For newcomers, three more items from the archives.

New Tyranny Detected.

Lara Pawson rails against “heteronormative privilege” and “the tyranny of coupledom.”

“I want to divorce the man I love and he wants to divorce me,” says Pawson. “We do not wish to separate – simply to end our seven-year marriage… We are both fed up with being part of the hetero-husband-and-wife brigade that is accorded so much status and privilege.” Such are the terrible burdens of those who go out of their way (and then some) in order to invent problems and thereby become interesting. Behold: fake divorce – it’s a bold political statement. Ms Pawson is of course indulging in a spot of overlording, which is to say, using pretentious egalitarian hand-wringing to signal her own moral, social and intellectual superiority: “See how sensitive, radical and intriguing I am – so much more enlightened than those lumpen married couples and their heteronormativity.”

Dissident Academic Feels the Warmth of Social Justice.

Or, “if you expose our student indoctrination policy we will punish you.”

Looking through various teacher-training outlines, the familiar leftist buzzwords appear repeatedly. “Diversity” and identity politics feature prominently and teachers-to-be are referred to as “critical thinking change agents.” These “agents” will use the classroom “to transcend the negative effects of the dominant culture” and will “speak on behalf of identified constituent groups,” becoming “advocates for those on the margins of society.” Evidently, “critical thinking” should be taken to mean leftist thinking – critical of capitalism, individualism and bourgeois values – not thinking that might also be critical of the left, its methods and its assorted conceits. And one wonders how many liberties will be taken while speaking on behalf of “groups” deemed marginal and oppressed.

Ignorant Teachers, a New Socialist Ideal.

Knowledge and competence are outmoded and unfair, says incompetent philosopher.

Natural variations in cognitive ability, unlike those in musicality or athleticism, are a thorn in the paw of devout egalitarians. Avid readers of the Guardian’s arts and music pages would no doubt feel free to delight in the prowess of, say, Helen Mirren or Pinchas Zukerman without believing that everyone they passed on the street could with training do the same. It seems that only intelligence attracts contrarian manoeuvring. The latest example of which comes via Fabian Tassano, author of Mediocracy: Inversions and Deceptions in an Egalitarian Culture. Tassano steers us to the claims of senior philosophy lecturer and Guardian contributor Dr Nina Power, who insists, apparently based on nothing, that “everyone has the potential to understand everything,” and that equality of intelligence is “something to be presupposed” because – well, just because – “everyone is equally intelligent.”

And by all means take a shovel to the greatest hits. There may be puppies trapped inside. 

One for our collection, care of Zoe Williams:

I think she [Margaret Thatcher] almost certainly didn’t say it (the bus thing). It’s just ambiently true, because she seems like a person who hates buses.

The alleged comment in question – “A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus, can count himself a failure” – is difficult to verify and somewhat implausible but is nonetheless repeated by Thatcher’s critics, including the BBC. Its repetition seems to exist independently of a reliable source, possibly because so many would like to believe that it’s true. What’s interesting, though, is the notion that this claim, and by extension any number of others, is ambiently true. Which is to say, it’s assumed as somehow typical – accurate or not – and fits a chosen narrative. Presuming the particulars of what so-and-so might as well have said (or done) – whether or not they did – is ripe with potential. It’s therefore no great surprise that others have taken this strategy much further – to its predictable conclusion.

As when Johnathan Perkins, a black law student, told the University of Virginia’s student newspaper that while walking home he’d been taunted and intimidated by two white police officers. Perkins’ letter claimed that “most Americans are raised in racially sterilised environments,” and that “black people are accused of… playing the victim.” The student’s stated hope was that, “sharing this experience will provide this community with some much needed awareness of the lives that many of their black classmates are forced to lead.” A subsequent investigation, involving dispatch records, police tapes and surveillance video from nearby businesses, revealed the student’s story to be entirely fabricated. In a written statement, Perkins admitted, “I wrote the article to bring attention to the topic of police misconduct… The events in the article did not occur.”

As Mark Bauerlein noted recently, Perkins’ dishonesty was oddly free of consequences, for him at least, and not without precedent. Previously, a 19-year-old freshman ransacked her own room and scrawled racial slurs across its walls before curling into a foetal ball, supposedly in shock. When this “hate crime” was revealed as a hoax, Otis Smith, a regional president of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, was remarkably untroubled. That the events had been staged and then lied about was, he said, “largely irrelevant.” He added, “It doesn’t matter to me whether she did it or not because of all the pressure these black students are under at these predominantly white schools. If this will highlight it, if it will bring it to the attention of the public, I have no problem with that.”

Similar instances of students fabricating “hate crimes,” rape and “hate speech” aren’t exactly hard to find. Maybe what we’re seeing is, at least in part, a kind of activism, albeit one with an unhinged postmodern twist. Perhaps Mr Perkins and his fellow dissemblers believe themselves to be righteous in illustrating some greater truth – an, as it were, ambient one – in the service of which lies can be told, proudly, repeatedly and in good conscience.

Tom Clougherty on Tax Freedom Day:  

Tax Freedom Day 2011 came on May 30, three days later than in 2010. That means that for the first 149 days of the year, Britons were earning for the taxman. Only on May 30 did they start earning for themselves. But even this alarming figure understates the heavy financial burden imposed by the British state. If the government had to finance all its spending through taxes, rather than relying on borrowing, Tax Freedom Day would not have come until July 1. To put it another way, the government would have to take every penny earned in the United Kingdom from January 1 to June 30 – a full six months – in order to balance the books for the year at current levels of spending.

