by Ben Shapiro
1
NO MORAL ABSOLUTES
There is no such thing as a neutral or objective claim,”1 said Professor Joshua Muldavin of UCLA. It was early in the quarter, and the professor was explaining to our class that there is no such thing as capital-T Truth. There is no right and wrong, no good and evil, he taught. We must always remember that we are subjective beings, and as such, all of our values are subjective.
It’s a load of bunk. Of course evil exists. Anyone who believes there is an excuse for rape is evil. Anyone who believes in killing disabled children is evil. Anyone who flies planes into buildings with the intent of killing civilians is evil.
But not according to the professors.
When Professor Orlando Patterson of Harvard University was interviewed on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer regarding President Bill Clinton’s perjury, he said, “I think it’s important to emphasize the fact that there are no absolutes in our moral precepts. Kant may have believed that, and some fascists do. . . . [P]erjury is not an absolute. You don’t have absolute rules here.”2 Wow. Perjury is okay because there are no absolutes. And if you don’t agree, you’re a “fascist.”
Professor Stanley Fish of the University of Illinois at Chicago wrote in a submission to the New York Times: “relativism will not and should not end, because it is simply another name for serious thought.”3 In the same article, Fish pushes Americans to “understand” the September 11 terrorists, and to condemn “false universals.” How sophisticated—and pathetic.
This is typical of professors. A National Association of Scholars/Zogby poll conducted from April 9 to April 16, 2002, revealed the overwhelming use of this professorial dogma. The poll calculated the opinions of 401 randomly selected college seniors. When asked which statement about ethics their professors most often voiced, 73 percent picked: “what is right and wrong depends on differences in individual values and cultural diversity.” Only 25 percent of the students selected the option reading: “there are clear and uniform standards of right and wrong by which everyone should be judged.”4
All this classroom propaganda has a major effect on the students. John Leo, a nationally syndicated columnist, reported that “Several years ago, a college professor in upstate New York reported that 10 percent to 20 percent of his students could not bring themselves to criticize the Nazi extermination of Europe’s Jews.”5 You heard that correctly: Students would not condemn the Nazis for the Holocaust. This is what American students are being taught at “institutions of higher learning.”
THE LEFT’S MORAL BLINDNESS
After trashing moral absolutes, professors are free to advocate anything— even murder.
Professor Peter Singer of Princeton University advocates the killing of disabled newborns. Reports the New York Times, “To Singer, a newborn has no greater right to life than any other being of comparable rationality and capacity for emotion, including pigs, cows and dogs.”6 This is evil. Equating newborn humans with animals is absolutely sickening. But that is what Singer is teaching in his course at Princeton.
Moral relativism is a widespread disease. A book by Paul Ehrlich, a professor of population studies and biology at Stanford, was assigned in my Life Science 15 course, Spring 2002. In the book, Ehrlich compares the Holocaust to the dropping of the A-bomb on Japan.7 To compare the slaughter of six million innocents with a military action that saved hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese lives is reprehensible. Of course, this type of moral relativism is nothing new for Ehrlich, who is most famous for his laughably erroneous 1968 tome, The Population Bomb. In that book, Ehrlich claims that “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970’s the world will undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” His solution? “The birth rate must be brought into balance with the death rate . . . We can no longer afford merely to treat the symptoms of the cancer of population growth; the cancer itself must be cut out.”9
Without any set of stable morals, professors argue in favor of thugs and criminals. One professor played the “song” “Cop Killer” by that illustrious artist, Ice-T. To quote from the song: “I got my twelve gauge sawed off / I got my headlights turned off / I’m ’bout to bust some shots off / I’m ’bout to dust some cops off ! / Cop killer, it’s better you than me / Cop killer, f— police brutality / Cop killer, I know your family’s grieving (F— ’em) / Cop killer, but tonight we get even (ha, ha, ha, ha, yeah!).”8 The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) protested this charming little ditty, even making statements on the floor of the United States Senate. The ACLU responded in defense of Ice-T, whose music “provides an outlet for anger and encourages listeners to think about the issue of police misconduct and the antagonism it creates.”9
The professor followed up the “song” by asking the class: “What do you think? Is the government censoring musicians by acknowledging the legitimacy of groups like the PMRC?”10 How is that for a leading question?
