“In
order to rise from the caves, man had to grasp the fact
of values”, says Peter Schwartz. “Every step forward
entailed the knowledge not only of how to take that
step, but of why it was of value – of why it was
a step forward.” (“Multicultural Nihilism” – Return of
the Primitive). Prehistorically, man behaved like a pack
of wolves. In order to survive he was forced to protect
himself through sheer numbers: primitive man practiced
tribalism in order to survive. He occupied himself with
the hunting for food and fighting other tribes. In order
to live, primitive man’s primary value was physical
prowess.
Then, at some point, mankind discovered other means of
satisfying his needs other than by sheer physical
strength. Man learned to reason, to think, and began
developing his mental capacity. Once man began to live
by his mental capacity, survival no longer required
physical prowess. The process of thinking became man’s
means of survival. Primitive man fashioned tools. He
learned to value tools as being better than the use of
his bare hands. He discovered fire and learned to value
it for its warmth and its use in cooking food. While
other animals continued to rely on strength and speed,
man began to rely on the process of thinking to guide
his actions. In doing so, “primitive man” began a long
course of evolution in which he sought to separate the
“primitive” from the “man”.
Physical prowess, primitive man’s fundamental value, was
greater when the number was greatest: for most of his
existence, man required tribalism. Thinking however, can
only be done on an individual level. It is not an
external process, such as fighting, in which a
collective number greatly enhances success. No matter
how many people are gathered, the process that
culminates in an idea being formed occurs in one
individual. That he then communicates the idea to others
- gives it to them - and that via choice his idea is
imitated and reproduced does not negate the fact that
thinking is, and always has been, an individual process
and does not require strength in numbers – no collective
action can reproduce this process. Just as he separated
the primitive from the man, so man severed the
requirement of a “tribe” from his means to “survival”.
Ideas do not originate spontaneously within a group.
Ideas are formed in lone individuals. Nor do ideas
happen frequently. It’s astounding to contemplate the
fact that for most of human history, approximately
990,000 years, man lived like an animal. It took that
long for the first “idea” to surface, for long range
thinking to occur in man. And the one idea that more
than any other enabled him to separate the primitive
from the man occurred when some lone individual had the
brilliant idea to plant a seed. That idea, that act,
resulted in what we now call the agricultural
revolution. That idea freed man from the necessity to
spend all his time obtaining food. That one seed, the
idea of it, was the birth of all civilization.
Having freed up most of his time, man got to the
business of evaluating his life, one idea at a time. Man
became a valuing animal. In order to grow crops he had
to make the evaluation between the nomadic life of a
hunter-gatherer and the life of a settler. Cultivation,
he concluded, required that he settle down. A settled
life was better than a nomadic one. Man began to value
property rights. Each idea built upon the other, each
value constituted the good, and with it man’s conceptual
faculty flourished – he began to set long term goals. He
developed simple technologies, then more complex ones.
At first slowly as the process of thinking occurred only
with the individual as he learned to evaluate the world
according to the knowledge available to him. With each
new idea, that knowledge increased and with the
acquisition of facts, of truths, ideas began to occur
more frequently. Civilization’s growth parallels
precisely the volume of knowledge previously available
to man and matches its growth to the rate at which new
ideas occur within certain select individuals.
From the Agricultural to the Industrial and from the
Technological to the Informational, man’s advancement
has experienced an exponential growth unmatched to any
other period in history. Where it took him 999,000 years
to achieve the Agricultural Revolution, and 500 years to
accomplish an Industrial one, it is estimated that man’s
current goal – what we term the Information Revolution -
will take him only 30 years to realize. One might say
that man’s goal is to realize a Revolution based on
knowledge itself: knowledge being the necessary
counterpart to valuing man.
