The Compromised University
In The Uncivil University, authors Gary Tobin, Aryeh Weinberg, and Jenna Ferer demonstrate how politicized Middle East studies in particular have become: “Scholarship in the Middle East today has become a platform from which to fight perceived Western domination and to absolve the Arab world of wrongdoing. It is also an attempt to ascribe blame specifically to the United States for any and all of the political, cultural, and social problems ongoing in the Middle East.” Under the mantle of diversity of opinion, free expression, and the unfettered exchange of ideas, many of our universities have given the dais to homicidal despots and enemies of the state while protesting against and even prohibiting anti-Islamists, conservative thinkers, and patriots from speaking freely and engaging students in discussion. The same bias holds in the realm of academic publishing. John Perazzo’s compendious report on the subject leaves little doubt about the extent to which “university presses reflect academia’s dominant worldviews in every way, promoting the tenets of doctrinaire leftism,” disparaging America, and resting “unconcerned about any threat from radical Islam.”
Who benefits? Certainly not truly liberal institutions or intellectual scholarship. As Denis MacShane comments in Globalising Hatred, “The role of the liberal university tradition is to defend liberty, not to promote politics that reduce it. One would have thought that all adults who teach at or administer our universities would subscribe to that vision.” Could anything be more obvious? Not, apparently, to many of our professors and their poodling administrations who, as MacShane suggests, give little indication of living in any relation to reality. It seems, to cite from Tennyson’s “The Kraken” — that the “unnumbered and enormous polypi” of the mind have risen from the preceptorial deep and identified with America’s, and the West’s, enemies.
What too many of our students are now receiving is not education in the authentic sense of the term — e-ducere, a leading out of [ignorance] — but the pedagogy of deprivation, by which I mean the want of impartial study, of comprehensive rather than selective knowledge, of scholarly respect for the subject and for the proponents of different political positions, of a grounding in Western history and its philosophical, political, and cultural tradition and, last but not least, of the fostering of native curiosity. Instead, they are increasingly at the mercy of teachers who have betrayed a noble profession. As Thomas Sowell contends, the professors have become fact filterers, that is, indoctrinators who “in the interest of their own vision, are denying to others the right … to … reach their own conclusions.”
I am forcibly reminded of Russell Hoban’s apt description in his post-apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker of what could well be our educational institution: “Yet unner neath that Zero Groun I lissent up a swarming it wer a humming like a millying of bees it wer like 10s of millyings.” Our millyings of professors are humming away while the barbarians remorselessly approach. Perhaps, as C.S. Lewis says in The Abolition of Man of the factitious teachers Gaius and Titius, these pedants “do not fully realize what they are doing, and do not intend the far-reaching consequences it will actually have.” But the chances are that they do, as they engage upon “a clean sweep of traditional values and start with a new set.” Only, the new set is not so new.
Democracy cannot survive in default of a reasonably alert and educated public and a viable university system. The almost daily capitulations of our intellectuals, opinion-makers, politicians, and academics to the invasive forces of what is nothing less than a global jihad, whether conveyed through terrorist, demographic, jurisprudential, or rhetorical means, along with the virtual exclusion of alternative discourses, must be seen for what they are: omens of approaching dissolution. And the soi-disant liberal university has become the “Zero Groun” of intellectual ruination, its busy bee professoriate invidiously programming its students with both a left-wing, statist agenda and a misplaced tolerance for radical Islamic thought and practice. David Horowitz points out, as an instance of this nuptial complicity between the left and Islam on university campuses, the interesting fact that “the pro-terrorist Muslim Students Association and the Young Communist League” are part of the same “Peace Workers” coalition.
Intellectuals and academics have long shared a pronounced tendency toward the “philotyrannical,” in its fascist, communist, and Islamic guises. In The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower, Stephen Norwood methodically reveals the sympathy of American universities, including Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, during the 1930s with the fascist regimes of Hitler and Mussolini; and even after the war, “there was widespread indifference in academia … about the fascist past.” The general hospitality for left-wing causes and Communism itself in the academy is common knowledge. And true to form, as we have seen, the university has become one of the chief incubators of pro-Islamic sentiment — and its natural correlate, anti-Jewish and anti-Israel rancor — in the Western world. Far from being the bulwark and harbinger of liberal civilization, the university seems more than willing to compromise its mandate and welcome into the once “quiet and still air of delightful studies” precisely those who would subvert it. As for the first part of Milton’s lovely and nostalgic phrase, “beholding the bright countenance of truth,” fuggedaboudit. The family mafia of left-wing professors, department heads, administrators, and syndics is simply not interested.
