated” [5:35]
• The most interesting part of that is the last three words: “should be eliminated.” That goes against one of the pillars of our society, which is of course free speech [7:10]
• Political correctness specifically seeks to prevent people from expressing their opinions [8:25]
• PC people are so quick to label others as haters [9:30]
• A liberal professor named Jonathan Haidt wrote an article in The Atlantic. He is a democrat. The article an article about the “coddled American college student” (actual title: The Coddling of the American Mind“) [10:15]
• If you haven’t been on a college campus since 2013, you have no idea how the culture has changed [12:00]
• Phew graduated from college in 2009, and there was very little evidence of political correctness [12:40]
• Unc graduated in the early 80s; never saw a protest, there were no political controversies [13:50]
• We now have a generation of students who were very coddled as children. This prevented a lot of these people from learning how to solve problems. If you had a problem, you needed an authority figure to solve it [15:40]
• The current movements all have in common that they are appealing to an authority figure to solve a perceived problem [16:15]
• The connection between being helicopter-parented and political correctness [18:15]
• People who are literally sitting and waiting to be offended [18:44]
• Dennis Miller on the Washington Redskins controversy: the people who are not directly connected to the issue–PC culture at large–are MORE OFFENDED than the people who are actually affected–native Americans [19:50]
• Haidt is concerned about this culture and how it’s taking over American universities [21:15]
• The Yale incident [21:25]
  • Petition to have the Dean of Students forbid people from wearing native American costumes for Halloween
  • Dean said not worth his time, not what his position is for
  • Students became so angry gathered at the center of campus and demanded his resignation
  • The Dean faced the students, and they seriously got in his face
  • The Dean was mild-mannered, poised and level-headed. He was totally composed. I would have been throwing punches. The student was literally SCREAMING at him with profanity. The student’s behavior was insane to me. I kept thinking, “What did this guy do to deserve THAT?” When I found it, it made the student’s behavior 10 times worse (see video below)

• “Big game hunting” using social platforms to create frenzies de jour? [28:10]
• When people feel they are truly backing a righteous cause, people who oppose that cause truly become the enemy [28:35]
• Case of Milo Yiannopoulos [29:25]
  • Gay English provocateur for conservative periodical Breitbart
  • He was on a tour of left, liberal colleges, including DePaul in Chicago, just down the street from where Phew lives
  • Days before he was to speak, he had to jump through a bunch of last minute hoops that were thrown at him
  • Milo spent $17K himself out-of-pocket just to come and speak
  • Can you imagine if that had happened to a liberal speaker going to a conservative college? The media would go INSANE
  • The talk itself got protested by hundreds of people, people were yelling and throwing things
  • The talk had to be stopped multiple times (videos below)
  • They removed no one from the venue
  • People got up on stage, grabbed the mic from the emcee
  • Milo tried to engage the protestors
  • Security does nothing
  • Milo left and attempted to go to University President’s office to discuss what happened – he was not there
  • Even if Milo is exactly who he is accused of being, should that prevent him from speaking?
  • This is AMERICA – we have free speech here
  • Think about how far we’ve moved away from our cultural foundation

• The protesters are protesting in favor of diversity while protesting a diverse point of view [40:50]
• “Deplatforming” is forcing thought control on campuses by preventing people from speaking [42:20]
• These people advocating for “safe spaces” are the same people TAKING AWAY the safe spaces of others [43:50]
• Gad Saad is a professor at McGill University in Montreal [45:10]
• Video called “the evils of political correctness explained” [45:37] (see below)

• Social experiment at Queens University: “Being respectful and kind is a form of racism” [46:10 ](watch video immediately above starting at the 30:05 mark)
• The left espouses equal and fair representation, and yet there is a major college where ratio of Democrats to Republican in a sociology department was 44-to-1 [48:35]
• Woman who conducted experiment at Queens University about the hijab walked into experiment already believing that people are racists, and when she didn’t find that, she manufactured an interpretation that fit with her worldview [50:40]
• There are very real real world consequences to ideological thinking [51:40]
• A lot of people have gone underground in terms of voicing opinions publicly [52:40]
• The response to perceived social injustice has no real limit [57:30]
• People block a highway and that type of behavior is just somehow OK [58:30]
• As long as the response to that behavior is as tepid as it is these days, it will continue unabated [59:30]
• If you call someone a racist long enough and loud enough, at some point they’re probably going to be pushed toward becoming one [60:00]
• Whole approach to life: I need more money, I better fucking hustle [61:45]
• At its core, PC is fundamentally flawed because of the intellectual inconsistencies and contradictions within it [66:20]

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