Multiculturalism isn't the only front in the battle. One indispensible tool for such cultural critics has taken academic form in the curious field of "study" subsumed under the term "Critical Thinking," which is, under the hood, a deconstructionist approach to those aspects of modern society that are most in the way of social "progress." It is indeed intensely critical but there is relatively little real thinking involved other than a mastery of pejorative terminology.
Another is the accession of Marxian class analysis, originally a strictly sociological application, to related fields such as law. "Critical Legal Theory" takes the techniques of Critical Thinking mentioned above and applies them to an interpretation of legal theory that is strictly class-based. Law, in the view of its proponents, is merely a manifestation of power relations between oppressed and oppressive classes. An inversion of those relations is seen as precisely as valid as the original; that is, a society where thugs rule the streets and cops are the hunted is no different from its opposite. This sort of approach works considerably better in theory than in practice but as a foundation of social theory it has gained a creedence far in excess of its actual merit.
Underlying all of this is a philosophical denial of the existence of objective truth and an attempt to replace it with political power. That is demonstrably the case with PC, as Dalrymple pointed out above - the entire approach assumes that truth is arbitrary and hence may be dictated, and it requires the surrender of the individual to a fantasy reality that is more malleable than the objective one. In this, one may pretend that food is poison and poison, food, because in the broad perspective "it's all the same thing." Acting on that pretense is likely to bring the real world crashing in, at which point the contest becomes to explain the latter away by ascribing blame to somebody else. The real world must fit the theory, not vice versa.
And that is why it will fail in the end. This sort of denial of truth is profoundly anti-life, actually suicidal when it leads the adherent to an action that is theoretically sound but objectively self-destructive. Were it only to kill the fool that adheres to it there wouldn't be a problem. Where it threatens to destroy an existing society with imperfections and substitute an impossible fantasy world without them, we all are in danger.
Fantastic reply. Cheers!
Boy this really captures the essense of the BS "critical thinking' sell going on in universities. I had many of these sort of classes in my undergrad and you are right on. Thanks for the post.
Absolutely correct. The problem is, it works. How do you explain the lies that are being accepted about the war in Iraq, for example? How do you explain how the Leftist anti-war movement escaped any accountability for the massacres in Southeast Asia after the US withdrew? Their hero worship of tyrants like Castro and Stalin, or goons like Che Guevara? They can rearrange reality any way they like, and with the aid of the media and academia, the fabrication becomes fact.