Freakanalysis

 

graduation-photo-stockTrigger Warning: Some readers of this essay may object to the use of the word “freak” in ways that raise questions about how we may best characterize many current political figures and actions. And if you’re not offended, I haven’t done my job. So, let’s get on with things, beginning with the observation that while many of us are seeking professional counseling to cope with His Royal Orangeness clinching the Republican nomination for President, other things of political importance have plagued network headlines. All of which will demonstrate that insanity may be contagious; you catch it from professors and government officials.

Let’s begin with professors, specifically, a clutch of nut-job dons (but I repeat myself) at George Mason University who complained about renaming their law school after recently deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in exchange for a cool $30 million donation. As Christian Adams reported in PJMedia, these self-important undergraduate ninnies were concerned about “groups that were slighted by Justice Scalia,” perhaps “offended” by decisions he made on important cases.

It gets worse: look at the credentials of a few prominent objectors. One of them was an advocate for “trans justice and prison abolition, and queer anarchist anti-war activism,” and referred to Scalia as racist and homophobic. Another who specializes in “whiteness … and queer and feminist theories” has previously inveighed against “white terror” and declared “Capitalism is not in crisis. Capitalism is the crisis.” Another opposes sex-offender registries; still another whose research “is grounded in intersectional theory, with an explicit focus on race, class, gender, and sexuality,” opined that the law school renaming proposal constituted a plot by “two White, heterosexual, upper-class men” on a power trip. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

On a different issue, last November Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal stated that a prominent Stanford Ph.D.’s “rhetorical goo” issued from “deep layers of mental flab,” which made her a “perfect representative of American academia. And American academia is, by and large, idiotic.” And a quick detour to the media world unearths a droll quip by Townhall’s Matt Vespa about a Fusion writer agonizing over her unborn son’s possible dalliance with “whiteness.” From NewsBusters, we hear her praying (praying!) “that his privilege, should he inherit it, will not divide us.” She goes on: “I fear that my son—insulated for nine-odd months in the warm shelter of my womb—will burst into the world and not recognize me. I fear that he will, in the midst of latching his tiny mouth around my nipple, see its darkness against his impossibly pale skin and see not his mother, but a stranger.” Nipples aside, a little old-fashioned assimilation here after Junior pops into the world would probably go a long way.

Then there’s government, pick your agency—let’s make it the Department of Justice, which is always good for a laugh or two. Actually, make that outrage, especially in a recent analysis of John Hinderaker, who reported in Powerline how “Under Eric Holder and now Loretta Lynch, DOJ has become a lunatic enforcer of far-left fantasies. The latest instance is DOJ’s letter to the Governor of North Carolina, claiming that North Carolina’s law requiring that bathrooms, locker rooms and so on be used by those of the proper sex–male or female, based on physical organs–violates the federal civil rights laws.” He carefully cites the laws in question to avoid any mistake in interpretation, and concludes his story, which bristles with wit and incredulity, by portraying the incident as “insane.” And of course he is right.

So here we have it—idiocy, lunacy, insanity, over and over again—what does all this mean? Simply this: much of American academia, which feeds media and government, is dominated by, for lack of better term, freaks. Which spawns an entirely new category of research that may be termed freakanalysis (Let’s refuse to call it Studies in Freakology, please). What exactly is a freak? Merriam-Webster’s definition actually isn’t very helpful, but its list of synonyms, antonyms, and related words is enlightening. Synonyms include abnormality, anomaly, monster, and monstrosity. Antonyms are average, norm, normal, par, and standard. Many of the “Related Words” will blow your socks off: abortion, malformation, miscreation, mutant, mutation; character, crackbrain, crackpot, crank, eccentric, kook, nut, oddball, screwball, weirdo; aberrant, deviant; individualist, maverick, nonconformist; curiosity, peculiarity, singularity; aberration, exception, irregularity, oddity, and rarity. Probably a few others come to mind, but this isn’t a bad list.

Nor is it entirely derogatory, in that some of the “related terms” could actually be used in a complimentary way. Unfortunately, this is hardly the case in trying to explain American politics over the last two generations, especially since Allan Bloom blew the lid off the whole scam in higher education with The Closing of the American Mind a quarter century ago. In fact, if there were a political version of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it undoubtedly would include most of the terms that find comfortable usage in educational, media, and governmental circles today, all created, with no sense whatsoever of their utter absurdity, by freaks.