Today, we have the culmination of a ten thousand year
process of man’s thinking, evaluating, and acting to
gain or keep his values, in the United States of
America. That it exists is a profound and heroic
achievement unmatched in man’s history. The United
States stands alone, as the last remnant of the
Renaissance, of the Enlightenment, and of the Age of
Reason. As a nation, it exists in a world that,
unbelievable as it may seem, still harbors primitive
cultures living in the Stone Age. In between these
extremes we find an assortment of man’s previous
experiments: from the tribal to the democratic, the
theocratic to the royal, the totalitarian to the
dictatorial. At one extreme stands the United States,
alone, as it champions individual rights, liberty, and
man’s right to the pursuit of his happiness. Its
fundamental principles as set forth by its Founding
Fathers are objective. They are based on the necessary
requirements of man. They were written in recognition of
the crucial role the individual plays in man’s progress,
that without the individual - whose mind must be free to
think, evaluate, and act - the United States, and in a
larger sense civilization, could not exist.
Having said this, it must be recognized that just as
primitive man required physical prowess to protect
himself from other aggressors, so it becomes necessary
for civilized man to protect himself from his enemies.
That America has enemies can no longer be doubted. The
recent terrorist attacks against the United States make
one such enemy quite obvious. He is a caveman who used
nothing more than the equivalent of simple, hunter
gatherer tools – namely, box cutters – and brought down
America’s two greatest icons. In the process, this
caveman who calls himself Osama Bin Laden, slaughtered
thousands of our true heroes, the men and women who ran
the engine of the world: Wall Street.
Our government, stupefied, announced the attack on the
United States as one of the most sophisticated terrorist
operations ever staged against any country. It took
years of planning, they said, thousands if not millions
of dollars to finance it and involved the cooperation of
several nation states. To do what, I ask? Grab a couple
of box cutters, ride a few airplanes until you have the
schedule down pat, and then read a technical manual on
how to steer an airplane that you know you don’t have to
land? Sophistication by cavemen? Or was it made possible
as a result of careful planning by another enemy, one
much more cunning and sophisticated than even you and I
can imagine?I referred
to an enemy not so obvious as a terrorist, but one I
consider far more dangerous. The threat this enemy poses
does not lie in sudden and savage acts of brutal
violence, such as those perpetrated on 9-11. This
enemy's battleground is man's mind – man's tool for
survival. This enemy counts his victories one small step
at a time, each separated by an appropriate interval so
as to pass by unnoticed. His patience is unmatched, his
willingness to sacrifice man endless, and his drive to
destroy Western civilization fueled by his seething
hatred for mankind …
Who is this enemy? What makes him possible? To discover
the answers to such questions requires us to cast a long
eye back into history.
Western civilization, the account of it, is the history
of a quiet war waged between the ideas of two men.
Throughout this history, when we stop to admire the best
in man, then we consider he who has inspired the very
best civilization has to offer . Conversely, when we
stop to observe the lowliest in man, then we must
consider he who originated the ideas that have guided
man to his worst excesses. The former gave us a few
centuries known as The Renaissance and The Age of
Reason, while the latter gave us 1500 years of horror
known as the Dark Ages. Lifting man out of the darkness,
saving man from his own self-destruction, we have
Aristotle. Drowning man, sending him back to the horror
of his own self-destruction, we have Plato. In the
former, we have the student; in the latter, we have his
teacher. And despite all who came after them, in
essence, the intellectual battle between Aristotle and
Plato continues to this day, some two thousand years
later. And in spite of the teacher's power, it is
certain that because of his student that man continues
to exist.
And therefore, it is appropriate that this intellectual
battle must now take place in the very institution named
after Plato’s intellectual training ground: The Academy.
Make no mistake: academia will host the battlefield upon
which America's quiet war will be waged. Today, the
enemies of civilization, those who champion the
derivative ideas as originally put forth by Plato,
reside in academia. By and large, they are today’s
leading intellectuals: the teachers, professors,
educators and administrators who have been entrusted
with the training of man’s mind. Their target was, and
still remains, the susceptible minds of their young and
eager students – our sons and daughters.
Men like Aristotle and Plato put forth systems of
ideas, but it is the academic who imitates and
circulates them. The academic does this in the
classroom: he disseminates ideologies to his students.
