Some things are predictable to observant students of human nature. There is a Newtonian principle of equal and opposite reactions in social, political and cultural trends. After the radical anti-war protests and bohemian lifestyle experimentation of the 1960s — LSD, campus sit-in demonstrations, psychedelic rock, hippie communes and meditation gurus — a discernible backlash took hold. This was first manifested in politics: Ronald Reagan’s election as governor of California was perhaps the first omen, as his campaign made a clear issue of opposition to student radicalism at the University of California Berkeley. The 1968 election of Richard Nixon, when Democrat Hubert Humphrey was handicapped both by left-wing opposition to the Vietnam War and blue-collar support for the third-party candidacy of George Wallace, was another harbinger of the emerging backlash.
Nixon was re-elected by a landslide in 1972 and, although the subsequent Watergate scandal temporarily derailed the political manifestation of backlash, it was still evident in social and cultural trends. By the mid-1970s, an increased visibility of fundamentalist Christianity — it was Jimmy Carter who made “born again” a universally recognized synonym for evangelical faith — further manifested the rightward shift in culture. Even the disco music trend could be seen as symptomatic of this shift: If it was a hedonistic expression of urban culture, disco also emphasized stylish fashions and a commercial show-biz ethic that was diametrically opposed to the politicized themes of anti-establishment protest that suffused much of the rock scene from the mid-1960s onward. The look made famous by John Travolta in 1977’s Saturday Night Fever — short, carefully styled hair and a flashy white suit — was a stark contrast to the grungy look of mud-covered naked hippies at Woodstock in 1969.
By 1977, kids didn’t want to change the world. They just wanted to boogie down. A couple years later, partly inspired by the nostalgic frat-boy movie Animal House, the “preppy” fashion trend swept college campuses, and suddenly Izod shirts, madras shorts, khaki slacks and Bass Weejuns were all the rage. (Does anybody else remember preppy girls with gold “add-a-bead” necklaces?)
To anyone who had been paying attention to cultural trends during the 1970s, the landslide election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was not really surprising. The average American who pulled the lever for Reagan might have had difficulty articulating what it was they were voting for, by they damned sure knew what they were voting against. It wasn’t just the manifest incompetence of Jimmy Carter’s administration and the political/economic “malaise” that they opposed. From the mid-1960s onward, Americans had felt a growing sense of helpless anger toward the youth counterculture that manifested itself in rock music, drug use, radical protests, and orgiastic sexuality. That counterculture had never really represented the mainstream majority of American youth, but by 1980, young people themselves were as fed up with the counterculture as their parents had been for the past 15 years.
It is too early to say we are witnessing a new youth backlash against the dominant progressivism of the Obama years, but why else would Princeton University freshman Tal Fortgang unload a powerful denunciation of the regnant left-wing campus orthodoxy?
There is a phrase that floats around college campuses, Princeton being no exception, that threatens to strike down opinions without regard for their merits, but rather solely on the basis of the person that voiced them. “Check your privilege,” the saying goes, and I have been reprimanded by it several times this year. The phrase, handed down by my moral superiors, descends recklessly, like an Obama-sanctioned drone, and aims laser-like at my pinkish-peach complexion, my maleness, and the nerve I displayed in offering an opinion rooted in a personal Weltanschauung. “Check your privilege,” they tell me in a command that teeters between an imposition to actually explore how I got where I am, and a reminder that I ought to feel personally apologetic because white males seem to pull most of the strings in the world.
I do not accuse those who “check” me and my perspective of overt racism, although the phrase, which assumes that simply because I belong to a certain ethnic group I should be judged collectively with it, toes that line. But I do condemn them for diminishing everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life, and for ascribing all the fruit I reap not to the seeds I sow but to some invisible patron saint of white maleness who places it out for me before I even arrive. . . .
You should read the whole thing, if you haven’t read it already. Fortgang’s resentment of endless lectures about his alleged “privilege” is almost certainly shared by millions of students on today’s hyper-politicized campuses, where critical skepticism toward progressive ideas is streng verboten. Liberal hegemony in academia — Democrats outnumber Republicans on liberal arts faculties by a ratio of at least 4-to-1, and at elite campuses, by far more — means not only that progressive ideas are taken for granted, but that those who challenge such ideas are condemned as hateful extremists.
Empty accusations of “privilege” stem from a progressive worldview that Shelby Steele examined in his 2007 book White Guilt,. Further examination of this worldview can be found in Thomas Sowell’s 1996 book, The Vision of the Anointed. There is already a well-developed intellectual critique of progressivism and identity politics, if only young people were made aware of it. Unfortunately, there are so few conservatives on university faculty now that students are ill-equipped to interrogate the dominant campus culture. Yet there is evidence that many students want access to alternative ideas.
You can follow Tal Fortgang on Twitter.
