Saturday, December 30, 2006
Amherst College: Should Marxism be Given Another Look?
-By Warner Todd Huston
The Young America's Foundation has come out with their 2006 list of the most bizarre and Politically Correct college courses of the year and it shows, once again, the foolishness being called an "education" that is foisted upon our children in our colleges and universities.
The number one most ridiculous is Occidental College's "The Phallus", supposedly a study on the relation "between the phallus and the penis, the meaning of the phallus, phallologocentrism, the lesbian phallus, the Jewish phallus, the Latino phallus, and the relation of the phallus and fetishism."
What palpable nonsense!
The U. of Pennsylvania's "Adultery Novel", where students learn about infidelity -- I suppose to make Bill Clinton more acceptable -- also made the list.
Additionally, we see the U. of California-Los Angeles's "Queer Musicology", where our youngsters are taught about gay music -- as if it were somehow a "different" kind of music, apparently. Now, is separating them out from the rest of our music supposed to make them accepted just like "everyone else"? I thought gays wanted to be thought of as "normal people" instead of separated and segregated?
The list seems mostly to chastise overindulgences in "women's studies" in the average American University. Occidental College, for example, has quite an extensive "women's studies" department with all sorts of facile and unnecessary courses stuffed into this area of "study". Imagine the bloated budget this department must waste on a yearly basis!
There were a myriad of other "courses" that our highly priced and woefully inadequate universities have wasted time and effort upon, many of which attack America, the male of the species, white people and western culture. Of course, they all assault the sensibilities of any student who wants to actually learn something useful.
But, to my mind, the worst one on the list was Amherst College's "Taking Marx Seriously: Should Marx be Given Another Chance? Let me answer that query with a word even the pointy heads at University might understand: NO. A resounding no!
Here is Amherst's course description:
In light of the 100 million human beings murdered over the last 100 years or so by people inspired by Marx, it is a continual amazement to me that certain types of people still wonder if the failed theorist's ideas could still work "if only it were tried right".
Marx's ideas have nearly all proven chimerical at best and murderous at worst, yet we get one person after another traipsing about our college campuses claiming the mantle of thoughtful, professor positing the absurdities of Marx and his many murderous acolytes and ruefully pontificating upon their unrealized potential.
These are the same sorts of people who point to things like the Spanish Inquisition and the many wars launched under the name of Christ in previous centuries as reasons to de-legitimize Christianity. They proclaim Christianity's hypocrisy because of the many that have died in Christ's name. Yet, far more people have died as a result of Marx's religion than any other ever created. And not a word about the millions upon millions of Marx's victims is ever acknowledged by the ivory tower set.
So, according to such people, religion should be cast out because of such depredations, religion should be banished from the mind of man and excised from the university because of such historical excess, yet the excess caused by Marx? Well, let's not bring that up shall we?
After all, they plaintively claim that Marx's ideas were never "really" implemented right as this fetid course description seems to allude, so his ideas must deserve a second look. Marx's followers just didn't get it because of how "poorly they understood it". Regardless of what Marxism has led to, let's give it another shot... no pun intended.
So, why can't we use the same argument for religion? Why can't we say religion has never been tried right, too? Not that I am equating Christ to Marx, far from it. But the pointy heads don't see their dichotomy. In fact, they don't even acknowledge it as a legitimate query.
Marx has proven an utter failure through every manner of implementation of his ideas on both large and small scale and does not behoove the time spent on him as a legitimate course of study unless it is as an adjunct to political science or history, and then only as a negative example therein.
Marx deserves nothing but the contempt of everyone. And our universities don't deserve much better for their slavish love for this murderous, beast at this rate.
Yes, he should be taught. But he deserves to be placed as the worst human being in human history. Worse than Hitler, worse then Stalin, even worse then Torquemada.
The Young America's Foundation has come out with their 2006 list of the most bizarre and Politically Correct college courses of the year and it shows, once again, the foolishness being called an "education" that is foisted upon our children in our colleges and universities.
The number one most ridiculous is Occidental College's "The Phallus", supposedly a study on the relation "between the phallus and the penis, the meaning of the phallus, phallologocentrism, the lesbian phallus, the Jewish phallus, the Latino phallus, and the relation of the phallus and fetishism."
