Liberal Intolerance
A Doctrine Come Full Circle
January 3, 2002
One of the ultimate ironies in the present war against terrorism is the prism-like view it affords us of the human condition. One spectrum illuminates an external struggle for survival against the wrath of international terrorism. By skewing the prism a fraction of a degree, the viewer is looking inward at a domestic battle with no less a threat to the future of the United States.
America did not go to war against the forces of international terrorism because of the Feb. 26, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center, the 1995 bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed five U.S. military personnel, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 and injured 200 U.S. military personnel, the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa, which killed 224 and injured 5,000, the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 and injured 39 U.S. sailors or the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with somewhere between 4000 to 6000 dead Americans and hundreds of billions of dollars in damage to the U.S. economy.
These were just the outward symptoms of a far more deadly disease…intolerance.
Intolerance, although commonly thought of as an inability to accept a difference from an inward belief system, is, more accurately, a triumph of emotion over logic. It is a component of megalomania. It is an affliction common to, and nurtured by, every insecure bully. It is a hypocritical cowardice.
When reason fails, war begins...
When people disagree with reason, they remain engaged as the truth is pursued. The validity of any viewpoint is measured by the tightness of its logical argument. During the “give and take” in the free market of thought, all parties benefit as ideas are tested and truth is pursued. Reasonable people can even “agree to disagree” and still remain engaged in productive debate. But, if an individual or group become so enamored of their righteousness that the emotion of one’s perfection outweighs the logic of one’s argument then disengagement and conflict result.
The United States would never have prosecuted a war against the forces of bin Laden if there were any palpable chance of engagement and diplomatic solution. When there is mutual credibility, engagement can be sustained. War is a last resort that is commenced when all confidence in the sincerity of reason is abandoned. War is a logical conclusion to illogical circumstances.
The dogma suits the dog...
When true logic prevails, there is little rigidity of argument. The history of human dynamics is a lesson in the belief that nothing looks the same after it is first seen. Although empirical observation of historical occurrences can suggest direction for a future analysis, there are too many variables interacting in the human condition for the rigidity of absolutes. A first reading of the Bible may suggest a Christianity of unforgiving absolutism. A second reading of the same Bible may lend itself to an interpretation of dynamic humanism. The same can be said for the Koran.
Herein lies the joy of reason. Truth is external to preconception. No single truth must be true twice. The fluidity of enlightened thought has been the catalyst for persecution by rigid dogma throughout the history of humanity.
Reason drives the individual on a quest to learn “how” to think while dogmatism is a simplistic mass exercise in “what” to think.
An enlightened person reads the story and lets logic create the conclusion. The rigid dogmatic seeks a self-serving end game and distorts the story to create a path to this preconceived goal.
Since the rigid dogmatic cares only for the goal and nothing for the legitimacy of the path, the same dogmatic must yelp foul if logical truth threatens the course.
Fool me once, shame on you…fool me twice, shame on me...
For decades, American citizens have been terrorized by the rigid dogmatism of political correctness.
Independent though and free speech have been threatened.
On college campuses across America, students have been taught by administrations and faculties that what one thinks is superior to how one thinks. Whether the causal factors for this are megalomania or infantile insecurity, these administrations and faculties have created a monster which is now beginning to bite the hand that feeds it.
Guest speakers who do not toe the P.C. line have been heckled off of stages (if they were ever invited onto the campus to begin with). The distinguished Jeane Kirkpatrick (Member, Defense Policy Review Board, 1985-1993, President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, 1985-1990, Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations, 1981-1985, White House cabinet member, 1981-1985) was silenced by hecklers at Berkeley. Not because she was right or wrong but only because she might utter a truth that the hecklers wanted silenced.
When lecturer Ward Connerly (chairman of the California Civil Rights Initiative campaign and a member of the University of California Board of Regents) spoke at Emory University school administrators refused to intervene while he was continually heckled with obscenities and racial slurs. Although two university deans, the student body president, and five security guards were in attendance, no attempt was made to stop the harassment. When asked to directly intercede, one dean refused stating that she would only intervene if Mr. Connerly’s life were in danger.
When David Horowitz ran his advertisement, “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery are a Bad Idea—And Racist, Too,” only 12 printed the ad out of 50 college newspapers to receive it, and 3 of these issued apologies to their readers. At Brown University, the entire press run of the Brown Daily Herald, 4,000 copies, was stolen.
A very savvy writer for the Ayn Rand Institute, Alex Epstein, said it best:
It is not surprising that some students had their feelings hurt by Horowitz’s ad. On campuses where students are routinely taught that blacks are oppressed—that racism is “institutionalized,” that they are entitled to be bitter, that they deserve preferential treatment in the form of special admissions and faculty-hiring policies, “cultural centers” and academic majors—is it any wonder that some blacks would feel offended by an ad which proclaimed that today’s blacks live in a free country and do not deserve special privileges? And on campuses where students are taught that reason is an illusion—that logic is arbitrary, that emotions are the road to knowledge and that whatever you happen to feel is “true” for you—is it any wonder that they would grant their feelings primacy over the facts?
But merely feeling offended is not evidence as to whether Horowitz’s arguments are true or false, racist or colorblind, worthy or unworthy of inclusion in a student newspaper. A feeling is not an argument.
The only proper response to an argument you disagree with is a rational argument of your own. This is the only way for individuals to know which position is true and which is not. This appeal to reason is the only way to settle disagreements.
The protests and the vandalism represent vicious injustices, because the students are trying to silence an opposing view, not with the power of reason but with a gush of emotion. They have provided no refutation of Horowitz’s arguments, and have not even grasped the need to do so. To these students, feelings trump any argument, and if they feel strongly enough that someone else’s argument is offensive, they can demand that it be forcibly banished from discussion.
If this attitude prevails, then any idea can be silenced and intellectual discourse is finished.
Which begs the case of Janis Besler Heaphy, the president and publisher of The Sacramento Bee...
In mid December 2001, Ms. Heaphy was the invited speaker for the California State University, Sacramento mid-term commencement. When Ms. Heaphy was about 10 minutes into her address calling for the protection of civil liberties in the government’s response to terrorism, the booing and heckling from the students forced her off of the stage. Donald R. Gerth, president of the university, unsuccessfully urged the crowd to be “civil”.
“I have been a university president for 26 years, and I’ve never seen anything like what happened last Saturday,” said president Gerth.
Either president Gerth is in a complete case of denial or he has spent his 26 years as a university president on the planet Zod. Of course he has seen instances of people with unpopular ideas being heckled into silence. But, perhaps, this might be his initiation at seeing liberal ideas silenced.
It is of little wonder that after decades of university education which is antagonistic to independent thought that the day of reckoning is starting to dawn.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap
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