The prognosis doesn’t look great. As the 14th century Muslim philosopher Ibn Khaldun theorized in the Muqaddimah (“The Introduction”), when a civilization begins to decay and enters the twilight of its existence, it is invariably vanquished by a society of barbarians. Looking about us today — at the media, the entertainment industry, the political establishment, and especially the liberal academy — it is hard to disagree.
“And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” ~ C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man.
It is as true today, if not more true, as it was in 1943. Sixty-seven years later and Lewis’ dystopian predictions have been almost fully realized.
I don’t think Lewis was completely clear here. Leftists do not castrate and bid be fruitful, actually expecting anyone to be fruitful. If they are so bidding, it is only mis-direction. They castrate, and desire and expect sterility. The author is making a basic mistake in conflating Leftism and Rightism. The reason the Nazis defeated the Left in Germany was because, as is always the defining difference between Left and Right, the Nazis were pro-German, while the Left was anti-German. Gee, in Germany, which side do you expect to win a popular vote? After WW I, the German Left ruled the Weimar govt and worked 24-7 to undermine, corrupt, destroy German culture, religion, society, religion. Just as their American cousins are doing now in Hollywood, academia, and the MSM, they promoted pornography, atheism, sloth, envy, and the rest of the 7 deadly sins with the aim of crippling the German people. At such time as they came into real power, they would systematically proceed to destroy them, just as the Bolsheviks worked to cripple and then destroy the Russian people (as a people) in the USSR. You may deplore Leftists and Rightists equally, but they are not the same. Leftists hate normal people and work to destroy all existing cultures and societies. Rightists work, perhaps overzealously, to protect their own culture and society from attacks, foreign and domestic. I believe that Rightists are prone to carry natural social self-preservation to unnecessary extremes, but Leftism is completely un-natural, anti-human, and nihilistic.
Nazis were totalitarians. Leftists. There cannot be a political spectrum of totalitarians on the left, the communists, and totalitarians on the “right,” the fascists, any more than there can be a light spectrum that extends from ultraviolet on one end to ultraviolet on the other.
I believe Stalin initiated the use of the term “fascist” to identify any group he opposed. Nazis as leftists were competitors of communists. Stalin would have called The Ripon Society fascists if it suited his purpose.
Orwell correctly observed that the term “fascist” has no discernible meaning other than “bully.”
There was a reason that Nazi is a contraction of “National Socialist.” They did not have as some of their goals the establishment of a parliamentary democracy or constitutional republic and they were certainly not interested in an independent judiciary and the rule of law.
The Muslims are exploiting the infrastructure that was build by other ‘minority’ groups, and they’re exploiting it well. I’d accuse those who invented the politically correctness and founded all the ‘human and civil rights groups.’
As you sow so shall you reap.
I find it interesting that so many former ardent communist now fight the Muslims tooth and nail.
What’s even worse is that many parents in this country are spending upwards of $50,000 a year for this indoctrination for their kids. Makes you wonder how valuable a college education is these days. If you’re going to pay that much for communist and Islamic propoganda, you may as well save yourself about $40,000 a year and send your child to a local state university. We should also be investing a lot, and I mean a lot, more money into trade and technical schools. We really do need more plumbers, carpenters, and electricians and far few Liberal Arts majors who specialize in modern lesbian poets.
Always remember, Bill Gates never graduated from college.
The university is a survival niche for organisms of a particular kind. Such organisms would swiftly perish in the waters that lap and swell around the base of the ivory tower. And a good thing, too; they’re profoundly hostile to our sort of life and would do what they could to end it — just as they’re striving to do today.
The sole remaining question is whether the larger society should continue to tolerate those bastions for leftism, or whether it should take action to end the threat from them, perhaps by bricking them in.
I recently wrote an essay about Swiss photographer Robert Frank’s very famous 1959 book, “The Americans”. That year was around the time self-loathing in America became fashionable, the photos themselves having been taken around 1955-6. In Frank’s photos, America is an empty, isolated, spiritually bankrupt nation of endemic racists. Sound familiar?
Many of today’s so-called documentary photographers make similar photos that rarely rise above the level of simply making fun of America, with the suburbs as the usual suspect or photos of elderly Americans playing golf in desert sand outside their RVs in Nevada. Such art, together with rock and roll, New Wave science fiction of the mid-60′s, hip hop, independent film and more, all have a symbiotic relationship with the debauched West they depict wherein the creators all have 401ks, gas guzzling cars, credit cards and iPads but like to pretend they don’t.
