Hate Running

The Colonel's alma mater, Ole Miss, is in the national spotlight again this week.  And, as usual, it ain't a good thing.

Seems a crowd of students -- which allegedly included approximately twenty freshmen members of the football team -- attended a campus theatrical production, the "Laramie Project," and allegedly heckled the performers with anti-homosexual epithets.

The hyperventilating reaction in the media and from the jack-booted gender-hustlers leading the political correctness parade has ranged from outrageous to idiotic, with no sane, sensible reactions in between.  

Disappointing, boorish behavior on the part of the hecklers?  Absolutely!

Hate speech?  Absolutely not!

There is no such thing as "hate" speech.

There is ignorant, uncouth, insensitive, impolite, biased, prejudiced, spiteful speech -- all protected under the very first, and most important amendment to the Constitution of these re-United States.

To those who would begin drawing lines beyond which constitutionally protected free speech is no longer protected and, further, illegal, the Colonel would pose the following question:

What makes you think that your currently-considered "politically correct" speech might not one day soon be considered not only politically incorrect but, further, illegal?

Once the precedent has been set by outlawing certain speech deemed "hateful," there is no stopping the slippery slide to absolute Orwellian thought-control.

(For the 'Bama and LSU grads reading this missive and confused by the reference in the paragraph above -- see the book "1984" by George Orwell.  You might have to come to Mississippi to find a library book not already colored in...) 

And while he is on the subject, the Colonel maintains in all sincerity that there is no such thing as a "hate crime." 

All crime is based on hate -- hatred for either God's Law or man's.

The hyperventilating political correctness crowd is calling on Coach Freeze to suspend the errant members of his football team, to "send a message."

Suspension may very well be the appropriate punishment for the boorish, anti-social behavior exhibited by his players, but Coach Freeze must carefully weigh his disciplinary action.

If he suspends the players, the race-hustlers will have a field day.

The Colonel would recommend a far more effective punishment used to great effect by the legendary Coach Vaught and his assistant coaches.

In his book, "Walk Carefully Around the Dead; Ole Miss Football...When the Coaches Held the Players by the...Throats," Page Cothren -- himself a player at Ole Miss and later an NFL standout -- relates in detail the high standards of personal conduct to which the players in the late 40's and 50's were held and the iron-fisted discipline by which they were held to those standards.

Cothren's accounts of players' antics and coaches' responses nearly always end with the same punishment -- running numerous laps up and down the stadium steps.  

If you don't think that's much of a punishment, then you've never had to do it.