The Students for Academic Freedom: giving "morons" a bad name.

Every so often, I like to pop by the web site of the Right-Wing Nutbars for College Fascism, just to see what intellectual atrocity they've come up with lately. And I was not disappointed, given a May 6 article by none other than David Limbaugh (he being the Limbaugh brother who is not the hillbilly heroin addict and "sanctity of marriage" proponent now working on his fourth wife).

Being that this piece is published at the SAF site, Limbaugh opens predictably, whining and snivelling about more academic left-wing bias:

If you want to get a real glimpse of the thought-tyranny of the academic Left, you should look at the case of Scott McConnell, who was recently expelled from Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., because his personal beliefs didn't fit within the school's indoctrination grid.

Oh, yawn. OK, what's this all about? Let's keep reading.

The Left, through an extraordinary process of self-deception, routinely congratulates itself for its enlightenment and open-mindedness, but the slightest scrutiny of its behavior in academia alone puts the lie to its claims. Sadly, the Left has even sunk its tentacles into Jesuit colleges like Le Moyne.

Um ... excuse me? So Limbaugh and the SAF have now taken to accusing Jesuit colleges of liberal bias? Jesus Christ (pun oh so intended), is there anyone these folks won't accuse of holding a grudge against conservatives? I just can't wait until they start to attack the Catholic Church. You know that's coming. But ... onward. This promises to get just plain weird.

So, given that McConnell was pursuing a masters in education at the college, what precisely was his crime? Praising Bush in an essay? Supporting the invasion of Iraq? Oh, here it is ...

Among McConnell's unforgivable sins were his audacious dissent from the university's dogma extolling multicultural education and his gross insubordination in asserting in a paper that "corporal punishment has a place in the classroom."

Oh ... so he's an aspiring teacher who just wants to beat kids when he thinks it's appropriate. Is that all? Well, for the life of me, I just don't see the problem. You have to think those Jesuits are kind of uptight if they can't see the value of a good beating every so often.

Seriously, this is a case that the SAF wants to hold up as an example of anti-conservative bias? An education grad student who thinks it's just ducky to slap kids around if he thinks they have it coming? What the fuck? Is this what the SAF has sunk to these days? I mean, was it just that they couldn't find any pedophile gym teachers to rally around or what?

The article is, of course, just one long piece of dishonest swill. At one point, Limbaugh quotes one David French, describing the college's action as: "This is one of the most brazen examples of censorship and summary expulsion for the expression of dissenting views I have ever seen."

What utter rubbish. As I read it, the college made no effort whatsoever to censor McConnell -- they just told him to take his child-beating attitude elsewhere. And one would think they have every right to not want their education program associated with someone who could conceivably be a legal liability. I mean, imagine the shitstorm that would erupt if McConnell, somewhere down the road, assaulted and injured one of his students and it came out that the college knew of his proclivities, didn't warn anyone and gave him his degree. Can you say "culpable"? Oh, yeah.

But here's the best part. You have to read all the way to the second-last paragraph to learn that Le Moyne College is, in fact, a private college. That's right: private, which means they can do whatever the fuck they want, which makes all of this conservative outrage so deliciously hypocritical because, as we all know, the right-wing wankers who are all up in arms about McConnell getting his ass booted out of a private college for whatever reason are exactly the same two-faced assholes who will defend the Boy Scouts' position on discriminating against anyone they want because the Scouts are (and you saw this coming, didn't you?) a "private" organization. If the hypocrisy was any deeper, you could dog paddle in it.

Of course, I didn't need to drag out the story this long. I could have just wailed on these idiots in a paragraph or two, like Steve Gilliard did over here. And as for the SAF, it's hard to know just how much lower they can sink. But I'll keep my eye on them, and let you know.