Not a single one of the people at these colleges walk it like they talk it. It’s hypocrisy 101 and while they’re playing at being rebels, the people they champion, which is basically anybody not Jewish, white or male, are coming to stay from their failed societies and they don’t play well with others. One need only look at the Third World to see what these hypocrites are claiming America needs in the way of diversity – their diversity.
Claiming that people who have a different skin color have some intangible quality not available to all colors is itself racist and it is as simple as that. Our colleges are killing zones to intellect and are churning out brain dead and brain washed Fox/Bush/John Wayne hating morons as fast as they can get loans. It’s a trend a half century along now and only shows signs of getting more and more traction, just like the urban myths it is actually intellectually aligned with.
Hating America is all the rage and Rage Against the Machine, Che Guevarra t-shirts and Arcade Fire “hoodies” are all available with a credit card on their sites. Unfortunately, when it comes to America’s colleges, thinking is not all the rage.
I recently wrote an essay about Swiss photographer Robert Frank’s very famous 1959 book, “The Americans”. That year was around the time self-loathing in America became fashionable, the photos themselves having been taken around 1955-6. In Frank’s photos, America is an empty, isolated, spiritually bankrupt nation of endemic racists. Sound familiar?
Many of today’s so-called documentary photographers make similar photos that rarely rise above the level of simply making fun of America, with the suburbs as the usual suspect or photos of elderly Americans playing golf in desert sand outside their RVs in Nevada. Such art, together with rock and roll, New Wave science fiction of the mid-60′s, hip hop, independent film and more, all have a symbiotic relationship with the debauched West they depict wherein the creators all have 401ks, gas guzzling cars, credit cards and iPads but like to pretend they don’t.
Not a single one of the people at these colleges walk it like they talk it. It’s hypocrisy 101 and while they’re playing at being rebels, the people they champion, which is basically anybody not Jewish, white or male, are coming to stay from their failed societies and they don’t play well with others. One need only look at the Third World to see what these hypocrites are claiming America needs in the way of diversity – their diversity.
Claiming that people who have a different skin color have some intangible quality not available to all colors is itself racist and it is as simple as that. Our colleges are killing zones to intellect and are churning out brain dead and brain washed Fox/Bush/John Wayne hating morons as fast as they can get loans. It’s a trend a half century along now and only shows signs of getting more and more traction, just like the urban myths it is actually intellectually aligned with.
Hating America is all the rage and Rage Against the Machine, Che Guevarra t-shirts and Arcade Fire “hoodies” are all available with a credit card on their sites. Unfortunately, when it comes to America’s colleges, thinking is not all the rage. Teenage rebellion lifted into the adult world isn’t working out very well.
You hit that one out of the park, David!
There are several points to consider in identifying the unique nature of our 21st c. universities – which have strayed far, far from any deference to objective reality and any respect for facticity and reason.
First, is the fact that faculty are unaccountable to, essentially, anyone. They are judged, if at all, only on entrance to the Select Club of The Tenured. Judgment, it must be noted, is done by current Members, and these Old Members reject dissent, controversy and questions of the current mindset. A new member knows that he must ‘toe the line’ to gain membership. Once in – that’s the end of accountability.
Such isolation removes the individual from the real world. The ‘intelligentsia’ live in an isolate world not much different from the isolate communes of Amish or cults. The outside world is rejected and the only ‘truth’ is that found within the group. Since this intelligentsia controls membership into the group, then, the ‘truth’ remains static, unexamined, unexposed to the hard data of reality. It rests ‘within the conceptual’, within ‘words’, within ‘rhetoric’.
The only departments grounded in the real world are, of course, the sciences, medicine, engineering, which must operate within reality and facticity. The social sciences and humanities look upon these people, who ‘consort’ with the outside world, with real objects rather than with words…with disdain.
Then, there is the authoritarian aspect of the profession of professors. They interact with their peers on a ‘no-touch’ basis; that is, since they are all Members of the Club, their courses are not critiqued, their papers are reviewed by like-minded Members, their teaching is considered off-limits to comment. Knowledge actually freezes!
And – with regard to the students, the authority of the professor to assign marks, to provide ‘knowledge’..is supreme. This hierarchical stance, where the professor is akin to god – further isolates the individual from accountability and sets the academic up within a hierarchy.
