Jan Resseger, dedicated champion of social justice, explains that the culture wars are a ruse that diverts is from far more important issues. Book-banning and attacks on diversity-equity-inclusion are outrageous, but even more so is our indifference to structural issues, such as adequate funding, persistent racial segregation, and the privatization movement.
She writes:
In Schoolhouse Burning, the important recent book about the history of public education since the Civil War and the protection of public schooling by the provisions of the 50 state constitutions, Derek Black declares: “Public education represents a commitment to a nation in which a day laborer’s son can go to college, own a business, maybe even become president. It represents a nation in which every person has a stake in setting the rules by which society will govern itself, where the waitress’s children learn alongside of and break bread with the senator’s and CEO’s children. Public education represents a nation where people from many different countries, religions and ethnic backgrounds come together as one for a common purpose around common values.” (Schoolhouse Burning, p. 250)
Right now, of course, Chris Rufo, the right-wing linguistic reframer and political provocateur, has taken upon himself the mission of undermining the very values Derek Black proclaims. Rufo and his political allies at the national level and across the statehouses are intentionally frightening parents—making them fear children who are different. They have made the topic of the day their hope to eliminate “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” to shut down any curriculum that honors the history and culture of children who are not part of the dominant culture, and to undermine our sense of responsibility for providing equal opportunity. Our statehouses and national politics are being sidetracked by ideologues seeking to silence classroom conversation about how our nation’s past has shaped the present moment and by lavishly funded lobbyists pushing politicians to grant families public tax dollars to pay for their children’s escape from the public schools. We are surrounded by a maelstrom of argument designed to make us forget about our responsibility to the public schools “where people from many different countries, religions, and ethnic backgrounds come together as one for a common purpose around common values.”
Responding to the education culture war provocateurs is essential for those of us who care about public schooling, but it is also a distraction from the difficult essential issues we hardly see in the news anymore. I was jolted by Erica Frankenberg’s concise updatelast week about the persistence of racial segregation in public schools across the states. My surprise wasn’t about the existence of continuing racial segregation and its contribution to inequality; I simply hadn’t noticed any attention to this reality for several months.
Frankenberg, a professor of education and demographics at Penn State University, begins: “Brown vs. Board of Education , the pivotal Supreme Court decision that made school segregation unconstitutional, turns 70 years old on May 17, 2024.” She continues with a concise history of the long resistance to compliance with the Supreme Court’s decision, and updates the situation as we begin 2024:
“Public school students today are the most racially diverse in US. history. At the time of Brown, about 90% of students were white and most other students were Black., Today, according to a 2022 federal report, 46% of public students are white, 28% are Hispanic, 15% are Black, 6% are Asian, 4% multiracial, and 1% are American Indian. Based on my analysis of 2021 federal education data, public schools in 22 states and Washington, D.C., served majorities of students of color. And yet, public schools are deeply segregated. In 2021, approximately 60% of Black and Hispanic public school students attended schools where 75% or more of students were students of color. Black and Hispanic students who attend racially segregated schools also are overwhelmingly enrolled in high-poverty schools.”
What is the financial consequence of racial segregation? Frankenberg explains: “A 2019 report by EdBuild… found that schools in predominantly nonwhite districts received $23 billion less in funding each year than schools in majority white districts. This equates to roughly $2,200 less per student per year.”
Every year the Education Law Center publishes the Making the Gradereport on school funding fairness. The news in the most recent Making the Grade, released in December, compliments Frankenberg’s brief on the impact of racial segregation. Here is the this year’s brief summary of the situation at the end of 2023: “Vast disparities in per-pupil funding levels persist with the highest funded state (New York) spending two and a half times more per pupil than the lowest funded state (Idaho), even after adjusting for regional cost differences. Far too few states progressively distribute funds to high-poverty districts: more than half the states… have either flat or regressive funding distributions that disadvantage high-poverty districts… (T)he worst funded states are often guilty of low effort, indicating a failure to prioritize public education.”
And instead of raising their investment in schools, many states have reduced budgetary allocations for public education: “Nationally PK-12 education saw the smallest annual increase in combined state and local funding since the Great Recession. Fourteen states reduced total state and local revenue for education at exactly the moment when schools needed more resources to deal with the unprecedented challenges of interrupted learning, virtual or hybrid schedules, and health and safety concerns. In Alaska, Nebraska, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming, declining revenues disproportionately affected high-poverty districts and caused these states to become either less progressive or more regressive.”
