This is worth reproducing; I came to essentially the same conclusion (emphasis added):
The viciousness with which this book [Mind and Cosmos] was received is, quite frankly, astonishing. I can understand why scientists don't like it; they're wary of philosophers trespassing on their terrain. But philosophers? What is philosophy except (1) the careful analysis of alternatives (i.e., logical possibilities), (2) the questioning of dogma, and (3) the patient distinguishing between what is known and what is not known (or known not to be) in a given area of human inquiry? Nagel's book is smack dab in the Socratic tradition. Socrates himself would admire it. That Nagel, a distinguished philosopher who has made important contributions to many branches of the discipline, is vilified by his fellow philosophers (I use the term loosely for what are little more than academic thugs) shows how thoroughly politicized philosophy has become. I find it difficult to read any philosophy after, say, 1980, when political correctness, scientism, and dogmatic atheism took hold in academia. Philosophy has become a handmaiden to political progressivism, science, and atheism. Nagel's "mistake" is to think that philosophy is an autonomous discipline. I fully expect that, 100 years from now, philosophers will look back on this era as the era of hacks, charlatans, and thugs. Philosophy is too important to be given over to such creeps.
One such creepy thug is this corpulent apparatchik of political correctness:
My title is intentionally hyperbolic and provocative, but not without justification given the outrageously vile (e.g., Martin Bashir) and breathtakingly mindless (e.g., Melissa Harris Perry) commentary encountered at liberal media outlets such as MSNBC. Here is a measured formulation of my question: To what extent does liberal ideology militate against sanity and moral decency in those who imbibe it, people who otherwise are basically sane and decent?
A philosophy doctoral student at an Ivy League institution e-mails,
In a recent post, you wrote:
Can one be both a liberal and a decent and sane human being? Or is scumbaggery as it were inscribed into the very marrow of the contemporary liberal? Or perhaps it is more like this: once liberalism infects a person's mind, the decency that was there is flushed out.
Actually, I have struggled with relatives of these questions for some time, and honestly don't know what to think. Many of the people I rub shoulders with are liberal to the bone. But I know well enough to say they're genuinely nice people–and smart people (some, for instance, are brilliant philosophers). At the same time, I find most of the liberal claptrap so intellectually inane and morally repugnant that I have a genuinely hard time seeing how anyone–much less these seemingly smart and decent people–can believe it. I don't know how to reconcile the two observations. Surely you know at least one intelligent, morally decent liberal. How do you fit their existence into your ontology? Or do we have an argument from queerness motivating us to become liberal error theorists? Would such a creature–assuming they can exist–present a peer-disagreement scenario, or cause you to lower your credence in your own beliefs?
My correspondent poses the puzzle of reconciling
1. Some liberals are genuinely nice and highly intelligent people
with
2. These same liberals subscribe to intellectually inane and morally repugnant beliefs.
What makes this aporetic dyad truly puzzling is that the limbs are individually plausible but appear collectively inconsistent. Let's consider an example.
I don't know Robert Paul Wolff personally, but I was favorably impressed by a couple of his books and I read his blog, The Philosopher's Stone, despite the fact that he often comes across as a stoned philosopher. He is no doubt very intelligent, and he seems like a nice guy. But he says things so preternaturally moronic that I am left scratching my head. Here is just one of several examples:
Why Do Conservatives Oppose ObamaCare?
Robert Paul Wolff has an answer for us. Ready? The bolding is Wolff's own and is twice-repeated:
Because Obama is Black.
