Monday, April 24, 2017

Campus Collectivism and the Counter-Revolution Against Liberty



Richard Ebeling emails:

Dear Bob,

I have a new article on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation on, "Campus Collectivism and the Counter-Revolution Against Liberty."

Numerous accounts have, now, appeared in the press about the aggressive intolerance against various invited speakers on American college and university campuses by “progressives” and more radical leftists determined to shut down any and all views different from their definition of the “politically correct.”

What should also be appreciated is that this is a continuation of the collectivist rejection of the Western values of individual liberty, private property, rule of law, free association and competitive capitalism.

What we are seeing is the latest mutations and variations on the century-old Marxist critique against the free and open society. Instead of “class conflict” between capitalist owners of the means of the production and their property-less workers, the focus is on racism, sexism, and general social injustice but from the same type of conceptual template as used in earlier decades by Marxists and traditional socialists in general.

Now the enemies of the global “masses” of women and “people of color” are the male, white and capitalist exploiters of humankind. The history of humanity, it is said, is a history of white racist oppression of other racial and ethnic groups and the female members of all societies.

History has been rewritten to ignore the fact that slavery, besides being one of the oldest of human institutions, has been one of “equal opportunity.” That is, through the ages people have conquered and enslaved those defeated in battle regardless of their racial or ethnic background, everywhere around the world.

The modern revolt against and abolition of slavery began in Europe, and especially in Great Britain, where the emergence of the classical liberal ideal of individual rights to life and liberty rejected the notion of some human beings being held in bondage by others, including black Africans owned and abused by white masters. This set in motion the anti-slavery movement that formally brought an end to slavery by the end of the 19th century.

Likewise, it was the rise of classical liberalism in Europe, with it emphasis on an equality of individual human rights, that set the stage for the end to the oppression and limits on the social and economic liberty of women. Indeed, it was the freeing of markets from government controls, particularly starting in the 19th century, that opened the door for women to have the freedom to make their own living, enter into their own contracts, and determine who or when to marry (rather than have these things dictated by fathers and husbands, as in pre-capitalist, classical liberal society).

Instead, this “inconvenient history” that it has been philosophical individualism and free market capitalism that has formally liberated humanity from slavery and reduced if not ended abuses of women in many parts of the world, has been erased from college classrooms in the same way that Stalin had purged and murdered people airbrushed out of photographs with him.

The totalitarian tendencies of tyrants of campus political correctness threaten the remaining foundations of a free society. They must be opposed at every turn through the power and uses of reason, reality and determined defense of liberty.

http://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/campus-collectivism-counter-revolution-liberty/

Best,
Richard

1 comment:

  1. This also means that our opponents KNOW they cannot win a debate with us. They KNOW it would be dangerous for them to simply familiarize themselves with our basic concepts and analysis. We need to always act like we know that too.

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