M.D. Rawlings
Classical Liberal
What we're really talking about here is cultural Marxism, the relativism of political correctness run amuck.
As I have written elsewhere on this forum:
In his The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom grasps the true nature of relativism: the epitome of black-and-white think, as it eschews the evaluations of reality's inescapable categorical distinctions.
Notwithstanding, even Bloom falls prey to Critical Theory's deconstructionist assault on individualism proper in his critique of Lockean sociopolitical theory.
The reason Bloom's critique is such a mess is due to his confused notion that the rugged individualism of classical liberalism is akin to something like the rational egoism of Rand's Objectivism, when in fact Lockean natural law does not emphasize the maximization of self-interest at all; rather, it emphasizes the peoples' duty to recognize the ultimate Source and Guarantor of human rights, the boundaries of the individual's inalienable rights relative to the inalienable rights of others and, thereby, avoid the tyrannical, mobocratic trappings of relativism's democratic collectivism. In other words, it emphasizes the tangible means by which the people may mark the proper limits governmental power!
The ultimate point of the Anglo-American tradition of classical liberalism is that human nature is utterly corrupt and can only be effectively checked by the imperatives of liberty, not by the corruptible machinations of the state.
Bloom not only conflates classical individualism with rational egoism; ultimately, he confounds the distinction between the classical liberalism of the Anglo-American tradition and the "liberalism" of the Hegelian dialectic, i.e., the post-modern progressivism of the political left, alternately expressed as fascism or Marxism since the turn of the Twentieth Century.
But in spite of Bloom's failure in this regard, his work is worth reading, as it rightly identifies the essence of relativism, the extent of the problem in higher education and asserts a number of worthwhile solutions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Closing_of_the_American_Mind
As I have written elsewhere on this forum:
. . . what is the Marxist to do when in fact the working class is a culturally heterogeneous component of production whose standard of living has dramatically improved under capitalism?
Well, its constituents must be programmed from early childhood to disregard the discriminations of common logic and eschew the conventions of common morality. But not only that, they must be protected from the economic depredations of false consciousness. Hence, they must be made to think of themselves as the victims of those who own the means of production and all that surplus value.
Toss that fishing pole in the lake and hand 'em a pitchfork.
In other words, make 'em dumb as dirt. Manageable drones. Turn 'em into sexual degenerates bereft of familial affections/allegiances: the Marcusean polymorphous perversity of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Hence, the intellectual and moral mediocrity and uniformity of relativism with a chip on its shoulder. This is cultural Marxism in a nutshell, more commonly known today as political correctness or multiculturalism. As economic Marxism is the deconstruction of the actualities of the factors of production and the expropriation of the means of production, cultural Marxism is the deconstruction of Western culture, of the influences of Christianity especially, and the expropriation of ideas and expression.
. . . Since the theory of Marxism is necessarily true by definition, i.e., that all of history is a struggle between the powerful and the oppressed progressively moving toward that overwhelming conclusion of a stateless Utopia, the uncooperative regressions of history must be due to the false signals or the misdirection of human culture obscuring the proletariat's view of its true interests. Marx was aware of the extant cultural hindrances, of course, but it was a group of German communists who in the 1920's established a think tank and, initially, based on the definitive observations of Marxist theorists Gyorgy Lukacs of Hungary ("Who will save us from Western civilization?") and Antonio Gramsci of Italy, contrived a systematic methodology for expropriating culture. Marcuse joined the group in 1932 with his Neo-Freudian theory of sexual liberation as a component of the proletariat's cultural revolution against the benighted tribal tradition of the biological family.
. . . Comprehensively, this was revolution by another means, the subversion of thought and morality, and the suppression of opposing views. The enlightened would artificially expedite the actualization of the object of the historical dialectic. Oh, the irony! In the 1930's, the members of the Frankfort School of Critical Theory fled Nazi Germany for America and set up shop at Columbia University.
The origination and the history of cultural Marxism is well-documented.
Well, its constituents must be programmed from early childhood to disregard the discriminations of common logic and eschew the conventions of common morality. But not only that, they must be protected from the economic depredations of false consciousness. Hence, they must be made to think of themselves as the victims of those who own the means of production and all that surplus value.
Toss that fishing pole in the lake and hand 'em a pitchfork.
In other words, make 'em dumb as dirt. Manageable drones. Turn 'em into sexual degenerates bereft of familial affections/allegiances: the Marcusean polymorphous perversity of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Hence, the intellectual and moral mediocrity and uniformity of relativism with a chip on its shoulder. This is cultural Marxism in a nutshell, more commonly known today as political correctness or multiculturalism. As economic Marxism is the deconstruction of the actualities of the factors of production and the expropriation of the means of production, cultural Marxism is the deconstruction of Western culture, of the influences of Christianity especially, and the expropriation of ideas and expression.
. . . Since the theory of Marxism is necessarily true by definition, i.e., that all of history is a struggle between the powerful and the oppressed progressively moving toward that overwhelming conclusion of a stateless Utopia, the uncooperative regressions of history must be due to the false signals or the misdirection of human culture obscuring the proletariat's view of its true interests. Marx was aware of the extant cultural hindrances, of course, but it was a group of German communists who in the 1920's established a think tank and, initially, based on the definitive observations of Marxist theorists Gyorgy Lukacs of Hungary ("Who will save us from Western civilization?") and Antonio Gramsci of Italy, contrived a systematic methodology for expropriating culture. Marcuse joined the group in 1932 with his Neo-Freudian theory of sexual liberation as a component of the proletariat's cultural revolution against the benighted tribal tradition of the biological family.
. . . Comprehensively, this was revolution by another means, the subversion of thought and morality, and the suppression of opposing views. The enlightened would artificially expedite the actualization of the object of the historical dialectic. Oh, the irony! In the 1930's, the members of the Frankfort School of Critical Theory fled Nazi Germany for America and set up shop at Columbia University.
The origination and the history of cultural Marxism is well-documented.
In his The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom grasps the true nature of relativism: the epitome of black-and-white think, as it eschews the evaluations of reality's inescapable categorical distinctions.
Notwithstanding, even Bloom falls prey to Critical Theory's deconstructionist assault on individualism proper in his critique of Lockean sociopolitical theory.
The reason Bloom's critique is such a mess is due to his confused notion that the rugged individualism of classical liberalism is akin to something like the rational egoism of Rand's Objectivism, when in fact Lockean natural law does not emphasize the maximization of self-interest at all; rather, it emphasizes the peoples' duty to recognize the ultimate Source and Guarantor of human rights, the boundaries of the individual's inalienable rights relative to the inalienable rights of others and, thereby, avoid the tyrannical, mobocratic trappings of relativism's democratic collectivism. In other words, it emphasizes the tangible means by which the people may mark the proper limits governmental power!
The ultimate point of the Anglo-American tradition of classical liberalism is that human nature is utterly corrupt and can only be effectively checked by the imperatives of liberty, not by the corruptible machinations of the state.
Bloom not only conflates classical individualism with rational egoism; ultimately, he confounds the distinction between the classical liberalism of the Anglo-American tradition and the "liberalism" of the Hegelian dialectic, i.e., the post-modern progressivism of the political left, alternately expressed as fascism or Marxism since the turn of the Twentieth Century.
But in spite of Bloom's failure in this regard, his work is worth reading, as it rightly identifies the essence of relativism, the extent of the problem in higher education and asserts a number of worthwhile solutions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Closing_of_the_American_Mind
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