RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/07/27/the-closing-of-the-american-mind%e2%80%88/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_

The media and the universities have mostly lost interest in fair debate

Cheers, but just two of them, for this special issue of National Review on the defense of America’s heritage and heroes.  

Following the murder of George Floyd on May 25, it was inevitable that a strong reaction would take place. All elements of American society joined in condemnation, from the president, to members of Congress, to the black leadership, to the population at large. Protests ensued, directed first at the police and then at targets indifferently charged with a measure of blame, from the federal government, to the nation’s historical legacy, to the newly minted abstraction of “systemic racism.” Dismissing the plea of Floyd’s girlfriend to remember that George “was about love and about peace,” and the assertion of Floyd’s brother that his family is “peaceful” and “God-fearing,” mobs soon formed within and alongside the protesters, bringing arson, violence, murder, and the widespread destruction of property, estimated to be among the most costly ever for an eruption of civil unrest. Mass iconoclasm against monuments, statues, and symbols of the West became the order of the day, as the lawless made a jubilee of the suspension of police enforcement.

Assembling important thinkers to set straight the historical record of America is assuredly a good thing. It should help make clear that Christopher Columbus, though a harsh commander, was a brilliant and dauntless explorer; that George Washington, rumored to have chopped down a cherry tree, was a man of extraordinary skills of leadership; that Thomas Jefferson, for all his moral shortcomings, was a statesman of unparalleled intellect; and that Abraham Lincoln, coming from a deprived background, succeeded in keeping the Union together and emancipating the slaves. These persons merit recognition for the good they did for the nation, which is certainly more than what the woke today, who celebrate their superiority by claiming to live lives without flaws, have contributed. 

Why then not go ahead and extend a full three cheers to this special issue? If there is a reason, it is the premise that if only the real facts are made known, the false reasoning and deceptive narratives behind so many of the ideologically tinged historical accounts of our time will eventually come tumbling down. The truth will set us free. But the reality is more dire than many suppose. America is now well down the road to losing its capacity to respond to argument. Let’s be clear about terms. Arguments are encountered everywhere today, filling almost every nook and cranny of intellectual space. But a repetition of arguments is not the same as the willingness and ability to argue, or the same as cultivating a disposition to consider alternative viewpoints. American society is now arranged from top to bottom, institutionally and sociologically, to suppress the encounter with different ideas and to fix thoughts automatically on set positions.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/the_academic_marketplace_of_ideas_is_dead.html

Academics are now refusing to make accurate information public lest any conclusions run counter to the leftist narrative.

In 2019, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (“PNAS”), a peer-reviewed journal, published a study from two psychologists showing that American police were not shooting blacks as disparate rates compared to other races. In the most recent issue of PNAS, the psychologists withdrew the study, not because it was wrong, but because they objected that conservatives were using the study to challenge the Black Lives Matter narrative.

The psychologists, Joseph Cesario of Michigan State and David Johnson of the University of Maryland, studied 917 instances, from 2015 through 2019, in which police fatally shot civilians. They were trying to determine whether race could be a factor in predicting shootings. They found that it could not.

Heather MacDonald cited the article when she appeared before Congress in September 2019 and wrote about it in a City Journal article. Regarding that article, it’s essential to know that MacDonald noted that two Princeton political scientists challenged the study, but that both Cesario and Johnson stood by their original findings.

The fact that MacDonald used peer-reviewed data to show that American police are not systematically massacring blacks upset academia so much that Michigan State demoted physicist Steve Hsu, who had approved funding for the research. (Michigan State, by the way, is home to Christina Wyman, the associate professor who wrote an opinion piece about racism that is so stupid, to paraphrase Billy Madison, we are now dumber for having read it.)

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/09/penn-state-retracts-statement-saying-conservative-voices-are-important/

Penn State University recently made a surprising statement about intellectual diversity, only to retract it after outrage from left-wing students.

“Dear conservative students. Your viewpoints are important,” the announcement read, referencing the isolation and self-censorship many conservative students experience on left-wing campuses. According to the schools Director of Strategic Communications, it was part of a statement aimed at creating a supporting and inclusive environment for students.

A survey conducted at the University of North Carolina found that over two-thirds of conservative students self-censor themselves in the classroom.

The message of inclusivity was swiftly met with fire by left-wing students who, according to the school newspaper, “found the Tweet harmful towards students of color and ignorant of the systemic issues that oppress people of color in the United States today.” A number of the offended students statements were then published in the Collegian, where the message was called “disgusting” and a “humiliation for communities of color.”