McPherson: Barbarians at the Gate

More than any other characteristic, human beings as a species are defined by our ability to communicate effectively. With the possible exception of the higher sea mammals, i.e. dolphins and whales, no other animal on the planet transfers knowledge and information as quickly, efficiently, or over such incredible distances, as do humans. It has been theorized that the evolution in the human brain of that part capable of developing cognitive skills – and as a consequence, language – went unused for some unknown amount of time, possibly thousands of years, before something – who knows what – created the spark that fired the conceptual cylinders, turning prehistoric grunts into words, and the writing of history itself.

Thought and language are in our nature.

Despite providing the foundation to our entire existence as a species, there is actually a startling amount of hostility to conceptual thought and language in our society – and there has been for some time. Many individuals and institutions do their utmost to destroy both language and its antecedent, by denying the efficacy and value of conceptual thinking at every turn – despite its being absolutely essential for human life – and systematically discouraging language, by crippling young people’s ability to speak or write effectively, coherently, or rationally.

In an excellent essay, “Kant Versus Sullivan,” written in 1970 and included in her book Philosophy: Who Needs It, Ayn Rand captured the important relationship between conceptual thought, language – and ultimately civilization itself. “Concepts are the products of a mental process that integrates and organizes the evidence provided by man’s senses,” she wrote. “Man’s senses are his only direct cognitive contact with reality and, therefore, his only source of information. Without sensory evidence, there can be no concepts; without concepts, there can be no language; without language, there can be no knowledge and no science.”

If language can be destroyed then so too can thinking – and ultimately freedom. For without the ability to construct reasonable arguments, and properly convey them, humans become easy prey to any and all purveyors of bovine feces. Rand did not like the universities in particular, because they exulted in language manipulation and distortion, precisely as a means to weaken all thought and reason. In the closing paragraph of her essay, she writes that the minds of students subjected to “higher education” are usually ”confused,” “plastic,” and “almost helpless.” A quick glance at our current world leaders provides reason enough to conclude that she was onto something.

What’s changed in a half-century? Trying to keep someone focused for longer than 140 characters is increasingly difficult. Hashtags elevate sentimentalism and superficiality to an art form. Empathy is a dying attribute, but everyone just ex-uuuudes compassion – especially for people they know nothing about. History favors white people and men, and is mocked accordingly. Logic is “misogynistic” or “Euro-centric,” and “instincts” are all the rage. A kid graduating high school next year has spent more of his time studying “community action” than learning how to deliver, in any intelligible manner, an explanation of anything remotely substantive. Then it’s off to college, where feelings rule the roost because thought and rational debate have been effectively banished. Even the suspicion of objectivity, let alone thoughtful critique, sends today’s university faculty and students into a frothy-mouthed frenzy.

When the award-winning journalist John Stossel went to Brown University to do a story on the worrisome trend of dumbing down the customary standards of proof in cases where sexual assault has been alleged, he was shouted down by an angry mob. “I’ve covered race riots in Portland, a birth-control riot in Mexico City, yet these privileged students at an Ivy League university were louder, and more intense...[A]ny challenge to their thinking must automatically be hate-filled and sexist (or racist, classist, or homophobic),” he wrote of the experience. At the recent Missouri University protests, a professor rallied a mob of students to stop a student journalist from filming the event. Ironically, the professor teaches communication.

When Milo Yiannopoulos, the flamboyantly gay, conservative columnist for the Breitbart news website was invited to Bristol University in England by the university’s Journalism Society, the school’s Feminist Society demanded that Yiannopoulos not be allowed on campus because he threatened the school’s “safe space” policy. The host of YouTube channel “None of the Above” interviewed social media officer Francesca Collins, to ask why experiencing different opinions made students at Bristol U. less safe.

The result would be pure comedy, were it not for the fact that incoherence and fanaticism so often pass for sound policy these days – at least to a ”democratically elected” gang of the mentally moribund sporting the temperament of a neurotic Yorkshire Terrier. (Does anyone think I’m talking about Congress instead of a student body organization?)

Listen for yourself, as Collins defends censorship by re-naming it “no-platforming,” and then asks that she might read from a prepared statement – which she then struggles to read, and is unable to complete before herself concluding (no kidding) “blah, blah, blah.” When the host pleasantly asks her to explain exactly how Yiannopoulos’s speech would “violate the safety and security of so many...students,” as the Feminist Society contends, Collins redirects, delivering an excruciatingly stilted (but blissfully, short) lecture on use of the word “transgenderism” (one of the topics Yiannopoulos will speak on, along with “rape culture”), saying, “by the way, ‘transgenderism’ is not the right thing to say. You say people who, like, ‘transgender people.’ ‘Transgenderism.’ I don’t know. Um.’” After admitting that she really shouldn’t presume to speak on “their behalf,” she declares that ”transgenderism” is nonetheless an “unfavorable terminology to use.” Thanks for setting us straight.

Yiannopoulos is not personally threatening, admits Collins, but his words remain a “direct threat” to some people’s “identity” – their “existence” even! “What you really mean,” the host replied, remaining as nice as the day is long, “is that students’ comfort is at risk, and that’s something completely different, and something freedom of speech should never be sacrificed for, because isn’t someone’s comfort in their ideology what the principle of free speech is meant to challenge?” Challenging thought and meaningful debate...at a university?

It was a perfectly reasonable question, and Collins responded as we might expect from someone who has been taught that conceptual thought, logic and language are useful only as the sinister tools of an oppressive gender or class – by terminating the interview, and probably fleeing to a room full of coloring books and fluffy pillows, from which place she sent a text five minutes later explaining that she had been instructed to “stick to our original statement in terms of publicity.” We must ask: When the Feminist Society chose a spokesperson, who lost the job to this girl?

Faced with a rational, respectful challenge to their point of view, the Bristol University Feminist Society opted instead for wild-eyed radicalism and the politics of thuggery. Tolerance is for racial and ethnic groups and “alternative lifestyles,” but never for alternative points of view. Free speech and free thought are in the hands of people prepared to crush both under the grinding heal of fascism, and for no greater reason than “blah, blah, blah.”

Debate and discussion today are only acceptable when no one’s feelings get hurt, and only approved language is used. That the language approved and the ideas expressed have more in common with a caveman’s grunts and a witch doctor’s conjuring, than the discourse of educated, intelligent human beings, only means the university system is still churning out so many confused, plastic, almost helpless little minds. The future of civilization – of a truly human civilization – requires nothing less than the complete rejection of a worldview paralyzed by fear of reason, knowledge, or the competent display of either one.