Free Republic

How we can fight social justice indoctrination in society and educational institutions

Postmodernists, on the other hand, eschew any notion of objectivity, perceiving knowledge as a construct of power differentials rather than anything that could possibly be mutually agreed upon. Informed by such thinkers as Foucault and Derrida, science therefore becomes an instrument of Western oppression; indeed, all discourse is a power struggle between oppressors and oppressed. In this scheme, there is no Western civilization to preserve—as the more powerful force in the world, it automatically takes on the role of oppressor and therefore any form of equity must consequently then involve the overthrow of Western “hegemony.” These folks form the current...

Dr. Jordan Peterson visits Harvard University, where he used to teach, for a civil discussion about neo-marxism and postmodernism, among other topics. 6 minutes of Jordan Peterson addressing the Harvard students directly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGkQil14LPQ Full conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urd0IK0WEWU&t=1916s

You can click here to go to this discussion by Dr. Jordan Peterson on why postmodernism is so destructive and how to counter it.

(Great, passionate lecture on the scourge of Postmodernism that has taken over the colleges and is making its way into the rest of society, resulting in the rotting away of our culture before our very eyes. Explains what it is, its relationship to marxism and how it's brought about identity politics... and what to do about it. Well worth the time. For those who don't know, Dr. Peterson is a professor of psychology at McGill university in Canada and is a courageous and outspoken enemy of political correctness. Once you see this video you'll want to see more of his...

According to the German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper, the “wisdom of the West” expresses the sum total of what man “ought to” be. This wisdom was then discredited and rejected in the Modern era, and so is largely unavailable to post-modern man, who bobs along in the wake of Modernism, which has largely discredited itself. Here I use Pieper’s vision as the standard against which to chart the spiritual and cultural decline of the West.ON FAITHPieper:  Man, insofar as he realizes his meaning, is someone who—in faith—opens himself by listening to God’s word, whenever he can perceive it.Modern:  Modern man,...

Obama always claims he found out about scandals from the "news". He only ramps up the fight against ISIS, when the media's reporting makes it obvious that the group is still a problem. So he has an obvious solution. If the media would just stop covering ISIS, it wouldn't be a problem. “The media needs to help in this,” he said, admitting that it has been a “difficult week,” with the threat posed by ISIS becoming a primary focus in the media. “One of the things that has to happen is how we report on this has to maintain perspective,...

".......It is here where the modern Left made its transition away from communism into a postmodern existentialism. Dr. Hicks strongly argues that postmodernism is rooted in the Counter Enlightenment movement featuring German superstars such as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. According to Hicks, postmodernism favors subjectivity over objectivity, the inadequacy of language to communicate over reason and truth, various collective multicultural groupings over individual identity and autonomy, willpower over realistic experience rooted in rational analysis, communalism and solidarity over individualism in values, markets and politics, and finally, suspicion, if not hostility, toward science and technology. As such, the postmodern critique...

How’s this for academic credentials: John C. Lennox holds MA, MMath, and PhD degrees from Cambridge University. Want more? He also has a DSc (Doctor of Science) degree from the Mathematics Institute at the University of Wales. Still more? How about additional MA and DPhil degrees from Oxford University, along with an MA in bioethics from the University of Surrey? More? Lennox was a Humboldt Fellow at the Universities of Würzburg and Freiburg in Germany and has lectured all over North America, Europe, and Australia. He currently holds a professorship in Mathematics at the University of Oxford and is an associate fellow of Oxford’s famous Said...

“…fully formed…heart beating…legs kicking…” And she dared. As a woman who’d earned the right to be on a stage historically dominated by men, Carly Fiorina dared to speak for those aborted alive, for the most basic right denied them by progressives: the right to live. She didn’t have to raise the topic at all, but she was the perfect candidate to have done so. She dared Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and by extension, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and all those pseudo-champions of women to watch the video of a near-term child whose life is snuffed out for the convenience...

[BIG SNIP]The Quakers’[new penitentiary system using isolation]experiment revealed that the consultation of one’s inner self without outside reference or constraints, with nothing to measure one’s self against, could produce distorted human beings who became certifiably mad. Self-proclaimed gods can turn out to be a Caligula or a Jim Jones.Just as bad as the fact consulting the inner light can result in the exhibition of mad or corrupt behavior is the fact that the newly minted gods believe themselves to be entitled to demand obeisance from us mere mortals.We mere everyday humans must bow down and worship the deities among us....

