The Reason for the End of Reason

Edward Bernard Glick writes an interesting article on how academia became the way it is:

It's August 1968. Anti-Vietnam War demonstrators have just wrecked the Democratic national convention in Chicago and ruined Hubert Humphrey's chances to become President. So what did these Marxist demonstrators and their cohorts elsewhere do next?

They stayed in college. They sought out the easiest professors and the easiest courses. And they stayed in the top half of their class. This effectively deferred them from the military draft, a draft that discriminated against young men who didn't have the brains or the money to go to college. That draft also sparked the wave of grade inflation that still swamps our colleges. Vietnam-era faculty members lowered standards in order to help the "Hell No, We Won't Go" crowd.

So now I get it! Basically, a bunch of self-indulgent leftists radicals with an agenda took over and destroyed any semblance of thought or standards.

Forty years have passed since the 1968 Democratic national convention. During that time, American academia has been transformed into the most postmodernist, know-nothing, anti-American, anti-military, anti-capitalist, Marxist institution in our society. It is now a bastion of situational ethics and moral relativity and teaches that there are no evil people, only misunderstood and oppressed people. American academia is now a very intolerant place, As Ann Coulter, who has been driven off more than one campus podium because of her conservative views, has put it, "There is free speech for thee, but not for me."

Though I really can't stand Ann Coulter, she is right on this one. All is relative, no "truth" (always in quotes) exists, yet their utterances are pearls of wisdom and anyone else is wrong or stupid (or both). These folks regularly get themselves all worked up into this kind of pretzelled logic.

I think of these folks as the CTD Crowd (and no, CTD does not stand for cliterodectomy). It stands for "Curse the Darkness" - the only thing that they know how to do. This is what they call "Critical Theory" (!) and sadly, this is what passes today for reasoned thought.

After too many years in the CTD camp, I am happy to report that I am finally with the life-affirming LAC Crowd (and no, LAC does not stand for Legal Aid of Cambodia). Rather, it stands for "Light a Candle" - something that is kind of hard to do if you are debating whether or not fire is something that should ever be endorsed. After all, so many people have burned themselves with fire in the past.

Then again, as the geniuses will be quick to point out, there really is no such thing as darkness. It's ALL a social construct.

Which Would You Choose?

Here are two articles that show the difference between living under Palestinian rule and living under Israeli rule.

The first one describes the human rights situation in Gaza over the past year.

Palestinian Mazen Shahin says the torture he suffered in a month spent as a prisoner of the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip was worse than the several years he spent in Israeli jails.

He says he will never forget his time in Mashtal prison: "It was a lot worse than being in jail in Israel," he told AFP at his modest home in Khan Yunis refugee camp in the south of the Palestinian territory.

The Israelis arrested him four times and he spent "several years" behind bars inside the Jewish state, said Shahin, a member of the Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

Sadly, the article buys the Hamas propaganda that this was carried out by rogue elements of the security forces and that the public can now complain if they wish. No doubt, those who dare to complain will be given their own private tours of the Hamas penal system. A place where:

He says he had the soles of his feet beaten with heavy electric cables. His captors also made him suffer the indignity of shaving his head and beard.

"They told me I was not a religious person and that I wasn't allowed to pray because God would not hear my prayers,"

By the looks of it, Meshtal prison makes Abu Ghraib look like a sanatorium.

The second article deals with Palestinian collaborators with Israel who now live in Sedorot - the same town that is constantly bombarded by missiles from Gaza. According to the Guardian - a newspaper that rarely if ever has something positive to say about Israel, these collaborators unanimously asserted like "Samir" that:

"I'm very happy that I helped the state of Israel. Here everything is straightforward, not like with the Arabs. Here there is a law and there are rights."

So basically, people prefer to live under a rain of deadly missiles rather than live in Gaza under Islamofascists. Ponder that the next time you hear about how some leftist, "peace-loving" organization or Carterite has expressed their solidarity with the Palestinians. Too bad Rachel Corrie did not live long enough to enjoy the type of hospitality reserved for Alan Johnson and Mazen Shahin.