There aren't many people
championing Marx and Lenin anymore. The
New York Times reported that the
Socialist party has only about 1,000 registered members, the Communist Party
U.S.A. has about 2,000 members, and the Democratic Socialists, 6,000. Compare
that to their heyday; in the 1932 presidential election, their combined votes
numbered nearly one million.
1
Why are these parties
so unsuccessful today? One reason is Communism as an idea has proven to simply
not work in the real world. It was tried across many countries of Eastern
Europe, most notably within the Soviet Union. The Communist experiment ran some
70 years, but it didn't improve the lives of the citizens, it worsened them. In
fact, in every country where communism was attempted, it became an utter
failure. Even today, citizens of Communist countries like Cuba are still
suffering in third-world conditions. Once Communist China adopted
Western/capitalist economic models (while using communism to hold onto political
control) it began to thrive.
I use this example to highlight a fairly simple
point: there are a lot of theories that sound good on paper, but when applied in
the real world, they simply don't work. In fact, that's one way to identify if
your worldview makes sense—see how it matches up with reality.
Political Correctness Eating Its Own
I've been watching with interest how liberal advocates are now suffering the
consequences of their own dictums. Universities have been beating the drum on
non-offensive speech, relative morality, and political correctness for decades,
but now those who have promoted such views have been finding themselves subject
to condemnation by the very students they instructed.
One example is Laura
Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University and a self-described feminist and
cultural critic recently
wrote an
article decrying the "sexual paranoia" happening at college campuses. She
didn't name any names nor did she point to a specific example, yet according to
the Fiscal Times, two students filed harassment charges against her claiming
that her essay had "'a chilling effect' on students' ability to report sexual
misconduct ."
2 Since in Title IX cases, the university
basically treats the accused as guilty until proven innocent, Kipnis had to
undergo an
arduous ordeal trying to show how the feelings of the students who felt
victimized didn't count.
Edward Schlosser, a professor at "a midsize state
school" admits in an
article
on Vox that "my students sometimes scare me — particularly the liberal
ones."
3 He recounts how a class discussion on the housing
crash where a student challenged a film presentation on the underlying cause of
the crash because the video did not talk about race as a factor. The student
filed a complaint with his director.
Schlosser said the new feelings-based
standard has him modifying his teaching style. He reports:
I have
intentionally adjusted my teaching materials as the political winds have
shifted. (I also make sure all my remotely offensive or challenging opinions,
such as this article, are expressed either anonymously or pseudonymously). Most
of my colleagues who still have jobs have done the same. We've seen bad things
happen to too many good teachers — adjuncts getting axed because their
evaluations dipped below a 3.0, grad students being removed from classes after a
single student complaint, and so on.4
I believe
Schlosser is scared. In fact, he was so scared he chose a pseudonym to write the
article.
There seems to be no one who is safe from the rebid demand to not
hurt feelings by students today. Even Dan Savage, the sex columnist and
homosexual advocate was caught the double-edged sword of hurt feelings. You may
remember Savage from his
castigation of Christian students at a student journalism conference last
year. He was hoisted on his own petard when speaking at the University of
Chicago. Savage was explaining that he used to use the word "tranny" to talk of
transgenders, but even using the word in his explanation caused students to
accuse him of committing a hate crime and set up a petition on change.org
providing guidelines for future speakers so they will not offend anyone.
5
Tolerance Crumbling Under Its Own Weight
There are many more stories such as these coming out of universities.
Christina Hoff Sommers experienced this many times when she speaks, eliciting
charges of triggering students and faculty alike. Sommers is also a
self-identified feminist, although she likes to present the facts as they
pertain to things like wage differences or biases against women in vocations.
Those facts are enough to make her an enemy of those who simply want to believe
the narrative rather than the truth.
I've written before about
living in the age of feeling. I've recognized that by abandoning the
traditional moral understanding of sex, colleges have opened themselves up to
more
sexual miscreancy.. Now, we can see the fruition of the "tolerance" and "do
not offend" ideology. Liberal professors, who have taught such poorly defined
concepts are now beginning to reap the consequences of that position. All I can
hope is that like communism, the culture abandons those failed ideas and returns
to search for the truth, for that's the only thing that will withstand the test
of time.
References