A few years ago I participated in a radio debate on "white privilege" with a certain man, whose name is unimportant, who had a Ph.D. in "ethnic studies." At one point he introduced an argument by saying, "If whites are 80 percent of the population...," which prompted me to interject and point out that whites (non-Hispanic) are now only 63 percent of America. Of course, you might think that someone with a doctorate in "ethnic studies" would know what the ethnic and racial composition of the country is.
While no one wants to be a real-life Cliff Clavin (of Cheers fame), mistaking trivia for intellectualism, facts matter because they're small snippets of reality. They're little pictures - and, as with a jigsaw puzzle - if you have enough of them, assembled properly, you can see the big picture. This is otherwise known as being in touch with reality.
This is why a certain trend in that liberal bastion called education is quite interesting. Educators will often say today, "We don't just teach kids facts [uttered dripping with derision]; we teach them how to think." This is quite convenient. After all, it's easy to test knowledge of facts; thus, such measures can reveal modern education as a fraudulent enterprise. But "how to think" is a bit more nebulous, and, if you define the expression of feelings-derived folderol as reason, your students cannot fail.
Yet there is a deeper reason why liberals eschew facts: they refute fiction. And since leftist agendas have no basis in reality, exposure to snippets of it is deadly; for, just as one small pin can pop a balloon, one little fact can shatter a rationalization.
This brings us back to Dr. Ethnic Studies. His field of expertise isn't about anything as old-fashioned as facts, but he can expound at length on oppression, white privilege, critical-race theory and "micro-aggressions." These things, you see, are the stuff of sophisticated modern men. Nev
Via: American Thinker
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