The Education Law Center concludes the introduction to its comprehensive report with this warning: “A fair, equitable, and adequate (state) school funding formula is the basic building block of a well-resourced and academically successful school system for all students. A strong funding foundation is even more critical for low-income students, students of color, English learners, students with disabilities, and students facing homelessness, trauma, and other challenges. These students, and the schools that serve them, need additional staff programs, and supports to put them on the same footing as their peers.”
Persistent racial and economic segregation in U.S. public schools and inequity and inadequacy of public school finance are merely two of today’s educational challenges, but they among the most serious causes of educational injustice. We can be sure, however, that the culture war missionaries who want to eliminate diversity and inclusion, are not worried about segregation. And as they openly state their opposition to equity, we can assume that public school funding is of little concern. The culture warriors and their political allies have been busy expanding all kinds of private school tuition vouchers and fighting for the right of parents to insulate their children (at public expense) from exposure to the rich diversity that defines our society.
Underneath the noisy distraction of the culture wars, however, serious structural challenges for public schooling require our attention. Only a public committed to public investment in the common good and expanding the opportunity to learn for every child can ensure the future of the public institution that Derek Black describes: “Public education represents a nation where people from many different countries, religions and ethnic backgrounds come together as one for a common purpose around common values.”
Former scholar Diane Ravitch writes many times every week that anyone who dissents from the DEI agenda does so merely from cynical motives; they are not sincere in their beliefs. Likewise for anyone who disagrees with obsessing about transgenderism and having sexually explicit books in elementary schools.
Out here in the real world, most people – including most Democratic voters – believe in the principles of equal opportunity and merit. They realize that some people begin life in a better position than others, and they know about America’s racist sins. But they oppose hiring and promoting employees based on immutable characteristics. They don’t like being called racist for having those beliefs, which incidentally are shared by a majority of African-Americans. They oppose anatomical males competing with girls and women in sports and intruding on female only safe spaces. At the same time, they oppose any harrassment of transgender people. They don’t like very young children being exposed to graphic books that display and/or discuss sexual issues before those kids are ready to engage with those matters.
This blog is on the far Left of the American political spectrum on almost all issues. That’s not a winning formula for elections, even against such an odious opponent as Donald Trump. The linked article below shows the winning formula.
“Former Scholar”
“Out here in the REAL World”
What a rediculous/immature/self-absorbed post.
Democracy thrives on psychological Grownups.
Zoe would find an ally in France’s new minister of education. Neither are very original. Macron’s new hire in education is married to a Pharma executive and they send their 3 sons to a private, prestigious Catholic school. The school’s being investigated for sexist and homophobic behavior.
The ed. minister allegedly lied when she said she moved her son to the Catholic school because of teacher absences and, “being fed up with staffing shortages.”
The school said the reason for the move was that it wouldn’t comply with the mother’s demand the child skip to a higher grade level. Right wingers and neoliberals believe they and their families deserve privilege, people like Zoe and France’s ed minister.
Colonialism was a “winning formula.” The Catholic Church was the first and largest slaveowner in the Americas. Southern Catholics advanced the Confederacy and Popes advanced Hitler and Mussolini.
Almost all of the tax money for private schools in Ohio goes to Catholic schools. In 1999, media reported that money for Catholic schools was the Catholic Republican Governor’s stated goal.
The majority of Americans want reproductive rights. Right wing Republicans like Trump want them for themselves but, could care less about others. Dioceses and others linked to the Catholic Church (including the Knights of Columbus) spent a combined approx, $14 mil. in just two states to take away rights in 2022-23. But, Zoe doesn’t care about that, because no media, church or blogger told her to care. No one in the Koch network crafted a message for the right wing lemmings that said, Catholic Conferences initiated the legislation that garnered tax-funding for their schools nor did they craft a message that said, religious charter schools are promoted by Notre Dame faculty (Amy Comey Barrett’s friend, Nicole Stelle Garnet).
Zoe, similar to me and all Americans governed by SCOTUS, live in a theocracy. Zoe believes it’s good. In contrast, I think Jefferson was correct, in every age, in every country, the priest aligns with the despot.
Zoe- I recommend you read how Ryan Girdusky, founder of the 1776 PAC that provides funding for right wing school board candidates, views religion in America. It’s in the interview with Pat Buchanan (available on line).
And, if you plan to reply in this thread that the info. above is anti-Catholic, Elise Stefanik covered that terrain and, rightly, faced ridicule. Logic should refute spin and propaganda. Review how many governors and legislators (they are both Democrats and GOP), are Catholic. You can find the data on the internet.
