Thursday, October 8, 2020

                                                             October 8, 2020

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

 

The Academy’s War on Western Civilization

Friends,

Of all the venues where the unleashed hysteria of revolutionary Progressivism manifests itself, it is most rampant in our educational establishment, on our college campuses and in our schools. It is there in those hallowed halls and in the hothouse public school classrooms that the Progressivist infection really begins in earnest. It is there where it becomes contagious and a pathological indoctrination of our children in a rancid ideology diametrically hostile to nearly all of Western tradition and beliefs.  What occurs in those centers where our children are educated is happening in our society at large….critically dangerous, perhaps even fatal, to our culture.

Our educational system has become the seedbed—the Typhoid Mary, if you will—for the frenzied “cancel culture” we see around us and for the concerted and increasingly fanatical attempt to destroy and erase the two millennia of Western Christian civilization.

Far too many Republicans and so-called “conservatives” believe that—somehow—they can coexist or even collaborate with this lunacy. They cannot. It will devour them, just as it is devouring what remains of our heritage.

There are literally hundreds of publicized examples of this educational madness, and they are just the ones that earn particular notice. But for every one news account there are dozens, even hundreds which don’t make it into the press. For every example of progressivist “woke” lunacy there are numerous others in classrooms across the nation, or proclaimed by professorial or teachers’ organizations.

I have selected a representative sampling of these as examples, and I will list them below—they are just the tip of the iceberg, just an impressionistic view of what is occurring in our academic system today. But they offer a very definite idea of the perilous and utterly disastrous state of our education system. Either we—our leaders—take strong and radical action, and initiate comprehensive reform, or there is no future for this nation…or for Western civilization.

First, there are courses on “how to make a revolution and overthrow the government”:

Washington and Lee University Offers Course on ‘How to Overthrow the State’

“Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, is offering a course entitled ‘How to Overthrow the State,’ which includes encouraging students to engage in ‘producing a Manifesto, and ‘writing a persuasive essay on rewriting history and confronting memory’….”

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And what about the University of Rhode Island? You see, “woke” students (and the university administrators) there just don’t feel comfortable or safe around monuments and murals honoring soldiers who fought in World War II—they were “too white”:

University to remove World War II murals because they show too many white people

https://www.thecollegefix.com/university-to-remove-world-war-ii-murals-because-they-show-too-many-white-people/

MATT LAMB - ASSISTANT EDITOR 

“Students didn’t ‘feel comfortable’ sitting near the murals, administrators said….

“The University of Rhode Island recently announced plans to remove two murals depicting World War II veterans because it lacks ‘diversity and a sensitivity to today’s complex and painful problems,’ according to the university. Kathy Collins, vice president of student affairs, told CBS 12 she received complaints because the two folk-art murals portraying life in the GI Bill era of the 1950s ‘portray a very homogeneous population’ and that most of the people depicted in the murals are ‘predominantly white’.”

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Or then there is this representative nugget, gaining quite a bit of currency and support among academics:

Brooklyn College Education Prof. Claims Math Is ‘White Supremacist Patriarchy’

“Brooklyn College Professor of Math Education Laurie Rubel argued this week on Twitter that the mathematical equation 2+2=4 ‘reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.’ Rubel’s tweet was retweeted and promoted by several academics at universities and colleges around the nation.

“According to a report by Campus Reform, Brooklyn College Professor Laurie Rubel, who teaches math education, tried to make the case this week that basic math is ‘white supremacist.’ The tweets are part of a larger trend in recent scholarship by American academics, many of which have argued that ‘objective truth’ is a social construct.

‘The idea that math (or data) is culturally neutral or in any way objective is a MYTH. I’m ready to move on with that understanding. Who’s coming with me?’ Rubel wrote in a tweet.”


I have to admit that math was never a subject where I shined—but a construct of “white supremacist patriarchy”? Hmm. If I had known this back in the eleventh grade, I might have used that excuse in defense of my abject disaster in calculus! Of course, I’m kidding, besides, I’m white. But apparently, a growing number of university professors now follow along with Rubel’s insanity.

