Oxford Yobs

Despite its unfair swipe at Puritanism, I'm thankful for this article by historian and blogger Tim Stanley for highlighting a turn of events for the worst at Oxford University.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11239437/Oxford-students-shut-down-abortion-debate.-Free-speech-is-under-assault-on-campus.html

Ironically, these elite students lose the moral high ground with their bad language and intransigeant views - the moral high ground as they see it. And of course foul language does indeed short-circuit sane and civilised discussion, every time. What is happening to us as a culture if even Oxford is a hotbed of yobbery? On the other hand, these students don't seem to be aware of what they're reacting to on a deeper level. As far as I can tell, they're not enraged by the suject of the proposed debate so much as by the lingering Christian values the suject of abortion culture arises from. If so, their behaviour is even more troubling, for it touches something more visceral than the failure of education, and of the social climate generally, to nurture thinking minds and generous hearts. Rage against a perceived threat to the right to abortion does not stop to consider the multitude of defenceless ones that abortion kills every day. What's more, as in this case, it violently resents the mere suggestion that these invisible victims affect us, whether we acknowledge them or not..