Education Has Consequences

Peter Berkowitz has an op-ed in the Wall St. Journal this morning. It ends like this:

Those who doubt that the failings of higher education in America have political consequences need only reflect on the quality of progressive commentary on the tea party movement. Our universities have produced two generations of highly educated people who seem unable to recognize the spirited defense of fundamental American principles, even when it takes place for more than a year and a half right in front of their noses.

So his thesis is that they literally don't get it.

But, it's clearly true that many progressives like to "jump to conclusions" that favor their cause. They ran incorrect meme after incorrect meme about the simplest aspects of the tea party people. It was obvious, to anyone who observed objectively, that racism was not a major motivating factor.

The Washington Post finally conceded that 2 days ago:

A new analysis of political signs displayed at a tea party rally in Washington last month reveals that the vast majority of activists expressed narrow concerns about the government's economic and spending policies and steered clear of the racially charged anti-Obama messages that have helped define some media coverage of such events.

Post-modern theories are involved in both - the failure to understand what the founders were about - and the willingness to misrepresent.

In post-modernism, politics is about the struggle among warring classes and interest groups. Quite alien to this is Madison's idea of getting above the fray and designing a system to contain the conflicting factions in a system of ordered liberty that allows individuals to get along in a productive fashion.

In post-modernism, truth is what your own group finds it useful to assert - in its verbal struggle with competing groups. Quite alien to this is Newton's idea of carefully observing facts and inferring necessary conclusions.

The war of the groups
involves willing dupes.