Where history is the polemics of the losers…with tenure
The richly quotable William F. Buckley Jr once said, “History is the polemics of the victors.” Like much of what dear old WFB said it’s delightful but not really true. At least not anymore.
To rail against the inherent bias in our modern academia serves little purpose; the cat is out of the bag. The people who care already know and the guilty are overtly satisfied with the status quo. We all know how in the early and mid 1960’s university campuses were “taken over by the protesting youth of the New Left” to quote dissident Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfeld, who was there to see it. We understand that the halls of higher education were beset by radical political groups which then festooned lifetime, tenured positions of power on the campuses, creating entirely new academic disciplines engineered from the beginning to beget new left-wing academics, long after the political movements which spawned them died out. We understand that many our liberal arts programs are simply factories for contemporary American cultural liberalism, nearly devoid of academic rigor or practical education.
Now the new wave of delusional reconstruction of history is beginning, at your literal expense. According to the Associated Press a bevy of institutions, many funded by your tax dollars, are falling over each other to snap up Occupy memorabilia for new exhibits. To quote from one of our publically employed arbiters of cultural heritage:
“Occupy is sexy,” said Ben Alexander, who is head of special collections and archives at Queens College in New York, which has been collecting Occupy materials. “It sounds hip. A lot of people want to be associated with it.”
Indeed. I’m sure the members of the Sociology Department at CUNY are scrambling to be the most legit Occupier in the faculty lounge. Or at least of those on the email list as being on sabbatical.
Or how about this fine archivist, so intent on approaching our living history with a critical eye:
“We want to make sure we collect it from our perspective so that it can be represented as best as possible,” said Amy Roberts, a library and information studies graduate student at Queens College who helped create the archives working group.
If you’re not sure what’s wrong with that perspective I have a fabulous piece of property in the Sun Belt to show you.
Another publically underwritten pop culture activist from George Mason University had this to say about the screaming discrepancy in her department’s interest in enshrining Occupy:
“This kind of social movement is probably more interesting to me, to be honest about it. And also so much of it is happening digitally. On webpages. On Twitter,” said Sheila Brennan, the associate director of public projects. “I guess I didn’t see as much of that with the tea party.”
That’s right. The Tea Party constituted the most powerful and change affecting electoral force since the Republican Revolution 20 years earlier but, hey, they’re totally not on Twitter. Like, am I right or what? Besides, middle class people showing up to town halls and participating in the democratic process? Bor-ing!.
Category: I hate hippies, Liberals suck, Politics, Protests/Rallies
The Smithsonian is at least making an attempt to get artifacts from the TEA Party and Glenn Beck as well as OWS.
The professors may not understand what they are doing, but in 20 or 30 years, OWS will be like a HS Freshman photo from the 80s: Big Hair, dead cans of aerosol hair spray, and braces. Face, meet Palm.
As for academia, it’s time to start over. The academicians currently hold all the power, are exceptionally intellectually dishonest, and eagerly encourage slave-creating debt in their students so the Prof can fund his or conscience/Mercedes.
The Free Market may destroy academia, but it can’t discredit it – academia’s already cornered that market.
Not much would be better for the nation than for waves of true Conservatives to descend on the institutions of Academia.
I’ve run across a few in my education experience….they’re there…but they’re in the minority.
On the flip-side, I think Twitter as a metric of importance could signal our intellectual downfall.
Twitter defines who and what we are? WE ARE doomed. And, there are a few, very few, conservatives in academia. But, living in a hostile environment, they usually don’t make their leanings known to many.
“eagerly encourage slave-creating debt in their students so the Prof can fund his or conscience/Mercedes”. Yeah, and the Occutards are so blind, they don’t/won’t see that.
Actually, several weeks ago I spoke with a friend in a British Ivory tower, telling her that the occupy movement ought to be an academic treasure trove, with sociologists and anthropologists able to do their thesis on how the movement went from democracy to Lord of the Flies in less than two months. She laughed at me, suggesting that modern academics would paint a revisionist history that would make old Soviet romantics blush.
Do tell, GW. It’s gotten to the point that as far as Liberal Arts degrees go, the line from Good Will Hunting holds true: “You spent a hundred and fifty grand you could have gotten for a buck seventy-five in late fees from the public library.”
Academia, while not rendering themselves irrelevant, certainly is a shadow of its former self.
Good point GW: “…modern academics would paint a revisionist history that would make old Soviet romantics blush”
These assclowns in academia witnessed the fall of the Soviet Union, the release of documents, eye witnesses, those facts that make up irrefutable knowledge of the evil of manking and Communism/Socialism.
These assclowns in academia profited off the backs of the American taxpayer subsidizing loans, grants, and whatnot to students, and grants for research from our government. Such as putting shrimp on a treadmill.
Pravda has nothing on these assclowns in academia. The writers at Pravda could at least claim knowledge only of getting the Party Line straight from the Kremlin and Dzerzhinsky Square. The assclowns in academia maintain a fiction far more grandiose, and evil.
The assclowns in academia get their knowledge and talking points from 430 South Capitol St SE. Washington, D.C.
That’s the address for the Democrat National Committeee. Different continent, same results.
Right. now there are only two universities that I would send my money or younger relatives to – BYU and Hillsdale. Neither one takes Federal money, with all its attendent baggage.