Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand (14 page)
Authors: Mike S. Adams
BOOK: Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand
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It is beyond dispute that many students like yourself move to the left during their college years. What is disputed is the reason why they do so. Generally speaking, there are two competing common explanations for this phenomenon:
1.
The Discrimination Thesis.
This view says that students are liberalized in college because they are exposed disproportionately to liberal and progressive ideas. In other words, they are brainwashed.
2.
The Enlightenment Thesis.
This view says that students are liberalized in college because they are simply becoming more informed, educated, and enlightened. In other words, they are simply converging on the truth, which is the progressive point of view.
The
Seahawk
, our student newspaper, once did a story about liberalism on campus, specifically probing the question of whether there was a “liberal bias” in higher education. The story quoted a UNC-Wilmington professor who took the position that there was no such bias. He argued that 1) better educated people tend to be more liberal (because they are more educated) and that 2) people who are more educated get hired to teach (because they are more educated, not because they are more liberal).
Seahawk
, our student newspaper, once did a story about liberalism on campus, specifically probing the question of whether there was a “liberal bias” in higher education. The story quoted a UNC-Wilmington professor who took the position that there was no such bias. He argued that 1) better educated people tend to be more liberal (because they are more educated) and that 2) people who are more educated get hired to teach (because they are more educated, not because they are more liberal).
This argument suffers from the following fatal flaws:
1.
The observation that he pointed to in support of the enlightenment thesis is equally consistent with the discrimination thesis. Both sides
in the argument acknowledge that people tend to become more liberal as they become more educated. The question is why. The discrimination thesis, no less than the enlightenment thesis, accepts the correlation between years of education and acceptance of liberalism. But it ascribes that correlation to a lack of exposure to conservative ideas, and a lack of criticism of liberal ones.
2.
The enlightenment thesis is at odds with current educational philosophy
. To believe that people are simply enlightened by further education is to assume that there is some sort of objective truth upon which people can converge. This is totally at odds with the educational philosophy of the postmodern liberal university. The postmodernists who hold sway in university education would ordinarily bristle at the notion that there exists some sort of truth that is not either a) culturally determined or b) determined by some sort of power elite defending its own interests.
3.
Aside from these logical flaws, the enlightenment thesis is countered by objective data suggesting that anti-conservative discrimination is widespread. For example, several years
ago a sociology professor in my department constructed a survey designed to determine whether there is, in fact, widespread political discrimination at UNCW. The sociologist was, of course, a liberal, and the survey was seriously flawed. One of the questions on the survey, which was given to UNC-Wilmington employees, asked whether the respondent had ever been denied a job at UNC-Wilmington. Of course, it does not take a membership in Mensa International to figure out that it’s especially unlikely you’ll find people denied a job at UNCW among a population that is
employed by UNCW
. But the survey was only given to people who worked at—read: were, in fact, hired by—UNCW. (There goes the argument that liberals have a monopoly on the world’s intellectual firepower.)
But, despite the severe flaws in the survey instrument, this study nevertheless discovered systematic evidence of discrimination against conservatives. I know this because the evidence was referenced in a UNCW press statement. Shortly after I filed suit against UNCW for denying me promotion to a full professorship, a reporter wanted to interview someone from the university in order to get their reaction to the suit. University officials declined the interview. Instead they issued a statement rejecting my contention that the denial of promotion was due to political reasons.
In that press statement, the university claimed to be “surprised” by survey results showing that people had experienced political discrimination at UNCW. The survey they were referring to was, of course, the one conducted by the liberal sociologist in my department.
When the study was later published, in 2010, its own liberal author reported finding that all groups surveyed were more likely to report “a bias against conservatives than against Liberal and Moderates.” Notice that she displayed her own bias by capitalizing “Liberals and Moderates” and putting “conservatives” in lower-case letters. She also reported that “Conservatives were more likely to report a need to conceal their beliefs.” (That time, she capitalized “Conservatives,” but only because it was at the beginning of the sentence.)
Zach, does “liberal bias” seem like a fair way to describe the situation in higher education today?
LETTER 26
Profiles in Anonymity
Dear Zach
,
,
It was great to get a chance to talk to you again during my office hours on Friday. It’s good to know that your junior year is ending on a high note. I really enjoyed our discussion about personal courage, and the willingness to stand up for the things you believe in, in a hostile environment. That’s the topic I’ll be writing on today. Even if all you’re fighting for is widespread acceptance of ending sentences with prepositions, I want you to advance it with unapologetic courage. That’s what many of our brave soldiers died for. I mean the freedom to advocate your cause, not the sentence-ending prepositions.
As you can imagine, it makes me wince every time I see a college professor—especially one with the full protection of tenure—shirking his responsibility to speak the truth and to do so with conviction. Unfortunately, most professors only have convictions before they enter the teaching profession—and most of those convictions are drug-related. I’m only kidding, but sometimes I have to make jokes like that just to keep myself from crying.
Recently I was reminded of the appalling state of spinelessness among contemporary college professors. It happened when I found a series of three anonymous notes posted above my mailbox in the Department of Sociology and Criminology. Each one of them was in response to a column I had written publicly and to which I had attached my name. Each note is worth describing, along with the circumstances that provoked it.
The first note simply asserted that the Tea Party was not a legitimate grassroots movement because it was propped up by Rupert Murdoch. The note was left above my box shortly after I defended the Tea Party publicly. My defense of the Tea Party also questioned those who classify the movement as “extreme” and “racist.” The note did not really offend me because I’m not actually a member of the Tea Party. So I just ignored it.
