Cowardice In The Least Tolerable Of Places

     I was casting about, looking for some “spleen fuel” and finding none, wondering if today might prove to be an involuntary day off from blogging, when I happened upon this opinion column from noted economist and opinion-monger Walter Williams. Note that the link goes to an entry in the “Internet Archive Wayback Machine,” even though it was published on October 17 of this year: only three days ago. Sarah Hoyt, who noted it at Instapundit, said only this about it:

     THE MOBS COME FOR WALTER WILLIAMS.

     I was puzzled for a moment...until I took the trouble to go to the article’s original URL at the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

     A note from the editor about Walter Williams:

     On Saturday, we published a Walter Williams column, "White Privilege and Other Fables," that included two paragraphs about sexual assault - to which many readers have taken strong exception.

     As we said in an earlier note, we often publish opinion pieces with which we, too, strenuously disagree — and we disagreed with Williams' points in his Saturday column.

     That was an understatement.

     The column fell short of our editorial standards. Given the chance to do it all over again, we would not run it - and certainly not those two paragraphs.

     In light of that, we are removing the column from Richmond.com, and we are re-evaluating Williams' place in our stable of syndicated columnists.

     That fit of editorial high dudgeon was over these two paragraphs from Professor Williams’s column:

     Then there’s the issue of campus rape and sexual assault. Before addressing that, let me ask you a question. Do I have a right to place my wallet on the roof of my car, go into my house, have lunch, take a nap and return to my car and find my wallet just where I placed it? I think I have every right to do so, but the real question is whether it would be a wise decision. Some college women get stoned, use foul language and dance suggestively.

     I think they have a right to behave that way and not be raped or sexually assaulted. But just as in the example of my placing my wallet on the roof of my car, I’d ask whether it is wise behavior.

     Apparently a number of readers objected to those two paragraphs, probably calling them “victim-blaming”...which they are not. Professor Williams said explicitly that women have the right to behave as foolishly as they like without being assaulted for it. That doesn’t detract from the foolishness of the behavior: sexually suggestive behavior coupled to personal intoxication in a venue where sexual assaults have been known to occur.

     An important Eastern Seaboard newspaper has apparently decided that opinions contrary to those of its readership or its editorial board must be deemed unprintable – silenced.

     So I left this reply under my “Louis Redmond” Facebook identity:

     Professor Wiliams is a highly intelligent and candid man, and you are revealed as craven fools by what you've done. Imagine it: a newspaper, supposedly dedicated to "telling it like it is," committing a cringing retreat because some of its readers were bothered by two paragraphs -- two exceedingly accurate paragraphs, as it happens -- of an opinion column.

     This country is going through a Hell of sectarian and identity group warfare because no one can stand to hear a sentiment that differs with his own. Rather than stand foursquare for freedom of opinion, the Times-Dispatch has decided to go along for the ride. How ignoble. John Peter Zenger is probably whirling in his grave.

     In the few minutes since I penned the above, I’ve only grown more furious.

     In this case the problem is women. But then, it nearly always is.

---

     Over my 65 years I’ve heard more complete bullshit than my brain can hold, and nearly all of it has come from women. I’ve concluded that American women have been indoctrinated – operant-conditioned, really – to believe that their social status arises from how greatly and how frequently they can become offended. They who objected to Professor Williams’s article became offended merely because he cautioned them, and their daughters, not to do something obviously unwise.

     No one likes criticism. No one likes being told that he’s done a foolish thing that increased his chances of being harmed. But it’s in the nature of the universe, which has rather strict laws about cause and effect, that acting like a loose woman increases the probability of being treated like a loose woman, whether or not the treatment at issue would be legal. To do so in the presence of young men “on the prowl,” under conditions where sexual contact is, shall we say, not unknown, is sheerest idiocy.

     But tell a young woman not to take an unwise chance? Tell her that she shouldn’t walk into a lion’s den wearing nothing but steaks? Time was, it was simple good advice any father would give to his teenage daughters. Apparently it’s no longer speakable.

     The objections arise almost exclusively from women: women obsessed with their right to do exactly as they please and absolutely unwilling to hear how their behavior could affect their chance of being victimized.

     Yes, ladies: You have the right not to be raped. You have the right not to be assaulted. But how many of you would walk into a college frat house in the nude and expect nothing to come of it? Assuming that nothing were to happen to you on the instant, how many of you would then gyrate suggestively while spewing filthy language and still deem yourselves perfectly safe?

     How many of you are too stupidly self-absorbed to be borne?

     The answer to that final question seems to be getting larger every day. Ponder it in light of the increasing number of young, unmated women demanding to know “where all the good men have gone.”

     All that having been said, I reserve my principal umbrage for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, a publication run either by the most cowardly editorial staff in the history of journalism, or by women. I’m unsure which of those conditions would be preferable to the other.