Is Professor Wolff serious? I'm afraid he is. But given that the man is neither stupid nor the usual sort of left-wing moral scumbag, how could he be serious? What explains a view so plainly delusional? How account for an emotion-driven mere dismissal of the conservative position the arguments for which he will not examine? How is it that a professional philosopher, indeed a very good one, can engage in such puerile ad hominem psychologizing? Wolff himself provides an answer in a later post:
My knowledge of the beliefs and sentiments of those on the right is based entirely on things I have read or have seen on television. I have never had a conversation with a committed right-wing opponent of the Affordable Care Act, nor have I even, to the best of my knowledge, met one. You would be quite correct in inferring that I live in a left-wing bubble [called Chapel Hill — before that, I lived in a left-wing bubble called Amherst, MA, and before that I lived in the right wing bubbles called Morningside Heights, Hyde Park, and Cambridge.] If this strikes you as disqualifying me from having an opinion, you are free to ignore the rest of this post.
Need I say more?
…………
This is a perfect illustration of my correspondent's puzzle. In Robert Paul Wolff we have a man who is intelligent and (I will give him the benefit of the doubt) morally decent, but who maintains a thesis that is both delusional and morally repugnant in that it constitutes a slander on conservatives. What explains this? Wolff himself provides what may be the best explanation: he lives in a bubble. He doesn't know conservative positions, nor interact with conservatives. But isn't it a moral failure in one who is supposedly a truth-seeker simply to ignore whole swaths of opinion that run counter to one's own? Is that not a mark of intellectual dishonesty?
But the best explanation, in terms of his 'bubbly' isolation, is still not very good. How could anyone of his maturity and experience with the world of ideas, even one unfamiliar with conservatism, imagine for even a second that the cheap psychologizing he engages in could be on target?
It is Christmas time, and so, to be charitable I won't accuse Wolff of a moral failing; I'll just say that he and so many of his ilk are topically insane: their leftism has rendered them incapable of rational thought with respect to certain issues, race being a chief one among them.
For further discussion of Robert Paul 'Howlin'' Wolff, see below.
Many prominent liberals now consider verifiable ID requirements at polling places to constitute voter suppression. And of course their use of 'suppression' is normatively loaded: they pack a pejorative connotation into it. Voter suppression, as they use the phrase, is bad. Well then, do these liberals also think that requiring drivers to operate with valid licenses to be driver suppression in that same pejorative sense? If not, why not?
After all, to require certification of age and of minimal driving knowledge and skills limits the number of drivers just as an ID requirement at the polls limits the number of voters. But for either limitation to amount to suppression in a pejorative sense, the limitation would either have to be injurious or arbitrary or unnecessary or in some other way bad.
But obviously both forms of certification are necessary and reasonable and in no way bad and the discrimination they involve is legitimate. (See articles below if you really need arguments.)
So why do liberals label legitimate voting requirements as voter suppression? Because they want to make the polling places safe for voter fraud. They need people, citizens or not, alive or dead, to 'vote early and vote often' if they are going to win in close elections. If it is not close, they can't cheat; but if it is close then cheating is justified by the end, namely, winning. Or so they believe.
You won't understand the Left unless you understand that they lack the qualms of those of us brought up on 'bourgeois' morality, most of which is contained in the Judeo-Christian tradition. For a leftist, there is nothing wrong with lying and cheating if those are means judged necessary to achieve their end, namely, the victory of the Left and the destruction of the Rght. So they want as many potential leftists voting as possible regardless of citizenship status, age, or criminality.
You can bet that if actual or potential conservatives were involved in voter fraud, liberals would call for standards of ID to be ramped up to 'proctological' levels.
What I have just done is explain why liberals maintain the absurd view they maintain. It is perfectly comprehensible once you grasp that the point is to enable voter fraud. The arguments why their view is untenable are found in the some of the articles listed below.
I've been asking myself a question these last years. Why did we expend so much treasure to defeat the Evil Empire, the USSR? To become another, albeit lesser, evil empire, the United Socialist States of America?
From a piece both pithy and penetrating by David P. Goldman (HT: Bill Keezer):
There has been considerable hand-wringing during the past few years about “lack of diversity” in the eight public high schools [of NYC] that require written exams. Asians are 14% of the public school population, but 50% of the elite high school population (the same proportion applies to Hunter College’s free public high school). By and large the Asian entrants are the children of working-class immigrants who pay extra tuition to prepare them for the entrance exams.
