Fix Features

liberty

College Student Takes on Sandra Fluke

by College Fix Staff on March 26, 2013

After hearing Sandra Fluke speak at American University recently, one female student wasn’t impressed.

In an op-ed titled “How Sandra Fluke Gets It Wrong,” sophomore Julia Morriss writes in The Eagle student newspaper that Fluke’s feminism charms didn’t work on her, and offers a pretty compelling argument against Fluke’s infamous claim to fame.

“Fluke presents an appealing position: someone else paying for contraception. For a college student on a limited insurance plan, this sounds pretty good. It’s easy to work up self-righteous anger about it. Lots of insurance plans cover Viagra and vasectomies, so why not my birth control? Isn’t this just another example of sexism in our society? It’s not my fault I was born a woman, so why should I have to pay extra for my contraception?

Once worked into a frazzle, we demand our “equal” treatment and push the government to ensure we get it. The result is Obamacare’s Contraceptive Mandate. While there are numerous problems with the mandate, some are especially poignant. It seriously infringes on religious liberty, and it denies any concept of responsibility for one’s actions and choices.

Though Catholics have been among the most vocal opponents to the mandate, it goes against the religious practices of many others, including some Jewish and Muslim groups. To them, contraception is considered immoral for a variety of reasons that they’ve explained on numerous occasions.

But they shouldn’t even have to explain. The First Amendment guarantees anyone the right to their religious practices, and no branch of government is authorized to take away constitutional rights. Religious groups are private institutions whose mission is not only their product or service but their desire to foster an environment where they can practice and share their faith. As a country that prides itself on religious tolerance, why are we punishing some for their beliefs and forcing them into practices they find immoral?

… Another problem with Fluke’s demands is that she refuses to accept responsibility for her choices, a problem our generation seems to struggle with on a continuous basis. We are constantly told that a woman has a right to her privacy and her own body and that her choices are her own. No one else gets to make them and the government should stay out of her bedroom. But then the government should pay for her decisions? If my choices are my own and only I get to make them, why does someone else have to shoulder the responsibility?

The choices we make come with consequences and responsibilities. That is no one else’s fault and no one else’s burden to bear. Live your life how you want. Just don’t ask me to pay for it.

Fluke embodies our generation’s sense of entitlement. As a woman, I understand her appeal, but I also recognize that in an economy already crushed with debt, we should not try to expand government spending for something that both hurts religious liberty and removes our responsibility for our actions.

Click here to read more.

CLICK HERE to Like The College Fix on Facebook.

{ 3 comments }

College Shuts Down Dorm Room Bible Study

by Nathan Harden - Fix Editor on March 11, 2013

Rollins College in central Florida is the latest institution of higher learning in the U.S. to wage war on student religious groups. College officials determined that Christian groups on campus were in violation of the school’s “non-discrimination policy.”

All Christian student groups who refuse to allow non-Christian leaders will cease to receive university funds, according to the school’s new interpretation of its “non-discrimination policy.” Because, of course, when a faith-based group wants its leaders to actually abide by its faith and beliefs–THAT’S DISCRIMINATION!!!!

Give me a break.

Now Rollins has reportedly ruled that students cannot even gather in their own dorms for a simple Bible study:

Four students affiliated with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship were holding an informal Bible study in the common area of a dorm suite. Midway through the study, a resident hall assistant entered the room and asked the student leading the study to step outside.

“He was told they were no longer allowed inside the dorm – even with the express consent of the students to do Bible studies,” said Greg Jao, InterVarsity’s national field director. “They said it was because InterVarsity was no longer a registered student group on campus.”

A Rollins spokesperson told Fox News that the rule was simply a miscommunication.

“No group is allowed to hold meetings in the common space of residence halls,” the spokesperson said. “A fraternity was recently in violation of this as well, and they were asked to meet elsewhere – so it was not just InterVarsity.”

Let’s get this straight because the logic employed by Rollins College in this story is very complicated.

1) Four students gather–not to hold an official meeting for their campus religious group–but rather in an informal setting to read the Bible together, and that’s suddenly a “group” holding “meetings?”

2) Students are told to leave the building because the religious group they happen to have been affiliated with is no longer recognized on campus.

3) Campus officials, when pressed by the news media, insist that the fact these four students were kicked out has nothing to do with the religious nature of the gathering, even though that’s what the students were told by the resident hall assistant.

