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I wrote earlier of how we\u2019re being bombarded with false \u201cfacts\u201d so obviously wrong that there\u2019s little choice but for rational people to start considering what the fake media refers to as \u201calternative facts.\u201d<\/p>\n
What happened to us as a people that we no longer can agree on even the most basic of concepts, like the meaning of the word \u201cfact\u201d?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just one murder away from utopia!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n –the unofficial Leftist motto. There are swaths of the population that honestly believe that Stalin, Mao, and others of their ilk failed because they just weren\u2019t willing to kill enough people. I\u2019ve met them. They\u2019re real. And they\u2019re mostly on campus. Mostly.<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s clear that what happened here started in the schools, that the falsehoods taken to be truth were instilled in childhood. Childhood is a great time to present lies as truth. Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny are fine enough I suppose\u2026but we stop reinforcing those lies after a certain point. Without the reinforcement, as the children get older they think things through and realize the toys and treats which appear on certain days are coming from the parents and not from supernatural creatures.<\/p>\n Other lies get near constant reinforcement. I remember being taught \u201ca little inflation is good for the economy\u201d and \u201cDemocrats are the party of the working people\u201d in high school, among other \u201cfacts\u201d that are clearly rubbish, and these ideas were reinforced at least a little in college.<\/p>\n In my day, such reinforcement was somewhat scattered (granted, I focused on mathematics coursework, so my opinion might be skewed), but now Marx is the most common author in college, dominating a variety of coursework. A student could literally be forced to read Marx four or more times<\/a> even if his degree wasn\u2019t in \u201cTerrible things people thought of in the 19th<\/sup> century.\u201d<\/p>\n For all its faults, the only country to embrace capitalism in the 19th<\/sup> century managed to achieve a standard of living far beyond everywhere else in the world, despite the fact the rest of the world basically had a 2,000 year head start. And yet, in the face of this fact, our students are constantly told capitalism is terrible, and the best thing to do would be to follow Marxist ideas, and on top of that our students are forced to ignore the fact of just how much death Marxism causes.<\/p>\n With such heavy reinforcement of lies, it\u2019s only natural for our students to get the wrong idea about how facts work: they\u2019re constantly being told that you can ignore facts just by saying whatever you want. It\u2019s pure insanity, but unsurprising from students fed a steady diet of madness in their classes.<\/p>\n The latest madness comes from Pomona college<\/a>:<\/p>\n After outgoing Pomona College President\u00a0David Oxtoby\u00a0sent a school-wide email rebuking the actions of violent protesters attempting to <\/em>shut down<\/em><\/a> conservative journalist Heather Mac Donald’s speech, three self-identified “Black students” triggered by the pro-First Amendment stance penned a <\/em>letter<\/em><\/a>\u00a0to Oxtoby, condemning his words, and, yes,\u00a0openly labeling “truth” a\u00a0racist “myth.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Before going further, I really want to point out another reason our campuses are going bonkers: spineless administration. The Poo Bah above had ample opportunity to speak out against the madness before now, and was in a position of absolute power. He could have restored sanity, but waited until he was out the door to denounce the violence against free speech. If our other Poo Bahs would speak in unison, right now, against violence, and remove those who use it to prevent free speech on campus, it\u2019d be at least a start towards restoring sanity in higher education. Instead they foolishly speak out against Trump<\/a>. We really need to change how our leadership is selected, starting with picking stewards instead of leaders, but that\u2019s for another post.<\/p>\n The letter being referenced is well-written in terms of grammar, but rather weird in terms of logic:<\/p>\n Historically, white supremacy has venerated the idea of objectivity, \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n I presume the authors are against white supremacy, but venerating objectivity is actually a good thing, right? The logic is difficult to follow here, but nevertheless highlights the incoherence of the ideology, and where it inevitably leads.