Social Justice Warrior Starts to Think

From July 13, 2015 New York Post:

A few weeks ago, I was heralded as a “Social Justice Warrior” by an anonymous commenter on the Internet. The title was meant, of course, as an insult — but I was elated.

I imagined myself as a superhero, fighting one stigma at a time until the United States became a land of truly equal opportunity.

I suppose I’d prefer to be a Social Justice Ninja, because “warrior” lacks the intrigue and mystery that I always try to emulate in my Cat Woman costume at Halloween.

Nonetheless, to him, I was a warrior for pushing a politically correct agenda by using rhetoric that wasn’t my own, but instead airy slogans right out of the leftist playbook.

I’m ashamed to admit it, but he was right.

I’m a rising junior at Columbia, one of the most PC universities in the country. We consider ourselves a community of protesters that links arms to keep out anything “oppressive,” even when we don’t understand its complexities. Our favorite words are “problematic” and “privileged,” especially when they work hand in hand....

But as a country and a generation, we need to be more accepting of viewpoints different from our own.

Homogeneity in ideology isn’t unique to millennials, but it’s getting worse with us, and it inhibits any kind of growth in our ability to interpret and analyze social issues.

We can’t enter a second Age of Enlightenment if we don’t find spaces like those in the 18th century where (yes, white male) citizens gathered to educate themselves.

Atop our crumbling capacity to vocalize our values is a second tier of concerns: Because our energy is focused on how we present ourselves in a purely oratory sense, we’ve become superficial.

Instapundit has great fun with this:

It’s one thing to have the already enormous self-esteem that all kids these seem to have drilled into them by their teachers since kindergarten. But if you imagine yourself a superhero ninja Catwoman comic book character while a student in college, it might be time for a wakeup call. (Otherwise, it will arrive good and hard when you enter the workforce.) To paraphrase the line from The Incredibles, if everyone thinks he’s a superhero, then no one is.