…I have intentionally adjusted my teaching materials as the political winds have shifted. (I also make sure all my remotely offensive or challenging opinions, such as this article, are expressed either anonymously or pseudonymously). Most of my colleagues who still have jobs have done the same. We’ve seen bad things happen to too many good teachers — adjuncts getting axed because their evaluations dipped below a 3.0, grad students being removed from classes after a single student complaint, and so on.
I once saw an adjunct not get his contract renewed after students complained that he exposed them to “offensive” texts written by Edward Said and Mark Twain. His response, that the texts were meant to be a little upsetting, only fueled the students’ ire and sealed his fate. That was enough to get me to comb through my syllabi and cut out anything I could see upsetting a coddled undergrad, texts ranging from Upton Sinclair to Maureen Tkacik — and I wasn’t the only one who made adjustments, either.
—Edward Schlosser, “I’m A Liberal Professor, And My Liberal Students Terrify Me” (NB: This original article uses some scatological language).
It is a sure sign of intolerance, racism, homophobia, bigotry and hate to point out today that man is not born good, as self-deluded Progressive Liberals of both atheist and cosmic humanist schools claim. Nor is man ‘evolving’ to some higher, more godlike spiritual state. The ugly truth is that all men are born terrible-willed hedonists, says Dr. Terry G. Shaw:
“To understand…principles of human behavior…we must first begin by accepting (that) all humans are born hedonists (aka narcissists) and have an intrinsic need to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and engage in those activities that best accomplish both with the least amount of effort.” (Born Liberal Raised Right, Reb Bradley, p.19)
In 1926, Governor Theodore Christianson of Minnesota established the Minnesota Crime Commission to study crime and evaluate its causes. The commission eventually concluded that criminal tendencies were not the result of poverty, education, or environment. Instead, it offered the following brutal observation:
“Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it: his bottle, his mother’s attention, his playmates toys…or whatever. Deny him these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which could be murderous were he not so helpless. He’s dirty; he has no morals, no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children, not just certain children, but all children, are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy, given free rein to their impulsive actions to satisfy each want, every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist.” (ibid, p. 21)
The architects of our nation were men who did not shy away from the ugly truth about mans’ sin nature, which meant that if the American experiment in national self-government was to succeed, then as the Founders strongly advised, all children would need to be trained against their natural self-centered inclinations from birth:
“Since private and public Vices, are in Reality…connected (it is necessary) that the Utmost Pains be taken by the Public, to have the Principle of Virtue early inculcated on the minds of…children, and the moral Sense kept alive…For no people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued when knowledge is diffused and Virtue preserved. On the contrary, when People are universally ignorant and debauched…they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign invaders.” (Our Sacred Honor, Bennett, p. 26)
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” Benjamin Franklin, quoted in Born Liberal Raised Right, p. 15)
We cannot understand why Edward Schlosser and other Liberal professors are terrified of their liberal students unless we return to the Biblical view of man:
“….the basic insights of the Christian faith provide the best insight we have into the nature of man and of the crisis we find ourselves in…” (intellectual conservative John Hallowell, The Conservative Intellectual Movement, George Nash, p. 53)
No concept gives “deeper insight into the enigma that is man” than original sin. Evil is not just a “bad dream,” warned Richard Weaver, author of “Ideas Have Consequences.” Evil is not “an accident of history,” or the “creation of a few antisocial men.” It is a “subtle, protean force,” and original sin is a “parabolical expression” of this “immemorial tendency of man to do the wrong thing when he knows the right thing.” (ibid)
The irony underlying the growing fear of liberal professors and the utterly depraved “safe space” controversy and its’ chilling impact on self-absorbed emotional tyrants (students) is that “elitist” progressive liberal faculty (supplemented by liberal media hyping and amoral entertainment) are responsible for preaching to us all how their so-called “enlightened” views of our Lord, heaven, hell, sin, moral law, immutable truth, history, evolution, scientism, and society are the only ones that count. Thus today’s self-absorbed generation of narcissists have come up in a spiritually and morally debauched, intellectually bankrupt time. They can neither spell nor articulate a coherent thought but they know the “rights” and “privileges” owed them by parents and society and claim abuse of their autonomy whenever their will is thwarted or their feelings are hurt.
This being so, the growing fears of a group of pampered “ruling class” professors may well be the “rewards” they’re reaping for what they’ve sown.
Some professors also have reason to fear some conservative opinions. When I took a U.S. history class and dealt with the American Revolution, I told my professor that based on all we had covered that led to the revolution, I thought the 13 colonies did not have a sufficiently good reason to rebel. He responded quietly by saying he tended to agree with me. I think he was not tenured at the time.
But I would like to add that there are professors and grad students that have behaved in an abusive manner. In the past, some were more likely to get away with it. I’ve personally had to deal with such situations.