A Pervasive Failure of Nerve in Higher Education

Richard Winchester March 10, 2019

The condition of American universities is well known to any astute observer: they are centers of left-wing, anti-American, indoctrination. Once-upon-a-time, universities enabled many students to broaden their perspectives on themselves and the world. Today, they all-too-often allow students to revel in their tribal identities, and try to ensure that the snowflakes have access to safe spaces, coloring books, and puppies, so they can ignore unpleasant information.

Universities give political correctness an entirely new, and dangerous, meaning. Many administrators, faculty, and students can abide no criticism. They say that they value diversity above all, but they are so intolerant of differing viewpoints that they are hot-houses of authoritarianism. Some universities have been havens for violent left-wing extremists such as Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Kathy Boudin, and Angela Davis. Almost every year an academic says or writes something that leaves one feeling he or she is from another planet.

A key question is: how did American colleges and universities get this way? Decades ago, they were the envy of the world............More

My Take - This problem started long ago, going back to the 20's with Margaret Mead  and her supporters and mentors.  (Actually Darwin's theory of evolution as the real foundation for leftism in academia, because that allowed for the rejection of a creator and any social structure surrounding the concept of creation. So foundationally this really goes quite far back.)  

Support for "activist" science, if not junk science, was already a mental and intellectual infestation in America's universities and Mead was a major part of that with her popular 1928 book, Coming of Age in Samoa,  on the sexual practises of Samoans.  "Contemporary scholars of Mead's work agree that, in her presentation of Samoa to American readers, Mead was motivated by a particular political agenda. As a sexually progressive individual, Mead saw (and portrayed) in Samoa the possibility of loosening social strictures on sexuality -- something she suggested could lead to more pleasure, and less pain and suffering." 

Her goal, and that of many of her supporters, was to undermine America's Judaic/Christian culture, and when you read about the personal lives of these people you begin to understand why!  The criticism of Mead has been attacked by her supporters, and truthfully, I have no idea if that attack is justified, although even her supporters say she left important information out about the social problems of Samoans, including rape.  So how to know what's right or what's important? 

 Well, let's apply my first rule in attaining understanding.  "Everything is the basics!"  Meaning we have to look at what's foundational to the structure of logic being presented.

So what's "the basics" we need to understand here?  Whether or not she stretched the truth isn't the primary question.  The primary question should be - does it really matter how Samoans live their lives to Americans and American values? 

There's the real issue - multiculturalism - going all the way back to the 20's among the academic and intellectual elite.  This idea that all cultures are equal - and better - than American culture is another insanity of leftist elitists.  The fact of the matter is American culture is foundationally structured on Judaic/Christian principles, and when the founding fathers created a freedom of religion component in the Constitution it never occurred to them it would involve religions that were not Bible based, because they clearly understood how superior Christianity was compared to the rest of the world's religions.  Even my scientific friends who are atheists believe that. 

Before America entered WWII a corrupt socialist group commonly known as the Frankfurt School fled Nazi Germany and infested America's universities and became central to the uprisings in universities all over the country in the 60's.  (To see more on this you may wish to read Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism, The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change")  But when they came here the intellectual swamp of leftism was already infesting the thoughts of intellectuals and academics.  This was fertile ground for them, and the evil seed of leftism grew and prospered. 

So what to do? We need to stop funding them.  End all support to all universities, whether they're from the right (there are some) or from the left and let the market place sort it all out.