I’m curious about something. Postmodernism has held sway in academia for years, right? Morality has long since been so thoroughly deconstructed that anyone making an argument based on morality could be expected to be laughed out of the classrooms or faculty lounges at most modern American universities. Morality varies from person to person, culture to culture, and there is no such thing as “absolute” morality. No good or evil. Etc.
At least, so goes the stereotype of the way academics think. It’s so familiar as to be almost tired by now.
The problem is that the stereotype is wrong. There is a huge consensus right now among academics that “income inequality” is wrong, evil, and must be combatted in any of its forms. This is not even open to question. Word has come down from high that income inequality is immoral, and that’s all there is to it. In a discussion with an insider, I was told that thoughts to the contrary simply cannot be voiced.
Now, I realize that trying to argue with religious people about sin is a waste of time, but here are post-modernist academics behaving in a very similar way, save that they don’t have a Bible to back up their claims; just a huge moral “consensus” which comes down hard on those who dare to question it.
Sure, there is a free speech right to argue that there income inequality is an ineradicable fact of life and can be a force for good, but that won’t get you an A in a course, nor will it get you academic tenure.
Conservatives who think there is no morality on the left should think again. They are making a huge mistake.
These people are as moralistic as they come, and as intolerant of dissent as the most ardent religious theocrats. Perhaps more so.
Comments
9 responses to “Whatever happened to Postmodernism?”
modern day liberalism came about in the early 1930’s during the great depression when communists and other lefty’s had stopped some rich white people at a road block they had set up and the rich white people were facing the ditch with a gun at the back of their heads modern day liberals would step in like fdr and say NO! you don’t have to shoot them we will tax them instead! read social history of the machine gun and you will find out that mother jones was a person not a magazine!
The left has a revelatory bible. Das Kapital. Everything after that is just Rabbinical commentary.
neil underestimating your enemy again! I am a non-exploitive capitalist and own my own service business where the smaller you are the more efficient!
Non-exploitive? You mean you don’t charge?
cap*,
Try defining “exploitive” without using Marx as your source. Can’t do it? Proves my point.
My comment got deep-ixed by your software, so I will make it simpler. Your posting reminds me of discussions of Joseph Bottum’s new book, An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America.
His thesis is that the Progs have religious fervor without formal belief in Christianity. They believe in the Social Gospel of some Christians without believing in Christianity
From Bookworm:Jonah Goldberg offers an interesting take on the Left’s escalating hunt for heretics.
Lab assistants and interns should be paid the same as full professors.
That should put an end to it. Or at least tie the discussion in knots.
Everyone should get paid as much as the President of the US. What makes him so special?
al I charge a fair price I don’t exploit others see bophal