Finally, the outrageous misuse of quantum physics within the social sciences and humanities has led to a postmodern mindset of relativism, where reality is considered to exist only within the subjective mind of the perceiver. The outside classical world does not exist, or, if it does, it is considered irrelevant and unknowable. This postmodern mindset further sets up the academic as an authority, and removes any capacity for accountability …for any dissent is yet another subjective opinion. Opinions..are not tied to objective reality; they are just personal views.
When you set up a group whose membership is unaccountable, where knowledge is defined as authored by and defined by a member of a closed group, and where that knowledge is not testable by objective reality…and put this group in a position of power – defining them as ‘guardians of knowledge’ – the result is an authoritative elitism.
Academics view themselves as the authority – and, like the 18th c. landowners, consider that anyone who engages in ‘the material world’ is unworthy of respect. That means..anyone in industries, in business, in any work that does not rest within rhetoric and words.
Why are they against the West and the USA? First, because they live in the West and the USA – and cannot view the governments as having any authority; the academic considers that he, and he alone, has authority over ‘how to live’. Second, because the West and the USA, have based their modus operandi on an acknowledgment of the reality of the objective world – it is this acknowledgment and the exploration of the objective world that has led to the technological and scientific wealth of the West and the USA.
Remember, the postmodern academic rejects the objective world; he lives only within words. And, he rejects an authority over him..such as the government. And..he rejects the equality of people, a basic component of the West and the USA. The academic considers his group elite and alone in control of knowledge. The govt and the people …are ignorant.
Why the academic support for Islam? One, because it is hostile to the West and its grounding in objective reality. Two, because Islam is authoritarian, declaring…just like our postmodern academic..that it has control over wisdom and knowledge..and the everyday person can only pray and submit, just like the everyday student. That is, the mindset of our postmodern academic, is very similar to that of Islamic thought.
Both the Islamist and the postmodern academic consider that there is a body of knowledge held within a Set of people, which body of knowledge is untestable, and removed from objective reality..which is sneered at and viewed as ‘material’ rather than ‘heavenly’. Both view themselves as superior and view others as without power..who must submit. Both condemn the West’s grounding in objective reality; both reject governmental power, considering that their rhetoric alone ought to have power.
Oh – and both can’t exist without that governmental stability provided by the West, without the technological wealth provided by the West, without the medical and scientific innovations provided by the West, without the freedoms to live and speak, provided by the West.
And both are, by refusing to acknowledge these truths about the West, and refusing to live within objective reality – arrogant and ignorant as people.
I consider them to be brave new world sort of “High Priests.”
or tapeworms.
Islam is authoritarian, declaring…just like our postmodern academic..that it has control over wisdom and knowledge…
It isn’t so much that it has control – it’s that Islam absolutely rejects the hallmarks of Western logic, reason and scientific method as ‘un-islamic.’ Adherents of Islam are happy to use our own technology against us, but they are quite incapable of building the aircraft they used to bring down the World Trade Center.
Islam – and that is Islam in its entirety – represents an existential threat to Western Civilization and must be treated as such.
Exactly – and that’s what is so stunning about Islamist ideology – its rejection of reason, logic, science and the objective world – which means that they are totally incapable of technological development. Yet, they are delighted to use the west’s technological development – everything from modern medicine (the Saudi King comes to the US for treatment); and airplanes (hmm, he’s coming by plane – did they invent it?)..to computers, to electricity, to oil fuel..and cars, trucks,..and guns. Everything – all technology, has been invented by the West.
Islam rejects it all, theoretically, yet is delighted to use it.
Same with postmodernism and our modern academic. He too rejects the objective world, and the ‘tyranny of science and facts’…and insists on the ultimate wisdom of his version of his experiences…well, you know the drivel they talk. But that same academic wants his computer and home heat and he’s not going to bicycle to that conference overseas.
The hypocrisy and arrogance of both, and their insistence that their way is ‘closer to god/truth/’ …..astonishing.
ETAB – Great analysis and follow up. islam and academia are both trained mental disorders.
Outstanding article Mr. Solway. I have been dealing with an Obama sycophant moonbat accounting professor at the U of Md this semester. November 3rd he was on a roll at how Obama had not been insufficiently leftist, a theme I’ve seen repeatedly in the press. That was followed by the inference that the voting public,poor dolts that they are, did not appreciate Obama’s brilliance.