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This line of thinking spills over in the classroom and, very obviously, in what students are learning in the ivy-lined-halls of academe. They don’t think up or adopt these ideas out of thin air, like the Greek goddess Athena, who was born out of Zeus’s head, fully grown and developed. Such ideas are inculcated and taught “out of professors’ heads,” and like an infectious virus they take root. What Professor Rubel suggests, he teaches, and the results in far too many cases are this:

Students Claim Objective ‘Truth’ Is a ‘White Supremacist’ Myth

“Students at the Claremont McKenna Colleges argued that objective truth is a social construct devised by ‘white supremacists’ to ‘attempt to silence oppressed peoples’ in a letter to the Pomona College president.

“The letter came in response to Pomona College President David Oxtoby’s affirmation of commitment to free speech and intellectual diversity following the chaos that ensued during a lecture featuring Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald. Student protesters derailed her lecture on the rise of anti-police attitudes by banging on windows and shouting, ‘F*ck the police,’ and ‘Black Lives Matter.’ Campus security ultimately forced MacDonald to livestream her lecture from a near-empty room across campus.”

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And then there is the rash—the epidemic?—of “woke” white women college professors who have pretended to be black, but now have come forward to “confess” their grievous “sins” and lived lies. (Maybe we should revisit the 19th Amendment?) Obviously, being black is the color and race of Predestination and the Elect in the new totalitarian religion of post-Marxist Progressivism. It’s like gaining instant and desired sainthood and celebrity, even if it must be faked.

Be it the notorious Rachel Dolezal (remember her assumed identity: Nkechi Amare Diallo?) or a Jessica Krug (“I am a culture leech!”), one really has to wonder about these female academic impostors. This is where a college education at Harvard and at many other universities, and the indoctrination of “woke” professors, leads: demented fanatical Harpies.

Here’s another example, and notice that the individual involved does not identify as either male or female, but “non-binary,” and goes by the pronoun “they” or “them”—a “third sex”(!).

Got that? The news item comes from Left-leaning AOL:

UW-Madison teaching assistant resigns after admitting to lying about being Black

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/09/18/uw-madison-resigns-after-admitting-lying-being-black/24624135/  Sep 18th 2020 4:55PM

“UW-Madison teaching assistant CV Vitolo Haddad is really Italian.  On the heels of the Jessica Krug controversy, yet another white academic has come clean about pretending to be a person of color. According to reports, CV Vitolo-Haddad – a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student/TA who identifies as non-binary and goes by ‘they’ or ‘them’ pronouns – has come clean about pretending to be Black and/or Latinx when in reality ‘they’ is Italian. In a Medium blog post, Vitolo-Haddad confessed to ‘their duplicity, apologizing for ‘every ounce of heartbreak and betrayal’ ‘they caused by co-opting the Black experience in order to gain access to ‘Black organizing spaces’.”

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Lastly, the AP Stylebook is used among journalists, but also on campuses as a guide to writing. Here’s their latest admonition to writers:

New AP Stylebook guidance recommends using ‘unrest’ instead of ‘riot’ to avoid stigmatizing protesters

https://www.theblaze.com/news/ap-stylebook-rioting-unrest-looting

 CARLOS GARCIA

“The Associated Press Stylebook tweeted an admonishment to stop using the word "riot" to describe political protests and instead use the milder "unrest" to avoid stigmatizing protesters.”

Everything must be done and done forcefully—no opposition tolerated—to protect the “space” of supposed minorities and to destroy “systemic [white] racism.” Anything in the way, anything that the zealots hear and see that somehow can be construed to offend them simply must be purged, must go. And, of course, that includes anything associated with Western civilization, culture, and history.

In a word, this is truly demonic—these are demiurges from the very depths of Hell.

Each of these examples, each of these cases, could be multiplied and added to; they are emblematic of what is going on at UNC and UVa, not just at Yale or Swarthmore. And until genuine reformers—radical reformers who are not afraid of the resulting barrage of severe criticism from the Left and the Educational Establishment—get involved and take dramatic action, the process and the irresistible decline of our civilization will continue.

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