Ghost of a flea

Regurgitating the Apple

Many years ago I had a professor of religion who gently mocked me for my earnest undergraduate relativism. "You say your are a cultural relativist," he observed, "but would you rather feed hungry children or burn babies? Don't bother to answer. I already know you would rather feed hungry children." Point, belatedly, taken.

I have a caveat before linking to Evan Sayet's March 7, 2007 address to the Heritage Foundation. It is entirely possible - it is all too common - for people to hold unthinking, irrational "conservative" views since the age of five, most commonly arriving from received wisdom and common sense derived from religious belief. I should also add I disagree with several policy prescriptions advanced by Sayet, these should be obvious to long-time Flea-readers, having attempted to establish my positions through reason; this whether or not my positions turn out to be objectively mistaken.

That said, Regurgitating the Apple: How modern liberals think offers the best, most succinct and perceptive insight into the memetic plague that has overtaken "the left" I have yet to hear. Sayet does not name Rousseau or the Frankfurt School or the looming apocalyptic suicide of Western civilization but it seems to me both the origin and telos of these ideas is clear. I think, like, notably, Christopher Hitchens, I agree with discrimination - the notion some ideas are better than others - not because I want to reenact some imaginary conservative golden age but because I hold beliefs which are genuinely progressive and genuinely revolutionary. As did Isaac Newton discriminating against bronze age science, Thomas Jefferson discriminating against iron age politics or Abraham Lincoln discriminating against an evil harking back to the stone age...

The first step, it seems to me, in retaking the schools and the universities and the media is to insist on the Truth, the Beautiful and the Good; to understand that a capacity for discrimination can be evidence of a capacity for Reason. I could no longer stomach a university system that will not discriminate between a student who can read and write and a student who cannot but is ruthless in discriminating against faculty who do not advance the party line, who argue for an objective history, economic fact or moral valuation of different worldviews. It would be good to teach again if it were some day possible to teach properly, truthfully.

Related: To the last point, What year did the September 11 attacks happen? Such are today's B-students. Such are tomorrow's teachers and journalists and politicians. This via the Drink Soaked Trots who offer unmissable comment.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at September 3, 2007 08:24 AM