The NAACP has filed a complaint against the school system demanding racial quotas. The same concern for those “left behind” motivated the open admissions program in the City University system in 1969, which nearly ruined the system until CUNY found a way to shunt the underperformers into the community college system. (See chart at bottom of page.)
The above clearly illustrates what is so deeply wrong with the liberal-left way of thinking. It is true that Asians are disproportionately represented in the best NYC high schools. But this is not anything that needs remedying. It simply reflects the fact that Asians, as a group, have different values than blacks, better study habits, and are of higher intelligence. Notice, I said as a group. That's reality. But leftists are here as elsewhere in the business of reality denial. Leftists confuse the world with the way they would like the world to be. But things are as they are regardless of human hopes and dreams and desires.
Some inequalities have come about through wrongs that ought to have been righted, and have been righted. But the inequality of Asians and blacks as regards values and study habits and intelligence has not come about though any wrongdoing. Slavery was outlawed almost 150 years ago when the Thirteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution was ratified on 6 December 1865. Jim Crow was outlawed almost 50 years ago. There is no de jure racism in the U. S. and very little de facto racism. The 'overrepresentation' of Asians is the predictable outcome of the differences between Asian and black culture, values, and innate intelligence.
By the way, one ought to be very careful with the word 'overrepresent' and its opposite. It is ambiguous as between normative and nonnormative readings. It is just a value-neutral fact that there are proportionately more Asians than blacks in the elite high schools of NYC. But it doesn't follow that this state of affairs is one that ought not be, or that it would be better if there were proportional representation.
Consider the sports analogy. Asians are 'underrepresented' on basketball teams. That is a fact. But it doesn't follow that this state of affairs is one that ought not
be, or that it would be better if there were proportional
representation. Enforced proportional representation would adversely affect the quality of basketball games.
Since we are now back to the delightful and heart-warming topic of race/ ethnicity, let's talk about Jews. They are 'overrepresented' in the chess world so much so that there is much truth to the old joke that chess is Jewish athletics. Should the government do something about this 'problem'? (This is what is called a rhetorical question.)
I once told my Jewish and Israeli friend Peter that I had never met a stupid Jew. He shot back, "Then you've never lived in Israel." The very alacrity of his comeback, however, proved (or at least provided further evidence for) my point.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that I am not now, and never have been, either an Asian or a Jew or an Israeli.
Too many conservative commentators are focusing on the inessential and the peripheral. Yes, Obama is a brazen liar, a bullshitter, and a consummate Orwellian abuser of the English language. He lied when he said that those who like their plans can keep their plans, and it is obvious why he lied: the ACA probably would not have gotten through otherwise. But the important issue is not Obama and his mendacity. It is not about Obama, which is also why it is perfectly lame, besides being slanderous, for the scumbaggers on the Left to accuse opponents of the ACA of racism. The fundamental issue is the assault on individual liberty and the totalitarian expansion of the state. That assault and this expansion don't have a skin color, white, black, or mulatto.
Mark Steyn got it right back in 2009 in an NRO piece that is no longer available. (Damn you, NRO! Links to high-quality content ought to be permalinks.) Excerpts
(emphasis added):
. . . [nationalized] health
care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. That’s
its attraction for an ambitious president: It redefines the relationship between
the citizen and the state in a way that hands all the advantages to statists —
to those who believe government has a legitimate right to regulate human affairs
in every particular. [. . .]
It’s often argued that, as a
proportion of GDP, America spends more on health care than countries with
government medical systems. But, as a point of fact, “America” doesn’t
spend anything on health care: Hundreds of millions of people make hundreds of
millions of individual decisions about what they’re going to spend on health
care. Whereas up north a handful of bureaucrats determine what Canada
will spend on health care — and that’s that: Health care is a government budget
item. [. . .]
