i have the privilege of welcoming today's speaker. the president of oklahoma wesleyan university. tornado if arrest piper. i have the honor of watching his three massive dog when he is giving these lectures. in his 14 years as president of the university, dr. piper has become known for his passionates defense of intellectual freedom. he advocates tirelessly for cultural courage ground in the conservation of time, tested truths. commentary on religion, education and politics challenges the intolerance of today's academic community. at oklahoma wesleyan he type ofs students to follow four basic pillars. the otherwise op-eds are feed tour in the local and national news outlets and is regular guest on talk radio across the nation himself most well-known op-ed, this is not a daycare, it's a university, has since gone viral and is now the basis for his new book. a native of hillsdale, michigan, dr. piper and his wife and their two sons have served as oklahoma's west layn's first family since august of 2002. dr. piper participated in community some church and serves on a variety of councils and boards relating relate christian leadership, pock policy and community l. nice to join you today. let's start. you should know your audience, and i would suggest the audience should know their speaker. so let me clarify a couple of things. trigger warnings. i do not issue trigger warnings. i don't believe in safe spaces and as cs lewis said, he is not safe but he is good. i would argue the great lyon of the academy of the ivory tower, of the university, of american and western universities and colleges should not be safe but indeed they are good. i don't believe that my feelings or yours are the million measuring rod of what is right or wrong. actually believe education should be more about facts than feelings. feelings lead to fascism and facts lead to freedom. remember the basic fact that jesus told us of, you shall know the truth. and it shall set you free. i believe in ideas and i believe in words. i believe that when we lose control of our words, we lose control of our ideas and we lose control of the debate, and when we lose control of the debate we ultimately lose control of our freedom. for example, when we dumb down the definition of words like hate to nothing more than disagreement, we make hate meaningless, and disagreement dangerous. words matter. ideas have consequences. and one last word before i get into my lecture. life isn't about you. education isn't about you. it isn't about me. george mcdonald, a writer from the turn of the 1800s to the 1900s, a writer that led to the conversion of c.s. lewis, had this to say. the core prim of hell is i am my own, i am my own king. i am the center of. i am the object and the end. my judgment is the faultless rule of all things. the claim that we can define and re-redine everything from marriage to morality, from neil female, everything from what it means to be good and what it means to be bad this, claim of god-like deity canning on lead to the ugly hell of our open making. believe it's only repentance and confession that will rescue us from this fate. so, i'm the guy, i'm the guy that wrote this op-ed title "this is a university, not a daycare." let me give you a context. then we'll launch into a little bit of a script and i'll add lib as we go along, too. it was just before thanksgiving 2015, oklahoma wesleyan university still has required chapels every wednesday and friday. and i received a phone call from one of my vice presidents who was the chapel speaker on this particular day. i didn't go to chapel that day. had something else to do and he wanted to call me and let me to the there could be a problem. he said, dr. piper, one of my students, one of our student, after chapel, came to me and basically played the victimization card. he told me that i had offended him, that i had singled him out and single hit peers out and he didn't like it. he didn't like my chapel speech. my sermon. and i said to him, what in the world did you speak on? and he said you won't believe this. i'm a monster, first corinthians 1. for those who don't know, furs corrine chances 13 is the love chapter of the bible. you heard it read at many weddings. love is patient, love is kind. well, asked this turk vp, give me a copy of your sermon because because he rarely ad libs. so i read through the sermon and it was a very simple and brief homily on love. no political humor no star custom, nat whatsoever that could be deemed offensive other than first corinthians 13. so, i was incredulous. thought to miss an institution like oklahoma wesleyan, as well and clear in our mark promotion who we and are why you should come there we stand for at the priority ore christ. you know we have center on capitalism, foreswear spice and constitutional liberty. because we think those things are good. not bad. you know that we stand for pro life and that we actually promote through our nursing program and premed program that god defines life. you don't. oklahoma wesleyan can't be confused. when you choose to pay to go through you're buying a product that is well defined. yet mass n spate of my we had a student saying he didn't like first corinthians 13. so i want to share with you what my response was. this is the op-ed. i actually published this on the web site, oklahoma wesleyan's web site, and i also published in a local newspaper which i have the routine of doing and have been doing that a decade or so. i said to this young man, you know that feeling of ditch comfort you have after listening to a sermon? called your conscious. an altar call is supposed to make you feel wood, supposed to make you feel some degree