This discussion is about two American Jews, Dennis Prager
and Bret Stephens, who did worse than lose the ability to shape events; they
lost the moral compass that was the “North Star” guiding them to goals that may
not have been universally accepted in the first place, but were at least well
defined and easy to follow.
It would help the readers to understand the ideas brought
into this discussion if they refresh their memory by reading an article I wrote
under the title: “The Flies that buzz the Ether,” published in the month of
February, 2011, and can be accessed by clicking the appropriate dates in the
archive at the right side of this page.
Both Prager and Stephens express disappointment – as did
dozens of other Jews – at the situation in which the American universities find
themselves at this time. Both had their views published on November 24, 2015,
each in a different publication. Prager wrote: “American Universities Begin to
Implode,” appearing in National Review Online. As to Stephens, he wrote his
Wall Street Journal column under the title: “Radical Parents, Despotic
Children,” and the subtitle: “Sooner or later, Orwellian methods on campus will
lead to Orwellian outcomes.”
These two are journalists, and my 2011 article was
essentially about journalists who think they are so important, they act like
the fly in la Fontaine's fable, “The Fly and the Stagecoach.” In that article,
I also discuss American exceptionalism, making the connection between this concept
and that of journalism. And now, a little more than four and a half years
later, there is one more connection that can be made. To appreciate this point,
we need to know who Spartacus was.
Legend has it that Spartacus was a gladiator in the Roman Empire who managed to escape the arena where slaves
of his caliber were kept well, even pampered. He went to the camp where lesser
slaves were doing hard work in the mines and the quarries. There, he organized
them and helped them stage an uprising against the camp guards, and later
against the mighty Roman Empire itself.
True or false, that legend can be thought of as a metaphor
representing the situation in the America of the past half century.
There may no longer be slaves in that country, but a metaphor does not need to
be exact to shed light on a situation that needs clarification. Think of the
original “pilgrims” who worked hard to build a nation, and then passed their
ethics on to their descendants. The trouble is that the ethics eroded a little
each time that they were transferred from one generation to the next.
In time, two things happened in America that led to the current
situation. First, America
discovered that to remain as exceptional as it was at the start, it had to
import the exceptional children of other peoples because it could no longer
produce exceptional children of its own. And then, the inevitable happened.
Those foreign children – who may not be thought of as traditional slaves, but
were still an underclass – decided to rebel. They said: enough with the white
skins and the red necks setting the agenda for us who are diverse peoples, we
deserve to be masters of our own destinies. And the university is the place
where we should start working on that goal.
Second, America
was taken over by the Jews who began life in that country as an underclass, but
rose to become the top dog. And when the diverse peoples of the underclass
began to rebel, they naturally rebelled against the Jews who were now in
charge, and were setting the agenda for everyone. That rebellion is what
brought fear and loathing to the hearts of the Pragers, the Stephens and others
like them who, in the name of pluralistic democracy, decided to swarm and
attack the multi-ethnic collective. Talking about Orwell?
To counter this trend, Dennis Prager founded a university in
which they teach what suits him. He writes about that in his column once in a
while, and from this writing, we conclude that Prager University
As to Bret Stephens, he wants to see universities founded by
the likes of Sheldon Adelson where the chant will most likely go something like
this: “There is no good Palestinian like a dead Palestinian.”