How did the health-care debate
decay to the point where we think it entirely natural for the central government
to fix a collective figure for what 300 million freeborn citizens ought to be
spending on something as basic to individual liberty as their own
bodies?
Are you willing to
sell your birthright, liberty, for a mess of pottage? That's the issue.
Liberals are a strange breed of cat. They'll puke their guts out in defense of
their 'right' to abortion and their 'right' to violate every norm of decency in
pursuit of the 'artistic' expression of their precious and vacuous selves, but
when it comes to the right to be in control of the sorts of care their bodies
receive they reverse course and surrender their liberties.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of debt, I fear no bankruptcy, for Obama is my shepherd. He prepareth a table of food stamps before me, and maketh me lie down beside waters He hath cleansed and seas He hath made recede, even though the bad Republicans wisheth the earth to be burnt unto a cinder, and will not buy the electric car that is good, for it hath zero emissions, and receiveth its power from a power plant, which hath not zero emissions, but the ways of the President are mysterious.
He hath told the stubborn Israelites, evil builders of apartments, that they know not their own interests and He does, and know not what they do, when they fear the nuclear weapon of the Persians. The ways of the President are mysterious. He alloweth the Persians to get the nuclear weapon (unless He hath something up His sleeve), for He knoweth that when they behold Him they will stay their hand, and not burn the Israelites unto a cinder, as they pronounce.
Robert Paul Wolff has an answer for us. Ready? The bolding is Wolff's own and is twice-repeated:
Because Obama is Black.
Is Professor Wolff serious? I'm afraid he is. But given that the man is neither stupid nor the usual sort of left-wing moral scumbag, how could he be serious? What explains a view so plainly delusional? How account for an emotion-driven mere dismissal of the conservative position the arguments for which he will not examine? How is it that a professional philosopher, indeed a very good one, can engage in such puerile ad hominem psychologizing? Wolff himself provides an answer in a later post:
My knowledge of the beliefs and sentiments of those on the right is based entirely on things I have read or have seen on television. I have never had a conversation with a committed right-wing opponent of the Affordable Care Act, nor have I even, to the best of my knowledge, met one. You would be quite correct in inferring that I live in a left-wing bubble [called Chapel Hill — before that, I lived in a left-wing bubble called Amherst, MA, and before that I lived in the right wing bubbles called Morningside Heights, Hyde Park, and Cambridge.] If this strikes you as disqualifying my from having an opinion, you are free to ignore the rest of this post.
First of all, what is doublethink? We turn to George Orwell's 1984 and the following quotation therefrom reproduced in Wikipedia:
The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink. Doublethink is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
This official website is an excellent contemporary example of doublethink, from the State of Idaho, of all places. (One expects PeeCee doublethink and newspeak in the People's Republic of Taxachusetts and in the once Golden State of Californication, but in Idaho, with all its Mormons and gun-totin' conservatives? Holy moly, things are worse than I thought.) At the State of Idaho website we read:
The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare's Self Reliance Office 6/2010
What is the Self Reliance office?
The Self Reliance office is the portion of Idaho Health and Welfare where people can apply for state funded public assistance.
This is what we call an 'Orwellian' use of language. It is language perverted and destroyed so as to serve leftist ideology and make clear thinking impossible. Accordingly, one who accepts welfare via the State from productive citizens is 'self-reliant,' when in truth he is the exact opposite.
Black is white, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and reliance on others is self-reliance.
Limited government is anarchism.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness = ObamaCare. (Idiot Pelosi accurately paraphrased.)
Fiscal responsibility = fiscal irresponsibility.
Semi-automatic rifle = fully- automatic rifle.
Semi-automatic rifle used purely defensively = assault weapon.
Constitutionally-mandated border control = xenophobia.
ID requirement at polling place = disenfranchisement.
Critic of a black person's ideas = racist.