Besides defending gangsta rap, professors will also defend convicted and admitted murderers and murderesses—as long as those killers are leftists.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is the convicted murderer of New York police officer Daniel Faulkner. After Faulkner made a routine traffic stop on Abu-Jamal’s brother, Billy Cook, Abu-Jamal stumbled upon the scene, pulled out a gun, and shot Faulkner three times, then stood over him and shot him in the head for good measure. Abu-Jamal is guiltier than sin but has become an international cause célèbre because of his political position: far left. He used to be a member of the Black Panthers and was a radical radio host.11
Naturally, professors rush to defend him. Mary Brent Wehrli, a self-described radical and professor of social work at UCLA, says, “His case is a blight on the democratic process we all believe in. Information which would have changed the outcome of the trial was not admitted and the judge appears to be racist and not open-minded—not unbiased.”12
Another campus celebrity is Sara Jane Olson (a.k.a. Kathleen Soliah), a former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a domestic terrorist organization. She pled guilty on November 1, 2001, to the attempted murder of two Los Angeles police officers in 1974. As part of the SLA, she planted bombs under the cars of the two police officers.13
Predictably, professors also support Olson. Wehrli was listed on the Web site of the Sara Olson Defense Fund Committee as an endorser and honorary member of the committee. She says, “I support Sara Jane Olson. Olson has been denied the right to a fair trial.” Erwin Chemerinsky, professor of law at USC, agrees with Wehrli. His name was above hers on the list of endorsers and honorary members of the committee. Other professors on the list included Peter Rachleff, a history professor at Macalaster College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and William Ayers (“Distinguished Professor of Education”).14
“Distinguished Professor of Education” William Ayers is a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago. In the 1960s and 70s, he was a member of the radical Weather Underground group (also known as the Weathermen). His wife, Bernadine Dohrn, now a member of the law school faculty and director of the Northwestern Children and Family Justice Center, was also a member. The Weather Underground was responsible for numerous antiwar bombings, including an attempted bombing of the Pentagon and a bombing at an army base. Ayers is unrepentant for his actions; he wrote a book, Fugitive Days, describing his experiences with the Weathermen. Ayers says, “I have no regrets . . . you have to act in an imperfect world and we did and would again.”15
Northwestern and the University of Illinois are backing these unabashed terrorists. Northwestern law school dean David Van Zandt says of Dohrn, “Her career here at the law school is an example of a person’s ability to channel one’s energy and passion into making a difference in our legal system.”16 It’s nice to know that one’s energy and passion for terrorism can be converted toward teaching students, isn’t it?
DEBASING MORALITY
The assault on absolute morality is the basis for every brainwashing scheme of the Left.
It even bestows upon them the leeway to defend murderers and thugs.
Higher learning, indeed.
2
PARTISAN POLITICS
Liberal Democrats dominate the university scene. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but the extent of the Democratic domination is mind-boggling. The percentage of Democrats teaching in the university system closely parallels the percentage of communists in the Cuban government.
To review: 84 percent of professors voted for Al Gore for president in the 2000 election; only 9 percent voted for George W. Bush. While 57 percent of professors are self-identified Democrats, only 3 percent identify themselves as Republicans.1 A whopping 79 percent of professors said that George W. Bush’s politics were “too conservative.”2 Of the seventy-eight political science professors at Colorado’s state universities, forty-five are registered Democrats, and just nine are registered Republicans.3 At Williams College, there are only four registered Republican professors on campus out of two hundred professors. At Brown University, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 54-3; at Berkeley, 59-7; at Stanford 151-17; at the University of California at San Diego, 99-6.4
Stanford’s History Department has twenty-two Democrats but only two Republicans. Cornell’s has twenty-nine Democrats and zero Republicans. Dartmouth’s has ten Democrats and no Republicans. At the University of Colorado at Boulder, the English, History, and Philosophy Departments have a combined sixty-eight Democrats, and not a single Republican. At that same university, 184 of the 190 social science and humanities professors identified themselves as Democrats.5
At my own beloved UCLA the numbers are just as frightening. There are thirty-one English professors with registered party affiliation. Twenty-nine of them are affiliated with the Democratic party, the Green party, or another leftist political party. Out of thirteen journalism professors with registered affiliation, twelve are affiliated with leftist parties. Fifty-three out of fifty-six history professors are affiliated with leftist parties. Sixteen out of seventeen political science professors are affiliated with leftist parties. Thirty-one of thirty-three women’s studies professors are affiliated with leftist parties.6
The few professors who are conservative are unable to “come out of the closet” for fear that they will be targeted by their colleagues and the university administration. Professor Robert Maranto of Villanova University explains: “While colleges strive for ethnic diversity, they actively oppose ideological diversity. Surveys find that only about 10 percent of social science and humanities faculty vote Republican.” Maranto cites the case of a sociologist who quit academia after turning conservative: “When I decided to become a registered Republican, it was a sensation,” the sociologist relates. “It was as if I became a child molester. You don’t want to be in a department where everyone hates your guts.”7
INDOCTRINATION
Professors spouting the party line have a definite effect on the student population. An informal exit poll at UCLA revealed that 71 percent of students voted for Al Gore in the 2000 election with another nine percent voting for Ralph Nader.8 At Tufts, 51 percent of the students identify themselves as liberals, 14 percent identify as moderate, 16 percent “did not know,” and only 10 percent identify as conservative or right-of-center.9 In more conservative states, the majority of college students might identify themselves as Republicans, as at the University of Tennessee.10 Even at these universities, however, the percentage of conservatives is extremely low compared to the general population in the surrounding areas.
I took a political science class during the winter of 2001, just following the 2000 presidential elections. The title of the course was “Introduction to World Politics,” and there were about 300 students enrolled.