4) The official says the reason the students were given for being kicked out was wrong, but that it is was right, nevertheless, for them to have been kicked out (for an entirely different reason).

Conclusion: If those four students had gathered instead to talk about the weather, or the Lakers, or to share celebrity gossip, that would have been OK–but talking about the Bible made the meeting not OK.

But it still has NOTHING to do with the students’ religion, they tell us.

Makes perfect sense, right?

Click here to Like The College Fix on Facebook.

Follow Nathan on Twitter @NathanHarden

(Image by KnowHimOnline / Flickr)

{ 11 comments }

Adviser: Romney “Shellshocked” by Loss

by Nathan Harden - Fix Editor on November 9, 2012

A series of miscalculations on voter turnout caused the Romney campaign to misread the polls in the final weeks of the campaign. When election results started coming in on Tuesday night, the numbers came as a shock, CBS News reports:

“There’s nothing worse than when you think you’re going to win, and you don’t,” said another adviser. “It was like a sucker punch.”

…Both wives looked stricken, and Ryan himself seemed grim. They all were thrust on that stage without understanding what had just happened.

“He was shellshocked,” one adviser said of Romney.

Romney and his campaign had gone into the evening confident they had a good path to victory, for emotional and intellectual reasons. The huge and enthusiastic crowds in swing state after swing state in recent weeks – not only for Romney but also for Paul Ryan – bolstered what they believed intellectually: that Obama would not get the kind of turnout he had in 2008.

They thought intensity and enthusiasm were on their side this time – poll after poll showed Republicans were more motivated to vote than Democrats – and that would translate into votes for Romney…

Those assumptions drove their campaign strategy: their internal polling showed them leading in key states, so they decided to make a play for a broad victory: go to places like Pennsylvania while also playing it safe in the last two weeks.

Those assessments were wrong.

What a bitter night for Romney after running for president almost non-stop for six years–and coming so close.

Indeed, what a bitter night for America.

Here at The College Fix, we believe standing for what’s right and true is always worthwhile, no matter the outcome. Liberty, freedom and opportunity, the right to life–these causes are the noble and just and worthy. In that sense, Romney, who may have worked harder than any man in history to become president, did not labor in vain.

And we who are of like mind must continue to work, and likewise do our utmost to defend those who cannot defend themselves, and to resist the attacks that, history shows, are ever being directed at human liberty.

Click here to Like The College Fix on Facebook.

{ 15 comments }

Freedom

by Nathan Harden - Fix Editor on July 4, 2012

In these troubled days, when the constitution is under attack and Americans’ individual liberties are imperiled, may this be a day in which we reflect on what’s at stake and resolve to do our utmost to guard those liberties. We at The College Fix wish you the very best this Independence Day.

{ 0 comments }

China Officials Celebrate Tiananmen Square Anniversary by Cracking Down on Dissent

by College Fix Staff on June 4, 2012

Fondly recalling the days in which they decisively crushed the Chinese youth’s dreams of freedom by means of the Tiananmen Square massacre, leaders of China’s communist party celebrated the anniversary of that occasion by rounding up critics of their statist rule and throwing them in prison.

Photographs of the Saturday protest posted online showed demonstrators with large placards that said “remember our struggle for democracy, freedom and rights as well as those heroes who met tragedy.”

A similar protest occurred in a park in southeast China’s Guiyang city last week, with police subsequently taking into custody at least four of the organisers of the event, the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group said on its website.

The US State Department on Sunday called on Beijing to release those still serving sentences for their participation in the 1989 demonstrations and do more to protect the human rights of its citizens.

But foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin hit back a day later, saying Beijing expressed “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition” to what he said were “groundless accusations”.

In Beijing, veteran dissident Hu Jia said on his microblog that, as in previous years on the Tiananmen anniversary, police had stepped up security around the homes of numerous political activists and social critics.

Rights activists and lawyers said police had also contacted them and warned against participating in activities marking the crackdown.

Another rights defender, Yu Xiaomei from eastern Jiangsu province, told AFP by telephone she had been followed by three men when she left her home on Monday.

“I recognized one of them. He had beaten me and detained me two years ago. I ran away, I don’t dare go out onto the street today,” she said.

Long live the people’s revolution.