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A professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing (Yes, there really is an actual university department for that. ) at the University of Texas has weighed in on the proposed Campus Carry bill (HB750) working its way through the legislature - needless to say, she opposes it, and has had her commentary published in the Austin American-Statesman paper and at the paper's website here:

http://www.statesman.com/opinion/syvers ... 41292.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There have been some responses that take issue with her assertions, and, truth be told, she's really not doing very well in defending her views.

* Rather than refuting dissenting opinions, she characterizes them as "ill-founded" and the persons who disagree with her are "deluded."
* She equates "freedom" with "disarmament" and disparages our ideas of freedom as being "narrow, individualistic, and self-centered." (Her outlook is distinctly collectivist.)
* She adds in the obligatory comment equating self defense with vigilante violence.
* And finally, she closes her latest response with an argument I have never - NEVER - seen uttered before: even when packing a gun, we will all still get old, get sick, and die.

So she felt a need to point out that firearms don't stave off old age. I don't know whether to or at this coming from a professor at UT.

I pity her students - at least the ones studying for a REAL degree, who are just using her class to fill out a humanities or social science requirement.

HankB wrote:A professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing (Yes, there really is an actual university department for that. ) at the University of Texas has weighed in on the proposed Campus Carry bill (HB750) working its way through the legislature - needless to say, she opposes it, and has had her commentary published in the Austin American-Statesman paper and at the paper's website here:

http://www.statesman.com/opinion/syvers ... 41292.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There have been some responses that take issue with her assertions, and, truth be told, she's really not doing very well in defending her views.

* Rather than refuting dissenting opinions, she characterizes them as "ill-founded" and the persons who disagree with her are "deluded."
* She equates "freedom" with "disarmament" and disparages our ideas of freedom as being "narrow, individualistic, and self-centered." (Her outlook is distinctly collectivist.)
* She adds in the obligatory comment equating self defense with vigilante violence.
* And finally, she closes her latest response with an argument I have never - NEVER - seen uttered before: even when packing a gun, we will all still get old, get sick, and die.

So she felt a need to point out that firearms don't stave off old age. I don't know whether to or at this coming from a professor at UT.

I pity her students - at least the ones studying for a REAL degree, who are just using her class to fill out a humanities or social science requirement.

She, and her colleagues, will someday retire with a very nice pension funded by me and you. Is this a great country/state or what?

She has every right in the world to not own a gun and feel smug and morally superior about the fact. She can make all the snide jokes she wants about gun ownership relating to the size of certain external organs, and even has an absolute right to her apparent world view of "everyone dies, so why bother?"

She does not have the right to make me die unarmed in a college classroom to some lunatic to appease those same views.

The Department of Rhetoric and Writing

Is that anything like the Department of Redundancy Department?

How do you post a comment on that thing?

I signed up, however, I can't seem to find a way to post a comment?

They must have a 2nd Amendment filter in place...

HankB wrote:A professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing (Yes, there really is an actual university department for that. )

In defense of universities everywhere, Departments of Rhetoric and Writing are required these days because students come out of high school utterly incapable of writing intelligible sentences or articulating ideas with logic and reason. Spelling, grammar and sentence construction appear no longer to be a part of education at any level below the colleges. You can imagine how successful the colleges are at compressing twelve missing years of primary and secondary education into two semesters of Rhetoric and Writing classes.

baldeagle wrote:

HankB wrote:A professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing (Yes, there really is an actual university department for that. )

In defense of universities everywhere, Departments of Rhetoric and Writing are required these days because students come out of high school utterly incapable of writing intelligible sentences or articulating ideas with logic and reason. Spelling, grammar and sentence construction appear no longer to be a part of education at any level below the colleges. You can imagine how successful the colleges are at compressing twelve missing years of primary and secondary education into two semesters of Rhetoric and Writing classes.

We pay property tax for that?

Oldgringo wrote:

baldeagle wrote:

HankB wrote:A professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing (Yes, there really is an actual university department for that. )

In defense of universities everywhere, Departments of Rhetoric and Writing are required these days because students come out of high school utterly incapable of writing intelligible sentences or articulating ideas with logic and reason. Spelling, grammar and sentence construction appear no longer to be a part of education at any level below the colleges. You can imagine how successful the colleges are at compressing twelve missing years of primary and secondary education into two semesters of Rhetoric and Writing classes.