In the last class he suggested Obama had not lauded his programs enough. After panning Decision Points, he just blurts out that the United States is an unethical country. I asked which nation he considered ethical.
His answer, Saudi Arabia!
What followed was a 10 minute butt whooping discussion of that countries treatment of woman, sharia law, and human rights abuses after which he admitted Saudi Arabia was a brutal country. Sadly I did not have a chance to bring up the religious police actions at that girls school some years ago.
This is in a capstone course, of which a key element is exposure to critical thinking skills and an understanding of bias. While the abuse of Bush is old hat in college it shocks me to see this level of academic bias.
In the name of economy, defund them. Cancel ALL (yes ALL) research and other program grants to universities. Use the money to eliminate debt. Let them (the professoiate) eat cake.
And hand out the muskatoons! If the world were controlled by people like you, we’d still be drilling holes in each other’s heads to let the vapors out.
I think not. Look what it’s done for you!
Sorry to feed the troll, folks, but its brain is wikileaking from the constant trepanations and the ESTs.
Spent from molesting his tattered and dubiously stained collection of stuffed animals, no-sensey, seeking diversion, chimes in. Someone give the poor boy another PCP-laced cigarette so that adults can have a conversation.
By all means, you adults continue with your conversation about stained stuffed animals.
Actually, he surprised me this time, in that he apparently knows what a musketoon is. (But can he define what makes it different from a musket?)
cheers
eon
I’m with white belt (sensei) on this one partly. Don’t defund rather force acountability and abolish the teachers union.
and abolish tenure and institute voucher programs so kids have a choice to addend the best schools. It’s all about the kids.
I kind of side with michaelhoskins-but I think that any university that receives federal funding have some kind of accountablility of their professors. Perhaps a one v. one to give alternative sides of an issue. Any university which does not loses its federal funding. Professors who make public pronouncements-like comparing those murdered Americans in 911 to little Nazis-in the role of a professor and who are not censored by the university lose their funding.
Second, the unviersities should use their endowments to pay for tuition and not to pay for a “chair”. Chairs should not be allowed to be funded by non-Americans.
Third, put up any state university/public university to a referendum when it comes to increasing costs/professor salaries, etc.
Fourth, limit any cost increases to the rate of inflation.
Fifth, no tenure. Every year a professor must be held accountable to students.
Instead of defunding them, it would be nice if employers stopped demanding college degrees, when they aren’t necessary. That would have the same effect.
That is right on the money. Many students don’t go to college to get an education; they go to get a credential, a bureaucratic stamp that they have “paid their dues.” In most cases, whatever they learn of any substance could be conveyed in a two-year program, at most.
Exactly! Since the 70′s colleges and universities have been graduating “educated morons” in most disciplines other than the hard sciences and maths and even in these disciplines they have to hire foreigners for professors because their graduates cannot meet teaching and research standards. In fact, check out the increasing numbers of foreigners filling the higher demanding positions in all discilpines today. Our own educated morons go into politics, journalism, law, and of course those zillions of intellectual think tanks, Walmart, fast food and mom and pops welfare when they can rousted from bed or their video games…lol!
Zounds! That’s all I learned in college. That and how to make an apple bong. looking back i wish i’d used it to smoke weed instead of polypropylene carpet fuzz. I might not have the curse of these relentless phosphenes. Swirling. Twirling. Vertigo vagabonds haunting my vision of the future. Enough! Medic! Medic! Morphine away this torturous logic seemingly reserved for my eyes alone!
Oh, oh, oh . . . Clamg . . . Clanp . . . Oh . . .
to michaelhoskins:
Defund them indeed. For too long free Americans have been paying taxes designated by the guardians of America’s ethos, their “representatives”. for the support of the universities, the “elite” ilk, to provide to Americans “the rope that will hang them”.
The SOP of journalists and “elite” exclusive fraternities / Greeks to the world in which they live. Sheep, followers, with few who might legitimately be considered leaders to E-duc- ate their charges.
NOW with real freedom of information without filter from organised, exclusive, “betters” with the Internet the secret of their treason is finally being exposed.
But WHY has it taken so long to discover what others with eyes open and a modicum of common sense and experience have been saying for at least a helf-century. 1930s yes, More recently even.
Some commentators,it was the best of times, of their youth, invested in the memories of that youth are still unable to recognise the blatant attack on the ethos and principles of the American Idea. With that recognition their part as perhaps unwitting allies in the planned destruction of that American Idea.