of guilt. the goal of many a good siron is to confess your sins and not do to cod little you. the objective is your confession, not your self-actualization so let me offer you some advice. you've want the chaplain to tell you you're a victim rather than tell you, you need virtue, that's may not be the university you're looking for. if you want to complain about a sermon that makes you feel less than loving, for not showing love, this might be the wrong place. if you're more interested in playing the hater card than you are in con fessing your own head, if you want to arrogantly lecture rather than humbly learn. you don't want to feel guilt in your soul if you're guilty of sin and want to be unabled rather than con from thread are many universities across the lan in missouri and elsewhere, that will give you exactly what you want. but oklahoma wesleyan university is not one of them. at we teach you to be selfless rather thatsen centered. more interesting in you principal personal forgiveness than personal revenge. want you to model reconciliation rather than foment. we believe in the con ten of your character and more important than the color of your skip. we don't believe you have been victimized every time you feel guilty and we don't issue trigger warnings before altar call. it's not safe place but rather a police to learn, to learn that life isn't about you, but about others, that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon, it's called guilt. and that the way to address issue trigger warnings to repent of everything that is wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that is wrong with them. this is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up. this is not a daycare. this is a university. well, this cautioned a bit of a grass fire and before i knew it fox and friends and glen beck and -- cbs and cnn and national review and weapons wednesday and the new york times and the chronicle of higher education and newspapers and great britains' the far east were all of a sudden interested. apparently many wanted to hear what i had so say. apparently i said something many were waiting for. apparently the simple and brief response struck a chord. many who even openly disagreed with what they called my religion and my politics, wrote me to say, thank you. this is long overdue. please carry on. side bar. we had 3.5 million views in about a two-week period. 97% of the comments were positive. 97%. there were dozens upon dozens if not hundreds of people that wrote in, texted, e-mailed, snail mail, called, and said, i don't like your religion, i checked you out, i don't like your politics, read your web site. but it's about time somebody said it. thank you. so why? why? i believe it's because we intuitively recognize as rational human beings, we're made in the image of god, that there is great power in what? ideas. ideas. and that at the end of the day civilizations are built and cultures are conquered not suchso much by armies and naves but by speeches and lectures and blogs and books, by the power of ideas, much more so than that of bullets. you guys know this. you've been taught this, 1948. richard we've very, told us that ideas have consequences, the title of his become, hardly even need to read the book. read the title. ideas have consequences. ideas matter. a few years after that -- excuse me -- a few years earlier than 1948, hitler said let me control the textbooks and i'll control the state. orwell said, we warn of dystopias where education can be used a means of total power and control. ideas have consequences. good and evil people have recognized this. good ideas lead to good culture and good government and good behavior and good community and good church and good corporations and good kids. bat ideas lead to the opposite. like your grandmother told you. garbage in, garbage out. she was right. ideas merit. and i would argue today that education is in a total mess, colleges and universities are in cries. the contemporary university is no longer known for pursuing truth but for celebrating tolerance and in name of tolerance i'm item my intolerance is intollable. this is nonsense. it's ideologically vacuous. can't tolerate your intolerance, i hate you hateful people. i'm absolutely confident that there are no absolutes and i know nothing can be known. this is humorous, funny, if it weren't so sad. it's like watching a dog chase its tail. self-defeating duplicity after every turn. their result of the nonsense is the tradition of good teaching has become the dark flag of tyranny, almost overnight. what was academic freedom yesterday is ideologyat fascism today. liberalled now demand conformity. rather than -- we have become bastions, universities and campuses and colleges have been bastions of speech codes that's right bulwarks of free people. faculty and students alike are more interested in trigger warnings than pursuing truth. run by the state and thought police colleges have been indoctrination camps, much more so than campuses of open inquiry. prop began a da and pour -- propaganda d.a. and power rule where there used to be pursuit of throughout. the track record is terrible. decade after decade we taught the next generation doesn't merit what you believe as long as it works for you if you ever say that, shame onout. doesn't parent what you believe as long as is works for you. all morality and i real give good and evil are subjective social constructs. year after year we preach to passers and priests are stupid and that liberation theology is the only good religion. day in and day out, we have fomented class resentment and racial an miss, and diminish excellent why extolling entitlement. why are be surprised at the result? our leaderred have loathers courage, congress lost is soul. our kids lost their conscience and character. our culture is without a conscience. yes, ideas have consequences. and the lousy ideas that we have been teaching in our colleges and in our universities for the past several decades are bearing themselves out daily before our eyes. but, okay, i'm bee moening the problem. actuallying there there is a solution. i think it's found in the historical liberal arts. side bar. my first book, which you can fine at not a daycare.com, if you care, as well as any subsequent writings. my first book was titled, why i'm a liberal and other conservative ideas. what was my point? as an unpaulitiest and bold conservative who believes in conserving things i'm a conservation u.s. believe in conserve the environment and bag good steward of the water and air and forest and whale and owl. i'm a conserve h.i.v. and i believe in conserving other things and more important and more enduring, truth. those ideas that have been tested by time and confirmed by reason and validated with experience, and given to us by revelation. the self-evidence truths endowed to us by who? somebody bigger and better than you or me. the permanency. of 0 those things that should be conserved. as conservative, ironically, i am more classically liberal than my left of center counterparts because i believe in a good robust exchange of ideas. believe in the power of the debate. i believe that there's a right answer and a wrong answer at the end of the hour, at the end of the lecture, at the end of the argument, and i think the truth is the jump, not you, not me north power, not politics, not the pundit, not the professor, not the priest and not in the pastor i. believe truth is the judge of the debate and that liberates me to engage. rather than confines me. i'm more liberal than those that often disagree with me. because i believe in liberty. and liberation and freedom and justice. i believe that if you go back a thousand years to the birthplace, the cradle of the liberal arts movement, oxford, a thousand years, the university was established to liberate us to educate a free man and a free mom, free culture and free society. to give us a sense of liberty and liberation, thus the word liberal. so why, why do you believe people were so interested in what i had to say? why were 3.5 million -- still being followed, still being posted -- you're here today to hear about i, some two years later. was far back as moses and later from -- we were told that only by trusting in the paradox of liberty and law can we ever hope to protect our unalienable right outfield life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and thereby be a people with purpose, not hapless but happen, not purposeless but with purpose. an objective goal, measuring rod outside of those being measured. self-evident truths endowed from outside, not constructed from inside. it was those fences around freedom that chesterton told us that you can have no liberty without law. and you can have no freedom without fences. that is how we become a free people and a free country. you see, freedom, trust and principles rather than people, power, politics, or pundits, freedom honors the debate because it knows there's an answer, true north, or a measuring rod outside of those things being measured. again, chesterton. when you get rid of the big laws -- this guess stuff, worth the price of admission. when you get rid of the big laws, you don't get liberty. you get thousands and thousands of little laws that rush in to fill the vacuum. we can't live as a culture by 10 simple laws. that all we needed. that's all we needed. 10 simple laws we refused to live by the big laws and by the way, jesus narrowed down to two elm where can't liver by ten or two so what happens? reames upon ream odd upon reames of little laws rushing in to fill the vacuum. being produced in this city, tells us how to do everything down to which bathroom to use. when you get rid of big laws, you don't get liberty but, rather, thousands upon thousands of little laws that rush in to fill the vacuum. academic freedom never found any rules of government. the pour of professor order temper tantrums of students. but, rather, in at the fewer and simple laws of nature and nature's god. there's a reason that dozen of universities were once elm blazenned with the motto, what? you shall know the truths. and the truth shall set you free. there is no liberty without law and there is no freedom. if you stop teaching truth. the solution to this nonsense can be found in common sense, sense that is common, in self-evident truths endowed to us by our creator rather than self-centereddedness in the air began and callous human heart. in the law of nature and nature's god the truth of god is written on every human heart. for example, if you want to dispute that, do we know that rape is wrong? do we? do we know that the holocaust was estill in do we know that slavery is a bad thing? we hold these truths to be, what? self-evident. not socially constructed. why? because there is a creator and it's not you. and it's not me. the solution to this nonsense is return to teaching the laws that make sense. we need to have competence in the laws that bring liberty and stop teaching lies. natural law leads to freedom. man-made laws bring nothing but more restrictions, more government, more division, more control, more fascism and less liberty. may seem rerebun can't but i i'd like to -- redundant but aid like to leave you with a very simple ask and clear message. culture is about ideas. and ideas are defined by what? words. in other words, words mean something. side bar. always remember that he who defines the words, wins the debate. education is about words. politics is about words. culture is about words. words mean something. guess what? they have definitions. words like marriage, green, and gay, and left, and right, and change and choice and right and wrong and up and down and good and evil. male and female. moral and immoral. all words have meaning. and as thinking human beings and thoughtful moral agents, we do know what the definition of "is" is. to and we also know something else very important. changing and manipulating the mean offering doing meaning of words is called something. it is called lying. we also know that deceit does bring consequences. as wore field by the prophet isaiah. darkness light and like darkness, lying about words and with words, turning then upside-down, is always wrong. a self-evident as it is it should be clear to all of us that what i'm trying to challenge you with right now, words mean something. take this couple of examples here. many who stand against -- i'll say us -- those of us who care for religious freedom, many who stand against news our fight for religious freedom today do so in the name of tolerance. a word. but their objection seems to be anything but to tolerantment they say i can't kole rate your tolerance, and i -- i'm absolutely confident that there nor absolutes. they don't seem to recognize that everything they just said is self-refuting, at every turn it makes no sense. they saw off the very branch upon which they sit. waving the banner of tolerance while being intoll ran dot nose make you the champion of your ideal. it makes you its executioner, its assassin. it doesn't take am eight grade education to see that's what it's worse. anything but a principled cogent argument. any school boy can see the premise posed by such progressive hoise about tolerance april. more about tyranny. and power. at every turn we see it on our campuses and in our courts and culture, angry red faces shouting you must agree with us, you must think like i think and do like i do, and if you don't, applaud what i say and what i think, your will be expelled and very beaten. we do not -- very beaten, -- we do president in want you in hour culture, community, and surely not on our college campus. tot rating anything they find intolerable is of no interest to them and in the end, their world view is not about coexistence but, rather, a poster child for contradiction. it isn't about tolerance or free dem. it's about fascism, pure and simple. a fascist was a rome bran bundle of sticks bound together so toothily that it could knock be broken. it couldn't break it the power of the common, the facist, that's where get the worst fascism. and today's mio fascism is likewise an unbreakable bundle of what? power. a group of people bound together so tightly and unbroken compliance no dissent no differences no diversity, it's the rule of the gang. it is unquestioned and unchallenged power. the call to arms of these modern day jacobons, you must submit. so the question we face today is whether or not we want to be ruled by the ideological fascism in our land or do we want to enjoy intellectual freedom? let me ask some questions just to point out headline. sure our government has the fewer force religious sin extra tim on its students -- tsunami -- on the citizens, students i suppose to, or do we have freedom to believe and behave by the dictates of our conscience, unimpeded by government hubris? some the government the of have fur 'oforce the oregon open a jewish meat processing business to process bigs. so the government be able to form a muslim newspaper to print "charlie hebdo" cat to ans, some should the government be able to force the anglican owner after billboard company to sell his services to someone who wants to mock christmas or easter? if your answer is no, how the world can you possible i look think the government should now be able to force the owner of a nature shop in washington to participate in a religious service, religious service, that directly violates a key sacrament, a sacrament. of her faith. when did the government get the power to define sacraments of the church? talk about a breach of the wall of separation. should the government be able to force a catholic order called the little sister's the poor to buy contraception they don't want and won't use. they're catholic and they're nuns. they don't have sex because they're nuns. they're sell bat. why in the world would anybody you, me, government official, presuppose to tell these women what kind of pills they need to buy in their health care. this is absurd. it's insulting. it's anything but pro-woman. it's misogynistic and somebody should say so, and by the way, if the little sisters of the poor shouldn't be forced to buy contraception they don't want and use and is contrary to their convictions and beliefs, then how in the world can the government presuppose to tell oklahoma wesleyan university faculty, who are pro life by definition, they, too, must submit. i'm going to go off on a little rant here. what could possibly, this prowoman argument -- what what could be bily more misogynistic than to ignore the obvious fact of the female. what is more insulting to a woman than to tell her she is not a fact. you're no longer a biological reality. you're nothing but a fabrication of social construct. you're nothing but the fantasy, the fabrication, the effects of a disforric male who hands to raise his hand on a begin day and say i am one. by the way, i'm pro woman, in insulting you in such a way and suggesting that anytime someone else races his hand and says i'm other female, even though biology does not show it, fiesol does not show. genetics don't show it, chromosomes don't show it, it's feelings and emotion and fabrication and makes the woman the female, less than a fact. nothing but a leprechaun or unicorn, you're a fantasy, fabrication, make believe wife. suggest that it anything but being pro-woman. but i digress. let's get back to my point. forced agreement is totalitarianism. it is not tolerant. requiring women to submit to the whims and wishes of male-driven government hegemony is not feminism it's misogyny. not intellectual free dom and a clear example of the government steaking what religion is acceptable and then prohibiting the free expression of any religion that is in disagreement with us. sound constitutional? so words mean something. as studenters, leaders, community members, hanging onton your words. define them. defend them. honor freedom. and fight fascism. stand for truth and fight tyranny. stand for love and fight hate. stand for the rights of women and fight against their subject -- remember the words of bon haver, they mean something, not to speak as to speak, not to act is to act, sigh sky lens in the face of evil is evil itself. one more time. not speak is to speak. not to act is to act. silence in face of evil is evil itself. god will not hold us guiltless. there's a reason that jesus is described in the gospel of john as, what? the word. the word. he means something. he cannot be changed. he is the logo, the way, the truth, the life. he defineed himself as the alga -- the alpha and omega. an alphabet, as a word, why? why? remember his words. you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. remember that he is the word made flesh, and dwelling month us. he said, behold i am coming soon. may the word be your confidence and your courage use fight the good fight to win the prize. the word has called you heavenward. amen. >> do you have some questions? q & a. fire away. >> thanks so much for coming and speaking. i was curious to hear -- to maybe talk a little pit practically just pause -- after macintyre and after virtue says when we lose the objective standard of molter rid replaced with -- making people respond the way you feel about things and the only way to adjudicate.com competing claims is through power and that describes the movement of the left to make people respect the way they feel. but in response i feel like conservatives happen embraced bombastic and aggressive, even call them provocateurs, miloan knopp miss go to liberal campuses and yell back later which makes the left accuse conservatives of being a fascist. do you think that's a wise embrace of these sort of people who try to yell back just as loudly as the liberals yelling and how practically do we encourage the open exchange of ideas and other opposing ideas to the left without sort of stooping to their level of aggression? does that make sense? >> i think so. i'll respond by pointing to christ. i am a christian, so if that is outside of your world view, i guess that's okay. we're here to talk about ideas, and when i bring ideas to table i bridge net context of my convictions and my world view. my world view is biblical. believe it's the world view testerred by time and proven to give the greatest measure of human freedom throughout the course of human history. so let's go back to the founder of the world view. jesus. when he was confronted by ans a sir vary, whether political or academic, what did he almost always do? when he was confronted with a contrary question? he almost never debated. he almost always simply asked a rhetorical question. who is face is on that coin? why do you call me lord? do you want to throw the first stone? and then christ himself -- if you're a christian, the son of god --ed the word may flesh and dwelling month us weeks in who is the smartest guy ever walk the planet, obvious hill new the answer, i would argue. the probably could have won the debate. but he chose not to. he chose to ask the rhetorical question that would cause the world view of his opponent to implode and more onthat nonthat it i would drop their stones and walk away. i think the best thing we can do in a culture today that is prone to anger and visit central, that is caustic and con kwon desendi, is ask bold and clear. don't capitulation and compromise is necessary. i don't think forced conversation about evil is necessarily the only way to go, and when i say conversation, there's some things that are not debatable. i'm not going to sit around and discuss the merits of slavery. i'm out in going to discuss the merits of the holocaust. i'm not going to discuss the relative values of those who engage in rape. it seems self-toast me when i engage in that conversation and ask my questions, i am not going to give any implicit ground to those bad ideas. but that doesn't mean i get angry. i get caustic. that doesn't mean i get con desending -- con -- con desensing. it mean its can simply and clearly ask a question that would cause the person that is advocating the contrary world view to recognize the brokenness of their idea. so you think slavery is okay. are you telling me black people are enfire your to whites? -- inferior to white? so you think consensual sex with minors is okay? are you telling me that a ten-year-old can consent to the desires and the passions of a 25-year-old man? be quiet. don't say anything. force the answer. let the world view that's obviously broken and wrong, implode upon itself. i think that's the best strategy. i hope i answered your question. i guess one down here. >> thank you, dr. piper. this is a question so a few of us interns and college students and if you could give us maybe a little bit of what you have experienced with students on oklahoma wesleyan's university campus. you gave the came of someone in chapel but we can do fracture i which, whether we go to secular or christian schools or other religion, how we can approach this problem with not only peers but professors that might give us an opposite view of how we feel and what we know to be true and kind of how we can approach these certain situations. >> i'm going to say couple thinged that are common sense and it's probably not true for you because you're spending a summer reading and putting several more arrows in your quiver so you're prepared to edge gauge but you know generally speaking very few other people under year group or general culture are prepared, they don't read, they don't know, how to express their ideas. they may have a feel. they may understand -- i argue it's bib click cal fact that the truth is written an every human heartment we have a general understanding, whether you're secular, or whether you're religious, that slavery is a bad thing. we have a general understanding that the holocaust was probably bad idea. so you don't have to be religious to have that general understanding thin. but so few people do any reading to say anything about it beyond that. so when they get in a debate they're totally intimidated and don't know what to do. so number one, do a cs lewis told you to do. before you read a new book, pick up a dozen or so old ones and read them because to the ideas have been around a while and there's reason they've been around a while. they've stood the test of time. so don't assume -- he accused his own burgeoning new generation of chronnal you snobbery, i'll be so blunt as to challenge you not to follow into the same trap. don't get involved in chronological snobbery where you think the only idea that is worth considering is on your phone and just came across your fitter feed. read the old book that stood the test of time and know what they say. odds are, because they won the debate a thousand years ago, they'll probably be a value in winning the debate today. that would be my first point of advice. their second is, get a spine. get some courage and have some confidence. it's amazing to me, it's amazing to me how few people on the conservative side of the debate have the courage and confidence to even edge engage at out. maybe it's because intuitively we defer to good manners, we defer to being courteous and avoiding the conflict, because we don't want to break relationships. that could be why conservatives are ornery luck tenant and those are all noble things, but i would also say that christ himself tells us that if you love me, you'll obey me, and the lord disciplines those who he loves so is is no false dichotomy of strength and conviction, i.e. discipline and love. it's a mutually beneficial truth. love and discipline, conflict, confrontation, if handled properly, is necessary in a loving relationship rather than contrary to it. i was on the o'reilly factor during the time of this, so two years ago, and it turned to the issue of cultural engagement, and cultural debate. at the at the time of the indiana river debate and the conflict and the church was turning tail and running the other direction. afraid to engage because of the conflict. and i said to mr. o'reilly because he brought up the issue of tops answer. i said on your anniversary or perhaps it was thanks, did you send your wife an i tolerate you card? and i said, i would suggest the answer is no because you've if you send your wife on i tolerate you card it probably didn't end well because why? tolerance says, i could care less, do what you want. i don't love you, don't even like you but i'll tot rate you do what you want. love says, i care deeply. stop. love says, i don't care -- excuse me, tolerance says, i don't care, do what you want. love says i care deeply, stop0. have confidence, have courage, get a spine, understand your ideas, practice them. chuck colson told us that the only way you learn it is to teach it. so teach it. teach it to yourselves to your peers, talk about it constantly. be prepared for your speech. by teaching it constantly. then you'll be comfortable and confident, your spine will stiffen. you do it without getting angry because anger is the last resort. emotion is always the last thing when you lost the ability to be logical and make sense. you see it. you see it so often in the political debate. people will digress to the name-calling. to the they'll digress to fallacy because that's grounded in feeling rather than stay on point and if you have the ability, the courage, the conversation, the conviction to stay on point because you practice, you'll be the only one in the rom that has it. >> i'm right to to figure out what could be offensive about first corinthians 13. did you ever find this guy or girl and ask them -- i guess you avoid it was male -- what was wrong with first corinthians 13? it's baffling. >> causes your head to spin. the answer is no, i never went to student pickly and there's a reason. because this became a public issue, i didn't want him to feel that he was being called out publicly, and believe it or not i'm told to this day that student did not know the article was about him. believe it or not. which tells you something. might say how is that possible? the only rein it could be possible itself he believed there were several students that shared his view and it must have been about them, not him. the other part of thens was was what so fence stiff? i have no idea. other than it made him feel illinois of uncomfortable and we