I don’t normally cleave to or agree with all the views expressed by the Conservative Woman blog but there are some posts that they’ve published that definitely get the thumbs up from me. One of these pieces is one from Dr Campbell Campbell-Jack which was published recently. In the article Dr Campbell-Jack speaks about the leftist snowflakes, especially those in academia, are trying to enforce a conformity of thought. What is interesting about this article is that Dr Campbell-Jack although seeing this as a problem, also sees this enforced conformity as a sign of weakness on the part of the progressive Left.
Here’s part of the really excellent article from Dr Campbell-Jack.
Dr Campbell-Jack said:
It is easy to think ‘We’re doomed’ and that progressives have taken over. The media is painfully politically correct and relentlessly pushes a progressive agenda. Politicians uttering a word out of line are quickly brought to heel by a braying Twitter mob. When university authorities hasten to appease students who demand ‘safe spaces’ and ‘trigger warnings’, it’s apparent that our universities are havens of progressivism.
Has progressivism won the day? Not necessarily. Shutting down public debate could mean that you have won. It could also mean that you are well on the way to defeat.
Progressives want to enforce conformity of expression. Contrary views are met with cries of ‘No platform’. Even long-serving progressive warriors such as Germaine Greer and Peter Tatchell have fallen foul of the mob. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum of the Roman Catholic Church was never half as effective as Twitter.
Dr Campbell-Jack then went on to describe some of the ludicrous ‘safe space’ activity that has occurred on US university campuses where students who should be given information that would challenge their minds are instead hiding from contrary opinions. He then added that in one case a student came out from the pre-prepared ‘safe space’ only to retreat again because their opinions were challenged. As Dr Campbell-Jack said, the culture of conformity in universities is creating individuals who are so weak that they are retreating from contrary views.
Dr Campbell-Jack continued:
When we find a student at a leading university traumatised by hearing contrary views, we are not encountering an invincible army. This is an ideology which feels the need to cocoon itself in a bunker of ideological conformity. It is not the behaviour of an all-conquering ideology.
It is not only students. On hearing the then president of Harvard, Larry Summers, say in a lecture that men and women had different aptitudes, Nancy Hopkins, an MIT biologist and Harvard graduate, walked out, telling The Boston Globe later that if she hadn’t, ‘I would’ve either blacked out or thrown up.’
Do these sound like the foot-soldiers of an invincible army? Apart from a handful of terrorist-inclined Antifa thugs, the armoury of most progressives is confined to hurt feelings and tears.
The writer is absolutely bang on with these paragraphs. These culture warriors do not seem like a bunch of winners, more like a bunch whiners bitching about ‘muh feelings’. The universities are as Dr Campbell-Jack says, producing a generation of graduates who are socially and intellectually stunted.
Dr Campbell-Jack made the very cogent and valid point that although many students may want to change the world it is impossible to change the world if you cannot face the world as it is.
Dr Campbell-Jack added:
To change the world, you have to learn how to engage with the world. If you are unable to engage with the world, you live in an ineffectual intellectual ghetto. What happens when progressives emerge from their safe spaces and encounter the reality where people have contrary opinions and frolicking puppies are in short supply?
The Hogwarts generation have been educated to believe they live in a world where by means of repeated incantations of ‘Tear it down’ and waving their arms they can make statues disappear and everything in the world will magically be changed for the better, the bad will vanish and the good will live in peace and harmony; until the next issue comes along.
The seeming triumph of progressives heralds their eventual defeat. The progressive elites in universities and the media are producing a generation of intellectual infants. These students think of themselves as radical progressives, the cutting edge of goodness in a corrupt society. In truth, they are the willing foot-soldiers of an elitist repression of thought.
This is extremely well said and well put. We have sat back for far too long and let the academics create a generation of damaged people but also people who are not only damaged but who are grossly intolerant.
Dr Campbell-Jack said:
The new orthodoxy seems on the surface to be all-conquering. Historically, monolithic thought systems which shun reality have a habit of collapsing so completely that onlookers are astonished. The Scottish Reformation was a relatively peaceful event in a blood-soaked century. This was not because the Reformers were all-powerful but because the seemingly impregnable established church collapsed when pushed. The totalitarian Soviet Union with its demand for total ideological conformity seemed impregnable, right up until it shattered.
As someone who was politically aware during the latter stages of the Cold War, I recall strongly how the Soviet Union seemed to be an impregnable fortress yet even this evil empire eventually shattered. The progressive authoritarians may look as if they are on top, but their power is extremely fragile. As the author says, elites are prone to self delusion and that shutting down debate may give these elites and members a progressive establishment an easy short term win. But in the long term, this sort of win is a chimera and that eventually those who are promoting such censorship and suppression of ideas will find that their attempts at opinion enforcement may no longer work. Just as the Soviet Union went from being a superpower into a messy break up so we may also find that the seemingly impenetrable wall between reality and the left wing opinion pumped into our students, will eventually collapse.
Link
Original piece by Dr Campbell-Jack
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/campbell-student-cant-change-it/
