Visiting Column #40 -- Safe Spaces

I have not been on a college campus for quite some time now, not as a visitor and not as a student, but we sure hear a lot about college students.  Apparently they arrive fresh from high schools full of excitement and with brains made up of uncongealed drool glands.

Only that can explain how they have come to demand "safe spaces" on campus where they are protected from ... I'm not sure what.  I guess it is "speech" they're scared of and need protection from, because anyone who wanted to slap one of these pampered snowflakes silly would probably not be one to let a "Safe Space" sign deter them from their appointed rounds.

The speech they want protection from, as we all know, is conservatism.  They don't want to be told that socialism is innately self-destructive, that it takes from the productive to give to the unproductive, that sort of thing.  That it defeats the incentive to work, create or succeed.  The crest of the socialist party should have the Latin motto "cur te movere", which loosely translates to "Why should I bother?"

God forbid that anyone speak to these snowflakes and tell them that you actually have to work for a living to support yourselves and your family (although in a perfect world they would never be allowed to reproduce).  We can't be allowed to tell them that it's not all rainbows and unicorns, that there really are two genders, that people are not all given the same skills, talents and intellect any more than they're given the same height.

All that makes it quite evident that they don't actually want the safe spaces for themselves, to make them feel safe.  No, it actually means that their safe space is meant to prevent your speech.  Get the difference?  Safe spaces aren't a way to protect the snowflakes, they're an excuse to take away your freedom of speech.

This seems relevant as we observe, during the ongoing Chinese virus crisis, loads of hard-partying college students stuffing the beaches in Florida and elsewhere, jamming themselves together and defending their violation of "social distancing" by reminding us that they only get to do Spring Break once (yes, one student from a four-year college actually said that to a reporter), and we can't take that from them.

Therefore, they need to set the rules aside and do what they want to do, even if it means an explosion in virus exposure and these morons bringing the virus back to their respective campuses -- where, of course, it will get transmitted all over the place.  But at least the snowflakes will have their Spring Break.

The irony, of course, is that they don't need safe spaces for the things that they claim to want them for -- ideas that differ with theirs, lest they have to think for themselves and defend their positions.  They actually need to hear those so that they can learn to think.  That's exactly what they do not need safe spaces for.

You know what they do need safe spaces for?  The Chinese virus, that's what.  They need to be six feet from each other and to get the living Hades away from those mosh pits on the beaches.  Safe spaces would be rather healthy and productive there.

But nooooooooo, they can't have safe spaces where they're really needed.  That would take away their precious Spring Break and incessant partying 24/7.  Colleges give them safe spaces to protect them from actual thought, and the snowflakes demand safe spaces for what they don't need protection from.

Safe spaces for public health?  Don't make them respect those, or they'll squeal like stuck pigs.

And those are the people whose college loans Bernie Sanders and Pocahontas want us to forgive.  I think I'll give that one a hard "no."

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton