It’s not often you see a purported journalist demanding that someone be censored, but that’s exactly what Craig Bannister does in a May 14 CNSNews.com blog post demanding that Georgetown University disinvite HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from an upcoming speech there.
Bannister rants that Georgetown is giving Sebelius “the opportunity to poison the school’s students’ minds with her anti-Catholic, pro-abortion, contraception mandate doctrine” despite several Catholic and religious organizations calling for Sebelius to be censored. Which means that Bannister himself is advocating Sebelius’ censorship as well.
Of course, Bannister offers no evidence that Sebelius will be “poisoning minds” with “doctrine” — indeed, he has no idea whatsoever what she will be talking about in her Georgetown appearance. Nevertheless, Bannister insists that Sebelius will “indoctrinate its students.”
Um, aren’t universities supposed to be open to exploring different points of view, even religiously oriented ones like Georgetown?
By screeching about Sebelius’ purported “indoctrination” — a claim that has no basis in reality because he does not know what she will say — Bannister is the one who is advocating indoctrination by insisting that Georgetown students not be exposed to views that conflict with a certain interpretation of Catholicism.
If people should simply be automatons for a particular ideology and be trained to automatically reject anything that conflicts with said ideology, why have schools and colleges at all? That’s the logical end point of Bannister’s thinking.
For him, it seems, obedience is more important than independent thought — an odd position for someone working in the leadership of a so-called “news” organization to take.