Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand (11 page)

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Authors: Mike S. Adams

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When the government gets involved in trying to solve a problem, it invariably makes things worse. Your cell phone provider—my previous Internet provider—is subsidized by the federal government. For that one reason, and that one reason alone, you are unlikely to ever get good service from them. Because the federal government has built a safety net beneath it, it is not afraid of falling. That is why its employees behave so carelessly towards you. Doesn’t that make sense, Zach? It’s basic human psychology.
Furthermore, when the federal government gets involved in something, it’s even worse than when the local government gets involved. The reason for that is simple—the greater the physical distance between the problem and problem-solving entity, the less likely you are to find an effective solution. Local problems can’t be efficiently solved by national agencies.
So far in college you have been exposed to a lot of theory. But I want you to get a healthier dose of reality. So I have a little assignment for you—two assignments, actually:
1. Take a notebook with you the next time you go off campus to get your driver’s license and vehicle license plates renewed. Those renewals are handled by two separate agencies. One is run by the government. One is privately operated. Take notes and tell me which agency was more efficient in their dealings with you. Then I will tell you which one was privately operated.
2. Take that same notebook with you every time you go to the admissions office, parking office, or financial aid office here at UNCW Two of those offices are controlled by the state government. One office is controlled by the federal government. Record enough information about your experiences to report back to me with a reasonably detailed evaluation of each experience. Then I will tell you which one is run by the federal government.
Thinking about these issues will actually help you navigate the current political climate. Our politicians are increasingly asking us to trust the government with ever-greater involvement in our affairs. However badly government messes things up, the solution is always more government.
Zach, in my opinion, these politicians sound a lot like your federally subsidized cell phone provider. They keep saying that things will get better if you just give them one more chance. But deep in your heart you know they’re lying—and they’ll just make you look stupid all over again.
LETTER 18
 
We Don’t Need No School of Education
 
Zach
,
Just last semester I terribly offended an education student who was enrolled in my introduction to criminal justice class. I know I offended her with my split infinitives. But I also offended her by suggesting that we ban the Watson School of Education from the UNC-Wilmington campus. What can I say? I like to boldly go where no other infinitive-splitting professor is willing to go.
From time to time, I joke around about things we need to eliminate on our campuses. But I was not kidding about the Watson School of Education. I believe it should be banned. My reasons are twofold:
1. Education majors do not earn a degree in any substantive discipline. They merely learn to “educate.” The obvious question: Educate about what? Why not have them earn a degree in a substantive area like history or English and then learn how to “educate” people by serving a longer term as a teaching assistant? Currently, they only do a one-semester teaching assistantship. Whatever happened to the idea of longer-term apprenticeships? It seems like we hear more about apprenticeships on reality TV shows than we actually see of them in reality.
2. Education majors are indoctrinated heavily in postmodern philosophy, which teaches them that there is really no such thing as objective truth. No one doubting the existence of objective truth should be trusted with the responsibility of teaching anyone at any level.
In our desperate attempt to elevate the self-esteem of students, we have succumbed to the postmodern temptation to eschew objective truth. In the process, we also eschew the notion of objective falsity.
I am not the only one who has noticed this phenomenon. Rita Kramer authored a classic book called
Ed School Follies
, which dealt with the issue at great length. In her well-researched book, she documented how one education professor taught future teachers how to acknowledge wrong answers. The list of possible responses: “Um-hmm,” “That’s a thought,” “That’s one possibility,” “That’s one idea,” “That’s another way to look at it,” and “I hear you.”
Notably missing from the list: “That’s wrong.” I suppose the professor would have thought it wrong to conclude that an answer could possibly be wrong. But there really is something seriously wrong with never telling students they are wrong.
Sometimes I think we are moving in this direction in order to boost the self-esteem of teachers. No one wants to be the “meanie” who goes around correcting small children. But these people are learning how to to be teachers. That’s their job.
LETTER 19
 
I Earned My B.S. in Victimology
 
Zach
,
Sometimes I have a hard time convincing people that the things I write about in higher education are actually real. I even have a hard time convincing them that some of our courses and majors truly exist. One good example is a course called “victimology,” which is frequently taught in our department. I have little doubt that before long Victimhood Studies will become an actual major housed in its own freestanding academic department.
As I look forward to the prospect of a victimology department turning out victimology majors, one question immediately comes to mind: what else could victimology majors do with their degrees except become professional victims?
It should be noted that there are numerous degrees already in existence that prepare students to become experts in certain types of victimhood, so a victimology major would be redundant to some extent. No doubt you have heard of some of these majors already being offered at a number of American universities:
1.
Women’s Studies.
This is a major that teaches women to consider marriage a form of patriarchal oppression and motherhood a form of slavery. Women are taught that they are so victimized by men that the word “women” should be changed to “womyn” to avoid any association with men.
2.
Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies
. Some of the same lessons learned in Women’s Studies are retooled in these programs using slightly different terminology. For example, marriage is seen as “heterosexist” rather than patriarchal. Both mean the same thing: oppressive.
3.
African American Studies.
Black people are seen as the victims of white people, and affirmative action and endless reparations for slavery are the necessary remedies for this oppression.
4.
Hispanic Studies
. Same idea, different race. The public policy initiatives advanced in these programs include open border immigration policy, bilingual education, and out-of-state tuition waivers for Hispanics who are victims of their parents’ decision to enter the country illegally.
One wonders why victimology is even needed as a course of study within the field of criminology. All of these other degrees are essentially specialized varieties of Victimhood Studies. They are taught by people who see themselves as victims and are bent on showing other people how they are victims, too. The only real career these degrees prepare one for is teaching some variety of Victimhood Studies. The whole field of victim education is both self-perpetuating and entirely useless for anything but lifetime employment within itself.
Of course, in a sense, people who major in any variety of Victimhood Studies really do become victims upon graduation. That is when their student loan payments are due, and either they have no job or their salary is too small to make the payments. At that point, there is nothing left to do but take to the streets and blame their capitalist oppressors.
I have a novel idea for these protestors: Why not pack up, leave Wall Street, and move the protest to the local university? That’s where the people who taught them that victimhood pays are. Professors pushing different versions of victimhood are the true reason these kids have buried themselves in a mountain of debt and cannot escape it. They should demand a refund from the local university and leave the capitalists alone. It isn’t the capitalists’ job to clean up the mess created by those who could never survive in the private sector.
LETTER 20
 