Of course, not all freaks are alike but most share an outstanding characteristic, which is this: until recently, very few could survive outside a protected institutional environment. Thus, criminal freaks are incarcerated, and more recently, young felons are labeled “justice involved youth,” which is another example of how far freakish terminology has invaded government agencies. Speaking of academia, probably no other domain in America is more dominated by freaks than the country’s colleges and universities. The fact is that America’s professors may spout the most outrageous ideas, indoctrinate students with the most pernicious ideological cliches, and promote the most hateful propaganda about their country with nary a thought about facing any consequences, because the chances of being dismissed are practically nil. Academic freaks, unlike their counterparts in prison, rarely have to cope with the bracing effects of personal responsibility for what they say and do.

Unfortunately, absent some inconceivable upheaval, America’s production lines of freaks will continue indefinitely, generating results that will continue to transform the country in grotesque ways, thought unimaginable, say, a half century ago. Perhaps the wisest observer of this type of phenomenon was Irving Kristol, who, in an essay written thirty-five years ago, recounted a conversation he had with J. L. Talmon about Talmon’s recent book, Political Messianism. Kristol asked if Talmon had overstated his case about the gnostic emphasis in political thought during the first half of the 19th century. Talmon said no, and Kristol concluded he had to agree.

Then Kristol went on to make the following observation about Talmon’s research: “Political thought in the first half of the nineteenth century was gnostic to the point of insanity. Saint-Simon was insane. Comte was insane. Fourier was insane. Marx was insane. Prior to the eighteenth century, anyone enunciating the notion that politics is concerned with the expectation of a universal regeneration of humanity … would have qualified for the loony bin.” Kristol also concluded that it was ludicrous to take these people seriously because in fact they were “religious fanatics of a peculiarly modern kind.”

And so it is with so many professors and politicians today, many of whom in fact are “fanatics [sometimes religious] of a peculiarly modern kind.” Indeed, prior to the 1960s or thereabouts, anyone who expounded gibberish about such things as whiteness, queerness, trans-something-or-other, micro-aggressions, trigger warnings, and safe spaces, along with a host of fabricated phobias and isms that have seeped into political and social discourse, would have qualified for the loony bin. They are, in fact, freaks, who are trying to remake the world in their own freakish image, like Comte, Saint-Simon, and Marx along with a bevy of other radicals before them.

And if history is any guide, a world based on the macabre designs of fanatics and freaks will result in a hellish life for the rest of us.

Published in Education, Education
Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 37 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. Eugene Kriegsmann Member
    Eugene Kriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    From your opening paragraph in which you refer to “His Royal Orangeness” you had me hooked. Wonderful, thoughtful analysis of the lunacy that is pervading our nation. Thank you for taking the time to put it all into perspective.

    • #1
  2. Mike Rapkoch Member
    Mike Rapkoch
    @MikeRapkoch

    Perfect.

    • #2
  3. Suspira Member
    Suspira
    @Suspira

    At what point do we cry “Enough!”? How can we plebeians push back against the insanity?

    • #3
  4. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    “I just want to fly my freak flag / I just want to fly my freak flag/ Come and join our tribe” —Gruntruck (1992)

    All the cool kids are freaks.

    • #4
  5. billy Inactive
    billy
    @billy

    Suspira:At what point do we cry “Enough!”? How can we plebeians push back against the insanity?

    Glenn Reynolds keeps predicting the burst of the “Higher-Ed Bubble.”

    Maybe that is when the push back begins.

    • #5
  6. donald todd Inactive
    donald todd
    @donaldtodd

    “Let’s begin with professors”

    But of course you began with his Royal Orangeness.

    I have no brief against anything from the second paragraph on down but would suggest that alienating people who might pick up the cudgel and walk with you isn’t very smart.

    • #6
  7. blank generation member Inactive
    blank generation member
    @blankgenerationmember

    Years ago I was stunned when someone said, “Science is a social construct.”  You know how you are supposed to be prepared for an attack, but when it comes you’re blindsided ?  I was that guy.

    • #7
  8. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    Diversity is the most unexamined and pernicious concept of the 21st century.

