The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught

Posted on | December 26, 2010 | 14 Comments

“One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”
— George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism”

“In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.”
– William F. Buckley Jr., Up From Liberalism (1959)

“In my experience, it’s very difficult to discuss an issue with someone who has their mind already made up.”
— Anna Tarkov, “Got raped? It’s your own fault, you filthy whore.”

Some prejudices are the result of ignorance. Others are the result of what can only be described as indoctrination. And in a politically correct age, the rigid mental categories involved in feminism are an expression of such a prejudice. Once these categories become fixed in the mind, every phenomenon must be interpreted within that rigid framework.

Education properly ought to teach a respect for facts — facts are stubborn things, as John Adams observed — and a respect for facts ought to make us skeptical of mere theory. Skepticism will increase, the more we observe facts that don’t fit the categories involved in the theoretical abstractions promulgated by the intelligentsia. Sooner or later, the accumulation of contradictory facts must convince a reasonable person that the theory they have been “carefullly taught” is false.

“As for RSM, I respectfully disagree. He is a misogynist through and through. Misogyny, as you’re probably familiar, is a cultural hatred of women simply because they are female. It can be manifested in many different ways from off-color jokes to pornography to believing women should feel ashamed of their bodies. A misogynist might still have functional friendships with women or be married or have daughters. It doesn’t change the fact that he hates women.”
— Anna Tarkov, “Got raped? It’s your own fault, you filthy whore.”

That’s two panels from today’s “Day by Day” comic strip by Chris Muir and, by all means, read the whole thing.

UPDATE: In the comments, Sissy Willis quotes Thomas Sowell on the 2006 resignation of Lawrence Summers as president of Harvard University:

“Even if every conclusion with which students are indoctrinated were true, unless those students develop their own ability to weigh opposing arguments, these conclusions will become obsolete as new issues arise in the years ahead. These ‘educated’ people will have developed no ability to analyze opposing sides of issues.
“Students are getting half an education at inflated prices and learning only how to label, dismiss and demonize ideas that differ from what they have been led to believe. Their ‘educated’ ignorance is a danger to the future of this country.”

Summers, a liberal Democrat in good standing, made the mistake of publicly suggesting that perhaps the relative rarity of top women research scientists was the result of something other than sexist discrimination.

Some thoughts are impermissible among the intelligentsia.


Category: Day By Day, Feminism

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