are at a time and place in our culture, college, campuses, where discomfort is anathema. any idea that makes you feel bad is an anathema to good education and to safety. that's nonsense. go back to what i said earlier because i think it's powerful. maybe you don't. crs lewis, when the kids are talking to mr. and mrs. beaver, they ask mr. beaver, is as lund safe? and mr. beaver says, of course not. he isn't safe. but he is good. so you paraphrase that. the great line of a liberal arts, the great line of the academy, the greatlyon of the university, the great lion of the tower, is it supposed to be safe or supposed to be good? there's a huge difference. sir, think we're actually at a time where if the ideas don't make you feel comfortable and safe, unchallenged, that those ideas can bees skewed. can be labeled as bad ideas. and that not the measure of free society. that's not the measure of intellectual freedom. if you haven't not read first core first corinthians, read it. i'm not interested in coddling you or comforting you at my university. i am about in con fronting you because when you graduate, i want you to be a man and a woman of character. i'm not going to hand you a diploma that says congratulations you got an opinion. you majored in opinions good for you. you have a degree in opinions. how absurd is this? this is lunacy. i actually hope you learned something. that's right and wrong and just and i want you to know how it is juxtaposed to injustice and i want you to know some truths relative to nursing and accounting accounting accounting and biology and philosophy. if you don't know anything that is true and you graduate, you wasteddor time and money. you don't get a diploma in opinions because pins, minimum and yours, don't matter on grade situation dimple don't care what your opinion is. and you shouldn't carry that much about mine. opinions always lead to bon damage and slavery. mao and hit loire and mussolini, al the despots of history had opinions that didn't end well. jesus told you, you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. yes, ma'am. >> so i was at a conference recently at american university and one of the government professors came and discussed trigger warnings and safe spaces and believed that trigger warnings should be mandated across the country on all campuses and i was the only one against trigger warnings, i felt it was easy to shut it down and show its flaw except when said what there's a spirit e person with ptsd or someone who has beenrail and you're talking bat certain topic that could bring bang the ptsd. how could you help combat that situation on trigger warnings. >> i would article the ethic. the biblical world view always delivers defers to love and if somebody has a technical disorder or dysfunction, such as ptsd, then of course we're going to be compassionate with that individual, recognize that we shouldn't ignore them, be cruel to them, expose them to greater harm, but this is what often happens in the progressive left of the debate. they take an isolated index the anomaly articulation aberration ask then brake all the rest of the world measure up to that anomaly as if that is the standard now, rare than recognizing, by def is in, it -- definition it is not the standard. by definition it is different. its disfunctional. there should be correction from it to the norm. rather than moving the norm downward we should love the person enough to bring them upward. so of course we recognize the anomaly. we recognize the brokenness. but we don't break everything else because of it. we try to correct it. that would be my response to that particular question. >> i think the first corinthian 13 is the great tigger warning passage. fear owl things, about treating people with kindness and love and -- which is kind of an interesting way to think about it, that kind of answers the problem phenomenon a christian perspective but didn't go be in idealal clap trap and just be island. >> somebody is offended imemploy an exercise, the virtues and value 0 first corinthians 13, but if if the solution is offensive to me because everying subjectivele and colorado down to me, i am god, you are not, god is not, i am god, i would argue today that we seem to be more interested in praying to the god we see in the mirror than praying to the god we see in the bible. and i would argue that the end result of that is not positive. there has to be a measuring rod outside of those things being measured. laid lady justice has to be blind remember whether she puts her thumb on the scale, justice is lost, truth its nonexistent, power will trump principle there is no correction, there's nothing self-evidenting everything is self-constructed, everything is self-reverend shall and we can kind to the pipe where we can say the solution which has been obvious for 2,000 years, love is patient, love is kind, is the problem because i don't like it. and i'll define things in my own image, like naar sis, gazing at his reflex in the pool, we slip and drown and all that is left is echo, pining after the loss of such wasted beauty. that's where we are coming as a culture today. we're on the precipice of the pool, ready to slip and fall. in we might be wise to wreck niece the thing in the mirror is not as grand and glorious we think because there might be something actually bigger, better, more permanent, than that, that's worthy of conservation and is only that that will give us liberty and liberation and freedom at the end of the day. thank you. applause >> booktv is on facebook. like us to get publishing news, author information and to talk directly with 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