We pay property tax for that?

Yes, you do.

Oldgringo wrote:

baldeagle wrote:

HankB wrote:A professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing (Yes, there really is an actual university department for that. )

In defense of universities everywhere, Departments of Rhetoric and Writing are required these days because students come out of high school utterly incapable of writing intelligible sentences or articulating ideas with logic and reason. Spelling, grammar and sentence construction appear no longer to be a part of education at any level below the colleges. You can imagine how successful the colleges are at compressing twelve missing years of primary and secondary education into two semesters of Rhetoric and Writing classes.

We pay property tax for that?

Yup!

I mean.....'yes'.

And so she eloquently makes a nonsensical point as the Greeks were wont to do with their rhetoric.

cbr600 wrote:

baldeagle wrote:

HankB wrote:A professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing (Yes, there really is an actual university department for that. )

In defense of universities everywhere, Departments of Rhetoric and Writing are required these days because students come out of high school utterly incapable of writing intelligible sentences or articulating ideas with logic and reason. Spelling, grammar and sentence construction appear no longer to be a part of education at any level below the colleges.

Although the professor's spelling and grammar seem up to par, logic and reason is lacking. One might even say conspicuous in its absence.

just wait till you meet her im sure she is a real brainiac.most are very book smart and nothing else.

Wow. Just read that, and.....wow. I would have expected a statement like that in the article to be in a paper in DC, or Eugene, OR, but Texas? They are like ostriches, head in the ground when confronted with something that impinges on their narrow world view.

HankB wrote:A professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing (Yes, there really is an actual university department for that. ) at the University of Texas has weighed in on the proposed Campus Carry bill (HB750) working its way through the legislature - needless to say, she opposes it, and has had her commentary published in the Austin American-Statesman paper and at the paper's website here:

http://www.statesman.com/opinion/syvers ... 41292.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There have been some responses that take issue with her assertions, and, truth be told, she's really not doing very well in defending her views.

* Rather than refuting dissenting opinions, she characterizes them as "ill-founded" and the persons who disagree with her are "deluded."
* She equates "freedom" with "disarmament" and disparages our ideas of freedom as being "narrow, individualistic, and self-centered." (Her outlook is distinctly collectivist.)
* She adds in the obligatory comment equating self defense with vigilante violence.
* And finally, she closes her latest response with an argument I have never - NEVER - seen uttered before: even when packing a gun, we will all still get old, get sick, and die.

So she felt a need to point out that firearms don't stave off old age. I don't know whether to or at this coming from a professor at UT.

I pity her students - at least the ones studying for a REAL degree, who are just using her class to fill out a humanities or social science requirement.

This statement in her smug "dear dissenters" comments tells you what informs all of her other remarks:

"The more people wandering around with guns, the less free we all are, because we trade our relative safety of living in peace for your deluded ideas of safety by the threat of violence. You then become no different than the very ones you fear and hate. "

"But vigilante violence does not offer safety nor peace. That is why police forces were created in civilized societies."

She's one of these lunatics who believe that being raped or murdered is morally superior to defending yourself. She can't distinguish a moral difference between a thug raping and murdering people and people defending themselves from being raped and murdered. While this is a fundamentally immoral belief it's somewhat tolerable when it's genuinely held and the person who holds it is against all violence and willing to sacrifice their own life for that belief. But she doesn't have such convictions. She wants to compel others to make the sacrifice she professes to believe, to be non-violent unto death, while at the same time it's alright with her for the police to use violence. Apparently then, violence can produce safety, but only after the magical application of government pixie dust.

The other thing her ravings demonstrate is that "liberal arts" professors are employed on the basis of their political views and how well they fit within the liberal collective, not for their aptitude. There is no real fix for the problems of this country that doesn't include a thorough scrubbing of college "liberal arts" departments --making political views secondary to competence.

Maybe she was simply speaking rhetorically.