Minus the personal attack on Diane, I do agree that it is an error to think that there is not a significant portion of Democrats who sympathize with opposition to the more grotesque forms of DEI, and who believe that equal opportunity and equal treatment under the law are more important and better ways of dealing with diversity than “equity” as used in DEI.
This is not entirely unlike the political debates over affirmative action, where defenders of AA paint opponents of AA as right wing racists, even as very large majorities of Americans across races and ethnicities are opposed to AA.
Which of the protected classes would you exclude from AA?
In what year diid America fulfill MLK’s promise to not judge a person by…..?
Did AA have a success rate in improving opportunities for demographic groups who had traditionally faced discrimination?
If we accept the premise that AA is ineffective in moving the needle, does the plan become, privilege coupled with chagrin that others won’t stop being anti-Black, anti woman, anti-disability, etc?
Personally, I’d like to see an expansion of voluntary AA, doors to top government jobs (e.g. SCOTUS and its clerks) opened to grads of public universities i.e. people who have greater experience with inclusion. And, I’d like discrimination that favors the wealthy at ivy leagues, which contrasts with merit, to be addressed.
I wouldn’t exclude particular “classes” of people from it. I would ditch the whole thing, as the Supreme Court did in college admissions and will soon do in other areas.
In a different universe it could have worked out much differently—i.e. as a way to give underrepresented minorities who maybe fell a only smidge below objective criteria a bit of help, as opposed to a de facto system of percentage targets and administrative decisions about how to achieve a “correct” balance of races and ethnicities, through the blatant application of different rules to different people based on their race or ethnicity. But that’s not the world we live in. We life in world where, I recently learned, the most recent class at John’s Hopkins is only 18% “white” but is somehow 20% “Native American.”
https://apply.jhu.edu/fast-facts/
What’s “voluntary affirmative action”? I’m not familiar with the term.
As a public school boy myself, I’m sympathetic to complaints about how elite universities favor applicants from exclusive Northeastern boarding schools. Hopefully that will change immediately after my son gets admitted wherever he ends up going to college.
“a way to give underrepresented minorities who maybe fell a only smidge below objective criteria a bit of help”
What “objective”criteria would that be, FLERP! ?
FLERP!
I went to your link and JHU isn’t “20% Native American”. It is TWO percent Native American.
It’s also 29% Asian.
I have no idea what your point is, but as you probably know, JHU is not typically one of the colleges most popular with rich white students. Bloomberg gave them a ton of money, but his daughters didn’t go there, and I am sure it wasn’t because JHU wouldn’t have taken them (although perhaps like MIT, Hopkins isn’t as influenced as many Ivies by big donations).
It also takes a lot of students from other countries. Is that ok with you? How can you know if “objective” criteria was used?
(Thank you Christine for mentioning that “objective”)
“elite universities favor applicants from exclusive Northeastern boarding schools” is the affirmative action that hurts very qualified public school kids.
NYCPSP, thanks, I misread that. That makes more sense. Quite odd that only 18 percent of the class is “white,” though.
Christine, objective criteria are SAT/ACT scores and GPA.
FLERP!,
You are welcome.
There seems to be some innuendo in your comment that I am missing.
“Quite odd that only 18 percent of the class is “white,” though”
Quite odd? Why is that “odd” when I explained that JHU is not a popular choice for the privileged white private school students who get special boosts in elite college admissions. It’s very possible more white students were admitted and turned down JHU.
White students make up a large majority in the private colleges popular with very affluent white private school students:
Yale’s entering class is over 49% white.
Brown’s is 46% white (they don’t use that number, they simply say that 54% are “students of color”.
Dartmouth is 60% white
Here is something to ponder. Williams College is one of the most selective and highly ranked liberal arts colleges in the country. From what I can see, nearly half the students are white. But fewer than 12% are Asian. Do you also believe that is “quite odd”? Or can you recognize at least the possibility that it is not because Williams Colleges accepts many less qualified white students over Asian students with higher standardized test scores, but because Williams College is not nearly as popular a choice among Asian families as it is for very affluent and privileged white families.
Maybe if you state straight out why you think that JHU having a freshman class that is 19% white, we can see if it is also “quite odd” that Dartmouth would have an incoming class that is 60% white and “quite odd” that Yale has an incoming class that is over 49% white.
You seem to be implying that there is bias in admissions against white students, by selectively citing random statistics while ignoring the statistics that (by your own standards) are quite odd and would imply a bias FOR white students.