The Vietnam War. And forget that war, was begun and escalated,in the hands of the “elite” in those very universities and elite journals, TV, radio, etc.
Even then it was apparent to thinking persons that things were not as advertised. AND that terrible lies were told graphically depicted in carefully edited to their designs the TV reports on that war. Escalated with each success of the lies about the behaviours or American soldiers in that war.
AND that those lies are even now told and emphasised by the “best and brightest” in all the US civic institutions. About that war and all subsequent in which America military was involved.
The “Democratic” Presidents Kennedy and Johnson involved America in a war which ended WITH CONTINUOUS AID AND ASSISTANCE FROM THE ELITE in the fracturing of social cohesiveness, under the guise of “equality and fairness”. Which as it turned out was not, AND WAS NOT INTENDED, anything of the sort. To break up a society just get its members at each others throats. Et voila. Victory for the enemy, with the victims their unwitting destructive agencies. OLD TRICK And Richard Nixon carried the can for that war in the coup d’etat called Watergatel.
There can be no doubt that the ENEMY of the American People is the “elite” of their own nation, who despise the ordinary, the common Americans
Those upstarts who actually believe they are the Equal of elites.
We’ll show them what miserable creatures they are. Get them fighting one another, we’ll pick up the pieces and redesign them to our new world order. Put these upstart Americans who dare to think they are our, royals, princes, superiors, elite, equals in their rightful place as OUR SERFS. Islam is merely an instrument in their hatred of Americans and the American Idea.
“It seems undeniable that many universities appear to be in the business of pimping for the Arabs, considering all the Saudi money (as well as “donations” and “gifts” from other Muslim nations) gushing into university programs and endowments. Harvard and Georgetown accepting millions of dollars from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal….”
Oh, you mean the same Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal who owns 5% of Newscorp, the parent company of FOX News and WSJ?
It’s funny that there’s always a convenient dastardly Arab to point to when “liberal” institutions are involved, but somehow he always disappears from view when his ties to everyone’s favorite FOX News are exposed.
I suggest you turn off the simplistic opinion, and consider some facts. News Corp is a business corporation and cannot refuse investors due to their religion or ethnicity. Ever heard of the laws against discrimination by religion and ethnicity?
Furthermore, bin Talal is not an ideologue; he’s not into promoting Islamism or Sharia Law. It’s an investment.
Yes, Saudi Arabia is a petro-dictatorship, run under Sharia Law – and that, I maintain, is a key activator of Islamic fascism, because it prevents a middle class from developing..and the lack of a middle class with economic and political power is the basic cause of Islamic fascism.
Think. Correlation is not causation. So, your opinion remains, like so many sophist academic opinions, unfounded and subjective.
It’s easy for me to see that the Democrat Party is intentionally subsidizing this movement to shore up their base of ignorant, angry, fawning parasites, for constituents.
They are given good grades for remaining petulant juveniles, and NOT growing up.
It’s hard for me to believe that these people came from the same American educational system as I did.
Yes! It’s very strange that all they tell you at any university is that you’re being prepared for “real life”. All the while, you learn how to insulate yourself from reality with generalizations and feel-good ideology.
There’s hope, though, in that so many people are fighting against the leftist intellectual aristocracy. We already don’t look to them as authorities in many cases.
David, this is all part of the New Intolerance that I believe has gripped this land of ours.
Rampant, unchecked leftism has made radical Islam a bedfellow. Each wishes to tear down the system in Western Civilization, for different reasons and with a different end game in mind, but each finding utility in the other’s “means” toward their individual “ends”.
Academia, Hollywood, front group media and now the New Party of Democratic Masks are all aligned similarly.
The landscape is ripe for treason. Just look at the trolls here, every comment dripping with it. The stealth left has disappointed the anarchist left. “It” was so close, within their grasp…and they are frustrated with Obama’s instinct to stay in stealth mode.
I’m not sure how to maintain the health and vibrancy of this nation. A confrontation is bubbling beneath the surface it seems. And I don’t believe ignoring it is healthy, yet I fear the consequences of a confrontation. We are in a real mess because we have ignored these signs for 40 years. I don’t know where this is heading, but it is likely to show first in our universities.
“Rampant, unchecked leftism has made radical Islam a bedfellow. Each wishes to tear down the system in Western Civilization, for different reasons and with a different end game in mind, but each finding utility in the other’s “means” toward their individual “ends”.”
