The headline of a Sept. 3 post by Prager U. reads as follows: “Did you know: To get a bachelor’s degree in English literature at the UCLA, you must take courses in Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability or Sexuality Studies; in Imperial Transnational or Post-Colonial Studies; and in Critical Race Theory. But you are not required to take a single course in Shakespeare……..The Liberal Arts were once a study of genius. Now it’s just Identity politics.”
I received an M.A. in English literature in the 70s, failing to get a P.H.D. simply because I was obsessive compulsive and continued to rewrite my thesis until I ran out of time. But the cultural treasures to which I was exposed in those years are easily my most prized possessions, indeed the reason that I have never been particularly concerned with material wealth. That a major American University should offer a degree in English Literature entailing no exposure whatsoever to the works of William Shakespeare, surely one of history’s greatest literary artists, is, beyond being merely stupid, quite literally criminal. Those who have never been apprised of the genius of Socrates, Chaucer, Donne, Milton, Locke, Voltaire, the Bronte sisters, Dickens, Joyce, Eliot, Sartre, etc., are hardly entitled to comment on issues of Western Cultural pride, ludicrously demonized these days as merely a form off Racism. But of course the very point of the curricula offered by institutions such as U.C.L.A. is not to inform their students but to indoctrinate them. Hence the incredible ignorance of a good portion of those young people marching these days in solidarity with Antifa and B.L.M. Hence their inability to contextualize the beliefs and behavior of individuals such as Jefferson, Lincoln and, here in Canada, MacDonald, who were actually far more progressive than their contemporaries around the world who were in many cases still are locked in the Middle Ages.
I mentioned Wilfred Reilly in my blog of Aug. 28, a Black academic who claims the Proud Boys are Western Chauvinists rather than White racists. It goes without saying that any member of that group guilty of breaching the law needs to be held accountable. But if the Proud Boys are in fact merely trying to defend our Western heritage against the constant barrage of half-truths fomented by the Left, what chance do they have in nations whose youth literally have no idea of the issues involved?
A number of books have been written over the last decade on the Neo-Marxist cancer that has metastasized throughout Western Academia. I honestly have no idea of the extent of the rot here in Canada. But I can say with some certainty that it is not, as is constantly proclaimed by “progressives,” so-called White Supremacists who, being invisible 99% of the time, constitute the main threat to our Western Democracies, but disgustingly derelict institutions such as U.C.L.A. who are quite literally betraying the very Principles and Values they were originally designed to perpetuate!
As if to validate my point, Glenn Beck revealed a video this past Friday of academic and counter terrorism “expert” Daniel Byman of the Brookings Institute passionately averring that Al Qaeda, the Taliban, etc. pose nowhere near the threat to the citizens of the West than the domestic fanatics of the far right! If you are in agreement, please explain to me how the “terrorists” who invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6 all forgot to bring along their AK-47s!