It’s odd because it’s unusually low relative to other schools in its class. Unusual things are odd.
Zoe is on board with the SCOTUS decision in Biel v. St. James Catholic school – well until, her tax dollars are spent in discriminate against someone in her family who has a disability, is a woman, is of a different religion or national origin.
Hi, Zoe,
I don’t know who you are. Never saw you on the blog before.
FYI, I am not a “former scholar.” When you spend years earning a Ph.D. at Columbia University, the designation remains with you for the rest of your life.
I used to see the world as you do, but as I grew older, I had a change of mind (and heart). I realized that “merit” tends to cluster among the children of people who had the most money. I became uncomfortable with the status quo. You could learn more if you read “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” and “Reign of Error.”
I don’t advocate anything related to transgender children, other than what they, their parents, and their doctors decide is their business, not the state’s. The sports associations should set their own rules about who should participate in their sport, not the government.
I do not want young children exposed to inappropriate reading materials, but I trust the professional judgment of librarians, not Moms for Liberty.
If you don’t like the blog, don’t read it. It’s a free country.
You are in no way a scholar anymore. Genuine scholars don’t become blatant, tribalist partisans. It is your right to do that, but you’re not a scholar. Everyone outside the far Left knows that fact.
Then Laurence tribe is not a scholar, nor is Heather Cox Richardson or the many other historians and social scientists who share my views and do not hesitate to express them on TV, in books, blogs and articles.
This is like saying, “You are no longer a writer to Hemingway because he started fishing.” LOL. Utterly idiotic.
And what, precisely, is “the far Left?” Is it “far left” to support universal healthcare OF THE KIND FOUND IN EVERY INDUSTRIALIZED DEMOCRACY IN THE WORLD EXCEPT THE UNITED STATES? Inquiring minds want to know.
Please list the positions that Diane has taken that are “far” to the “left.” Support for Ukraine? for a knowledge-based curriculum? for unionization of workers? for our allies the Kurds in northern Afghanistan?
Please, enlighten us.
If Zoe is a woman, she should be sent back to the period described in the book, Lessons in Chemistry. Zoe is the poster child for entitlement, no gratitude for the advances others made for her and other women- pioneering feminists like Diane Ravitch. Zoe pulls up the ladder that she herself climbed to prevent others from having the same opportunities that were won in battle for those in her generation.
Zoe
Go back to Ireland when the government was the alliance of the Catholic Church and men like Koch’s Christopher Rufo.
1,000,000 Irish died of starvation in the Great Hunger.
This blog is nowhere near the “far left” of the political spectrum. It is firmly center right. Supporting public education is a conservative point of view. Supporting the autonomy and wide experience of education experts (ie teachers) is a conservative value. Supporting expertise is as well.
The view that public education is a private good and not a public good is the radical position, and that is not a conservative value, it’s anarchic. It’s destructive.
Your listing of battles from the culture wars is a distraction from the issues Diane focuses on.
Thank you, Greg R.
I have a hard time categorizing my political views. I’m pretty near the center, I think, and I’m liberal. I’m certainly not “far left.” You are quite right to say that I respect the judgment and wisdom of experienced professionals in education. To me, that’s common sense.
With all apparently undue respect, Zoe, what in heaven are female only “safe spaces” when you are a transgender female? You obviously have a high horse that your ladder of privilege took you to. If you want to learn about gender identity and expression, perhaps you should consult actual biologists and psychologist who study such. Throughout history, misgendered people have been born and lived without your “safe spaces” nonsense. Equity and diversity is far more complex than your simplistic yammering says it is.
Diane, you are a saint for tolerating an obvious shill for an enemy you somehow have exposed in the past.
Just who sent you, “Zoe?”
Thank you for this insightful, excellent post. After more than twenty years of privatization, we have not saved poor children from their zip codes. On the contrary charters and vouchers tend to increase segregation by race and class. A trend that seems to follow minority majority schools is a loss of funding, even though these are the most vulnerable students with the greatest needs. Privatization does not address segregation. It contributes to great segregation.
I worked in a diverse suburban district that was white majority. My poor new English learners benefited tremendously from attending safe, clean, well maintained and well resourced school. The PTA and staff went out of their way to include my students and help pay for field trips and book fairs. They understood that an inclusive school is a good school. My students made great academic strides despite their limited English, poverty and sometimes trauma. I can remember reflecting that this was the promise of America, and it was working!
