ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 12, 1995                   TAG: 9504180019
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MIDDLE GROUND?

THE RESISTANCE to political correctness may be getting almost as boring as political correctness itself - though, thankfully, in amassing anecdotes from around the country, the rebellion is still largely free of the incomprehensible jargon pervading PC academia.

Even so, as a book published this year by New York Times reporter Richard Bernstein reminds, the resistance must go on. The threats to Western values of free thought and free expression remain alive and well as ever. In the name of "diversity," a gray, lifeless uniformity continues to be enforced, and incorrect speech punished.

Bernstein's book, Dictatorship of Virtue, is the latest addition to a depressing library of horror stories about the excesses of multiculturalism and other PC variants running amok - mostly (where else?) on college campuses.

As noted in an article about the book by Wall Street Journal features editor David Brooks, in "The Public Interest" magazine, one of the more amusing and amazing examples Bernstein cites is a conversation with a university administrator at the Women's Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Bernstein asks why the center offers only "pro-choice" information about abortion.

"My position," replies the administrator, "is that the pro-choice position is the middle ground. The middle ground allows for everybody to have their own personal opinion."

Bernstein, not quite getting it, asks the administrator to elaborate. She does.

"If you have pro-life saying there should be no abortion, the opposite of that is that everybody should have an abortion. The middle ground is that everybody should decide for themselves. You cannot point to a program where I have said everybody should get an abortion. We don't support that."

Another reminder that, on many campuses - where freedom of inquiry and tolerance for diverse views ought to claim top value - the middle ground remains an endangered spot, slippery and shrinking. The vigilant better stay at their posts. 


 by CNB