What palpable nonsense!
The U. of Pennsylvania's "Adultery Novel", where students learn about infidelity -- I suppose to make Bill Clinton more acceptable -- also made the list.
Additionally, we see the U. of California-Los Angeles's "Queer Musicology", where our youngsters are taught about gay music -- as if it were somehow a "different" kind of music, apparently. Now, is separating them out from the rest of our music supposed to make them accepted just like "everyone else"? I thought gays wanted to be thought of as "normal people" instead of separated and segregated?
The list seems mostly to chastise overindulgences in "women's studies" in the average American University. Occidental College, for example, has quite an extensive "women's studies" department with all sorts of facile and unnecessary courses stuffed into this area of "study". Imagine the bloated budget this department must waste on a yearly basis!
There were a myriad of other "courses" that our highly priced and woefully inadequate universities have wasted time and effort upon, many of which attack America, the male of the species, white people and western culture. Of course, they all assault the sensibilities of any student who wants to actually learn something useful.
But, to my mind, the worst one on the list was Amherst College's "Taking Marx Seriously: Should Marx be Given Another Chance? Let me answer that query with a word even the pointy heads at University might understand: NO. A resounding no!
Here is Amherst's course description:
Should Marx be given yet another chance? Is there anything left to gain by returning to texts whose earnest exegesis has occupied countless interpreters, both friendly and hostile, for generations? Has Marx's credibility survived the global debacle of those regimes and movements that drew inspiration from his work, however poorly they understood it? Or, conversely, have we entered a new era in which post-Marxism has joined a host of other "post-" phenomena? This seminar will deal with these and related questions in the context of a close and critical reading of Marx's texts. The main themes we will discuss include Marx's conception of capitalist modernity, material and intellectual production, power, class conflicts and social consciousness, and his critique of alienation, bourgeois freedom and representative democracy. We will also examine Marx's theories of historical progress, capitalist exploitation, globalization and human emancipation.
In light of the 100 million human beings murdered over the last 100 years or so by people inspired by Marx, it is a continual amazement to me that certain types of people still wonder if the failed theorist's ideas could still work "if only it were tried right".
Marx's ideas have nearly all proven chimerical at best and murderous at worst, yet we get one person after another traipsing about our college campuses claiming the mantle of thoughtful, professor positing the absurdities of Marx and his many murderous acolytes and ruefully pontificating upon their unrealized potential.
These are the same sorts of people who point to things like the Spanish Inquisition and the many wars launched under the name of Christ in previous centuries as reasons to de-legitimize Christianity. They proclaim Christianity's hypocrisy because of the many that have died in Christ's name. Yet, far more people have died as a result of Marx's religion than any other ever created. And not a word about the millions upon millions of Marx's victims is ever acknowledged by the ivory tower set.
So, according to such people, religion should be cast out because of such depredations, religion should be banished from the mind of man and excised from the university because of such historical excess, yet the excess caused by Marx? Well, let's not bring that up shall we?
After all, they plaintively claim that Marx's ideas were never "really" implemented right as this fetid course description seems to allude, so his ideas must deserve a second look. Marx's followers just didn't get it because of how "poorly they understood it". Regardless of what Marxism has led to, let's give it another shot... no pun intended.
So, why can't we use the same argument for religion? Why can't we say religion has never been tried right, too? Not that I am equating Christ to Marx, far from it. But the pointy heads don't see their dichotomy. In fact, they don't even acknowledge it as a legitimate query.
Marx has proven an utter failure through every manner of implementation of his ideas on both large and small scale and does not behoove the time spent on him as a legitimate course of study unless it is as an adjunct to political science or history, and then only as a negative example therein.
Marx deserves nothing but the contempt of everyone. And our universities don't deserve much better for their slavish love for this murderous, beast at this rate.
Yes, he should be taught. But he deserves to be placed as the worst human being in human history. Worse than Hitler, worse then Stalin, even worse then Torquemada.
Labels: college, education, Huston, Publius Forum, universities school
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