What does the rising generation of young evangelicals think about marriage? [Catholics too!] Here's the troubling truth. For five years, Dr. Abigail Rine has been teaching a course on gender theory at George Fox University, an evangelical school in the Quaker tradition. At the beginning of the semester, she tells her students that “they are guaranteed to read something they will find disagreeable, probably even offensive.” Writing at FirstThings.com recently, she related how five years ago it was easy to find readings that challenged and even offended the evangelical college students “considering the secular bent of contemporary gender studies.” But...

Rob Bell is a progressive former mega-church pastor. He is also a heretic who, since giving up the mega-church pastoring gig, has been hanging out with the likes of Oprah Winfrey. Bell was part of the emergent church, which engaged in “conversations” and rejected historic Christianity. While the emergents like to pretend they’re new, hip and cool, the reality is they’re no different than the other progressive churches out there which have rejected historic Christianity. The difference between the emergent church and the pentecostal or baptist churches is only how they demonstrate their rejection of historic Christianity. Rather than rolling...

[SNIP] The exchanges are just the latest eruption in a long culture war, analysts said, with lines clearly demarcated. “As screenings have sold out, conservative media has manned barricades against liberals who have attacked the movie or the idea of lionizing Kyle,” conservative David Weigel wrote for Bloomberg. He noted that much of the controversy involves the extended battle over guns — and gun control — and pits pro-Iraq war conservatives against anti-war liberals. But it also hints at another gulf in American politics: the plummeting number of Americans who serve in the armed services, which has given rise to...

For the last few decades, Western civilization has been attempting to avoid the difficult levels of thought-analysis,synthesis,and most of all,evaluation. No one wants to be the one to point a finger and say, “That’s just wrong.” For one thing, as we learned from Charlie Hebdo, doing so can get you killed. But we also know that repercussions can take other forms as well--job loss,lawsuits,public ridicule,and personal rejection(I don’t have as many friends as I used to). We have been basking in the luxury of sloppy, pseudo-intellectual mock thinking and it may cost us everything. The horrors of 9/11,the Boston bombing,the...

All presidents at one time have fudged on the truth. Most politicians pad their resumes and airbrush away their sins. But what is new about political lying is the present notion that lies are not necessarily lies anymore -- a reflection of the relativism that infects our entire culture. Postmodernism (the cultural fad "after modernism") went well beyond questioning norms and rules. It attacked the very idea of having any rules at all. Postmodernist relativists claimed that things like "truth" were mere fictions to preserve elite privilege. Unfortunately, bad ideas like that have a habit of poisoning an entire society...

Some thoughts on the celebrity of Sarah Silverman. "I saw my father’s penis once. But it was okay, because I was so young . . . and so drunk.” Thus one of the important cultural voices in modern American liberalism explores what our credulous Freudian friends would call her Electra complex. If, somewhere in this or another galaxy, an advanced alien race is monitoring the broadcasts of Sarah Silverman, we can be sure that they will not be much tempted to visit. Silverman is a model American of the age, whose craft consists of taking a very old tradition, Jewish...

There’s a lot eating Cate Blanchett in “Blue Jasmine,” a brilliant social satire about morals, social class and a socialite coming spectacularly undone in our ethics-challenged times, and she should already start clearing space on her mantle for all the golden statuettes that are going to be coming to her. The latest cinematic effort from writer/director Woody Allen is the perfect antidote from the usual superhero spectacles and it's a stand up and cheer return to form for a celebrated director that has fallen on hard times himself.

The glossary of inadmissible words in 21st-century American society has shrunk to what seems, at times, a null set. Deprecations and excretory references that once got kids' mouths washed out with soap are dropped with aplomb and immunity, and not just in Quentin Tarantino films. On the rare occasions when the Federal Communications Commission chastises a broadcaster for letting an expletive pass uncensored or unbleeped, cries of repression ricochet from sea to shining sea, quickly followed by passionate defenses of the First Amendment. But the set of inadmissible words is not quite null just yet. For, to paraphrase St. Paul,...

Well, well, well, so Obama has embarked on his third war in little more than two years. You've got to admit that "flexibility" is his middle name. Or at least one of his middle names: Barack Barry Hussein "Flexibility" Soetoro Obama, Jr. Those are the names we know so far, but The Donald thinks there might be more. Whodda thunk? Here we are barely into the first week of what started out as a "No-Fly Zone" and it is now turning out to be Air Al Qaida. Ten years ago, AQ had a mere four civilian airplanes to crash into...