Column: Overthrowing Oceania

All black men are criminals and drug dealers. All women are weak and genetically predisposed to be poor at math and engineering. All homosexual men talk with lisps, act effeminate and carry purses. These stereotypes are not only offensive, but are simply untrue. Before you finish that letter you've started writing to the Dean of Students to have me punted out of the University, I want to ask you one question. When Todd Swiss wrote in his Oct. 4 column that all Christian conservatives are racists, were you offended by that stereotype too? Or did you nod your head in agreement?

The problem I've noticed with discrimination is that people really don't have a problem with it. What people have a problem with is being on the butt-end of discrimination. As long as "their people" are the beneficiaries, they never seem to mind. This attitude was displayed in several letters and columns that attacked my previous column on discrimination against conservatives. No one really denied that it took place; they said it just doesn't matter. Conservatives supposedly control the country, so liberals have a right to engage in hate. Diversity? My ass.

The fact is that the loud minority on this campus keeps parroting out stereotypes that are simply untrue. I'm a conservative Catholic Christian and graduate student in Catholic theology. I never cease to be amazed at the number of people who've never touched a Bible or picked up a catechism who purport to know more about my faith than I do.

My religion condemned racial slavery in 1435. The best man at my wedding was Hispanic. The two friends I play poker with are black and Hispanic. I am starting a not-for-profit organization to help supply and build up schools in Tanzania. The above facts won't stop some people from applying the stereotype to me anyway. Open-mindedness? My ass.

It isn't about racism, or any other "ism," really. It's about power. It's not about tolerance, diversity, unity, or any of those other nice-sounding words. It's about domination.

When I wrote last week on the state of public education, I found that my critics proved my point more eloquently and directly than I had. The argument goes something like this: if parents were allowed to choose which school their children went to, it would destroy the public education system. No one challenged the assertion that public education has failed. They state implicitly that public schools are inferior and fail to educate, and they can't compete with private schools that do. If the purpose of public education is to educate children and the system fails to do that, what point is there in maintaining that system? The answer is that the system isn't about education. It's about power.

Swiss brought up one specific act by one specific Christian school as an exemplar of Christian education as a whole. He apparently has no problem with the exclusion and demonization of Christians in schools because that is an acceptable discrimination. School choice gives parents the opportunity to choose what values and what kind of education their children receive. The threat is that they might not choose what liberal philosophy finds appropriate. That's why University Professor Walter Feinberg is upset at the concept of school choice. Tolerance? My ass.

This philosophy has nothing to offer except a universal condemnation of humanity as hopelessly evil. Humanity, therefore, requires benevolent "elites" to look out for them, and they can tolerate no dissent. Such is the power of liberalism whose militant sense of individualism does nothing but force conformity. In short, liberalism is a message that has failed to inspire. It's a philosophy born out of hate, sustained by hate, and ultimately being put to the death it rightly deserves by its own hate. It is that "poor player that struts and frets his hours upon stage, and then is heard no more."

John Bambenek is a university employee and a graduate student. His column appears every Friday. He can be reached at opinions@dailyillini.com.