Unfortunately, in many other parts of New York state and elsewhere, segregation is worse today than it was in the 1960s. Investor conglomerates are manipulating real estate markets, and fewer communities have pockets of housing that poor families can afford to rent in white majority communities. The result of this practice is more illegal, yet widely practiced, red lining and enhanced segregation. Websites like Great Schools that rate and rank school systems tend to drive white home buyers into less diverse areas which also contribute to more segregation.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil
is for the “good” to do nothing, that stops it.
The meaningful change to opine ratio is very low.
The results continue to outpace the strategies.
Do the results reveal “who” the strategies work for?
Great article as is Bob Shepard’s. Interesting connections. The rise of schools of choice has indeed increased segregation. The test scores of minority districts continue to be low and are more likely to employ test and punish tactics. The problem as I see it is Poverty. No amount of money can change those schools where poverty and defeatism reign. It can help of course. But without addressing the problems of poverty, nothing will solve the problem. I taught College writing, African American Literature, and Shakespere at a small community college in Benton Harbor Michigan. I worked in Upward Bound programs in the summer and continue to tutor there when I can. Many African American students have benefited from school choice because of the problems in the Benton Harbor schools. I have met and taught many of them who were in High School and later in college. Their parents took them out of the poor mostly minority school because they wanted the best for their children. Again the problem is poverty. I think all parents want the best for their children even Republican parents. It is a society problem not an educational one.
The noble idea of “saving poor students from failing schools” has drowned in sea of profiteering, waste and fraud. It has become so politicized that it is undermining public education and trying to dismantle it. The main goal of privatization today is for special interest groups like religious groups and profiteers to transfer public funds out of public oversight and into guarded, secretive private pockets. No, sir. It’s not all about the kids. It’s the politics of cash and how to squeeze out of the commons.
“Public education represents a nation where people from many different countries, religions and ethnic backgrounds come together as one for a common purpose around common values.”
The problem is, if you are a racist, sexist, blood purist of any sort, or just plain wealthy, in other words, if any of these is one of your values, then public education is bad, bad news.
Also, in another note, did I call Fox News “NEWS”? What was I thinking? CBK
If you did, you obviously shortened “Fox News Entertainment” most likely to be succinct, Catherine. You are forgiven! 🙂
LG Whew! CBK
Diane FYI: I have tried to reply to Bob in several posts and keep getting kicked off. Very frustrating. I’m writing here because nothing goes through on the more recent posts. CBK
Diane and Bob: I see my above post went through. I’ll try to post the several-times-rejected one here and hope that won’t annoy anyone. It’s the one about scholars like Snyder and Tribe actively talking about politics. CBK
PRIOR POST:
Hello Bob: This is a post I tried to add to the other note, but nothing worked. So I’m trying it here. It became a circular problem. “You are already subscribed.” “You need to log-on.” Over and over again. But here’s the post, if it actually gets posted. CBK
Hello Bob TWO THINGS that reveal so clearly how one’s philosophical stance influences history—and the more power, the more influence.
First, your linked note about Putin/Dugin’s totalitarianism and its relationship to relativism (a clip from that link is below–do you have the date of the BBC interview for a proper citation?)
Second, about scholars NOT taking an open political stance: though there are many layers of interpretation, in the philosophical layer, there is taking a stance (like Snyder and Lawrence Tribe et al), and then there are those who treat scholars’ political influence as if the problem were rooted in physics and the natural sciences, rather than in human concerns and history. (A matter of belief? Bah. See below.)
The first destructive upshot of that view is that one’s active political views are not critical on principle (not “scientific,” where “science” is interpreted as reductionist/positivist).
The second is that Snyder’s/Tribe’s et al views are “biased” rather than well-argued . . . even though they provide a real argument against someone like Putin (who throws people out high-rise windows); but again, even if students aren’t already disgusted, scholars are drained of their political vibrancy and import (to their students!) because they are considered “biased” and are just trampling on a (pseudo-) scientific set of assumptions.
And from there, the third is that once you figure a “scholar” is biased, no one need ask WHY one takes that stance, (“Well, I just believe it”?????) so that students can do their own thinking on the matter, again, even if they don’t understand it and are not disgusted already from having had good moral examples and training in their background.
In any case, giving solid explanations of one’s moral views about concrete historical events and people (as you describe in your essay) from good reason and moral principle is already broken loose from the get-go in the public square . . . with the hammer of very different philosophical foundations. Relativism AND BELIEF pave the way for that to occur, especially in less thoughtful people. In sociology, however, we’ve done the same, and seemingly from great thinkers. (What a joke THAT is.)
