Thread: Georgetown Anti-Proselytizing Policy

As a follow-up to this thread, see the recent Washington Post article (July 21, 2007) concerning Georgetown University's anti-proselytizing policy here.

What is so striking to me is the clear distinction between the old United States, where there was actually freedom of speech, and the new "no-first-amendment" United States, which is run and controlled by the post-modernists.

Before, back in the "bad old days of repression" one could say or print almost anything. Which meant, of course, that one's words could get him in trouble with other people, but not ordinarily with the government. The government just stepped in to make sure people didn't resort to violence over those exchanges. Enforcement wasn't perfect, we all know that--because governments are made up of flawed people. But it was a good system, represented by the maxim: "I may vehemently disagree with your SPEECH, but I will defend to the death your right to SPEAK it."

But no more. Now, freedom OF speech (like freedom of religion) has been reinterpreted to mean "freedom FROM speech," i.e. the right to never be offended. Where is the ACLU in such cases? Noplace. They are uninterested in "free speech" rights for the "wrong" people. They only care about the freedom of expression of pornographers, open accessibility of the most vile and criminal garbade imaginable on "public access" computers, etc. Now, "proselytizing" is what you call someone just expressing their opionon, if it happens to convict you, or you feel challenged in your thinking. Are university professors and grade school teachers exempt? Or are they expected to offer bland "suggestions" and carefully worded "opinions" as well.

Christianity--I should say, Protestantism--created "free speech." Now, the new religion of post-modernity is taking all that away. True "freedom of thought" was never that your thinking should be protected from challenges from other humans. The government was there to protect you from coersion. Now all that is gone or going. Now, freedom of thought is trumping freedom of speech, and the state is being used as an instrument of suppression of speech-expression of thought.

Wecome to the brave new world. Same as the old (pre-Christian) world.

I ought to add, that Georgetown, being a private institution, ought to be able to suppress whatever speech they please, even the genuine article Protestant religion. It's your God-given right to cut yourself (and anyone foolish enough to commit their time and money to the Jesuits, even liberal ones) off from the saving gospel of Christ.

To add to Pastor Bruce's remarks, I quote from an essay on postmodernism vis-a-vis Christian literature (available in pdf on request),

We may think of Postmodernism as simply the new worldview on the block, and while a bit extreme in its Political Correctness rules, a needed antidote to the excesses and arrogance of cultural bigotry and the old Modernism with its blind trust in Enlightenment reason, secular humanism, and social progress, all supposedly based on a “logocentrism” and Eurocentrism that disregard or oppress varying viewpoints, minority cultures and subcultures. However, according to the new postmodernist (PM) thought, we who live by the Bible, and seek to bring to God’s world knowledge of His existence – as well His saving mercies – through proclaiming the person and work of Jesus Christ, are deemed guilty of violations – crimes! – against humanity. We are accused of spiritual and intellectual imperialism, seeking to impose our culture’s story on other cultures, indeed, having our story dominate all others, while – the accusers say – it is simply one of many cultural constructs, real for us, but an infringement on the equally valid realities of what other peoples and cultures have determined are their truths. There are no universal and absolute truths, they say, and to affirm there are is to be a Totalist or a Fundamentalist, one who cruelly disrespects and seeks to invalidate other cultures’ beliefs and realities.

Nor is this just a harmless tendency to relativizing truths and beliefs which can be successfully argued against by a clear mind, but the principles of new world-wide (starting from the West) philosophical and legal initiatives that are sweeping up all our institutions – education, politics, sociology, science, law, medicine, art, theology, psychology, history, literature, etc. – into their fold, and that will actually outlaw dissenters as disturbers of the social order. That this is not a mere “futurist prediction” may be seen in that this is a growing consensus widely established even now, possessing legal teeth, as Canadians and some Europeans know – and even Americans, although the encroachment here is subtle, for the present. Which is not to say that postmodernism is entirely destructive, for it also has important positive aspects we shall consider shortly....