And so on. Continue the list and resolve to do your bit to resist and oppose the liberal-left scumbaggers. It is your life, liberty and happiness that are at stake.
As CBS 2’s Jennifer McLogan reported Monday, officials at Weber Middle School in Port Washington are worried that students are getting hurt during recess. Thus, they have instituted a ban on footballs, baseballs, lacrosse balls, or anything that might hurt someone on school grounds.
If you don't see this absurdity within the context of Right-Left struggle, you won't understand it. It is of a piece with the general wussification and infantilization of the populace promoted by leftists, the active promotion of food stamp dependency being a prime example.
As
you know, they are not called Food Stamps anymore. The program has been given the snappy
new label, at once both a euphemism and an acronym, SNAP: Supplemental
Nutritional Assistance Program. And it is actively promoted.
Liberals will call it part of the social
safety net. That metaphor suggests something to keep one from falling to one's
death. But it is also a net in the sense of a fishing net, a device that
entraps and deprives of liberty. But liberals ignore this aspect of their
favorite programs. For self-reliance and the nanny state don't go
together. Since the nanny state serves the interests of liberals,
self-reliance has to be diminished. Part of the motivation of the liberal is
to help the needy. But another part is the lust for power which, to be
retained, requires plenty of clients, plenty of dependents who can be relied
upon to vote Democrat, thereby voting goodies for themselves in the short term–
and the long-term fiscal and moral solvency of the nation be damned.
Am I
opposed to all social welfare programs? No. There are those who truly need help
and cannot be helped by private charities. But I am opposed to the current,
utterly irresponsible expansion of the welfare state, and for two reasons. One
is economic: the expansion is unsustainable. The other is moral: it diminishes
and degrades and infantilizes people. "The bigger the government, the smaller
the citizen." (D. Prager)
For Dworkin, the meaning of religion consists in “two central judgments about value” that he believes religious people — theists and some atheists — regard as objectively true. First, “each person has an innate and inescapable responsibility to try to make his life a successful one: that means living well, accepting ethical responsibilities to oneself as well as moral responsibilities to others, not just if we happen to think this important but because it is in itself important whether we think so or not.” Second, “what we call ‘nature’ — the universe as a whole and in all its parts — is not just a matter of fact but is itself sublime: something of intrinsic value and wonder.”
If this is what Dworkin maintains, then his characterization of religion leaves a lot to be desired, to put it mildly. This is obviously NOT what the meaning of religion consists in on any adequate understanding of religion. Religion cannot be reduced to axiology. True, the religious will accept that there are objective values and disvalues. But such acceptance, even if necessary for being religious, is not sufficient.
All or most of the following are beliefs essential to anything that can be legitimately called a religion:
1.
The belief that there is what William James calls an "unseen order."
(Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 53) This is a realm of absolute
reality that lies beyond the perception of the five outer senses and their
instrumental extensions. It is also inaccessible to inner sense or
introspection. It is also not a realm of mere abstracta or thought-contents.
So it lies beyond the discursive intellect. It is accessible from our side via
mystical and religious experience. An initiative from its side is not to be
ruled out in the form of revelation.
2.
The belief that there is a supreme good for humans and that "our supreme good
lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves" to the "unseen order."
(Varieties, p. 53)
3.
The conviction that we are morally deficient, and that this deficiency impedes
our adjustment to the unseen order. Man is in some some sense fallen from the
moral height at which he would have ready access to the unseen order. His moral
corruption, however it came about, has noetic consequences.
4.
The conviction that our moral deficiency cannot be made sufficiently good by
our own efforts to afford us ready access to the unseen order.
5.
The conviction that adjustment to the unseen order requires moral
purification/transformation.
6.
The conviction that help from the side of the unseen order is available to bring
about this purification and adjustment.
7.
The conviction that the sensible order is not plenary in point of reality or
value, that it is ontologically and axiologically derivative. It is a
manifestation or emanation or creation of the unseen order.