    • #8
  9. Damocles Inactive
    Damocles
    @Damocles

    Marvin Folkertsma: beginning with the observation that while many of us are seeking professional counseling to cope with His Royal Orangeness

    You would have a bit more credibility if you didn’t follow the current academic fashion of leading with your feelings.

    • #9
  10. Pugshot Inactive
    Pugshot
    @Pugshot

    The more I read about higher education, the more I become convinced that, having abandoned Christian religion, the high priests of academia have established their own religion, and when one blasphemes against it, the priests call out the Inquisition. One would think that a sane reaction to the insanity of most state-supported colleges would be for conservative politicians on the state level to start cutting back on state funding unless such worthless departments as anything with the word “Studies” in its title were abolished. But, as has become increasingly apparent, politicians by and large adopt any title that will get (and keep) them elected. So they are “conservative” politicians only insofar as they must be to secure enough votes at election time to guarantee their continued election. Perhaps until enough people wake up and stop sending their children to the most flagrant violators and withhold voluntary contributions, or maybe start campaigns to terminate the administrators who sanction the campus nonsense, there is no hope that anything will change.

    • #10
  11. Rightfromthestart Coolidge
    Rightfromthestart
    @Rightfromthestart

    The aim is to get insanity on the table for discussion, the supposedly sane people will offer some kind of compromise to the lunatics to shut them up. They put that in their pocket and then pop the next item up on the table for negotiation. Piece by piece and emboldened they walk off with everything. The proper response on day one is ‘go xxxx yourself’

    • #11
  12. Muleskinner Member
    Muleskinner
    @Muleskinner

    blank generation member:Years ago I was stunned when someone said, “Science is a social construct.” You know how you are supposed to be prepared for an attack, but when it comes you’re blindsided ? I was that guy.

    I once had a philosophy professor who was similarly challenged. His response was something to the effect that if you really believe that, then the idea of “solid” is suspect. Then he challenged the offending student to put his head down and charge the brick wall at the back of the classroom.

    • #12
  13. Ansonia Member
    Ansonia
    @Ansonia

    I’m interested in answers to Suspira’s question. (comment 3)

    Captivating post, Mr. Folkertsma.

    • #13
  14. CuriousKevmo Inactive
    CuriousKevmo
    @CuriousKevmo

    Suspira:At what point do we cry “Enough!”? How can we plebeians push back against the insanity?

    My guess is never.  I think they are now a significant majority of the population.  We are, I’m afraid, screwed.  I should be fine, I’ve got 20 or 30 years at best on this earth, but I do worry about the world in which my kids will live.

    • #14
  15. SEnkey Inactive
    SEnkey
    @SEnkey

    donald todd:“Let’s begin with professors”

    But of course you began with his Royal Orangeness.

    I have no brief against anything from the second paragraph on down but would suggest that alienating people who might pick up the cudgel and walk with you isn’t very smart.

    Wrong, if they can support his Royal Orangeness, they aren’t with us.

    • #15
  16. Dustoff Inactive
    Dustoff
    @Dustoff

    These Freaks historically speaking have never had it so good.  No longer checked by a coherent community’s organic shaming, limits of patience and the customary requirement to contribute something essential or useful (in order to eat, like the rest of us), they now populate and  run our vaunted halls of higher education, are paid well, cannot generally be fired and are protected by state and federal law.  What could possibly go wrong?

    • #16
  17. Cantankerous Homebody Inactive
    Cantankerous Homebody
    @CantankerousHomebody

    CuriousKevmo:

    Suspira:At what point do we cry “Enough!”? How can we plebeians push back against the insanity?

    My guess is never. I think they are now a significant majority of the population. We are, I’m afraid, screwed. I should be fine, I’ve got 20 or 30 years at best on this earth, but I do worry about the world in which my kids will live.

    I think you might be too optimistic.  I graduated not too long ago and the most leftist thing I saw was “We’re here and we’re queer” which was actually less strange to me than the Yaoi Club openly advertising for members … err … but I digress.

    In well under a decade this campus stuff went from unheard of fringe to national movement on every campus.  Just look at how BLM wasn’t even a hashtag only a couple years back and now its what everyone is chanting.

    One day soon someone will call you into their office and they’ll tell you that you’re going to be let go because you’ve used the wrong pronoun and now you’ve just made the workplace an unsafe environment.  On that day, I’d ask you to think of me but, best case scenario, I will be re-educated by then so I won’t be the me that’s writing this.

