Melting Snowflakes at UConn

The University of Connecticut has invited a lady by the name of Linda Sarsour to make a speech of some kind on campus this month.

Now, you may not have heard of her, but Linda Sarsour is some kind of fringey Muslim who believes in Sharia law (we don't know if she herself was mutilated, according to its teachings, nor do we care much), who has made disparaging remarks about Jews and has expressed support for Antifa, the domestic terrorists who turned Berkeley into a bomb site.

She also had some part in organizing women's marches which, I guess, must offset all the far less-mainstream and threatening opinions an things she has said, at least in the eyes of the people in charge of the University of Connecticut.

That is because UConn has taken exactly zero steps to "protect" its students, such as providing special services, including mental health counseling, for them.

Now, I suppose that you are wondering why that would even be necessary.  Aren't UConn students, after all, mature enough at ages 18-22 to hear the words of some wacko Antifa-loving, anti-Semitic Muslim fascist without needing to go see a shrink?

Well, yes, they are ... or at least they should be.  But when the campus Republicans invited Ben Shapiro, the young and dynamic conservative speaker to the very same campus, the university felt it necessary to go to great lengths to ensure that the snowflakes in their student body were not driven to faint collectively at what he might say.  They arranged for "counseling" and mental health support for students who might find themselves so offended.

I'm serious.  They did.

None, of course -- absolutely no such services are being offered to the students who might find Sarsour's rhetoric -- and I've no idea what she is going to say, but we can guess -- equally offensive.  And although Berkeley had to try to provide heavy police support when a conservative speaker was actually allowed on campus last year, no such policing, no such snowflake services, are offered up when leftists speak there.

Will someone please -- OK, I will do it -- point out the fact that those services are not needed when leftists speak, because conservatives don't actually need them.  We are sufficiently self-disciplined to be able to listen to opposing views and not get all wound up, not smash buildings, not steal TV sets, and definitely not fall into a swoon and need mental health counseling.

More than noting our capacity to listen critically, it is an amazing indictment of the left that they actually need to be comforted when told that cutting taxes is actually a good thing, or that Democrat-run cities like Chicago are not exactly bastions of good race relations, or that Jesus Christ died to redeem our sins.  But the left, apparently, needs all this.

Connecticut will have likely gotten tons of snowflakes dumped on it by today's storm, but I would offer that the state, and its flagship university, have far more to fear from the snowflakes it purports to be educating there.  If UConn feels that it has to offer counseling when a conservative speaks, but can whistle "la-la" when an Antifa-loving radical speaks there, well, that says a lot about the university.

And its students, and the state.   And about what we have to fear from the left.

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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