Evan Coyne Maloney and Greg Lukianoff on speech codes, conformity and the heckler’s veto:  

These are not cases that are really open for debate as far as their constitutionality, but what ends up happening is that, because the rules are there, people feel as though they can’t engage in this discussion to begin with. If you’re a college freshman and you’re worried about your grades, you’re worried about what your professors think of you, you’re not going to do anything that’s going to get you in trouble with the school. You’re certainly not very likely to get involved in a court case…  When it does go to court the schools always lose defending speech codes. The problem is, who wants to be the guy who spends their college career in court so that they can say what you can say anywhere else in the country?

My review of Maloney’s film Indoctrinate U can be found here. The subjects of campus censorship and efforts to “correct” improper views have been discussed many, many times.

And via Franklin, Charlotte Young discusses art bollocks, a term that may be familiar to regular readers of this blog. Ms Young’s former art tutor, Nico de Oliviera, coughs up this gem:

Stefan Brüggemann’s work, of course, comments on the absence of conceptual art, because conceptual art no longer exists. It existed once, but it no longer exists. So what do we put in its place? What does Stefan put in its place? One might say that he re-presents something which is absent, and in this absence what he represents is remarkably similar to that which once was.

The of course is, of course, typical of the genre. Readers keen to bask in the aesthetic radiance of Mr Brüggemann’s work can do so here. And here. And here.

As usual, feel free to add your own in the comments.

Mark Steyn on the hierarchy of phobias and the collectivist inversion of human rights:  

In some of the oldest free societies on the planet we’ve entirely corrupted the concept of human rights. It’s not very difficult. Human rights are rights for humans, rights for individuals. Back in 1215, Magna Carta – Magna Carta Libertatum, to give it its full title – couldn’t have made it plainer. Real human rights are restraints that the people place upon the king. We understood that eight centuries ago. Today, we’ve entirely perverted and corrupted the principle. We’re undermining real human rights, like freedom of speech, and replacing them with ersatz rights that, rather than restraining the king, give him vastly increased state power to restrain the rights of his subjects. These new rights are not handed out equally but in different ways to different degrees according to which approved identity groups you fall into. 

The tribal approach to rights and entitlement is discussed here and here. Consequent attempts at attitude management may also be of interest. Though some academics prefer the term “social justice education,” or simply “treatment.” 

Bella Gerens notes the conformist trajectory of the comical Laurie Penny:

She has certainly worked very hard to communicate a message, but I don’t know if it’s the message she intended. Like many people from Wadham [College], she seems to want to improve the world in a certain way. But what she seems to do is reinforce the belief that privileged people from privileged educational backgrounds can, as long as they say the right things, engender trust among the lower classes whilst taking their place among the elite… She is travelling an extremely well-trodden road bearing the placard of thoroughly-explored philosophies. And the destination, reached so many times before, has benefitted no one except the travellers themselves.

And Heather Mac Donald revisits ‘radical’ graffiti and the art world’s double standards:  

Art in the Streets is a classic exercise of the elites’ juvenile dalliance with countercultural norms that they have no intention of adopting in their own protected lives. The Museum of Contemporary Art has never tolerated graffiti on its own premises; none of its wealthy Hollywood and real-estate-mogul trustees would ever allow tagging on their homes or businesses, either. So opposed is MOCA to unauthorised graffiti on its walls that it stationed additional security guards around its premises before the show opened, to guard against the inevitable upsurge in graffiti that the show would (and did) trigger. Yet there is no sign that [MOCA director, Jeffrey] Deitch or his trustees grasp the contradiction. Indeed, in a breathtaking display of stunted moral development, Art in the Streets never even addresses the seminal fact that behind every act of graffiti is an invisible property owner whose rights have been appropriated against his will.

Readers may spot a thematic link with, among others, our academic radical, Alexander Vasudevan.

Feel free to add your own.

Your host has an article posted over at Minding the Campus. It expands on a few themes that may be familiar to regulars here.

Natural variations in cognitive ability, unlike those in musicality or athleticism, are a thorn in the paw of devout egalitarians. Avid readers of the Guardian’s arts and music pages would no doubt feel free to delight in the prowess of, say, Helen Mirren or Pinchas Zukerman without believing that everyone they passed on the street could with training do the same. It seems that only intelligence attracts contrarian manoeuvring.

The latest example of which comes via Fabian Tassano, author of Mediocracy: Inversions and Deceptions in an Egalitarian Culture. Tassano steers us to the claims of senior philosophy lecturer and Guardian contributor Dr Nina Power, who insists, apparently based on nothing, that “everyone has the potential to understand everything,” and that equality of intelligence is “something to be presupposed” because – well, just because  - “everyone is equally intelligent.”

Dr Power’s assertions are bold and her reasoning unobvious, indeed difficult to detect – thus meeting the key criteria of Very Deep Thought. She refers to the French postmodernist Jacques Rancière, whose “axiomatic assertion of the equality of intelligence” is, we’re told, “one of the most important ideas of the past decade.” On what basis Rancière felt entitled to make such claims – and why Dr Power sees fit to agree with them – remains somewhat mysterious. Dr Power does, however, cite fellow philosopher Peter Hallward, who tells us, “Everyone has the same intelligence, and differences in knowledge are simply a matter of opportunity and motivation. On the basis of this assumption, superior knowledge ceases to be a necessary qualification of the teacher, just as the process of explanation… ceases to be an integral part of teaching.”  

On this, Dr Power elaborates, highlighting another benefit of the egalitarian ideal: “In principle then, there is no reason why a teacher is smarter than his or her student, or why educators shouldn’t be able to learn alongside pupils in a shared ignorance.” 

Knowledge, competence and the ability to explain – none of these things will be needed in our socialist utopia. Children will simply inhale education or absorb it through osmosis. On reflection, a couple of the teachers at my old comprehensive were particularly unskilled at explaining their thinking and struggled to remember facts. At the time I had no idea this would soon be regarded as a cutting-edge educational strategy.