The second note specifically said, “God is a theory and evolution is a fact.” It was pinned above my mailbox shortly after I wrote a column criticizing the theory of evolution. Charles Darwin actually referred to evolution as “my [Darwin’s, not Adams’s] theory.” So, I printed off a quote from Darwin, highlighted the phrase “my theory,” and pinned it next to the note above my mailbox. But I added my name to my note because I am generally opposed to leaving anonymous notes. It is only acceptable to leave anonymous notes in grammar school. By middle school, the practice should be avoided. I feel the same way about bedwetting and talking to imaginary friends. At some point, one has to evolve beyond these practices.
The third note said, “God is the world’s greatest abortionist. 25 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage within two weeks. That’s intelligent design in practice!” Unsurprisingly, this note was provoked by a column I wrote on the topic of abortion. There was little sense in responding to this note since its contradiction was self-evident. In sentence one (“God is the world’s greatest abortionist”), the author accuses God of killing babies on purpose. That’s what an abortion is—an intentional termination of pregnancy. In sentence three (“That’s intelligent design in practice!”), the author accuses God of killing babies by accident, apparently because God is not intelligent enough to design miscarriage-proof babies. The further insinuation is that if God cannot create babies with a success rate above 75 percent, then He cannot possibly have created the universe.
Of course, even a mentally handicapped child knows the difference between harming someone unintentionally and harming someone on purpose. Who could possibly fail to grasp the parallel difference between abortion and miscarriage? One is an intentional act, the other isn’t.
Frustrated by the stupidity of the notes and by their anonymity, I spoke to the professor who occupies the office across the hall from my mailbox. I just asked him who had been leaving the notes. I first suspected it was a graduate student, but I was wrong. According to the professor, who can see my mailbox directly from his office, it was a fellow professor who was leaving the notes. That professor should have grown out of the practice of leaving anonymous notes, but at this point that is unlikely to happen. He is over fifty years old.
The case of the professor who leaves anonymous notes for his colleagues is symptomatic of everything that is wrong with Godless progressivism. This professor has had tenure for years. His tenure protects him from ever losing his job for saying something controversial. But he doesn’t believe in God, and without God, there can never be real security. That is why so many progressives are so lacking in courage once they step outside of the classroom and away from a captive audience of teenagers.
I share this with you because this is where progressivism can lead students who don’t grow out of it quickly. Unless you choose a radically different path, one day you’ll lack the ability stand up for the truth because you will have convinced yourself that it doesn’t really exist. I want you to lead a better life—one in which you may be ridiculed for standing up for things you believe to be true. It is the only life worth living. It beats the alternative of anonymously defending your unbelief.
Zach, your willingness to hear challenges to your progressive beliefs over the past year has been extraordinary. It’s an unusual student who is willing to reconsider, based on facts and logic, once he has adopted the angry attitudes of his liberal professors. But I hope you can be an even more extraordinary person. I want you to become a lightning rod for the truth—a man constantly pushing buttons and constantly causing people to come after you. I don’t want you to end up an old man sneaking down a hallway and leaving anonymous notes for people you are afraid to confront—just because they hold ideas you cannot rebut.
I won’t be writing again for a couple of weeks, during the usual end-of-semester time crunch. But after I finish my grading I’ll be heading back out to Colorado, and when I get there, I’ll write you again—this time on the subject of the experience I had that caused me to abandon progressive politics altogether.
Meanwhile, I hope your exams go well!
PART TWO
THE HEART OF THE MATTER
“Political problems, at bottom, are
moral and religious problems.”
—Russell Kirk
LETTER 27
The Constitution Is Dead (Because God Isn’t)
Dear Zach
,
,
It’s hard to believe we’ve been corresponding for more than a year now. Once again, the weather here in Colorado does not bode well for the global-warming apologist. It is 48 degrees in the middle of the day in the middle of May—exactly one year after I wrote my first letter to you from this same spot. The light mist has just turned into a light rain.
During the course of the past year, we have discussed some problems with the progressive worldview. You’ve seen some logical errors in progressive thinking—and also some signs that a leftist worldview can have strange effects on the people who adopt it.
Now I want to get to the heart of the matter. Progressive politics—in fact, the whole progressive worldview—is really built on one huge mistake.
As I write, the clouds are descending upon Pikes Peak and making their way toward my little cabin at the base of the mountain. It is so much like that afternoon in March of 1996—March to be exact—when I walked inside the gates of a prison in the Andes Mountains just outside of Quito, Ecuador. The weather was the same that day, but everything else in my life was different then.
I was an atheist trying to save the world. I was also a criminologist and an aspiring journalist hoping to change what was going on inside those prison walls. I did not know that what was going on inside those walls would forever change me. The existence of God, the fallen nature of man, and the source of our inalienable rights would all come into focus in a few short hours.
That prison was the closest thing to hell I have ever seen.
First I made a brief visit to the inside of a thirty-six-square-meter cell packed with forty-five inmates. There was the unbelievable stench of rotting meat being thrown into vats of boiling water to make it barely edible for the inmates. There were puddles of urine mixed with fecal matter sitting near broken and rotting pipes. There was the young man I saw being badly beaten by baton-wielding guards. I still remember the sound that club made as it struck against his bones. He was probably no more than eighteen years old.
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