I live in England, so I am unable to see for myself if students on American campuses are, in fact, somehow being "radicalised" into displaying communist symbols from the former USSR or Chinese Cultural Revolution on their campuses. If Pinker says that they are, and that it is a concern, then I tend to believe him, as he has never shown himself to be a fool in any of his previous forays into the public domain in the US/West. In any case, it is a well known fact that many of today's social science and humanities/liberal arts academics are themselves children of a postmodern educational establishment whose teachers and curricula were heavily influenced by the Marxist critical theory of the hard left ( e.g. Marcuse) which was very fashionable on American campuses during the 1960s, 1970s, 80s and 90s.

To cut to the chase. In my own opinion, whoever is responsible - and SOMEONE - IT WOULD SEEM - MUST BE - for the fact that bright, young people in the West are glorifying the kind of Marxist ideology that grounded the Soviet Union under Stalin and the Chinese Cultural Revolution ( not to mention that "charming" little Marxist, Pol Pot, in Cambodia) last century, should be hunted down immediately and then publicly "strung up by the balls" asap. The very idea of American/Western kids literally hoisting the Red Flag at their schools makes me really angry, in precisely the same way that child abuse does.

Pinker is one of those intellectuals who feel it necessary to provide an opinion on everything outside his main area of work, which, as a result, are usually jejune, uninteresting, or just plain wrong. — Maw

:up:

The dachshund photo is cool, and yes I do own a miniature, smooth red Dachshund ( called "Tory" in line with my world-view). :halo: AS for the dead dinosaur, political conservatism, is far from dead, I can assure you, Charleton! You should read some of Edmund Burke's work, he was one of England's greatest political theorists ( that's not merely my opinion BTW, rather that of the entire Western academy to this day) and not a bad philosopher either ! ( had a great influence on Kant's aesthetics, for ex).

I figure you are a young guy Charleton ? So , if I am right ,let me tell you that one can only really appreciate classical conservative political theory when they have gathered a fair bit of wisdom and experience walking around on this funny old planet called Earth - that is why young people so often lack the ability to REALLY connect with a thinker like Edmund Burke. Burke's thought, like that another great old conservative, Cardinal Newman,is is like a fine, old, vintage wine - totally wasted on today's youth ( who might as well be given a glass of "Coca Cola") :lol:

PS: Edmund Burke was not a nasty man - great sense of humour - so you should associate Burkian conservatism with the image of a dachshund who is snarling in a nasty, angry manner ! !

The fact that he is such an extremely popular public intellectual in the US tends to contract your view of him as "jejune" and "uninteresting", Darth ?

You say there is a troubling, pervasive "pro-communist" sentiment on American campuses. Do you have any research, statistics, any substantive evidence to offer to support this claim? Across America, are college students really flying the Soviet flag, reading Mao's Little Red Book, and smoking Cuban cigars?

The vast majority of social media these days consists of groups that quickly ban anyone with different viewpoints. I'm not sure whether that applies to this group, but I would hope not, if it is an actual philosophy forum. Outside of philosophy forums, however, from what I have observed, read, and heard from others, social-media is a breeding group for people to see their narrow-minded views validated by others who share their same mind-set. You believe climate change is all a hoax and the leading scientific bodies are all in on it, then you can find echo-chambers where that view is considered to be the only one worth holding. Same for the anti-vaxxer crowd, Holocaust-deniers, 9/11 truthers, conspiracy-theories, gold-advocates, etc., etc. Each and everyone of these views are absurd, not supported by the facts, but are all alive and well and spreading across the globe through social-media. Political correctness is merely the tip of the iceberg on what is happening.

You say there is a troubling, pervasive "pro-communist" sentiment on American campuses. Do you have any research, statistics, any substantive evidence to offer to support this claim? Across America, are college students really flying the Soviet flag, reading Mao's Little Red Book, and smoking Cuban cigars? — Maw

Like I said, if you even bothered to read my post above, I am English and living in England, so I cannot, therefore, gather any first-hand evidence for myself. I have no option but to trust the claims of certain persons ( American public figures) whom I generally regard to be reputable, responsible and honest individuals. Like I said, if Pinker nd Peterson suggest that the glorification of 20th century Marxist icons is a worrisome issue on US university campuses today, (and in American youth culture more generally), I tend to listen and I tend to take them at their word.