The student absorbs these ideas and readies himself to
enter society. He grows up and through his personal and
professional life circulates what he has been taught
directly or indirectly to the public at large. The ideas
he holds guide his every action. Though each individual
is responsible for the ownership of his thoughts, and
therefore is responsible for his own actions, it may
still be observed that the degree to which the student
becomes a willing or unwilling participant in this
process, is due in large part to the academic’s
methodology. Does the academic instill ideologies with a
partisan view, does he perhaps fail to present an idea’s
antithesis, or does he remain objective as he presents
contrasting ideas to his students? Does the academic
indoctrinate or educate?
Educators need to be taught that the immense task of
training a student’s mind is a grave responsibility –
and not an open license for indoctrinating our children
to only their partisan ideologies. Consider the
words of Professor Vivian Ng of the University of
Oklahoma, who openly admits to using her lectern as a
pulpit for leftist ideologies: “ I do political work,”
she says, “both inside the classroom and outside it…My
students come around and I convert them.” Or, Professor
Ohmann of Wesleyan University, who makes no bones about
his agenda: “We work in whatever ways we can toward the
end of capitalist patriarchy.”
Professor Ohmann and Professor Vivian Ng, and thousands
more like them, are not educators – they are
indoctrinators. Under the guise of providing an
education for our children they instead use their
influential and powerful positions to train the
student to oppose the very principles upon which their
survival outside of academia depends.
For instance: Professor Ohmann, in seeking to end
“capitalist patriarchy," fails to explain why he
describes a statist-run, mixed economy as
capitalism. Were he forced to explain it, Professor
Ohmann would be faced with the uncomfortable task of
explaining why his leftist ideologies applied to an
economy have themselves failed. The answer is that the
disintegrating nature of a mixed economy is all too
apparent for everyone to see. And for that reason a
mixed economy is often referred to as capitalism.
And what about Ohmann's students? Having been duped by
the man they entrust to give them factual information,
they, in turn, grow up with the firm notion that
capitalism cannot work, that alternatives must be sought
– particularly those alternatives that give even more
power to the State. That, after all, is the political
objective behind the Ohmann's of this world. So
successful are these academic anti-capitalists, that
today we wage war, not against terrorists, but against
capitalism. Even more surprising is the fact that
despite the overwhelming antipathy towards capitalism,
this political and economic ideology has never before
been practiced in our country. Not in the United States,
not anywhere on earth.
But these two academics are not alone. In the Los
Angeles Times November 1991 paper, Ann Rosenhaft,
secretary of the Socialist Party of the USA estimated
that there were 10,000 Marxist professors and
administrators in U.S. colleges. Over a decade later,
this number has increased, rather than decreased. The
demise of the Soviet Union, the untold millions that
have died in the name of Marxism attest to the horror of
that ideology. And, how many millions of students have
passed through these Marxist classrooms – today, and in
our past?
Observe that the United States the only difference
between this country’s inception and today’s version of
it, is that in the beginning, it was freedom that
dominated our system, whereas today, it is statism that
dominates it. Freedom is the necessary requirement for
individual rights. Statism is the requirement for
collectivism. To assume that this transference
from freedom to statism was an arbitrary idea
disseminated into our political and economic culture via
some collective mind is impossible. We have already seen
that ideas originate and are disseminated by
individuals. Who are the primary disseminators? Our
academics who have been very busy indoctrinating the
minds of our children. Over the last century how many
individuals did it take to accomplish this transference
from freedom to statism? One can easily imagine a number
in the millions: the generations of bureaucrats,
politicians, economists, and journalists who had as
their point of convergence, the lower and higher
institutes of learning. Who trained them to implement
the ideas required to further altruism and statism? Our
academics.
That these altruist academics are the enemies of
civilization is true to the extent that they are the
“distributors” of collectivist philosophies created by
others, ideologies that may be traced back to Plato and
his descendants. Though we may properly blame Kant for
the invidious ideas that destroyed the Age of Reason, it
is today's academics who continue to imitate him.
Observe that this process of imitation makes academics
second-handers, for the most part incapable of original
thought. Having accepted Kant and therefore, rejected
reason, and because they are but second-handed
intellectuals themselves, today's academic is ruled
instead by one, primary emotion: envy.