RT @smitty_one_each: TOM White Guilt Passes Its Expiration Date http://t.co/S2ZYsKWoAW #TCOT
The race card has been maxed out. We’ve passed peak guilt. The boy who cried “racist” has discovered the law of diminishing returns, and what big teeth it has!
One of the worst things ever to happen to the Left is the internet. Not only has it broken the chokehold of the liberal media forever, but more importantly it has allowed left-wingers across the world to vent their rage and stupidity all over Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, and Facebook.
And normal people can see how clownish and hypocritical the average social justice warrior is, their malice and tantrums no longer filtered and varnished by a sympathetic press before being released for public consumption.
Look at some of the vile comments left under Mr Fortgang’s article. Liberals can’t contain their hate when they’re challenged by facts and logic. Collectively they’re still a powerful malignant force in politics and culture, but they’re steadily losing the argument.
Ideas have consequences, and the ideological currency of the Left – the teary accusations of “racism”, the increasingly surreal quest to exhume new and ever more improbable forms of “white privilege” – is being devalued in the marketplace of ideas to the point of worthlesness.
Do tell. What is the nineties confusion?
It’s people like Samantha that make me not want to waste any more of my money and, more importantly, time on college. If that’s what she’s learning in college (which wouldn’t surprise me given my own experience in college), I see a career behind a Starbucks counter in her future. Who the hell pays double or triple digits for that kind of future?
One thing that I saw while I was attending college several years ago was a large wall built with cinder blocks right in front of the library. The cinder blocks were all painted with racial, ethnic, and sexual slurs. It was up for a week, at the end of which the group responsible for it had people demolish it with sledgehammers as some kind of symbolic takedown of all the various isms represented. I fumed every time I walked past it because it seemed like such a waste of money and space (as well as being a completely useless exercise in ignorance and utopian thinking). The space was better served being used for nothing at all. But the idiots that came up with the idea felt all warm and fuzzy because they broke down racism. Or something.
Waaaaaahhhhhh! Privileged white boy crying that people are pointing out that he comes from privilege! Oh, no! He’s so oppressed! He’s so clueless that he actually “believes” it’s his hard work, and accomplishments that got him into an Ivy League School, and not the caste he emerged from.
There is no such thing as white guilt. It’s a term angry conservatives thought up because they couldnt understand why some people were human enough to sympathize with minorities, and not just kick them in the face, jail them, or let cops beat them.
No worse group of people in this country than white male conservatives.
Reaganism is as dead as Reagan. Get over it. This generation has less trust in our institutions than the boomers did.
Credit where it’s due — I believe Limbaugh offered them the first challenge to their monopoly on information. The meager organization that grew from his show — Rush rooms, the bake sales — let people know it was safe to reach out to the like-minded.
The Internet certainly changed it from an occasional event to continuous, but Rush kick started it.
I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by whether or not they are an asshole.
Assholes are not limited by race, creed, ethnicity, or national origin (although there does seem to be more of them in France).
And a hate-filled bigot chimes in. Could have gone all day without this crap.
Head back to the OFA(y) meeting.
Tell me more about this “caste” you believe Jewish students come from.
“No worse group of people in this country than white male conservatives.”
Any evidence to support that claim?
You wouldn’t have a country if it weren’t for white male conservatives.
I’m not in an asylum. Are you?
I already do dislike a member of a special protected race because he is an asshole, which I suppose makes me a racist.
Let’s hope this generation becomes a parody of finger-guns, infantile entitlement mentality, “reverse racism” (a term I despise–anti-white racism is racism), hipsters, wearing your stocking cap indoors and another backlash occurs which results in another Reagan.
Hey, douchebag: Get a clue.
Go read Shelby Steele’s book, or shut up.
Don’t pretend that you know all about conservative motives, when you can’t even be bothered to READ A FUCKING BOOK, you ignorant troll.
I think the key point to take away from that is:
“You are completely unaware that your continued existence means that POC will suffer because of it.”
When you read sentiments like that, it becomes easier to understand how progressives managed to murder over 100 million innocent people in the 20th century.
Any evidence to support this claim? yeah, the Republican lead congress, and conservative media. Every single thing they believe in, and every idea they have, is simply wrong. You guys talk about Reagan, but even he would be completely flabbergasted by how completely brain dead, and angry the modern right that he birthed has become. You’re comparing our founders to modern conservatives? LOL! Look no further than the Cliven Bundy debacle to realize how wrong you are on that. Washington would have sent troops and they would have killed Bundy and all his asshead followers who showed up with weapons.
Shhhhhh! You might disturb his cognitive dissonance!
Every single thing they believe in, and every idea they have, is simply wrong.
You obviously didn’t learn the difference between “evidence” and “assertion.”
that was the exact thought i had when i read her hate filled rant. seems endemic with the libs. guess this is why the left has such an impressive body count for the 20th century
“Every single thing they believe in, and every idea they have, is simply wrong.”
