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.
Perform 5 abortions and go sin no more.
What if he says he is a homosexual atheist? Doesn’t atheist trump Muslim on campus?
I do ok. I think the real question though is why would I want to join any club that you’re a member of?
I was kind of hoping for a few Hail Marys and Our Fathers, in Latin . . . .
What purpose might that have been? Corporate middle management?
Your not evil privilege is showing.
Only on Christian holy days, or if the player also holds a Bi-Polar, Fibromyalgia, or Repressed Memory Of Sexual Abuse card.
The rules for Race Card poker are ever-changing.
Alas! Corporate middle management is where all of the liberal arts majors used to wind up, before they realized that graduates with degrees in Women’s and Gender Studies were walking discrimination lawsuits!
It was the corporate middle managers without whom the executives found they could survive in the post-recession pushes for improved efficiency.
Production people create the things that corporations can sell to make money; most middle managers produced nothing but memoranda.
Pater Noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat
regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem
nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut
et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem,
sed libera nos a malo. Amen.
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora
pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.
Or maybe a really sexist one:
Gloria Patra, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio,
et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
I’m not a liberal arts major(sorry to disrupt your lame brained stereotype)and never had any desire to work in “corporate middle management”. I was being facetious. I understand though that unless one gets a STEM degree and has a vocational education conservatives have to mock them. Very american of you, comrade.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPvAQxZsgpQ
Amusing that you accuse leftists of being collectivists, and walking in lockstep when it’s conservatives who seek ideological purity, and disdain anything outside of bourgeois Christianity.
Who gives a crap about the Ivy League? Didn’t get in, did ya, and that’s what sticks in your craw. You have spouted the same stats under other aliases.
Next up: oh, global warming!
Who are these “Christians” of which you speak? Did you read about them in a book, or did you just here about them at Party meetings? Oh, now you’re going to tell us that some of your best friends are Christian. Riiight.
Chomper was referring to the Ivy League. And no, I didn’t try to get into an Ivy League school. I come from a humble working class background and never even thought of an Ivy League education, and didn’t know anybody that had one. My dealings with Ivy League graduates have left me the distinct impression though that I didnt miss anything and that they’re privileged assholes not worth sack sweat, and constructed by the rarified environment they were brought up in. Those stats are true, and have been referenced by McCain as well, only he did it to attack campus feminists.
Well, it would seem that at least a few people at Princeton are not such privileged white people, or Mr Fortgang wouldn’t have had them trying to use his race to shut him up.
Alas! All that I could afford was a state university, and I had to work my way through that as well, because my (very white) family was poor.
I feel so underprivileged.
I’m glad you feel that way. I don’t share your feelings though. Fuck those yuppies and everything they stand for. Their families are all criminal bastards, and bigots toward anyone that doesnt come from their social class. One day they will end just like the aristocracy did during the French Revolution, and all the private security in the world will not stop that.
No wonder you’re a leftist. You’re a racist and a bigot who wants to see the people you don’t like raped, tortured and murdered. Or don’t you know what happened during the French Revolution? Just spouting the talking points, eh?
Really? Perhaps you might want to consider the eventual results of the French Revolution, with Napoleon Bonaparte and Maximilien Robespierre.
I really do love the radical left, those who so hate the entrepreneurial people, and who can’t seem to realize that without us wicked capitalists, they wouldn’t have jobs. Were the left to really get their way, we’d wind up where we were centuries ago, with almost everybody — the exceptions being those people with military power — was living a subsistence lifestyle.
They don’t count unless you’re kneeling on concrete
I produce concrete for a living; does that count?
Alas! Our parish church has wall-to-wall carpet!
They have a gift. It may have something to do with each of them having a fussili Eiffel Tower up their ass.
I suspect that Miss Benning will be rather lucky to earn 77¢ for every $1.00 earned by women.
This generation has less trust in our institutions than the boomers did.
Probably true. Most likely because children coming of age in the last five years have seen the bevy of broken promises and lies put forth daily by the current administration. Our children are not stupid. They know when someone is attempting to lead them down the primrose path.
Check your privilege.
Gender studies, then.
Apostrophes and other correct punctuation are merely “The Man” holding you down, eh?
The list of potential names for that person is very long, alas.
And it’s a indictment on our nation that said list is so long.
Ouch!
That should be OFA(L).
You’ve never gone Outside the Asylum and met Wonko the Sane?
http://www.terindell.com/asylum/docs/asylum.html
Joe555/John555 wrote:
Ronald Reagan came into office, inheriting a long, long bad spell from Jimmy Carter, put his policies into action, and after a couple of years, the economy took off. Barack Obama came into office, inheriting a short bad spell from George Bush, put his policies into place, and 5 years later we have a rocking 0.1% economic growth rate, and fewer people employed today than in 2007.
We have had a real-world test of liberal ideas, and they sure haven’t produced very much.
Being a leftist apparently includes the delusion that you can read minds, as they’ve been claiming to know what I “really” think for the last quarter century.
You’re from KY. There is no absolution for you.
I’m only half guilty ’cause I’m only half white
I used to listen to some pretty mindless drivel from some pretty dumb female students if I thought there was a even the slightest chance of getting into their panties but, even with the worlds greatest rack, Sam would be pretty difficult to be around***.
***Warning…. the above comment is borderline sexist, but I don’t give a shit.
RT @smitty_one_each: TOM White Guilt Passes Its Expiration Date http://t.co/S2ZYsKWoAW #TCOT
Is that split left/right or top/bottom? I have dark, melanin-rich spots in places (they used to be called freckles, but that’s racist). So I’m about 1/30th black.
Draw the inside straight and win!
I call out the mind readers frequently. I ask them how it works:
“Do you have to make ‘o0O0o’ noises and scrunch your eyes all up, or what?“
That explains the backbone-like design.
Someday, somehow, someone is going to successfully pull off a Catapult Turtle Flying Castle Gambit in this context.
And lo, I will laugh.
I’m sure some would say the black is all in your heart 🙂
I should root for the All Blacks, then.
Funny how the left used to whine about police states and liberty, but when they gain ascendancy they turn into Nazis or Stalinists.
[…] White Guilt Passes Its Expiration Date […]
ROTFLMAO, Evi.