Posted on 02/21/2014 5:47:33 AM PST by Kaslin
Cancel the philosophy courses, people. Oh, and we're going to be shuttering the political science, religion and pre-law departments too. We'll keep some of the English and history folks on for a while longer, but they should probably keep their resumes handy.
Because, you see, they are of no use anymore. We have the answers to the big questions, so why keep pretending there's anything left to discuss?
At least that's where Erin Ching, a student at Swarthmore College, seems to be coming down. Her school invited a famous left-wing Princeton professor, Cornel West, and a famous right-wing Princeton professor, Robert George, to have a debate. The two men are friends, and by all accounts they had an utterly civil exchange of ideas. But that only made the whole thing even more outrageous.
"What really bothered me is, the whole idea is that at a liberal arts college, we need to be hearing a diversity of opinion," Ching told the Daily Gazette, the school's newspaper. "I don't think we should be tolerating [George's] conservative views because that dominant culture embeds these deep inequalities in our society."
Swarthmore must be so proud.
Over at Harvard, another young lady has similar views. Harvard Crimson editorial writer Sandra Y.L. Korn recently called for getting rid of academic freedom in favor of something called "academic justice."
"If our university community opposes racism, sexism and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of 'academic freedom'?" Korn asks.
Helpfully, she answers her own question: "When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue."
One could easily dismiss these students as part of that long and glorious American tradition of smart young people saying stupid things. As Oscar Wilde remarked, "In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience."
But we all know that this nonsense didn't spring ex nihilo from their imaginations. As Allan Bloom showed a quarter century ago in "The Closing of the American Mind," these ideas are taught.
Indeed, we are now up to our knees in this Orwellian bilge. Diversity means conformity.
Let me invoke personal privilege by citing a slightly dated example. When the Los Angeles Times picked me up as a columnist in 2005, Barbra Streisand publicly canceled her subscription in protest (I'm proud to say). You see, Streisand's friend, iconic left-wing columnist Robert Scheer, had been let go. And I was one of the new columnists brought on board. This was an outrage.
"The greater Southern California community is one that not only proudly embraces its diversity, but demands it," Streisand wrote to the Times in a syntactically impaired rant that read a bit like one of those letters I occasionally get from prison inmates who've memorized words from a thesaurus without fully understanding what they mean. "Your publisher's decision to fire Robert Scheer is a great disservice to the spirit of our community. ... So although the number of contributors to your op-ed pages may have increased, in firing Robert Sheer [sic] and putting Jonah Goldberg in his place, the gamut of voices has undeniably been diluted. ..."
Nearly a decade later, I still don't know what it means to dilute a gamut of voices. But I do know what she meant by "diversity." It means: "people who agree with me." It's lazy and insipid shorthand for "left wing." After all, by the normal metrics of identity politics -- race, religion, gender -- Scheer and I are largely interchangeable. Where we differ is ideology. And ideological diversity is the only kind of diversity the left finds offensive.
Which brings us back to the sages of Swarthmore and Harvard. They at least understand that ideological diversity is actually, like, you know, a thing. They just think it's a bad thing.
More pernicious, however, is that they believe the question of justice is a settled matter. We know what justice is, so why let serious people debate it anymore? The millennia-old dialogue between Aristotle, Plato, St. Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Rawls, Rorty, Hayek et al.? Shut it down, people. Or at least if the conversation heads in a direction where the Korns, Chings and Streisands smell "oppression" -- as defined solely by the left -- then it must not be "put up with." Diversity demands that diversity of opinion not be tolerated anymore.
Further closing of the American mind..........or whats left of it. (no pun intended).
Look at Obama's background. This is exactly what he came from. Is it any wonder?
Succinct and accurate.
Your remark reminds me of one of the more memorable scenes from Dith Pran's The Killing Fields.
Not the gruesome stacks of bodies and gratuitous executions. There were so many of them, your mind got numbed.
But the scene of the kid, maybe 9 years old, who gets praised lavishly by the prison camp guards for pulling up tomato plants.
It seems some of the inmates were cheating on their meager food rations by planting tomatoes; a metaphor on the liberals who want to tax those who show any ambition to earn more than the state allows.
BS...Bush Sr was left of center; Clinton far left; Bush Jr Center...Obozo=communist.
“Diversity” Means:
No ‘white faces’.
No male genitalia.
Leftist agendas ONLY.
Same-sex relations a PLUS.
Signed, A Tolerant Liberal
LOL... While I agree with you, your comment is very representative of the perception problem that positions of others are different based upon where you stand to view them.
“It is getting harder and harder not to cry when contemplating the future of our country.”
I do cry as I see the pain that is ahead for all and I can’t help but have compassion for the painful experiences of many.
While I am well ahead of the turmoil ahead, I find my strength in several beliefs.
1. God is in control and everything is happening according to His Divine Plan as predicted and told to us by His Son. It is happening for a reason. What we see as painful from the perspective of a three year old, God from the parent’s perspective sees as being a good experience required for us to grow.
2. It is the matters of the soul that are important and not the matters of the flesh. They could drop an atomic bomb on my head and totally destroy every cell in my body, but it would not harm my soul.
3. Love is the most important thing. Not human love like I love my gun or dog or family, but Divine Love that is unconditional and freeing. By finding my strength in my Love of God, it is easier to let go of all else and be truly free. My joy comes from seeing my children and all around me grow to find that same freedom.
As I read this article I’m struck by it’s title, and how it illustrates how wrong it is to call these people ‘liberal.’ There is absolutely nothing liberal about the modern American left. I wish conservatives understood the power of words and language as well as leftists do.
sigh...I'm living this quote.
If small government is the goal of the right and big government is the goal of the left, that means that the extreme right is anarchy and the extreme left is totalitarianism. In this country, the center SHOULD be strict constitutionalism.
Given this situation, I suggested in 'Repressive Tolerance' the practice of discriminating tolerance in an inverse direction, as a means of shifting the balance between Right and Left by restraining the liberty of the Right, thus counteracting the pervasive inequality of freedom (unequal opportunity of access to the means of democratic persuasion) and strengthening the oppressed against the oppressed. Tolerance would be restricted with respect to movements of a demonstrably aggressive or destructive character (destructive of the prospects for peace, justice, and freedom for all). Such discrimination would also be applied to movements opposing the extension of social legislation to the poor, weak, disabled. As against the virulent denunciations that such a policy would do away with the sacred liberalistic principle of equality for 'the other side', I maintain that there are issues where either there is no 'other side' in any more than a formalistic sense, or where 'the other side' is demonstrably 'regressive' and impedes possible improvement of the human condition. To tolerate propaganda for inhumanity vitiates the goals not only of liberalism but of every progressive political philosophy.If the choice were between genuine democracy and dictatorship, democracy would certainly be preferable. But democracy does not prevail. The radical critics of the existing political process are thus readily denounced as advocating an 'elitism', a dictatorship of intellectuals as an alternative. What we have in fact is government, representative government by a non-intellectual minority of politicians, generals, and businessmen. The record of this 'elite' is not very promising, and political prerogatives for the intelligentsia may not necessarily be worse for the society as a whole.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWWCpuqV4c0&feature=player_detailpage
Language and content alert...Click if you are not offended by the ironic truth...
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