You do not, BTW, see students at universities in this country vandalising their campuses with the noisome sayings of Mao Zedong or the lofting of "Hammer and Sickle" ensigns! I think if you were a youngster caught carrying on like that at a respectable college here in Oxford or Cambridge or London, you would be swiftly apprehended by the local police, then bought before a local magistrate to defend a public order charge the next day.

If you think I am THAT stupid, that I would pay one atom of serious attention to the conclusions of any kind of "professional" research studies conducted in any the modern social sciences, esp in the US, let me assure you that I am not.

I did "bother" to read your post above, and I asked for hard evidence, not anecdotal insight from individuals you consider to be above questioning. As far as I am aware, neither Pinker nor Peterson have provided any type of statistical evidence of "pro-communist" sentiment raging across American campuses. Pinker works at Harvard, and whatever anecdotal evidence he claims is (if even true, again, there doesn't seem to be stats here) nevertheless isolated to an elite Ivy League institution. Not remotely similar to experiences most college students in America would have. If you cannot provide evidence, why should I, or anyone, believe you?

You are a shining example of the problem, as I said above, with public intellectuals who sermonize opinions across specialized fields. People, such as yourself, gravitate towards them through the pull of their authority and "trustworthiness". A gleeful appeal to a single authority who feeds to you what you wish to hear. Ironically, one can see some vague parallels between this, and the 'cult of personality' of Communist leaders.

If you cannot provide evidence, why should I, or anyone, believe you? — Maw

OK. Say ,for example, regarding Pinker's Claim #2, I wanted to provide evidence that gender feminism in the US, is, and always was - as a "celebrity" academic like Jordan Peterson observes - sheer madness that has, over the past 50 or so years, bought an unspeakable universe of grief and suffering to bear on countless millions of American individuals and families. There is SO MUCH hard , official, high-quality, objective, empirical ( you name it) evidence of this fact that to be perfectly honest with you, I would scarcely know where to begin in setting it out!

Lol is this a philosophy forum or Donald Trump's twitter feed?

Yet again, the responses seem indicative of the climate. What Pinker said was true. Is it that folks really don't believe the claims are true? Or is it a lack of trust regarding the conclusions others might draw from the truths?

I suspect it's the latter and I suggest it's bad strategy to shout people down, shame, or otherwise silence them pre-emptively. — Roke

My problem with the whole "anti"-political correctness crowd is that, well, they're often responsible of the same sort of stuff that they accuse others of doing. Being called "politically correct" or an "SJW" is just as much a shut-down tactic as being called "racist" and "sexist" is. I can't help but feel that if the current trends of the times favored their ideologies over those of their opponents, then they would be doing the same sort of thing they accuse others of doing- shutting down discussions on topics before they even began.

Political-correctness is merely just another way of shutting down conversations. I'm not sure if it's even inherently bad. I mean, I don't think there is really anything wrong with public backlash and social condemnation if someone posted "Hitler did nothing wrong," on the internet. If the KKK wants to do a demonstration in town, they are legally allowed to do so, but when the general public decides to show that the KKK are not welcome in the town, then I see nothing wrong with it. If an intellectual said he was a Holocaust denier, I'm not going to get angry when a bunch of other intellectuals social condemn and ostracize them. The very hyper focus on mudslinging distracts us from actual discussions, both on what topics ought to be treated with social taboos and from genuine people seeking to have actual discussions about the necessary and relevant topics of today.

Your ilk, smug left wingers who substitute sarcasm for reasoned debate, outnumbers everyone else by a large margin on this forum. You are typically blind to what is most evident.

Edmund Burke's work, he was one of England's greatest political theorists — Dachshund

Thomas Paine owned his arse.

