ERICKSON: There are no safe spaces
A couple of years ago, Mercer University invited me to give the Founder's Day address. Those addresses involve noted alums speaking to the university about their time at Mercer and how Mercer helped shape them. Naturally, the gender studies crowd was horrified. They threatened a mass walk out. They claimed that I was an inappropriate speaker for Founder's Day.
The censor was a position within the Roman Republic, then Empire, who decided who could or could not participate in government by taking the census. Over time, the role expanded to supervising public morality. Modern censors on college campuses demand complete uniformity in thought while praising diversity of skin color and gender as they seek to create "safe spaces" where they — protected by their tenure — and their precious students, who soon to return to a life with mom and dad and college debt, can avoid confronting opinions and people that might make them uncomfortable.
At Mercer, I did give my speech, and there was no walk out. I participated in an afternoon question and answer session akin to something out of "Monty Python" where the local feminists could make themselves feel good about their gender studies degrees by asking me questions like "why are you opposed to gender integration at Augusta National?" The answer, of course, was that I'm not opposed, but it is a private entity that should have the right to do as it wishes.
Luckily for the gender studies professors at Mercer and its administration, we live in Middle Georgia, outside the Ivy League and well away from the University of Missouri, where students are protesting because people are not nice. The sensitive souls at Yale were forced to consider that some people might wear Halloween costumes that are insensitive, though worn not meaning to offend. Students at Mizzou have been forced to confront the fact that in a city of 60,000 or so people, there actually might be some not very nice people.
The lack of emotional maturity from the participation trophy crowd fueled by '60s revolutionaries who still think the Beatles are cool and counter-cultural should be mocked by every sane person. The Robespierres who have assured us that a $120,000 degree in gender studies is a valid life choice instead of a con-job are now being led to a guillotine of their own making. It is rather exciting to see the censors being censored.
C.S. Lewis once wrote, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
The moral busybodies of college campuses who have taught kids that there can be such things as "safe spaces" and the world is fueled by "white privilege" have been tirelessly demanding we all conform to a reality that does not exist and telling the kids with participation trophies that they are victims. In reality, the world is a terribly cruel and unfair place and instead of trying to take down an imaginary patriarchy, these college students should spend more time learning the most important lesson in life: Suck it up, because life is not fair and one day worms will eat your rotting body.
Erick Erickson is a Fox News contributor and radio talk show host in Atlanta.
This story was originally published November 12, 2015 at 10:02 PM with the headline "ERICKSON: There are no safe spaces ."