By Yifrah Kaminer MD

Harsh and Liberalism in the same sentence sounds like an oxymoron. Images associated with books like Animal Farm, 1984, and Lord of the Flies are usually associated with police states.

However, the danger of tyranny and state control usually attributed to right-wing movements is only half of the picture. The many victims of the French and communist revolution have been a grim statement as to how great ideas and noble intentions about forced equality that ignore human nature can deteriorate into tyranny in the name of subjective justice by a growing mass of leftist puritans.

We live in a postmodernist world where truth and facts often do not apply. Furthermore, they are being sacrificed for lofty ideals based on dubious social justice and alike poorly reasoned philosophies. Motivated reasoning of listening and supporting what we want to be true supersedes facts and reason. Humanity in general and our youth in particular have failed to learn from history. That is why we move in perpetual motion of social and medical problems (see for example the present Opioid epidemic). What our children learn in public schools is what (or not) to think and NOT how to think.

They need to adopt a political correctness-based terminology as much as the British puritans who built this country forced the community to be in tune with the scriptures or bear the consequences. Then and now, the argument was similar: “This is for the community’s own good.”

Would you ever have thought that at the 21st century straying from political correctness, defined even by the liberal Joe Kline from Time magazine as “avoiding hard truths in order to save soft sensibilities,” is punishable by naming, shaming, even losing your livelihood because the purpose justifies the means, even if the process trumps the First Amendment protecting free speech? This is where the reference to the iconic books noted above is relevant.

I do not think that social science pioneers such as Locke, Hobbes, Roger Williams, and President Thomas Jefferson would have liked to see the pendulum strike back after separating church from state. Here is where the history lesson is necessary because American liberalism will take us to dark days eclipsed only by the tyranny of the church. Russell Shorto, in his book Descartes’ Bones: The Conflict between Faith and Reason, reviewed the history of science in Europe. Philosophers, scientists and artists put their name, fortune, work and life in danger in order to gain free speech for their ideas. Now, the liberal church’s oral scriptures provide a justification to university students in the U.S. to obstruct invited scholars with different geo- and socio-political views even from debating them.

I wonder what academic forums are for.

Dangerous and passionate idealism runs wild in our campuses and streets. The majority of our community is being held hostage by mushrooming politically correct ideas developed by an oppressive minority that deviate from the mean and become normative. The First Amendment is being ignored. Free speech limits that have been accepted to some degree in order to prevent explicit and inciting hate have been unilaterally expanded by the political correctness liberal movement to obstruct any expression that “might” be perceived by anyone as offensive even if it is a factual and sensible criticism.

There is unfortunately one exclusion — demonstrating the hypocrisy of the liberal left wing church — that is the BDS movement. This is not sheer ignorance but an anti-Israeli-based antisemitic propaganda that supports the extinction of the Jewish state in stages. The uber-liberal BDS movement does not play a constructive role in order to bridge gaps in the peace process and the establishment of a peaceful coexistent Palestinian state. The BDSniks simply ostracize an entire democratic nation where freedom of religion is exercised by all compared to the rest of the stormy Middle East. The BDS zealots ignore any alleged misconducts in other countries and focus only on Israel. Opponents of the BDS movement who are willing to debate its inflammatory rhetoric are shunned from campuses and often fear for their safety. This includes close-to-home campuses, such as those of Yale University and Brown Univeristy.

This academic oppression and a lynch-mob mentality should be stopped. University administration should prevent this Clockwork Orange dystopia and take back the radicalized campuses that look more and more like a scene from Lord of the Flies.

Yifrah Kaminer MD lives in West Hartford. He can be reached at Kaminer@uchc.edu.