The “enlightened elite’” believe, as an article of faith, that they can co-opt anybody, any movement, and any culture to their ends; those being their own self-aggrandizement.
They also believe, as Charles Manson did, that the “Other” they seek to co-opt to destroy that which they hate (i.e., the rest of us) is at once;
1. So strong and brutal that we have no chance of survival once the Other is aroused;
2. Simultaneously too stupid to run the Brave New World after their Triumph; but still
3. Just smart enough to recognize the superiority of the Enlightened Ones- and to instantly fall on their knees and beg said Enlightened Ones to run the world, with the Others as their obedient, adoring slaves.
(See “Helter Skelter” by Vincent Bugliosi.)
What our “progressive” revolutionaries, in academia and elsewhere, do not understand is that to the Islamists, they represent most everything offensive to Islam. Islamists resent their attitudes on everything from science to sex- especially the latter. The progressives could not understand why the 9/11 attack was aimed at New York City, their Paradise on Earth, as opposed to someplace the progressives would rather erase from the face of the planet, like Texas, or Utah. (Or now, Arizona.)
The progressives also do not comprehend that, if the Other they now seek to assist ever does “Triumph”, it will be they, the “enlightened ones”, who will be the first bent over the block for the headsman’s blade. Partly because of their philosophy, but also because it has always been Islam’s SOP to do away with anyone who betrays their own people to the Islamic conquest, on the principle of not leaving them around to betray Islam in its turn.
I’d say this was something they should think about, but I long ago realized through personal experience that objective thought is something progressives simply refuse to attempt. I suspect that if they ever did, they would promptly cease to be progressives, and they won’t risk that.
They prefer their fantasies to reality. The problem is, reality bites, and has exceedingly sharp teeth.
clear ether
eon
Moonbats and the moongod. Birds of a feather.
Why is there always a rich Saudi behind just about everything?
I don’t know. ask the Saudi’s.
So many liberals I know went into school as normal, intelligent, pragmatic human beings, and came out complete vagabond communist robots. All of a sudden, even though it makes complete sense to anyone NOT brainwashed, it’s unethical to kill murderers and make money. Well, except for killing those who make money.
I’m all for free speech, but when it comes to indoctrination that supports fascism and theocracies, letting those, who are supposedly moral authorities, say whatever they want in a classroom seems to dangerous. I think we should have an anti-fascism panel to check in on academics and have a proper mechanism for taking away tenure for Islamofascists and communists.
In reality, there are at least two universities – the science and engineering faculties and the arts and social sciences. The two sides now almost never interact with each other. If you look at the budgets, the science side gets most of the money for real stuff like research and facilities. The arts and social sciences do make a lot of noise though…
DD
Consider George Soros instead. Look to the owner and CEO of Progressive Insurance. Follow the money.
Most of Americas universities and colleges, outside the hard curriculums of the sciences and math’s, are cesspools of self professed intellectual elites selling their socio-political ideologies.
Since the communist-socialist-progressive revolution of the 1960-70′s in America, these self professed intellectual dregs making up the cesspools in our higher education systems have been accelerated. It should not go un-noted that the anarchist libertarians and religious zealots are well represented also in many of the zillions of “think-tanks” that shape much of the misdirected educations received our higher education.
These self professed intellectual dregs, void of any common sense and real life socialization and working experiences, are the downfall of many a society…to include our own. It’s unfortunate that they become our leaders in almost all disciplines such as politics, government officials, journalist, educators, economists, judiciary, etc.
It is these same people who no longer stand for the Traditional American founding values, be they representing the anti-American democratic Republic and capitalism or in so many cases the counterpart movement loosely labeled “Conservatives” of today, that so many are taking the rhetoric bait. All the camps are being led by intellectual dregs selling a particular ideology contrary to the Traditional America’s founding and great successes.
While we’re exposing educators lets not forget all those cesspool “think tank” professed intellectuals!
“Most of Americas universities and colleges, outside the hard curriculums of the sciences and math’s, are cesspools of self professed intellectual elites selling their socio-political ideologies.” Agree, but this pattern isn’t limited to America. One finds it as well in Canadian, in European, and in Israeli universities.
I agree with the sentiment that tenure must be done away with. Why, of all vocations and professions, must academia be secure from the vagaries of the market? Why must unaccountable ideologues be guaranteed a platform and six-figure salaries for a few hours a week of teaching, presence at the occasional conference, and a stream of propaganda? Free speech? Heck, if one institution doesn’t like your “speech”, there are thousands of other places you can seek employment.
