Yale Drone Class: Tolerating the Intolerable

Via John Fund, who emailed Glenn Reynolds this link about the craziness at Yale (you know that esteemed institution who is educating a loud and proud Taliban member). You absolutely must read it. The circular thinking of those defending this spokesman for the murderous Taliban regime need help, but are unlikely to get any.

Related to the thoughts expressed in the link above, recently, I have written two posts regarding evil. You can read them here and here. Why did I find it necessary to write these essays? It should be patently obvious what evil in the exreme is, right? Rape, murder, gas chambers to exterminate innocent people all evil, right? We can agree on this even today? My conclusion is that no, agreement upon something so fundamental as evil cannot be agreed upon. It cannot be agreed upon because the line is blurred between absolute moral evil and good because an agreed upon standard would be acknowledging that a standard exists. And then, who makes the standard?

It seems that in the increasingly secular society we now find ourselves, and by society, I mean the Western democratic family, where moral training takes a back-seat to a humanistic bent and the religion is individualism to the extreme--i.e. all moral code is a personal code, therefore there is no objective right or wrong except what I view as right or wrong and my view is the only view that matters, people are lost in a wash of nonsense.

Evil is defined, by triumphant Individualists, as someone whose views disagree with mine. Tolerance is for people who believe like me or might be of another culture. But people of my culture who disagree with me must be banished forthwith to eternal damnation--tee hee, except that hell doesn't really exist except in fairy tales. We're talking metaphorically. Evil thinkers, people who disagree with me, shall be banished forthwith and posthaste, to a category of people: stupid, narrow-minded rubes who should be ignored. They shall dwell in a hell of apathy by the intelligent. Their opinions are deemed unworthy of thought or debate. Meanwhile, in heaven, also known as Yale, San Francisco, or anywhere Starbucks is sold and Google is used (you know when you are in heaven--everyone wears tie-die, contemplates life through a hashish haze and participates in mass rituals like peace protests) the more learned, informed and intelligent may opine ad nauseum about topics of great import--to me.

I'm finding tolerance is becoming intolerable.

Worse than intolerable, the purveyors of this mindset put forth facile arguments and do not have the intellectual acuity or stamina to even follow an opposing argument much less answer it with anything besides raw, human, emotion, man.

I do not think we come to this place because prayer isn't allowed in schools or that the 10 commandments are being removed from public places all over. I do not think this thinking is because children watched puffy fluff on Sesame Street, Nickolodean and the Disney channel. I do not think we have come to this place because abortion is used as a utilitarian means to destroy something so defenseless and pure and non-mechanical. I do not think we have come to this place because every sort of violent and sexually explicit image and song is elevated to art when it is simply a base exercise in entertainment. I do not think that we have come to this place because meanness, pettiness, and all manner of antisocial behavior is indulged by parents too busy, too distracted, too wrapped up in their own pursuits and then too guilty to give a child the blueprint for acceptable behavior.

I think we are in this place: the place where an ignorant young person is in a collegiate environment completely smug and self-satisfied because he or she lacks a basic understanding of one of the greatest literary works ever--the Bible. Whether the secular humanists like it or not, and I got in this argument with an atheist friend years ago in High School, Western society is based upon the law and that law is based on the law given to Israel by God. To understand our law, Western morality and justice, a Biblical understanding is an absolute necessity.

To understand Greek Mythology, to understand Shakespere, to understand the great Fantasy and Science Fiction writers like Tolkien and Herbert, one must understand the writings of The Bible. To understand Western Civilization, knowing the histories contained in the Bible is a must. One musn't agree with everything therein or anything, for that matter. But to claim erudition without this most basic foundation is a false claim.

While most Westerners are not Hindu, they need a basic understanding of the religion. It informs the beliefs, thought and action of millions of people faster than any book on economics will. While most are not Buddhist or Taoist, the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu and The Art of War by Sun Tzu should be a minimum to understand current Chinese culture. To understand how ideology can be used Mein Kemph should be read as well as Karl Marx. It shouldn't be only Muslims that read the Qu'ran. All these belief systems need a context. But how are these belief systems put in a context when there is no context? Only one belief informs all others and that belief holds that every belief is as good as the other. Then why have any belief at all?

