Thoughts on an Early Sun AM

According to The Blogger, this is my 1200 blog post.  I don't know if that is a lot or not.  I don't recall my first blog post or even the year it was written.  It just seems like a long time, "1200" posts.

BTW, thank you Rachel G!  I don't always see the comments right away, but eventually I get to them.  Where are you teaching?

We sure live in strange times.  They seem to be out of a novel, one that is quite far-fetched.  "Defund the Police!"  Huh?  That really is stupid.  Obviously some reforms/changes are needed, but "Defund.....?"  To lump all police officers as "racists" is just like lumping all protesters as "rioters."  Why is it permissible to make one broad, inaccurate generalization, but not another?"

Of course there is racism in this country.  I don't know how prevalent it is.  Some might argue that there isn't any.  I'd say that's naive if not delusional (which is becoming one of my favorite words).  Gee, maybe they are right.  I have never heard anyone say, "Hey, I'm a racist."  I don't know if it is "systemic" or not and am not even sure what that word, "systemic," entails.  I'm inclined to believe it's more of an individual thing, though, and, in 2020, there is too much of it.  

But how carried away can we get?  I read where some university professor (somewhere) has been placed on administrative leave/suspended because he would not change his final examination schedule or grading policy following the demonstrations after George Floyd's death.  There have been people who have lost their jobs because they have uttered or written things that apparently offended others.  Why is "All Lives Matter" offensive enough to be fired?  Really, don't all lives matter?  I would hope everyone would think so.  Isn't picking and choosing whose lives matter a very dangerous, not to mention unsympathetic, thing to do?  I know what some of you are thinking (I have ESPN!) and I agree, but I'm not going there this AM.

Maybe I have this wrong, but it seems those who want to tear down statues and monuments of our not so prideful past (I'm not saying we should or shouldn't raze them, but am saying we need to discuss that--rationally.  There are more than one reason to erect or let stand a statue or monument.) are the same sort who in the past wore tee shirts with the images of  Mao Zedong and Che Guevara, mass murderers both.  OK, I realize many wear those shirts to be trendy, but they must be unaware that, say, Mao was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people, probably more than Hitler and Stalin combined.  Well, I hope they are unaware/ignorant, not that they are wearing the tee shirts as statements of support for Mao!

Related, why are professors who do something, for instance, that offends the Black Lives Matter supporters maligned and even fired, while those who still espouse the views of communists (and the hundreds of millions of deaths that lay at their feet) protected by "freedom of speech" or "academic freedom?"  As much as I hate some ideas, I believe that's what freedom of expression entails, protecting the ideas we hate.  We really don't need to protect ideas with which we agree, right?  Although this is misattributed to the French philosophe Voltaire, "I may disagree with what you say, but will fight to the death your right to say it," I concur wholeheartedly.