Now here’s a little thought experiment. If the typical “professor” in the sciences or humanities were compelled to seek employment outside of academia, exactly what “job skills” would he have? Exactly what would he be qualified to do? Now tell me why they should retain for life a position along with its prestige and salary.
Time to hit the reset button for academia. Shutting down the liberal arts, the social sciences, fine arts, and the “studies” programs for three or four decades won’t affect this country in the least and the sooner we do this, the better off the country will be.
I am my college professor’s favorite pupil. He calls himself a “philosophical progressive” (whatever that means) and he tells wonderful stories about Mao Zedong and how deeply spirtual it is to become a Progressive. He told us not to pay any attention to those horrible rumors that the Conservatives preach to us about Brother Mao’s murder of 60 million. I know it’s a lie, that’s what a girl on Facebook said. After all, President Obama had a Mao ornamate hanging fron the White House Christmas tree, right on cool. After learning all of these new political ideas, I went out and got the latest Che Guevara t-shirt. It is so rad. My professor went to Harvard like Obama did so I know he loves Che too. My professor said Hollywood helped to revive another leftist martyr but my uncle (who was in the Army) said Hollywood has dutifully churned out yet another cinematic agitprop paean and that I should read to try to discern why many supposedly democratic, civil libertarian liberals still swoon over this Stalinist mass-murderer. What ever that means, later dude.
Last Christmas I had an in depth conversation with my nephew, a political science major at a good university in the south. He was over visiting, when he looked down on the coffee table to see a copy of the latest Glen Beck book I had just received from santa. The conversation quickly got political. I listened as he told me how absurd Beck was and that he should be banned from television. I think it was at this time my wife quickly retreated to the laundry room to avoid the coming lecture.
I asked him if he read the book. “No” he said. I asked him why. It was at this time I asked him his political philosophy.
I think my ears began to bleed and my disbelief of the money that was wasted. I have three daughters. One started college this fall. One going next fall, then another right behind her. Oh, I worry! I know personally about the liberal crap that can spew from the mouths of professors.
It was nineteen years ago, I sat in one of my upper level communication classes at college. We were in a debate about the inequalities and injustices females and minorities face. It seemed that all conversations were steered by my professors to the liberal left blow horn. In an attempt to substantiate her position, the conversation quickly turned personal, and how she had been overlooked to become the next department head. She said she was more qualified. She had better schooling. (Columbia) This was her position.
I think it was at this time my ears began to bleed. I couldn’t hold back. I began to tell the class about a white boy who parents divorced. Before they divorced the boy lived a comfortable middle class life. A mother faced with bills trying to hold on. The boy and his younger brother working odd jobs to help out. The mother never complained or asked for anything. The boys saw the pain and told their mom to sell the house. The boys go off to college. One on a scholarship and the other flounders for a few years, mad at his father for not helping him with tuition. One day the boy wakes up and says enough is enough. He gets two jobs and begins Community College. Then after two years he is off to the university. Paying his way. Then just one year in at the university his girlfriend gets pregnant. They get married and have a baby. Now that young man has a baby, a wife, and two in college (himself and his wife). They go out once a week, a $8 chicken dinner they split. They don’t have cable.
I asked, what advantage did that white bog have? No answer
“How about the brother who got the scholarship” someone peeped . I said, That boy was the only white man out of 29 scholarships. A 4.0 and a 1425 SAT. All others were females or minorities. Then I said, everyone needs to look in the mirror and only blame yourself. If you are unhappy, change. Nothing is given, it is earned.
I stood up and said, not one of you can answer me. I guess class is over. As I walked out the door I told my professor ” maybe you just aren’t as good as you thought”. I never went back to college again.
Back to my nephew. It has gotten worse. I couldn’t believe how he bashed the business world and capitalism. He is a socialist!
As he ranted and raided about how corporations and businesses make unjustified profits. How they are out for only themselves. Now I know every businessman and CEO are not saints but I then laid into him on how I hadn’t taken a check in eight months. That I had put $60,000 back into my business. I was trying to keep the employees working. Profits sustain businesses, less taxes sustains businesses.
I just hope the $350,000 dollars I will pay for my daughters college is well spent. No aid here.
I had to laugh. The other day my unemployed college grad nephew came over. He was talking about how he had to start paying for his $40,000 in college bills and he can’t find a job. We are going hunting for 5 days next week. Lots of time to talk. It will be a fun 5 hr drive.
Great story.