The professor just wants permission to indoctrinate students

To the editor,

Over the years I have come to recognize that what we call freedom can be as messy as the floor in an abattoir. Free speech can be downright ugly and offensive. Freedom of assembly can turn into confrontations of one sort or another. The right to life can turn deadly for some. And so it goes.

One has to wonder what the founders were thinking when they read what Jefferson and his associates wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Surely those men had to know that what they were calling “truths” would be looked upon in future years as mere suppositions, not truths. And “self evident”? Certainly learned men will one day demand some material proof, not simply take the word of Jefferson and the founders. Who would ever believe that “all men are created equal”. My goodness, just look around you . . . tall, short, comely, plain, bright and dull, variations in color. For sure, this is not ‘equal’. Endowed by their Creator? A humanist would take issue with that statement, and demand proof of such. This word ‘unalienable’ is an insistence that these new proclaimed Rights are God given and cannot be taken away? Who ever heard of such a thing? That those Rights include Life and Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness? Does that really mean that everyone is entitled to life? Liberty? And the pursuit of Happiness? Pshaw! What are those fools thinking?

If you notice, the founders didn’t guarantee happiness. Nor did they guarantee anyone would be entitled to it. They only said that we have a God given right to pursue it. Further, they didn’t guarantee anyone would be as successful as their neighbor, but they gave each of us the liberty to make the most out of the talents we were given. The right to life called for in the Declaration, and codified in the 14th Amendment, said that God given right couldn’t be taken away without ‘due process’. But we’re smarter now and we just ignore that ‘unalienable right’. For shame!

This preamble brings me to Tuesday’s column by Professor Sandy. He did his best (using the work of others, as he is inclined to do) to use emotion in his attempt to plead for equality of outcome. After reading his column I was once again reminded of the words of Albert Camus, the French philosopher, author, and anarchist, who said, “The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience”.

Professor Sandy doesn’t really want equality of outcome, as he and we all know that is an impossibility. He simply wants permission to indoctrinate students so that they agree with his positions. You see, he doesn’t trust that Jefferson and the founders knew what they were doing when they entrusted plain, everyday people to think for themselves, to achieve based on their own merits, to have a shot at catching the gold ring in life’s merry-go-round. How could the founders possibly have thought that just plain folks would be smart enough to make decisions for themselves?

Like a said, freedom can be as messy as the floor in the slaughterhouse. It’s a beautiful thing though, isn’t it?

Why don’t we replace ‘tenure’ with merit?

Bob Meade

Laconia