Leftism and the abolition of Reason

Rambam Moreh Nevuchim 1.1: "Let us make man in our ẓelem [image]" (Gen. 1:26) ... man's distinction consists in a property which no other creature on earth possesses, viz., intellectual perception, in the exercise of which he does not employ his physical senses, ... On this account, i.e., on account of the Divine intellect (השכל האלוקי) with which man has been endowed, he is said to have been made in the form and likeness of the Almighty.

Leftism vs. Conservatism

The column on the left (in red) in the above table is what I take to be the major tenets of Leftism as it is practiced today in the West, by the mainstream media, academia, the courts, and big business (such as Facebook and Google). The Democratic party in the US has become a mouthpiece for leftists such as Bernie Sanders and the Squad¹.

In many ways, the Right and the Left share the same murderous and totalitarian tendencies so that Hitler's Nazis (and white supremacists) have been as destructive to mankind as Lenin and Stalin's communists².

The column in the table in blue is what I believe describes a Conservatives mindset. It opposes the destructive tendencies of the others and is closer to the views of the founding fathers of the US.

All these systems must be evaluated in the light of the Torah, which alone contains the objective Wisdom and Kindliness of the Creator.

The university is a seminary for left-wing indoctrination

The modern university is the engine of leftism. Take academics like Rorty and Derrida (both now dead), whose influence is typical of the kind of postmodern thought that began percolating throughout the modern university a generation ago. It is now much worse.

Rorty: This is the concept ... which was used by American school teachers who had read Dewey and were concerned to get students to think ‘scientifically’ and ‘rationally’ about such matters as the origin of the species and sexual behavior (that is, to get them to read Darwin and Freud without disgust and incredulity). It is a concept which I, like most Americans who teach humanities or social science in colleges and universities, invoke when we try to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic, religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own [i.e. like postmodern Marxists of the Left].

The racist or fundamentalist parents of our students ... will protest that these books are being jammed down their children’s throats. I cannot see how to reply to this charge without saying something like “There are credentials for admission to our democratic society, credentials which we liberals have been making more stringent by doing our best to excommunicate racists, male chauvinists, homophobes, and the like. You have to be educated in order to be a citizen of our society, a participant in our conversation, someone with whom we can envisage merging our horizons. So we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable. We are not so inclusivist as to tolerate intolerance such as yours.” [Rorty and His Critics, Blackwell, 2000, Universality and Truth, Pages 20--1]

A defining feature of the Left is that the professoriate will not use reason to enter into a dialogue with students coming from religious homes. Rather, professors will demonize and make fun of the beliefs of these "naive" students under their care, so that their views will seem so silly as to not even be worthy of discussion

Derrida: See [Explaining Postmodernism (Steven Hicks)] (http://www.stephenhicks.org/explaining-postmodernism/). Jordan Peterson has summarized it as follows. Postmodernists completely reject the structure of Western civilization. Jacques Derrida, a head trickster for the postmodernist movement, regarded Western culture as phallogocentric (post-modern leftists are crude; there is no sense of the sacred). “Phallo” refers to the male organ of procreation–so that’s the insistence that what you see in Western culture is the consequence of the male-dominated oppressive self-serving society rooted in the Bible. Values such as hard work, self-discipline and honesty are the tools through which old white men dominate the oppressed; these values must be deconstructed and then eradicated.

“Logo” is logos a root word meaning speech, logic, and reason. Leftists believe that logic is part of the process by which the patriarchal institutions of the West continue to dominate and to justify their dominance. So they don’t believe in logic and reason. Thus they also don’t believe in dialogue. The root word of dialogue is logos — again, they don’t believe that people of good will can come to consensus through the exchange of ideas. They believe that that notion is part of the philosophical substructure and practices of the dominant culture, which needs to be destroyed. So you don’t reason with your opponent. You demonize him

So the first thing that you might want to know about Postmodernism is that it doesn’t have a shred of gratitude — and there’s something pathologically wrong with a person that doesn’t have any gratitude, especially when they live in what so far is the best of all possible worlds. So if you’re not grateful, you’re driven by resentment, and resentment is the worst emotion that you can possibly experience, apart from arrogance. Arrogance, resentment, and deceit. There is an evil triad for you. For more, read Explaining Postmodernism by Stephen Hicks.

EDI: Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity

Universities generally claim "excellence" for the proficiency of their faculty and students. But the focus is not on developing and evaluating the competence of their students in their chosen disciplines. The reality is that the clarion call and energy is all about EDI. Without EDI, so it is claimed, there is no excellence.

• But, equity does not mean equality of opportunity; rather, it means equality of outcome. E.g. if 50% of the population is female, then 50% of the faculty and students in engineering must be female, otherwise women are claimed to be victims of discrimination (the same claim is not heard about nursing).
• Diversity does not mean diversity of reasoned opinion in the market place of ideas. Diversity means that all cultures and beliefs have dignity and must be equally represented in the faculty. At the same time, Conservative values are to be to be rooted out as they are claimed to be biased, misogynistic and racist. It is known that there are few openly conservative faculty.

Atheism

Darwinian Evolution

Male & Female Nature

The nature of Nature

Man's good and evil inclination

Private property

Responsibility

Big government

Victimhood (equity & diversity)

Gratitude