Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 4:34am

Free Speech For Me But Not For Thee

Hattip to Ed Morrissey at Hot Air.  I guess some public schools must not be quite clear on the First Amendment.  Jerry Buell is a 22 year veteran social studies teacher at Mount Dora high school in Florida, and he was teacher of the year for his school district in 2010.  However, after offending the gods of political correctness, he will not be in the classroom when school begins this year.  On July 25, 2011 he posted these comments on his Facebook page:

“I’m watching the news, eating dinner when the story about New York okaying same-sex unions came on and I almost threw up.  And now they showed two guys kissing after their announcement. If they want to call it a union, go ahead. But don’t insult a man and woman’s marriage by throwing it in the same cesspool of whatever. God will not be mocked. When did this sin become acceptable?”

“By the way, if one doesn’t like the most recently posted opinion based on biblical principles and God’s laws, then go ahead and unfriend me. I’ll miss you like I miss my kidney stone from 1994. And I will never accept it because God will never accept it. Romans chapter one.”

The school district suspended Buell because they are afraid that a homosexual student might be frightened or intimated by him.  Go here to see a video report of this farce.

 

 

 

 

 

Schools should be a place where students learn to value free inquiry and robust debate.  Instead, the forces of the Left, which have a death grip on public education in most locations in this country, have turned them into citadels of reaction where there is only one correct answer in regard to the issues of the day, and dissenters will be punished severely.  This is an institutional structure suitable for the old Soviet Union, but not for a free people.  The idea that at a public school a teacher can be disciplined for expressing a political opinion would have sent a chill down the backs of old-fashioned liberals, many of whom were legitimately concerned for the rights of dissenters.  Most of their ideological descendants have no problem with crushing dissent if it is dissent from their orthodoxy.

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Paul W Primavera
Friday, August 19, AD 2011 2:50pm

Democrats are practitioners of freedom only when you agree with them.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, August 19, AD 2011 4:09pm

Democrats/liberals/progressives: You are either on the bus or you are under the bus.

Brave new world indeed.

I hope Mr. Buell is lawyered up.

Foxfier
Admin
Friday, August 19, AD 2011 5:36pm

Sadly, not just schools– although schools are probably why it’s spreading.

I just lost a friend over what he would call “politics”– when I shared an article on facebook that pointed out the top 1% are earning 20% of the AGI and paying nearly 40% of the income taxes, he attacked my math skills and said of course lower taxes on those who make more will get more income, it’s only fair that people “give” more….

Remember, attacks, be they personal, physical, or on folks’ ability to get a job are fair game…if it’s for the right cause.

*sad*

pat
pat
Friday, August 19, AD 2011 8:08pm

One way to put it is to say that Democrats are Platonic while Republicans are Aristotelian. The Democrats know from an elitiest vantage point what’s best for everyone else. So they have a right to make that happen and that regardless of the means. Republicans think individuals make choices and should make good ones because it’s their responsibliy. So it’s a war between Platonists and Aristotelians.

Clinton
Clinton
Saturday, August 20, AD 2011 4:02am

There was a time when the ACLU would have had the back of a man like Mr. Buell.
Sadly, the ACLU no longer seems to be in the business of fighting for the preser-
vation of civil liberties. T. Shaw was correct in his post above– Mr. Buell should
lawyer up.

It’s amazing that the school district suspended this otherwise sterling teacher not
because of anything that he actually did, but because a homosexual student
might be frightened or intimidated by him because of what he had posted
on Facebook. No student actually complained about Mr. Buell.

Would it be consistent with the dubious ‘logic’ used by the school district to call
for the suspension of those officials responsible for Mr. Buell’s suspension? After
all, Christian staff and students might be frightened or intimidated by
them because of how they punished Mr. Buell for voicing his religious and
political beliefs outside of the school. Just sayin’.

G-Veg
G-Veg
Saturday, August 20, AD 2011 6:40am

Pat,

I need to break out my philosphy primer because I don’t remember ever having heard Plato and Aristotle reduced to those points? Could you elaborate?

Joe Green
Joe Green
Saturday, August 20, AD 2011 7:41am

As I recall, in the famous painting, The School of Athens, Plato is pointing to the heavens and Aristotle to the earth. Plato represented the ideal, Aristotle the “real world.” Choose your philosophers.

As for Mr. Buell, Bravo! I hope he sues the pants off the school district on 1st Amendment grounds.

pat
pat
Saturday, August 20, AD 2011 12:22pm

Well, E-Veg, I meant it only on the most general level, in the sense that Republicans do acknowledge the world as it is. Demoncrats have a vision, think of the world in terms of that vision, and demand that it materialize.

Paul Primavera
Saturday, August 20, AD 2011 12:41pm

The Democrat vision is murdered unborn babies, and homosexual filth sanctified as marriage.

pat
pat
Saturday, August 20, AD 2011 12:48pm

So that’s the opposition I meant to clarity. Democrats have got a vision that’s impracticable given human nature, and they try to impose that vision anyway. Republicans acknowledge human nature for what it is and go from there. God has promised a New Jerusalem. But he never said that it would come about through human effort. It would arrive from outside and beyond. Nevertheless, secular and religious ‘Calvinists’ are always trying to implement it in their own power. Silly. Silly. Very silly. Not to mention all the harm they do, whether it’s Oliver Cromwell or Hillary Clinton.

pat
pat
Saturday, August 20, AD 2011 12:50pm

When you’re young you’re a Platonist. As you age you turn Aristotelian. You get afraid. You see how people really are. You know that some things can’t be done. You deal with reality as you find it and go from there. Can’t impose that vision; the material you have to work with just isn’t fit for it. Further, you learn it’s not your job. People have to be respected for their individuality and choices. Share the light you have. But don’t think you can impose it after your fashion.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Saturday, August 20, AD 2011 1:17pm

The crowd now ruining the country has no experience and so no knowledge (I’m being charitable not charging them with intentionally destroying the USA, which they hate) that think they know everything.

Camus: “All attempts to create Heaven on Earth result in Hell on Earth.”

Part of destructive plan is polarization. Name one policy or goal that d’rats push which benefits, or asks for sacrifices from, the entire citizenry as a unit.

Question for whomever on that Bd. of Ed.

What will you do when normal (not sexual vampires) children living in fecund, sanctified households feel frightened, intimidated and threatened by the school’s imposition of sodomy on them? We know what Stalin would do.

pat
pat
Saturday, August 20, AD 2011 4:24pm

Well you hit on something interesting…there are people who think we ARE the problem in the world. There are folks who think America stands in the way of a better world. It’s rediculous, of course. But they beleive that. They beleive that if the world had our money and we had their brains we’d have universal peace. Silly. But they DO believe it. And remember, as in psychology, reality is ninety-nine percent perception. If someone believes a thing, they’re acting in accordance with that. So you get this political type, a certain kind of Democrat or whateverf, that sees America as bad and the rest of the world as benign and victimized by us. This democratic type really believesthat, and you’d best acknwoledge it. They’re acting on that perception!

Micha Elyi
Micha Elyi
Sunday, August 21, AD 2011 1:31am

What’s the difference between America and the People’s Republic of China? In America, government coercion is used to force people to pretend sham marriages are real. In China, government coercion is used to force people to pretend sham ordinations of bishops are real.

Micha Elyi
Micha Elyi
Sunday, August 21, AD 2011 1:36am

A follow-up question to T. Shaw’s for the whomever on that Bd. of Ed.

What will you do when homosexual children feel frightened, intimidated and threatened by the school’s imposition of an expection that they must someday marry upon them – and sue that Bd. of Id.?

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