In both cases of “siloed” pseudo-scientific thinking, and ungrounded sociology (we don’t really know and cannot EXPLAIN why it’s not a good idea to throw people out high-rise windows for disagreeing with Putin?), scratch the surface and the fundamental philosophy that bleeds through reeks with an endorsement of principled ignorance and the moral (philosophical) corruption of the speaker, e.g., Putin, Dugin, and now probably half of the United States Congress. Philosophical corruption is just a cover, however, for: a thoughtless bully adolescent who is also a BAD LOSER.
Here is the clip from your link–nicely written.
“Here is Putin’s fav fascist, imperialist philosopher, Alexandr Dugin, clarifying what “truth” means in Putinese (I transcribed this from a BBC interview):
“Everything is relative, and we need—we, in Russia, realize that we could use Postmodernity to explain to the West that . . . any truth, is relative, so we have our own special Russian truth that you need to accept as something that maybe is not Europe truth. . . Postmodernism teaches us to understand, and also sociology. I am sociologist as well, and the total fact, according to Durkheim, the founder of sociology, Emile Durkheim, that total fact is the fact that the society believes. . . . The truth is the question of belief, and Postmodernity show[s] that every so-called truth is a matter of belief, so we believe in what we do. We believe in what we say, and that is the only way to define the truth. The truth is a matter of belief.”
So, let’s all just shrug and walk away<–what a philosophical failure THAT is. CBK
CBK,
I tuned out last night. Sorry you were stuck in moderation
Diane Thank you for responding! I don’t know yet if other of the same posts actually showed up, but I cringe to think it. You are a peach. CBK
The BBC interview with Alexandr Dugan was published on Youtube on October 20, 2016. There is no indication there when the interview took place or when the interview first aired, so a full citation is not possible.
Bob Thanks for replying. I have no doubt in your recounting of the interview. But I wanted to perhaps use it in a work I am doing, so I need to be extra-critical. I’ll either note what you note or do some further research on it. Thanks. CBK
You can simply cite the Youtube video, CBK.
MLA Full Citation
“Aleksandr Dugin: ‘We Have Our Special Russian Truth’.” YouTube, uploaded by BBC Newsnight, 28 Oct. 2016, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGunRKWtWBs&t=11s.
APA Full Citation
[BBC Newsnight]. (2016, October 28). Aleksandr Dugin: ‘We have our special Russian truth [Video]. YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGunRKWtWBs&t=11s.
Chicago Full Citation
“Aleksandr Dugin: ‘We Have Our Special Russian Truth’.” BBC Newsnight. October 28, 2016. Video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGunRKWtWBs&t=11s.
Bob I watched the video. That whole idea is what both enables and requires Putin and other totalitarians to murder those who disagree with them. They have abstracted themselves right out of their own historical reality. They have to murder . . . otherwise, they might recognize that they are responsible, not only for what they think is or is not true, or before that, how they “interpret,” but also for what they do in real-time.
Brute power is all they have because their argument is a philosophical witch’s brew . . . it falls to the contradiction between the embedded assumptions of their own performance (in arguing a case at all), and what they claim in the argument, which is an ever-receding set of hairball tautologies wrapped around the totalitarian’s stunted libido dominandi. (I shudder to think.)
Poor babies. They just cannot stand it or even grasp that they are not the god of all . . . just human like the rest of us. (Libido dominandi.) CBK
I encourage you to watch the interview. It’s scary AF. It’s Postmodernist BS in service of authoritarianism. So, he’s even worse than, say that poser Slavoj Žižek, who is all about verbal bomb throwing while maintaining deniability because of the obscurantism of his expression of his ideas. Žižek is irrelevant. Dugan is quite relevant because he is described as acting as “Putin’s brain.”
Bob . . . the philosophically ignorant leading the philosophically ignorant and dangerous. I’m really glad to have this quote about relativism, however . . . such a clear connection between philosophical attitudes and the concerted demise of persons and cultures. CBK
So glad you find this as useful and interesting as I did, CBK! Really frightening.
I did the transcription myself to ensure its accuracy.
A full citation to the original airing of the BBC interview is not possible unless one contacts the BBC directly. However, one can cite the YouTube video, which is just fine. I provided citations, CBK, to the YouTube video in three common citation formats, but that’s in moderation.
Bob: Thanks. Fits right in with what I am writing about. I’ll find the video. CBK
I linked to the video. All you have to do is click on it. Here, again:
Somehow, Bob, you inflamed the WordPress Lord of Moderation.
I do that. Alas.