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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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November 2, 2007 A Craving for Tyranny Democracy -- Good Idea, Didn't Work by Fred Reed
Diversity. Always diversity. I learn that the University of Delaware has instituted mandatory indoctrination of students to make them appreciate diversity. Delaware is going to eradicate racism, sexism, and all. It's going to make the world safe for diversity. I thought diversity just meant that you had to buy a new bicycle three times a year. From the university's training material, "A RACIST: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. 'The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities, or acts of discrimination…." The program (do read the original) is pure mind-control, as much as anything Goebbels or the Soviet Union employed. In training sessions, the student must confess to bad-thought, outline his diversity-failings in detail, and abase himself before a thought-leader. Progress in good-thought will be monitored and records kept. You must learn that you are an oppressor, and you must be reformed. We will tell you what to think. It is for your own good…. The national symptoms roll on. The United States is in the middle of a portentous abandonment, rapid now, of the ideas that led to the founding of the country, and certainly of what were previously regarded as the purposes of a university. It is the strangest damned thing I have seen. Americas never lived up to its ideals&emdash;who or what does?&emdash;but it actually tried to and at least said it wanted to. Often it succeeded. Now it deliberately reverses all it stood for. Curious. Usually it is a government that imposes control over the population. Extreme governments of the right seek absolute control over behavior, and those of the left, over thought. But it is usually the government. In America the universities do it&emdash;help do it, I should say, since government too works against what the country was. No gauleiter or commissar from Washington tells the universities what to inculcate. There is no need. All by themselves they abandon the notion of teaching the young to think for themselves. The tone is Marxist in its contempt for students, almost hostility: They are dough to be shaped. Behind this is the devouring passive aggression of minor minds who have found themselves in power. How must this appear to the students at Delaware? The young I suspect do not know that things were not always thus. I went to a small, very Republican, Southern college these many years ago. In those days communism was thought poorly of. Yet in my survey course on philosophy, we learned what Marx thought, not what to think about Marx. The readings represented his ideas fairly. For further knowledge, go to the library. We were expected to come to our own conclusions, and did. A different world. I find it fascinating that it is the white professoriate that so intently imposes belief in an imaginary racism, that so fervently reviles whites. Apparently academic liberalism is an autoimmune disease. The smugness would curdle milk. The document of the University of Delaware that sets out the program runs to ninety-nine painful pages, couched in the sorry English of the half-educated who want to sound learned. It contains transcripts of some of the one-on-one sessions of indoctrination. The example below was described as the worst interview, meaning that the student didn't respond as desired. I have no idea who she was, but she has my whole-hearted admiration. Records the inquisitor: "When she [the student], left I read the exercise. This is what it stated: 1) When were you first made aware of your race? "That is irrelevant to everything. My race is human being." 2) When did you discover your sexual identity? "That is none of your damn business." 3) Who taught you a lesson in regards to some form of diversity awareness? What was that lesson? "My grandparents sometimes made racial comments. And what the hell does that have to do with anything?" 4) When was a time when you confronted someone regarding an issue of diversity? What was the confrontation about? If you haven't, why not? "Why would I do something like that? Diversity exists. I like it. Leave it at that." 5) When was a time you felt oppressed? Who was oppressing you? How did you feel? "I am oppressed everyday on the basis of my undying and devout feelings for the opera. Regularly passersby throw stones at me and jeer me with cruel names. Because of this I am exiled and often contemplate suicide. Unbearable adversity. But I will overcome, hear me, you rock-loving majority. (This is called 'sarcasm.')" Etc. If the antics of Delaware were merely the clownishness of the faculty of a second-rate diploma mill, they might be amusing. But the whole country appears to yearn for regimentation, for authority. As the Democrats attack a nonsensical fantasy of racism, so the Republicans flail at imaginary terrorists twisting in their inner fog. They eagerly revoke habeas corpus, monitor email, use NSA against the citizenry, start wars on fraudulent grounds, and openly advocate torture. (Has any other country done the latter?) The following from a friend in DC:
More police with more powers, swatted-out, more militarized. (For a foot race.) Recorded warnings in subways to watch other passengers and turn them in if they behave strangely. More cameras everywhere. Blast-proof trashcans on Metro. Surly border guards, increasingly intrusive in their questioning, keep records of the books you read. Shoe searches at airports, confiscation of toothpaste and shampoo. Warrantless tapping of telephones. Warrantless searches on the subways of New York, with no pretense of probable cause. Why this rush toward enforced conformity and regimentation? I figure it's something in the water. Or maybe the country is just ready for thought-policed authoritarianism. Neither Bush nor Delaware could do it if the country weren't complicit. We're getting there. Oh yes. What fun.
Copyright 2007 by Fred Reed and reproduced here by permission of the author.
Fred Reed is a Marine combat veteran, police reporter, amateur biochemist, former long-haul hitchhiker, and part-time sociopath living in Mexico. Fred, a keyboard mercenary with a disorganized past, has worked on staff for Army Times, The Washingtonian, Soldier of Fortune, Federal Computer Week, and The Washington Times. He has been published in Playboy, Soldier of Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Harper's, National Review, Signal, Air&Space, and suchlike. He has worked as a police writer, technology editor, military specialist, and authority on mercenary soldiers. He is by all accounts as looney as a tune. Visit the "Fred on Everything" website to read his previous columns and sign up for his regular e-mail feature.
Because The Radical Academy publishes essays and articles on its website does not imply acceptance or approval of the comments or opinions expressed by the author of the material. Nor is the Academy responsible for any misrepresentation of the facts included. It is your job to be a critical reader.
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