Friday, June 26, 2015

Beck: University of California Is Going to Put a Bullet in Your Head

Another day, another melodramatic Glenn Beck freakout. And as usual, the object of his freakout is a rule that doesn’t actually exist. Falsely claiming that the University of California had banned phrases like “America is the land of opportunity,” Beck works himself up into a lather about this ends with them shooting people in the head.

On his radio program this morning, Glenn Beck voiced his outrage over reports that the University of California had supposedly banned phrases such as “America is the land of opportunity” and “America is a melting pot” on the grounds that they are “microaggressions” that could potentially offend others.

In reality, the university had simply held “seminars to make people aware of how their words or actions may be interpreted when used in certain contexts.” Nobody was required to attend these seminars and “no one at the University of California is prohibited from making [these sorts of] statements.”

So, totally false, like nearly everything Glenn Beck says. Cue the hyperbole:

Calling the University of California “a re-education camp,” Beck warned that the university had officially banned certain thoughts and so it is only a matter of time before it bans any books which contain those thoughts. From there, it was just a short step to attacking the people who hold those views and beating them in the streets. And if that doesn’t get them to shut up, Beck said, “you just kill a few of them and everybody else shuts up.”

“You ban not just words but thought; next thing, you’re going to be banning books,” Beck warned. “And the step after that is a bullet to the head.”

So let’s add up the score. The premise of the argument is false and the conclusion is absurd and hyperbolic. Other than that, totally cool.

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