My Turn: The Question That We Should Be Asking [senior at Yale challenges PC "morality"]

The explanations students and professors give for the September 11 attacks—extreme poverty in the Middle East

"Extreme poverty in the middle east"... extreme poverty? I'm sorry, I am struggling with this being our fault!

We spent, in the 1940's and 1950's millions of dolars finding sites to drill wells, and installing them. When our leases ran out, they were not re-newed and many Arab states became very wealthy selling the oil we gave them the technology to extract to us. But it is our fault many in their nations are poor??????? Excuse me, but this does not compute! But what do you expect from public schools?

And some people wonder why I am working long nights to make sure our daughter goes to private school.... I still remember one line from 6th grade in public school, in 1974; "...what makes our Constitution so great is that it is a living document...." Obviously she had never bothered to read the document, since there are only 2 ways it was intended to be "living"; either through an ammendment or a Constitutional Convention (which would have killed it and started over).

As soon as my daughter begins to learn about the Constitution in school, even though it is a private school; I will begin to sit with her every night and read the original document with her.

Oh, and btw, when I was in college, the big push was against "multi-national coporations", especially Nestle's; where my summer job was. Needless to say; I was not a popular man on campus!

MARK A SITY
http://www.logic101.net/

"pedagogical-industrial complex"

I wonder if it would not be better to call it the "pedagogical-big government complex"?

Done - email sent to her. Thanks for the link. That a young person, after 14 years of public school and Yale experience can reason so well gives me great hope for the future of our country. The indoctrination is not yet total!

Thanks for the bump. I expect her to take some crap for writing this piece, not to mention what the professors might do/say/think.

Continuing to neglect the place of moral evaluations in discussing current events is not only philosophically problematic; it is also potentially suicidal. There comes a point where the refusal to take a stand on what is wrong results in its victory.

Exellent article! Thanks for the post and the ping.

Alison reminds me of a line from one of my favorite movies:
Less than a drop in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea. But it seems some of the drops sparkle, some of them do sparkle" ...

I think it's interesting to note that our society as a whole only began accepting all of these gray shades in morality as the "rebel generation" became the parents and the leaders. It's taken us far from the the basic moral foundation we once had in an amazingly short amount of time.

I'm hoping we will begin to see a backwards turn in this road we've been on.

I expect her to take some crap for writing this piece, not to mention what the professors might do/say/think.
Almost certainly.

Still, there ARE some "good guys" at Yale.
Here is an e-mail that I now have permission to post here:

Dear Ron,
Thank you for sending along this link! I think one of the most important ways the university can question the assumptions of postmodern moral relativism is with a return to the classical concept of a liberal education.
I remember one of my classes, on the afternoon of September 11 when professors and students alike were in a state of shock. Our assignment for the second class meeting was to begin to reread the Iliad. My professor commented on how an understanding of the issues involved in the Iliad was relevant for understanding the attacks. Achilles' rage, and the moral problems it poses, is not unlike the violent calculations of the terrorists. The solution the poet proposes (for it must be said he recognizes Achilles' rage to be problematic) may help us in our search for understanding and for an appropriate response to similar events.
Thus,
Instead of holding up different and undefinable standards for each culture, we ought first to study the Western tradition both for the insights it gives us into our own cultural standards, and also to help us understand and evaluate the standards of other cultures. Given world enough and time, we could then begin to study non-western cultures and try to find the historic roots of such ideologies as Islamic fundamentalism. But what the student writer has to say is certainly true: we can't do these things in good faith unless are willing from the beginning to embrace moral distinctions.
Sincerely,
Eric P. Babbs, Yale '04

Wow, thanks for sharing that. I wonder who her Professor is, they have some great Homer scholars at Yale.

Wow, thanks for sharing that.
I wonder who her Professor is, they have some great Homer scholars at Yale.
You KNOW that I cannot pass up a straight line like that...

from www.gizmoandwidget.com

(I know, I KNOW... You were talking about THESE guys.)

The problem is that most minds-full-of-mush (an apt Rush term) is simple. They wouldn't recognize a moral imperative if their life depended on it (and it does.)

With all due respect, I think you're wrong about this. They do recognize moral imperatives. They just don't honor the right ones.

What we're seeing now is the inherent hatred of America by the liberal elite. It's always been there. It always will be. It's just now being exposed to the light of day.

Unfortunately the greatness that America had was its inherent sense of morality - which began dying as that was strangled, choked and beat out of her.

And the result of this decline was the 9/11 attacks. But I'm beginning to believe this inherent sense of morality may just make a comeback. Say what you want about the next generation. They may fool us and develop into the next great one.