The Fear of Ideas
 
Dear Zach
,
One morning in January of 1993, as I was walking down the hall in the sociology building at Mississippi State University, I saw my good friend (and professor) Greg Dunaway. When he saw me he shouted a question, “Hey, Mike, weren’t you a Sigma Chi?” I replied “Yep. I still am.” He continued, “I think one of your guys got murdered last night. A guy named Steckler and his girlfriend, too.”
I thanked him for letting me know, rushed out the door, and drove across campus to the fraternity house. By the time I got there, a couple of reporters had arrived. The mood in the house was somber. It would stay that way for weeks.
The facts of the case are sad and gruesome. Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller left the fraternity house around one in the morning. As they crossed the parking lot and approached Jon’s car, they saw a man trying to break into another car parked nearby. Tiffany shouted at the man to stop what he was doing. And he did.
But when the thief turned around, he was brandishing a gun. He immediately ordered Jon and Tiffany to get into Jon’s car. The man hopped in the back seat and ordered them to drive to the outskirts of town. Before they knew it, Jon and Tiffany were taking their last ride together in his car. They must have known those were the last few minutes of their lives. The only question was what that man would do to them now that he had assumed full control of their destiny.
About ten miles outside of town on U.S. Highway 45, the man ordered Jon to pull over. There on the side of the road he murdered both of them execution-style. Later testimony revealed that Jon was forced to watch his girlfriend take a bullet in the head shortly before he suffered the same fate. To add fatal insult to fatal injury, the armed sociopath would later try to blame the killings on rap music.
At the time of the murders, I was a liberal who was opposed to handguns. I had even voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988 in part because of his support for a complete national ban on handgun ownership. But I was also playing in a band and had to travel late at night—sometimes driving more than sixty miles home after the bars shut down at midnight.
Every Thursday night I played at a bar called Jefferson Place in Tupelo, Mississippi. On the way home, I had to pass by the very spot on Highway 45 where Jon and Tiffany had been murdered. I usually passed by the murder site between one and two in the morning. I started having nightmares about the killings. And I started to think about guns in a different way.
A good friend of mine by the name of David Lee Odom, who also owned one of the bars I used to play in, invited me to go shooting with him just a few weeks after the murders. David had just purchased a .44 magnum and was looking to sell a .357 magnum. So we went out to the local gun club one Saturday afternoon and fired off a couple hundred rounds.
After just one day at the shooting range, I agreed to buy his gun—a Smith and Wesson Model 19 revolver—for $250. I tucked it under my seat every time I took a road trip in my old Toyota truck. I knew that if the truck ever broke down I would not have to worry about being caught unarmed by an armed criminal, the way that Jon and Tiffany had been. The playing field would be leveled by my two new friends, Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson.
Although I bought that first handgun in 1993, I did not get around to applying for a permit to carry a concealed weapon (CCW) until 1997. By that time, I had moved to North Carolina to teach criminology at UNC-Wilmington. My decision to acquire the concealed carry permit was prompted by a drug trafficking problem in the neighborhood where I bought my first house. There were crack dealers living just a few doors away, and I wanted to be armed on those occasions when I would walk from my house to downtown Wilmington—especially when I had to go to the ATM and walk back to my house with a wallet full of cash.
Upon hearing that I had obtained a CCW, one of my colleagues—a criminology professor—made an interesting comment. He said that the research indicating that CCWs actually reduce violent crime was “unsettling” to him. The remark is certainly an odd one for a criminologist to make. Why would anyone, particularly anyone who had devoted his professional life to acquiring expertise on crime prevention, be bothered by the results of research suggesting that a public policy was actually achieving its goal of reducing crime?
The answer, of course, is that reducing crime is not the chief concern of many criminology professors—or of professors in general in the so-called social sciences, even though crime is one of our most serious social problems. They are often more interested in having their own preconceived notions confirmed. Such bias does not advance knowledge. If fact, it only impedes it. It is one reason why our universities have become ideological echo chambers.

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