OK. Say ,for example, regarding Pinker's Claim #2, I wanted to provide evidence that gender feminism in the US, is, and always was - as a "celebrity" academic like Jordan Peterson observes - sheer madness that has, over the past 50 or so years, bought an unspeakable universe of grief and suffering to bear on countless millions of American individuals and families. There is SO MUCH hard , official, high-quality, objective, empirical ( you name it) evidence of this fact that to be perfectly honest with you, I would scarcely know where to begin in setting it out! — Dachshund

@Maw is asking for actual evidence (not anecdotal) that there is widespread communist sentiment across college campuses in the US. I mean, if anecdotal evidence counts, I can dismiss the claim, as I didn't get that vibe from college I went to. Yeah, we had Marxists, but I don't recall them going around with hammer and sickles. There were people who were very pro-capitalist. Maybe the college was left-leaning, but whatever; it's not like none of the professors leans towards the right. The students didn't seem all that Marxist- some were, but some were vocally not.

You could make the argument that it is more left-leaning, but I don't think it reaches pro-Stalin, pro-Mao levels and that I think it mostly suffers from selective reporting. In my local news, a college let a group (I assume one of the Christian churches in the area) to go protest LGBT stuff on their campus. Some of the students went out and said that they didn't like them. One of college officials said that the college supports free speech, so the group was allowed to speak on campus, but that the campus community overall welcomed everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation. It didn't make headline news nationally because, well, it really wasn't that remarkable of an occurrence. When a professor goes off and publishes a book that gets national attention for being radical, there are bunch more college professors who don't care.

Tom paine was a frothing- at- the- mouth egalitarian communist who died a penniless , alcoholic, in a dirty little hovil in England. Only six people attended his funeral ( and they were probably paid to front by the local Council)...S**T HAPPENS, right? Also, most of the American's who bought and read Paine's "Common Sense, were semi-literate "plebs", and "Common Sense" told them that they weren't semi-literate "plebs" ( that is , it peddled a monstrous LIE) and that is why he managed to sell so many copies of it.

The overwhelming majority of people who starve to death are non-white.
— unenlightened
Why is skin color relevant to the problem of starvation if you don't mind me asking? — Agustino

It's a fact; now as an honourable conservative liberal truth admitting liberal, you do not want to deny the fact. As a postmodern neo-marxist degenerate, I might think that there are structural social explanations for the conjunction. But such social explanations are anathema to the pcgm brigade, so it can only be a racial difference.

What's the "pcgm" brigade ?

political correctness gone mad.

Ok, what do you propose?

I propose that there are structural social explanations for such supposed racial differences. For starvation, and equally for crime.

Gender feminism is a good example of insane, postmodern utopist, Marxist critical theory run rampant (pcgm) Rarely, in American history has one perverted social/political theory resulted in so much tremendous suffering and despair. Same for the discredited policy of "Affirmative Action" that did a monumental amount of harm to untold millions of individuals in the US alone.

So what do you propose we do about it?

My mother had to give up her job when she married, because married women were not allowed to work in the bank. My grandmother did not have the vote for some years. My great grandmother had to give up her property on marriage. Now you may think that for my daughter radical gender equality prevails, but it is hardly insane to dissent from this.

Stop paying attention to Pinker and Peterson.

No, I meant serious proposals for addressing the problems you mentioned. I don't see what I can do granted that I'm not a member of government and have literarily zero political influence, especially when it pertains to influencing such matters.

I'm very serious. This kind of pseudo intellectual so-called radical truth-telling is influential and gives comfort to the ungodly. I'm a retired night-porter, and my influence is limited to making posts here and there. Do what you can.

Oh, if you mean the problem of people starving, food is the solution. And food is readily available if we are prepared to countenance some redistribution.

Gender feminism is a TOTALLY different ball of wax to the so-called" first wave" of EQUITY ( or LIBERAL) FEMINISM that eventually enabled people like your mother to work in banks and realised the 19th Amendment in the US in 1920 (though personally I agree with Kant that allowing womens' suffrage was an act of sheer madness). GF is A TOTALLY different beast, so don't conflate the two movements.

Are you referring to the biblical God ?

I'm a retired night-porter, and my influence is limited to making posts here and there. — unenlightened

I have no clue what a night-porter is, but okay.

Do what you can. — unenlightened

Doesn't sound like much of a plan. That's what happens with many on the left on these issues - if you ask what's the plan, there usually isn't any. People just shrug, go protest a little bit on the street, and little happens.