Is there any group more absurd than the modern anti-enlightenment that passes for wisdom in the parties of collectivist thought? Filled with self-importance and the ridiculous belief in their own virtue and insight, they may be members of the dullest, least informed, least insightful generation who may have ever lived. In a world that should have and could have created the greatest flood of prosperity and human freedom in history, they are demanding a return to mass poverty and political serfdom. These are people for whom the social and economic structures needed to provide the flow of worldly goods is largely unknown. Ignorant to a fantastic degree about how wealth is created, they nevertheless are driving the world over the precipice into a new dark age.
The article at the link is about an episode at Evergreen University where the lunatics have largely taken over the asylum other than for a single professor who had decided to stand apart. The article discusses Evergreen State and the Battle for Modernity” where “progressive biology professor Bret Weinstein attracted the ire of a student lynch mob for refusing to leave campus due to being white”. He refused to play along with racial-identity day where all whites were asked to stay away for 24 hours. By refusing, “vigilante groups are roaming the campus with bats, seeking out Weinstein supporters”. And after this intro, this is where the article heads and this is its point.
We are faced with a three-part distinction between postmodern/modern/traditional. Let’s take a look at each of these in turn, and discuss why they are particularly important today. Starting with the most right-leaning, the traditionalists [represented by the #NeverTrumpers]. These folks do not like the direction in which modernity is headed, and so are looking to go back to an earlier time when they believe society was better. . . . Even though there is much furor in the media about the threat that [traditionalist] groups represent, I would argue that they have largely been pushed to the fringes in terms of their social influence. . .
It is between the modernists and postmodernists where the future of society is being fought. Modernists are those who believe in human progress within a classical Western tradition. They believe that the world can continuously be improved through science, technology, and rationality. Unlike traditionalists, they seek progress rather than reversal, but what they share in common is an interest in preserving the basic structures of Western society. Most modernists could be classified as centrists (either left or right-leaning), classical liberals and libertarians.
Postmodernists, on the other hand, eschew any notion of objectivity, perceiving knowledge as a construct of power differentials rather than anything that could possibly be mutually agreed upon. Informed by such thinkers as Foucault and Derrida, science therefore becomes an instrument of Western oppression; indeed, all discourse is a power struggle between oppressors and oppressed. In this scheme, there is no Western civilization to preserve—as the more powerful force in the world, it automatically takes on the role of oppressor and therefore any form of equity must consequently then involve the overthrow of Western “hegemony.” These folks form the current Far Left, including those who would be described as communists, socialists, anarchists, Antifa, as well as social justice warriors (SJWs). These are all very different groups, but they all share a postmodernist ethos.
That is, they find debate irrelevant and power by any means their only aim with the core policy the destruction of the civilisation of the West. Which brings me to a second article with a similar perspective although more optimistic outlook: The left’s own politics by shorthand is now being turned against it. This is where it starts:
Once asked by an aide to respond to a letter to the editor from one of his critics, Vladimir Lenin refused, saying: “Why should we bother to reply to Kautsky? He would reply to us, and we would have to reply to his reply. There’s no end to that. It will be quite enough for us to announce that Kautsky is a traitor to the working class, and everyone will understand everything.”
That has been the modus operandi of the left for decades. It doesn’t respond to arguments with arguments but with stigmatizing names designed to end debate. As the communications arm of the left, the media conforms perfectly to Lenin’s method. Instead of rebutting the arguments of conservatives, it has found it easier to brand them as “enemies” of science, women, minorities, the poor, and so on.
Trump may be beating them at their own game as the article says, but he is the one of the few who understands it and the only one who is able to return fire. Without others to come to his aid, the postmodernist-Islamic alliance will eventually overwhelm us all.
Law of Markets 