In a word, Dworkin's characterization leaves out Transcendence; it leaves out what is absolutely central to religion, namely, the conviction that there is a transcendent dimension, an "unseen order," (see #1 supra) and that adjustment to this order is essential to human flourishing (see #2 supra).
What Dworkin has delivered is a miserable leftist substitute for religion. Being a leftist, he of course cannot value or perhaps even understand the genuine article; but he at least could have had the intellectual honesty not to try to redefine something whose definition is tolerably clear. Berkowitz has it right:
. . . Dworkin redefines religion to conform to his progressive sensibilities. What he presents as the offering of an olive branch to believers may seem to a person of faith, with justice, as a hostile takeover attempt. The steps by which Dworkin appropriates the religious label for his own left-liberal and atheistic outlook provide a case study in how the progressive mind, under the guise of conciliation, seeks to command the moral high ground exclusively and discredit that which differs from it.
"Hostile takeover" is right. Berkowitz also perceptively notes that
Dworkin also overlooks a formidable problem latent in his sanctification of the progressive perspective. If progressivism counts as a religion, then enacting the left-liberal policy agenda would seem to represent an establishment of religion in violation of the First Amendment.
But of course progressivism is not a religion, but an anti-religious political ideology. Nevertheless, one can and must ask: if it is wrong for the State to impose religion on its citizens, why isn't it also wrong for the State to impose leftist ideology on its citizens as it now doing here in the USA?
Long-time reader Tony Hanson perceptively notes a contradiction in the Obama administration's attitude toward their poor minority clients:
As I read about the complexity and nightmares (or as Obama prefers, glitches) of the ACA [Affordable Care Act] marketplace roll out today, I am reminded of your posts on Voter ID. Apparently the condescension of Obama and the Dems is very selective. They think requiring poor minorities to have the wherewithal to accomplish the relatively simple task of securing an ID card is just too difficult a task for them and therefore discriminatory; at the same time the success of the new healthcare law requires them to navigate (using a computer and internet connection mostly) a rather complex system of web sites, information and rules.
And while the Feds will spend millions upon millions to provide them help, it apparently cannot provide a tiny fraction of this amount to help them get IDs (if in fact they really need this help) and thereby secure the integrity of the voting system and democracy itself.
'Selective condescension' is an apt phrase. Blacks and other minorities are thought to be too bereft of basic life skills to secure government-issued photo ID, which is free in many states, but are nonetheless expected to be computer-savvy enough to sign up for ObamaCare. But if this contradiction were pointed out to Obama or the liberals that support him, it wouldn't faze them in the least. For they care about logical consistency as little as they care about truth. For a leftist it's all about power and nothing else. They have no bourgeois scruples about truth or the rule of law. The end justifies the means.
The plain truth of the matter is that Dems oppose photo ID because they want to make polling places safe for voter fraud. This is a harsh allegation but one that is perfectly justified given the utter worthlessness of the 'arguments' brought forth against photo ID. But I have said enough about this depressing topic in ealier posts, some of which are listed below.
If one has demonstrated that one's opponent's arguments are worthless, it is legitimate to psychologize him. For motives abound where reasons are nonexistent.
I have been following your blog for years, and continue to enjoy it immensely. [I've also had the opportunity to read several of your printed works in the field, which I found to be excellent – your article on states of affairs was particularly outstanding.]
I've nothing in particular to offer, other than two anecdotes that I think you'll find amusing:
(1) I met a bona fide, genuine Marxist-Trotskyist the other day. Not much more than a boy, alas, though he had drunk the Kool-Aid in toto, e.g., dialectical materialism, Trotsky a genius, all information is propaganda, etc., etc. I engaged him for some time just for shits and giggles, until the point at which he tried to (seriously) compare slavery to the position of "the woman" within the domestic family. His view, of course, was ridiculous, backed by the flimsiest of slogans. When it became apparent that he was making little sense, he backed off by saying something to the following effect: "Well, clearly two WHITE MEN need not even be discussing this issue…" Whereupon, I was pleased to recall the Maverick Philosopher, and replied (to a slackened jaw, no less): "My friend, arguments do not have testicles."