How do you put modern philosophers in context? Most write in reaction to the Bible. Does one ignore the original work and swallow hook, line and sinker what amounts to criticism?

Many people in America are "churched", many people in America are "philosophized" and often in extreme rhetoric. But it is alarming that knowledge base is so superficial.

Families, the foundation of society, fall short these days in moral education. Many can't even find the time in their busy week to get to church or temple for even a cursory overview of even basic moral tenents: love your neighbor as yourself, for example.

Divided families find the routine and ritual of religious training daunting. One parent picks on church, the other picks another. No thought is given to the long-term consequences of a child left morally adrift.

But this empty-headedness didn't start in the last twenty years. When the boys of WWII returned and raised families something changed. Were those returning from war and their spouses, so grieved at the loss of life that they chose to make life cushy and easy for their children--pampering them and thus pampering themselves after the torment and tumult of a brutal war? Did this generation see so much evil that faith in the God of the Bible took a backseat to a functional worldview: we all might die, anyway, better to make a life here while we have it. Did fatalism set in and infect their children?

In response, did the Baby Boomers who were coddled and babied and perhaps raised with moral ambivalence (moral ambivalence can set in after the moral certitude of a "right war" when the long-term effects are lived with day to day) did the Boomers descend further from ambivalence to irrelevance? Did their mistrust of authority extend to any authority?

I think it did. And then today, the children of the Boomers, raised as they were by parents who mistrust authority, even their own, and who find church and any dogma oppressive (it impedes my rights to even be told that any behavior is bad), have children who have no understanding of the authorities rebelled against. They are simply schooled in rebellion--in the name of freedom and liberty--as though the founding fathers equated "freedom to worship God as you will" with "freedom from worship of God" or "there is no God".

The problem that Penraker identifies in his/her? post is one of literacy. Many young people today, and those who profess to teach them, are ignorant in many important matters of culture and history and morality. Ironically Yale University was founded upon religious principles (though no mention of this exists on the Yale information website). You can find a brief history at Wikipedia here (make sure and scroll down). Last year, Yale ended its affiliation with any church. That seems fitting since the main moral arguments today are not of the contents or merit of the Bible but whether it should be of importance at all in modern times.

How does this lack of Bible literacy manifest? Let me give one example:

My daughter received thorough schooling during Black History Month about Martin Luther King Jr. She knows about civil rights. She knows that black people were oppressed. She knows that Martin "loved Coretta". She knows that Dr. King was killed for trying to free his people. She is deeply passionate about this knowledge--horrified at the injustice done and impressed with Dr. King's desired to right this unfairness and wrong.

What she doesn't know is on what authority Dr. King argued. He was a Preacher, Man of God, a Minister. He quoted THE BIBLE when explaining the arguments to end injustice and unequal rights. And he was right. Those Southerners who had a hard time letting slavery and then prejudice go knew the Bible too. That's why the notion of a Black man being 2/3 of a man came up. They knew how a human, a man, a woman, should be treated.

The New Testement is pretty clear about how slavery is viewed. Can you name the book of the Bible that discusses the escaped slave and Paul's advice both for slave and slave owner?

How about Old Testement law? The Torah--the Pentateuch? Do you know how slavery was handled in Ancient Israel? It wasn't the same as how the Egyptians treated the Israelites, I can assure you. I'll give you a hint: Do you know the meaning of the word Jubilee? Do you know how that was applied to the nation Israel? Do you know the prophetic implications of Jubilee?

These notions all inform Constitutional Law today. America's bankrupcy laws, laws on divorce, laws on contracts all have their roots in this book: The Bible.

So many of the debates today come back to the question of who decides morality. Who indeed. I shudder for the day when the decisions fall into the Drone Class to decide matters of justice and truth. Their knowledge and understanding and wisdom is sorely lacking.