Observe his nature: the academic’s profound hatred and
envy for those who can “think”, “evaluate”, “and further
their lives” makes him an advocate for egalitarianism –
a collectivist doctrine that “levels all men, so that no
one man may enjoy that denied to others.” “All men are
equal”, he tells his students. What is the equality to
which he refers? An equality of that which sets men
apart in reality: their degree of ability, their talent,
their skill, and their qualifications – intellectual
virtues towards which the academic is envious and
hostile.
In their world, when given the choice between an
unqualified, black female and a qualified, white male it
is the unqualified candidate who gets the job. But what
about the candidate's talent, skill, and qualifications?
They are equal, the academic says. No man is
intellectually better, more talented than another. And
what does set them apart? The color of their skin, their
gender…precisely those attributes that hold no bearing
on the position and therefore ought to have placed both
candidates on an equal level.
On a political and economic
level, the academic is hostile to capitalism because
it is a system that is primarily intellectual:
everything needed to survive is directly due to man’s
application of reason to the problem of survival. The
academic is hostile to individual rights because
they rely on man’s right to life, to man’s right to
engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action. The
academic is hostile to reason because it is man’s
only means to his survival.
Never a champion of merit the academic champions instead
the disadvantaged – a class to which he “intellectually”
belongs. Never an advocate for competition, he instead
defends those incapable of it – himself included.
Denying the validity of reality, he upholds the rights
of those who seek to evade it.
For example: what is the prize so sought after by the
academic? Tenure, with its way of shielding the senior
staff from the reality which they claim doesn't exist.
Working for an institution in which neither pay nor
promotion is connected to performance, the academic’s
job security is guaranteed (after tenure is attained).
His pension arrangement is probably the finest in the
country. Though he is anti-value by necessity, the
academic does pursue one value: his own survival. He
ensures that he is effectively shielded from public life
– from reality - and from the disastrous consequences of
his actions as a so-called educator.”
What are some of the consequences of his actions? Most
Americans wonder about the state of our cultural
atmosphere, its cynicism, its skeptical indifference,
the appalling apathy, nihilism, violence and moral
decadence that has spread like a cancer across our
nation. Wonder no more. Take a good look at academia.
When the academic indoctrinates our children with his
own envious predilection to faultfinding, criticism, and
misanthropy is it any wonder that our culture reflects
such views? When the envious academic hammers it into
our children’s heads that reason is impotent, that
ability is a non-value, that the individual must suborn
his own pursuit for happiness to the will of others, is
it any surprise that skepticism and indifference reign
across our cultural landscape? When the academic
relentlessly purges all concepts of self-interest from
our children’s minds– without which their self-reliance
and self-sustaining action is possible – is it any
wonder that the pervading emotion in our nation is, not
the passionate pursuit of happiness, but the apathetic
acceptance for the lack of it? When the academic
instructs his students that moral and cultural
relativism constitute the good, that truth is whatever
one chooses it to be, can we expect anything other than
a Columbine massacre? When the envious academic
instructs his students not towards a society in which
the man of ability engages in peaceful trade, but rather
a society in which some are entitled to the productive
efforts of others, than is it any wonder that violence
now spreads like a cancer across the American tapestry?
And finally, when the academic tells his students that
no thing is better than any other thing, then is it any
wonder that our children no longer understand the
difference between right and wrong?
Most Americans view their politicians worthy only of
contempt, their government as corrupt, and taxes as a
metaphysical fact of reality. And yet, they continually
vote the same politicians into office, vote to grow
government, and remain silent when their taxes are
raised to the point that now most Americans work at
least six months out of each year to sustain government,
rather than their own lives. Why? Ask the academics.
If the academic himself works for an institution which
forcibly takes its wealth from those who produce it, how
can we expect him to educate his students that they have
a right to their own wealth? If it requires a politician
to vote in tax legislation that supports, for one, the
taking of wealth from the productive and the giving of
it to the institutions that shield the academic from
having to survive via competitive means, than why are we
so surprised if the academic teaches our future
politicians that to do so constitutes the “moral good”?
If the government has no principles and instead replaces
- truths with statistics, morality with the taking of
polls, and individual rights with the will of the common
good - then is it any wonder that the academic who
bristles at the very idea of principles, indoctrinates
our children with the notion that compromise – the
willingness to sacrifice one’s values - is a virtue?