<\/p>\n Without the concept of objectivity, how are we to determine right and wrong, or what is good and what is bad? Presumably, we\u2019ll start with long shouting matches, but empirical evidence tells how this will end: mass murder. If we actually use \u201cobjectivity\u201d as some sort of epithet, then the inevitable conclusion to resolve the shouting (and rioting) will be \u201cjust one more murder, and then utopia!\u201d<\/p>\n The letter continues to explain its point of view:<\/p>\n The idea that there is a single truth–\u2019the Truth\u2019–is a construct of the Euro-West that is deeply rooted in the Enlightenment, which was a movement that also described Black and Brown people as both subhuman and impervious to pain.<\/em><\/p>\n This isn\u2019t gibberish, at least, but ignores the fact that those people of the past, those seekers of objectivity, when confronted with the unpopular idea that \u201cother\u201d people were in fact human, didn\u2019t respond with violence like kids on campus today.<\/p>\n Instead, we realized that, yeah, the color of your skin doesn\u2019t annihilate your humanity. That\u2019s how it works, you see\u2026you talk about things, you allow people to discuss their ideas, even if those ideas seem bizarre. It\u2019s better than rioting and simply killing people with disagreeable ideas, honest.<\/p>\n The idea that the search for this truth involves entertaining Heather Mac Donald\u2019s hate speech is illogical.<\/em><\/p>\n I don\u2019t even know this person so don\u2019t know what her speech entails, but, yes, the search for truth means a willingness to look, and listen to things that might be uncomfortable to hear. There really was a time when it was radical to say slavery was an evil institution, but the culture these students are railing against allowed people to speak out against slavery.<\/p>\n And these kids have been given the \u201cfact\u201d that the culture that freed them is evil and thus all the ideas of that culture must be wrong. On how many levels is wrong?<\/p>\n Then comes the usual litany of slurs:<\/p>\n Heather Mac Donald is a fascist, a white supremacist, a warhawk, a transphobe, a queerphobe, a classist,<\/em><\/p>\n Look, in the past, it was fact that slathering people with these names would hurt them, but now that basically everyone who dares to speak out against this ideology of hate gets called the same names\u2026it doesn\u2019t work. Facts can change, but not simply by yelling or killing whoever disagrees with you.<\/p>\n Advocating for white supremacy and giving white supremacists platforms wherefrom their toxic and deadly illogic…<\/em><\/p>\n In addition to the ridiculous name-calling, the cry of \u201cillogic\u201d seems to come up often. These poor kids haven\u2019t been trained in logic, but they do realize the word makes them sound more adult. Logic isn\u2019t resolved by shouting or name-calling, you see, there are very precise rules for logic. If there was illogic, they could, if they understood logic, simply identify the error.<\/p>\n As an aside, a grad student pointed out I was being illogical just a few weeks ago. I responded in the rational way (\u201cWhere exactly am I being illogical\u201d), and she showed where I improperly took the contrapositive of a complex conditional. Hey, I made a mistake, it happens\u2014I teach mathematics, not gender studies, I don\u2019t punish students for telling me I\u2019m wrong. I acknowledged the mistake, and then asked for a counter-example to further reinforce how I was wrong. She couldn\u2019t do it, but I could after a few minutes. But that\u2019s how logic works, if you\u2019re wrong, it\u2019s perfectly simple and unarguable to demonstrate as much.<\/p>\n But we\u2019re teaching our kids that you can shout at something as being illogical, and by some weird magic, it will become illogical. We really need to focus less on ideology on our campuses, and put more time into learning how to think rationally.<\/p>\n The letter continues, but is fairly summarized as \u201cwe don\u2019t like what you\u2019re saying, therefore it is a fact you are illogical and wrong. And racist.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s\u00a0 a shame the Poo Bah didn\u2019t have the courage to do what needs to be done to help these kids while he was on campus, but maybe the next Poo Bah will put some effort into telling these kids \u201cFacts aren\u2019t racist. Go study something besides ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n Yeah, right.<\/p>\n www.professorconfess.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"