What, democracy, habeas corpus, free speech, equal treatment before the law, the Constitution of the United States… all wrong, is it Joe?
“You guys talk about Reagan, but even he would be completely flabbergasted by how completely brain dead, and angry the modern right that he birthed has become.”
I see, it’s the right that is angry. LOL.
Are you a white male, Joe?
Joe, I thank you for proving me right. This has been quite the teachable moment, although I fear your mind is a rocky place, in which learning can find no purchase.
What the Latin for “bring on the men in suits”? “Qui insipiens est” has decided to troll the site once more. With all the usual abuse (angry white males, etc.) Sadly, I have learned the hard way that blissfully ignoring him is the only effective way to deal with him.
Shame. He could have accomplished so much if only he had used that detail-absorbing mind of his, combined it with FOCUS, and applied it to a more constructive purpose.
“He could have accomplished so much if only he had used that detail-absorbing mind of his, combined it with FOCUS, and applied it to a more constructive purpose.”
I hear Walmart is hiring.
I would also submit an additional observation on the “backlash” to the 60s:
The re-invigoration of the American Military. I don’t mean just the military budget build-up under Reagan; I mean the public perception/opinion of the military returning to very positive levels.
That was definitely a very good thing.
And who cares if your family “suffered” for a little bit decades ago?
Um, yeah. As if The Holocaust was the functional equivalent of a tooth pull.
Ainu, I think, still qualify.
Wait, wait, wait…
Are you “John555” or “Joe555”? Can’t
troll-boy even keep his name straight? Maybe you should just stick to
“DOUCHEBAG555”, so you don’t get confused about who you really are…
Samantha is of course, wearing huaraches and Salvation Army castoffs as she types this on her iPad. To show she cares.
Although Samantha has a point. Suddenly I hate those Polish people in Poland, with all their African colonies and slave trading and shit. Wait, what…?
That had me reaching for my reading glasses too. Maybe he’s one of those trans* people.
Don’t forget the keffiyeh and extra 60 lbs of fat she’s probably wearing.
If the internet is not a setback for liberal ideas, why did this Administration want to hand control of it over to dictators, religious fanatics and butchers?
The French are legendary assholes though. They take it to the level of magnificent bastardy.
You called him troll-BOY! You be raciss’!
The only wind I feel blowing is the hat air you are spouting, Mr. LIberal Troll. You are such a typic leftist string puppet: filled with anger, insults and generalities.
it’s nothing compared to the oppression of having to pay for your own birth control pills!
What incredible ignorance you spout. So you’re saying that the administration of Princeton admitted Fortgang because he’s white? So basically, Ivy League Schools are a bastion of White Supremacy? You embarrass yourself with such absurdities. “White privilege” is another word for hard work, delayed gratification, a good work ethic, and personal accountability — all the traits that are so very missing in the government teat suckers of the left. Like you, John.
More generalities from the sound-bite king.
The lovely Miss Benning wrote:
This is, at heart, eliminationist writing; Miss Benning has claimed that Mr Fortgang’s very existence harms other people, kind of like a former German Chancellor once did.
If Mr Fortgang’s very existence harms other people, could people like Miss Benning not justify his removal from society?
Get your head out of your ass, dummy, 85% of Ivy League students come from the top 10% of incomes. Who else can afford such an education? Second, along with coming from that income bracket, comes connections, and an education in how to play the game even to get into an Ivy League school and that includes private school educations, tutors, etc. If you think all it takes is “hard work, delayed gratification, and a work ethic’ you’re in fantasy land.
It was Mr Fortgang’s “privilege” to have to be smarter and work harder to get in than the “POCs” who were admitted to Princeton.
TROLL-BOY thinks Donald Sterling is a conservative? Mr. Two-NAACP-Lifetime-Achievement-Awards Democrat Sterling???
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
One of us suspects that the lovely Miss Benning is majoring in Women’s and Gender Studies, or something equally preparatory for a profession in the real world.
Get out of my uterus! You can’t understand what it’s like to earn only $.77 on the dollar vs. men! Don’t slut shame me!
Did I hit all the points?
One of us suspects that Miss Benning will be rather lucky to earn 77¢ for every $1.00 earned by men!
Clinton WAS impeached, DOUCHEBAG555. He was not convicted.
Boy, what a historian TROLL-BOY is!!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Perhaps if Mr Fortgang announces that he is homosexual, he’ll be accepted?
Thats not how privilege is suppose to work and you know it! I denounce you!
Oh, what penance must I do to expiate my guilt?
That’s “cis-racist”, you heteronormative privilege person!
No. Gay card trumps Jew card, but Islam card trumps Gay card. So Mr. Fortgang can only win when playing Race Card poker if he’s an Islamic Jew.
Yeah, I know.