Beautiful. (On a similar note, I took your advice a few months back and read TROTSKY: DOWNFALL OF A REVOLUTIONARY by B. Patenaude – one helluva' read.)
(2) Not so long ago, I turned a very close friend of mine – one who shares my philosophical, political and religious predilections and who teaches in the Philosophy Dept. at a private school – onto your blog. He and I occasionally swap emails concerning the content, but the following comment from him (made in relation to, I believe, the Trayvon Martin debacle) I simply had to share with you:
"If it were possible to baptize the Maverick Philosopher as my uncle, I would pay to do so."
The Left is dangerous for a number of reasons with its disregard for truth being high on the list. For the Left it is the 'narrative' that counts, the 'script,' the 'story,' whether true of false, that supports their agenda. An agenda is a list of things to do, and for an activist, Lenin's question, What is to be done? trumps the question, What is the case? Paraphrasing Karl Marx's 11th Thesis on Feuerbach, the point for a leftist is to change the world, not understand it. See here: "Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert, es kömmt drauf an, sie zu verändern." "The philosophers have only variously interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it." (my trans.)
The leftist's aim is the realization of 'progressive' ideals, and if the truth stands in the way, then so much the worse for it. Inconvenient truths are not confronted and subjected to examination; their messengers are attacked and denounced.
For concrete instances I refer you to Jason Richwine, Can We talk About IQ? Excerpt:
So when Larry Summers, then the president of Harvard University, speculated in 2005 that women might be naturally less gifted in math and science, the intense backlash contributed to his ouster.
Two years later, when famed scientist James Watson noted the low average IQ scores of sub-Saharan Africans, he was forced to resign from his lab, taking his Nobel Prize with him.
When a Harvard law student was discovered in 2010 to have suggestedin a private email that the black-white IQ gap might have a genetic component, the dean publicly condemned her amid a campus-wide outcry. Only profuse apologies seem to have saved her career.
When a leftist looks at the world, he does not see it as it is, but as he wants it to be. He sees it through the distorting lenses of his ideals. A central ideal for leftists is equality. And not in any such merely formal sense as equality under the law or equality of opportunity. The leftist aims at material equality: equality of outcome both socially and economically, equality in point of power and pelf. But the leftist goes beyond even this. He thinks that no inequalities are natural, and therefore that any inequalities that manifest themselves must be due to some form of oppression or 'racism.' But because this is demonstrably false, the leftist must demonize the messengers of such politically incorrect messages or even suggestions as that the black-white IQ gap might have a genetic component.
This truth-indifferent and reality-denying attitude of the leftist leaves the conservative dumbfounded. For he stands on the terra firma of a reality logically and ontologically and epistemologically antecedent to anyone's wishes and hopes and dreams. For the conservative, it is self-evident that first we have to get the world right, understand it, before any truly ameliorative praxis can commence. It is not that the conservative lacks ideals; it is rather that he believes, rightly, that they must be grounded in what is possible, where the really possible, in turn, is grounded in what is actual. (See Can What is Impossible for Us to Achieve be an Ideal for Us?) And so the conservative might reply to the activist, parodying Marx, as follows:
You lefties have only variously screwed up the world; the point, however, is to understand it so that you don't screw it up any further.
There is a paradox at the heart of the radically egalitarian position of the leftist. He wants equality, and will do anything to enforce it, including denying the truth (and in consequence reality) and violating the liberties of individuals. But to enforce equality he must possess and retain power vastly unequal to the power of those he would 'equalize.' He must go totalitarian. But then the quest for liberation ends in enslavement. This paradox is explained in Money, Power, and Equality.