    • #17
  18. Dustoff Inactive
    Dustoff
    @Dustoff

    Well Cantankerous Homebody, it was nice knowing you while you were still you.

    • #18
  19. Cantankerous Homebody Inactive
    Cantankerous Homebody
    @CantankerousHomebody

    Dustoff:Well Cantankerous Homebody, it was nice knowing you while you were still you.

    Thanks! Remember me as I was: grumpy, agoraphobic and voluntarily homebound.

    Edit: If people from the future ask about who I was tell them I prefer he/him pronouns and, while I’m not an otherkin, if I had to choose a kin type I would be a raincloud that stalks picnic goers. Thank you.

    • #19
  20. Marion Evans Inactive
    Marion Evans
    @MarionEvans

    The problem in academia is lack of accountability because of tenure. When tenure was first introduced, life expectancy was 50 years, which meant that you spent maybe a decade as a tenured professor. Now life expectancy is over 80 years and one decade has turned into three or four. That is nonsense. We have to abolish tenure or limit it to say 15 or 20 years. Even Einstein was mostly spent in his last decades.  Now we have thousands of stodgy old professors decades past their prime squatting faculty positions, while thousands upon thousands of new brilliant PhDs are jobless or driving for Uber. What an incredible waste of talent and of fresh ideas.

    • #20
  21. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    It will all be replaced digitally but never soon enough.   Few things are more important than blowing the educational establishment away, remove all subsidies to Universities, move toward choice in all primary and secondary education.  What happens to the brick and mortar schools that are for signaling?  The freaks prove Chesterton right, it’s not that atheists believe in nothing, it’s that they’ll likely to believe anything.

    • #21
  22. Eugene Kriegsmann Member
    Eugene Kriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    I found the couple of posts complaining about the use of the term “his Royal Orangeness” somewhat disingenuous. Trump is the one who started the name-calling, referring to Jeb as “low energy”, to Marco as Little Marco, and Ted Cruz and Lyin Ted. Trump has a very long way to go before he earns the respect of those of us who opposed his nomination. Thus far, he has done nothing to do that. He is still, for my money, an aberration, a major mistake on the part of the electorate. He has been fully supportive of many of the idiocies professed by the leftists on campuses. He has lied repeatedly throughout the campaign. The fact that, as a demagogue, he has picked up on a major thread of angst and capitalized on it in his campaign proves nothing to me other than his ability as a snake oil salesman. The fact that he is now the apparent nominee of the party gives him no more creds than he had before last Tuesday. He needs to show some real gravitas before he will be anything but “his Royal Orangeness” to me.

    • #22
  23. Marvin Folkertsma Member
    Marvin Folkertsma
    @MarvinFolkertsma

    To all on the “Orangeness” thing:  Actually it was perhaps a bit cutesy way to begin, I suppose, and I didn’t ponder that too much.  I did think that some readers might bristle at the “freak” characterization, especially since there is more to say about that, but I didn’t want to make the essay any longer.  In fact, the freaks don’t know they’re freaks because they live and work in an echo chamber, and too many think the rest of the country is insane.  Or worse, criminal.  Hence, academics and politicians calling for criminal investigations of those who disagree with the Al Gore position on climate change. Next we’ll find demands to confine dissenters to mental institutions, as the Soviets did, as sanity-challenged “deniers” on any given PC policy.  My next book will explore this, in fact.

    All this frightens me terribly.  I won’t be around to see the consequences, but my children and grandchildren will inherit a brave new world foreseen by Tocqueville, but much worse.  It will be “nasty, poor,” totalitarian and hideous.

    • #23
  24. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    Eugene Kriegsmann:I found the couple of posts complaining about the use of the term “his Royal Orangeness” somewhat disingenuous. Trump is the one who started the name-calling, referring to Jeb as “low energy”, to Marco as Little Marco, and Ted Cruz and Lyin Ted. Trump has a very long way to go before he earns the respect of those of us who opposed his nomination. Thus far, he has done nothing to do that. He is still, for my money, an aberration, a major mistake on the part of the electorate. He has been fully supportive of many of the idiocies professed by the leftists on campuses. He has lied repeatedly throughout the campaign. The fact that, as a demagogue, he has picked up on a major thread of angst and capitalized on it in his campaign proves nothing to me other than his ability as a snake oil salesman. The fact that he is now the apparent nominee of the party gives him no more creds than he had before last Tuesday. He needs to show some real gravitas before he will be anything but “his Royal Orangeness” to me.

