Victor Davis Hanson has said about all there needs to be said on this subject. He has adroitly pulled back the Liberal, "intellectual" KKK sheet and revealed the swarming maggots and wholesale putrification underneath!
Tenure has ensured that tens of thousands of professors who work nine months a year cannot be fired for being unproductive or mediocre scholars, much less for being abject failures in the classroom.
Universities exist to provide employment to men who cannot make a living with their hands or their heads. - Florence King, attributed to her father.
I heard a Q&A forum between college students and a sitting supreme court justice on C-SPAN the other day. The justice quoted a line in the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
He then posed the question, "What is the operative word to you?"
Her answer, "the word 'We'." She reasoned that these principles only apply to the US, and "who are we to impose on others?" arguement. A 'live and let live" attitude.
This is a perfect example of moral bankruptcy. To say this is to believe that "there are no absolutes" (which is the ultimate in hypocracy because this claim is an absolute).
Sure, saying "live and let live" to another American is called freedom. But try saying "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" do not not apply to a starving North Korean, a cuban citizen, a moslem condemned to death because she committed adultry, or any dissenter in Iraq or Iran.
"Live and let live" can mean "live and let die or be enslaved" depending on who you are talking to. "Who are we to impose ourselves on other?" We are Americans, that's who. I hold that freedom is superior. We live this truth every day. The evidence is seen in our past and present. The US is the world's only "superpower" because it is the product of our principles and values. Who are we to deny others of our values?
Freedom must be promoted wherever we do not find it. Period.
The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists are Murdering Our Past -- by Keith Windschuttle
for those of you interested in the who's and what's of the postmodernistic neomarxist takeover of the social sciences and liberal arts. Some good scary stuff in there....