Early on in the quarter, the professor asked for a quick show of hands: Who voted for Al Gore, and who voted for George W. Bush? About 250 hands went up for Al Gore, and about 15 went up for George W. Bush (I raised my hand even though at the time I had just turned seventeen; I figured Bush needed all the help he could get in that classroom). The professor then asked: “Who thought the election process was fair?” About 15 students, including me, raised their hands. The professor finally asked: “If Al Gore had won, who here would have thought the election was fair?” This time, almost every one raised a hand. It was typical of a Democratic constituency: the system only works if we win.
The Democrats running the universities don’t separate politics and teaching. At all. In fact, the Democratic party platform provides a great description of the material professors shove down the throats of their captive audiences.
“PRESIDENT-SELECT” GEORGE W. BUSH
Immediately following the 2000 presidential election, professors started depicting George W. Bush as an illegitimate, “selected” president. They spewed all the usual rhetoric about Bush’s alleged stupidity and illiteracy. The legacy of democracy had been shattered by Bush’s highway robbery.
English Professor Robert Watson of UCLA submitted an article to the Daily Bruin the week before George W. Bush’s inauguration. It was a brutal, cynical, and altogether outrageous piece. “We can’t stop him from taking office,” Watson wrote. “We also can’t let him pretend he deserves it.”
Watson invented charges, accusing the Bush campaign of “mob intimidation” and “stalling legal tactics.” He played the race card; Bush only gained his “mythical official edge,” Watson said, because he “systematically deprived” racial minorities and the poor of “equal voting rights.” He ripped the “conservative Republican majority on the US Supreme Court” for overriding state law.
Bush spokespeople were men of “intellectual dishonesty, ethical indifference and spiritual ugliness,” and Attorney General John Ashcroft had a “lifelong record of opposition to African Americans and racial justice.” Awash in melodrama and metaphor, Watson stated, “Let’s meet on Jan. 20, while George W. Bush takes his oath to serve the Constitution he’s undermining. Maybe, for symbolic value, we can each hold a candle, and burn a piece of paper marked ‘Ballot’ and ‘Democracy’ on one side and ‘Truth’ and ‘Equality’ on the other.”11
Watson wasn’t finished with his one-man protest. He held a meeting of roughly thirty people the night of Bush’s inauguration. “Something truly outrageous and destructive had happened, and the Bush handlers were cynically counting on everybody wanting to forget about it. I thought it was important for people who were willing to resist to know they weren’t alone, to improve each other’s understanding by discussion and to figure out what can be done to limit the damage,” said the English professor-cum political expert. Watson then dragged out his sobbing wife who managed to sniffle: “I don’t believe in God. The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are narratives to me of how the world should work, and what happened in the last election destroyed that.”12 She’s God-less. She’s Constitution-less. She’s world-less. She’s brainless.
Political science Professor Matthew Baum of UCLA said that the 2000 election “stretched legitimacy.”13 Thomas Cronin, president of Whitman College, and Michael A. Genovese, political science professor at Loyola Marymount, said that Bush faced “compelling questions about whether he possesses enough ‘gravitas’ to be president.”14 September 11 answered those questions pretty definitively.
Princeton professor Richard Falk called the Supreme Court decision “dubious to the point of scandalous, seemingly inconsistent with the conservative view of federalism, and suspiciously linked to the promotion of a partisan political outcome.”15 Fellow Princeton professor Stanley Katz concurred: “What the Supreme Court decided, in the end, was that we should be governed by John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney. It should remind the Democrats how much is at stake in presidential politics—and that partisan politics are the name of the game.”16 Professor Gwendolyn Mink of UC Santa Cruz declared: “The Supreme Court not only stole the 2000 election from the people, it deranged our constitutional order.” To hear these professors talk, you would think that
the Supreme Court is full of neo-fascists who burn American flags for fun.
Bush is illegitimate and lacks gravitas. John Ashcroft is a bigot. The Supreme Court is partisan and politically motivated. Thank goodness the professors are here to save America from such rotten people.
“TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH”
A favorite shtick of the professors is the tried-and-true anti-Republican “tax cuts for the rich” argument. According to professors, the rich don’t deserve their money. Rather, the poor deserve the money of the rich. Therefore, the government should take the money of the rich and give it to the poor through high taxes. If an administration either fails to take enough money from the rich or gives back money to the rich, that administration is evil and hates the poor. Hence, tax cuts only benefit the rich.
The “tax cuts for the rich” argument is completely specious. To start, most of those who are categorized as “rich” by the Left are hardly rolling in dough. My family would probably be classified as rich based on my parents’ combined income, but my parents pay private school tuition for three children and have a mortgage and living expenses. I have yet to see a tux-clad servant named Alfred around my house. Still, according to some, my mother, a hard-working television executive, and my father, an author and composer, should pay nearly 50 percent of their money to the government. Why? To support socialist programs that discourage hard work and favor reliance on the government.
There’s no denying that tax cuts return money to rich people, but that is because rich people pay the vast majority of taxes. Tax cuts provide money to the upper class, but that upper class doesn’t just tuck it into a mattress and sit on it. They use it to start businesses; they invest in the stock market; they provide jobs and income for the lower classes.