Voice in the Wilderness

A progressive view on what causes campus protests

A few days ago, I suggested emotional hot buttons were a real life Jedi mind trick that could cause weak-minded campus protesters to lapse into apoplexy. While I was talking partially tongue-in-cheek, it appears that a radical, liberal think tank is taking my assertion seriously.

Public Research Associates, the same band of merrymakers that peddled their activist wares on the UT-Austin campus this spring, recently released their Spring/Summer 2005 newsletter. In it, Pam Chamberlain, who recently presented at UT on student activism, said this about the recent attacks on conservative speakers by liberal student mobs:

"Yet the approaches favored by conservatives on campus, as taught them by national conservative training institutes like the Young America's Foundation, depend on a blend of adolescent humor, sarcasm, and demonization of the opposition. Perhaps there is a connection with this way of thinking and recent progressive campus-based responses to conservative speakers such as Ann Coulter and William Kristol. Both were attacked with pies at the University of Arizona and Earlham College respectively and Pat Buchanan was smeared with salad dressing at Western Michigan University."
(emphasis added)

Did you catch that? Conservatives (allegedly) use adolescent humor, sarcasm, and demonization, which somehow causes liberal student groups to go ape, as was seen at the recent Ann Coulter speaking event at the University of Texas and the YCT-Texas Independence Day kerfuffle.

In other words, the leftist students themselves are not to blame for their intolerant and hateful behavior. Those gosh darn conservatives are just so mean that it causes an irresistible, Pavlovian urge in liberal students to use food as speech squelching projectiles.

I am not sure which is worse: the students' abominable behavior or the adults' justification of it.

But Parental Consent Helps Empower the Shepherds

I found this stomach-churning story in this Abilene Reporter-News (free subscription required) this morning (hat tip: Lasso).

The story chronicles the Child Protective Services investigation of coaches in the West Texas town of Merkel and the alleged sexual relationships they have had with female players and students over the years. According to the report,

“Merkel, as portrayed in CPS interviews, is a community where students and teachers are close. So close, in fact, that interviews suggest a handful of coaches partied, drank and had sexual relationships with students. …”

So predatory men have figured out how to exploit the small town bonhomie often present in rural areas.

“These patterns of behavior didn't develop overnight. They took years to cultivate. Two coaches were accused of displaying similar behavior at schools they coached at before Merkel. For one coach, the inappropriate behavior stretches back 20 years to another school district, according to CPS interviews. One woman, who says she was molested by the coach in the eighth and ninth grades in another West Texas town, told the Reporter-News she wishes she had reported the abuse earlier.

She was 13 or 14 years old at the time, she told CPS.

The woman would baby-sit the coach's daughter while his wife was home, she told CPS. At the coach's home, she said he would take her hand and place it on his genitals. He also touched her breasts, according to her CPS statement. She didn't tell anyone about the abuse. She felt no one would believe her, she told CPS. ….”

These patterns of behavior took years to cultivate, but having no threat of accountability was also a factor.

“Diane Dotson, executive director of the Regional Crime Victim Crisis Center in Abilene, said the reporting victim should never have been confronted by the alleged abuser in this manner. ''That's the reason they (victims) don't report,'' she said. ''They're afraid of being attacked and retaliated against.'' …”

This is heartbreaking. Young, naïve girls are being sexually abused by older “men” then intimidated into silence.

“Dotson, who heads the crime victim crisis center, said many girls are afraid to come forward because they feel ashamed about the abuse. ''Lots of times they feel like it's their fault,'' Dotson said. ''They think they should have done something different.'' Other victims won't report abuse because they feel like no one will believe them or if they do tell, they will be punished.”

This story illustrates why the parental consent bill is necessary. As several post-abortive women testified at the Texas Rally for Life in January, they were made pregnant by predatory, older men who used fear and threats to manipulate their victims into having abortions and keeping quite about it.

The current law only requires abortionists to attempt to notify parents that their minor daughter is seeking an abortion. However, these “notifications” can happen by phone or mail and may never reach the parent because of wrong numbers or wrong addresses. Under current law, if one of these (alleged) jerkwoods in Merkel got one of their young victims pregnant, he could coerce her into an abortion and the parents would probably not find out, leaving said predator free to victimize again.

With parental consent, predators will have to think twice about their actions, because if they do get a girl pregnant, the path of coerced silence will be closed to them. Either the abortion or the pregnant girl will be out in the open.

5/17/05 update: To learn more about the particulars of the parental consent bill and the arguments for and against, see my previous post on this topic here.