    He can’t show gravitas because he has none, but he isn’t Hillary.  He likes to deal, he doesn’t care about policy and isn’t ideological.  So lets make a deal.  Adults who are conservative for Scotus, Treasury and State.

    • #24
  25. donald todd Inactive
    donald todd
    @donaldtodd

    SEnkey:

    donald todd:“Let’s begin with professors”

    But of course you began with his Royal Orangeness.

    I have no brief against anything from the second paragraph on down but would suggest that alienating people who might pick up the cudgel and walk with you isn’t very smart.

    Wrong, if they can support his Royal Orangeness, they aren’t with us.

    Good.  Now that you’ve made that call, I won’t have to consider your emotions.

    • #25
  26. SEnkey Inactive
    SEnkey
    @SEnkey

    donald todd:

    SEnkey:

    donald todd:“Let’s begin with professors”

    But of course you began with his Royal Orangeness.

    I have no brief against anything from the second paragraph on down but would suggest that alienating people who might pick up the cudgel and walk with you isn’t very smart.

    Wrong, if they can support his Royal Orangeness, they aren’t with us.

    Good. Now that you’ve made that call, I won’t have to consider your emotions.

    Please don’t consider my emotions. Do consider you are electing someone just as likely as Hillary to put a liberal justice on the court, further the scope and role of government, and further coarsen our culture. If you are okay with that, vote your conscience. I will certainly vote mine.

    • #26
  27. Herbert E. Meyer Member
    Herbert E. Meyer
    @HerbertEMeyer

    Yet another thoughtful — and delightful — gem from Marv.

    There’s a really important point here:  We value competence in most professions — medicine, for instance.  And when we board a flight we assume, correctly, that the pilot and co-pilot actually know how to fly.  Yet we keep electing people to public office without much thought to whether they actually know how to do the job they’re running for.  We get so caught up in their ideas, and in their personalities, that we pay too little attention to the level of their competence.

    I would rather vote for someone who disagrees with me on a specific issue, but who actually knows what he or she is doing, than someone who agrees with me but is incompetent.

    • #27
  28. Paul A. Rahe Member
    Paul A. Rahe
    @PaulARahe

    Marion Evans:The problem in academia is lack of accountability because of tenure. When tenure was first introduced, life expectancy was 50 years, which meant that you spent maybe a decade as a tenured professor. Now life expectancy is over 80 years and one decade has turned into three or four. That is nonsense. We have to abolish tenure or limit it to say 15 or 20 years. Even Einstein was mostly spent in his last decades. Now we have thousands of stodgy old professors decades past their prime squatting faculty positions, while thousands upon thousands of new brilliant PhDs are jobless or driving for Uber. What an incredible waste of talent and of fresh ideas.

    I am not so sure. I have been a denizen of the academy now for nearly fifty years. At every stage, I found that the administration was more radical than the professoriate. Do away with tenure and the administration can cashier professors who resist the radical agenda. If you look at Yale, the University of Missouri, etc., the trouble originated with the dean of students office, and the upper administration seized upon what these lower-level figures stirred up as an opportunity. Something similar happened at Claremont McKenna College. Let me add that, nationwide, the kangaroo court system for dealing with claims of sexual assault was implemented by the administration without input from the faculty.

    Yes, there are freaks in most university faculties. No, they should not be there. But they are generally there because the administrators have shoved them down the throats of departments.

    • #28
  29. GirlWithAPearl Inactive
    GirlWithAPearl
    @GirlWithAPearl

    FYI: Orange is the new universal all purpose CoC friendly substitute for strings of creatively conjugated F and A words followed by violent head banging on the nearest brick wall. So it’s quite polite for readers and safe for users.

    • #29
  30. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    GirlWithAPearl:FYI: Orange is the new universal all purpose CoC friendly substitute for strings of creatively conjugated F and A words followed by violent head banging on the nearest brick wall. So it’s quite polite for readers and safe for users.

    Orange is the new blech?

    • #30
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.