Most Americans wonder about the state of the economy.
Where once we were a free nation, engaged in free trade
and a nation that championed the industrialist and
business class above all others, we now legislate and
regulate every aspect of trade, condemn the successful
for being a success, and instead look to political
action for the advancement of mankind. Who transformed
America from a nation of self-reliant individuals to one
whose people continually look to Washington, D.C. for
solutions?
If the freedom to engage in free trade is the
requirement of survival for a thinking and valuing man,
then you must expect that the envious mind of an
academic will attempt to take way from man that which is
required for his survival. If the businessman is
precisely that man who takes risks, who does not shield
himself from reality, who does not use forcible means
but rather free trade in order to survive, then we can
expect the envious mind of the academic - who relies on
tenure, eschews society to live only in academic
circles, and who does use forcible means for his
survival - to condemn the businessman for being
opportunistic, materialistic and greedy (their euphemism
for the proper virtue of self-interest).
And last, but not least, most Americans wonder about our
War on Terrorism. How is it possible to declare war not
on the terrorists themselves, but rather on their
methodology? How is it possible that we praise the
Islamic faith for doing exactly what it’s holy book
describes, the annihilation of western man? How is it
possible to drop food and bombs on the enemy at the same
time? How is it possible to fight a long, protracted war
without actually declaring war? How is it possible that
the only revolt against this war erupts from within our
own campuses?
Look no further than our academics. Their virulent
hatred for America, its principles and ideas have been
taught for decades to those students who now constitute
our current political leaders. If it is the academic who
teaches that America’s value system comes at the expense
of those systems of lesser value, then it can come as no
surprise that our leaders engage not in our own moral
self-defense, but in an appeasement (apology) towards
the enemy who view us as oppressive and tyrannical. For
the same reason, if our culture is no better than anyone
else’s, then it’s no surprise that our leaders in their
fear of appearing superior - and therefore supposedly
oppressive and tyrannical - continue to praise Islam. In
its consistent policy of compromise, we need not wonder
at the seeming contradiction of dropping food and bombs
on the enemy. Our leaders have been taught that a
consensus is necessary, that a policy of pleasing
everyone is superior to morality. Why do we fight a war
without officially declaring one, because it would mean
officially declaring war against all nations harboring
terrorists? And finally, how is it that only academia
has expressed revulsion towards this war and how is it
that only academia expresses a vicious anti-American
sentiment?
The answer to this last, is that academia does not
consider itself part of reality. Only that portion of
society that is completely closed off from it, that is
safely ensconced from man’s requirement to sustain
himself, that officially denies the existence of
reality, reason, values and principles can utter a
statement no one else facing a direct attack against
their lives would . It is precisely the terrorists’
gross attack against life, reason, our values and
principles that have made America – those of us living
in the reality of it – aware once again of what makes
this nation great. That the academics refuse to do so,
is the final proof that they now constitute
civilization’s deadliest enemy.
In closing, let me say that there are those in academia
who are not destroyers of the mind. In fact, there are
many who remain objective, who educate instead of
indoctrinate, who are advocates for reason, individual
rights, and capitalism while teaching opposing views as
well. My attack is most definitely not aimed against
them. They are precisely what this country needs. They
constitute the necessary reform our educational
institutions require. They are our true intellectuals
who seek, as we all do, to further mankind and
civilization through the educational process.
Harry Roolaart is the founder and
creator of the
harryroolaart.com
website and a writer and artist
living and working in Charlotte, North Carolina. You
may contact him personally at
hroolaart@harryroolaart.com.
This TRA feature has been edited
in accordance with TRA’s
Statement of Policy.
Click here to return to TRA's Issue
VI Index.
Learn about Mr. Stolyarov's novel,
Eden against the Colossus, here.
Read
Mr. Stolyarov's new comprehensive treatise,
A Rational Cosmology,
explicating such terms as the universe, matter, space, time,
sound, light, life, consciousness, and volition, at
http://www.geocities.com/rational_argumentator/rc.html.
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