***
The number of couples in China choosing to marry has gone up for the first time in nine years.
***
Speech and Ideas
There is a big case coming before the Supreme Court on Freedom of Speech. The substance involves the efforts by the federal government to control the information coming out of social media that opposed the government's position on COVID-19, how people got it, how they spread it, and how vaccines influenced it.
There is a peculiar picture here of acres of computer farms with technicians combing through postings from a housewife in Peoria looking for her subversive questions about the value of immunizing infants.
But what about speech the other way? What about speech originating not from the small computer on the kitchen table but from the center of opinion-making? Like Washington.
Here's an example.
A typical university policy statement (such as this one from California State University, Fullerton) reads, “Faculty members from traditionally underrepresented groups may experience additional demands on their time, a phenomenon termed ‘cultural taxation.’ Cultural taxation involves the obligation to demonstrate good citizenship towards the institution by serving its needs for ethnic representation and cultural understanding, often without commensurate institutional rewards.”
An example of "Cultural taxation" might be a black professor who is burdened with the supposed need to spend more time with black students than a white professor would be and therefore deserves some extra compensation. There isn’t any evidence that this is true, there is no reason to assume these Black students require more help, there is no reason why the helpful professor would necessarily be Black ....on and on.
A typical university policy statement (such as this one from California State University, Fullerton) reads, “Faculty members from traditionally underrepresented groups may experience additional demands on their time, a phenomenon termed ‘cultural taxation.’ Cultural taxation involves the obligation to demonstrate good citizenship towards the institution by serving its needs for ethnic representation and cultural understanding, often without commensurate institutional rewards.”
An example of "Cultural taxation" might be a black professor who is burdened with the supposed need to spend more time with black students than a white professor would be and therefore deserves some extra compensation. There isn’t any evidence that this is true, there is no reason to assume these Black students require more help, there is no reason why the helpful professor would necessarily be Black ....on and on.
The point is that we now are dealing with a new concept--"cultural taxation"--with its own structure, theories, costs, and--most importantly--its own mythology. What is essentially a coffeehouse notion has become policy and will result in its own bureaucracy, rules, administration, and justice system. Without any proof.
Does such an idea deserve support or should the veracity of this idea be questioned? If the idea is imaginary and without foundation, should it be suppressed or should it be allowed to advance in deference to "Free Speech?"
Another way of putting it is, Why is the citizen always the offender?
No comments:
Post a Comment