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Monday, May 23, 2005
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LEFT BEHIND Some interesting language from an article by Keith Thompson in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle about his decision to “leave the left” -- “A turning point came at a dinner party on the day Ronald Reagan famously described the Soviet Union as the pre-eminent source of evil in the modern world. The general tenor of the evening was that Reagan's use of the word ‘evil’ had moved the world closer to annihilation. There was a palpable sense that we might not make it to dessert. When I casually offered that the surviving relatives of the more than 20 million people murdered on orders of Joseph Stalin might not find ‘evil’ too strong a word, the room took on a collective bemused smile of the sort you might expect if someone had casually mentioned taking up child molestation for sport. My progressive companions had a point. It was rude to bring a word like ‘gulag’ to the dinner table. [The American left is] a movement increasingly ensnared in resentful questing for group-specific rights and the subordination of citizenship to group identity. There's a word for this: pathetic. In the name of ‘diversity,’ the University of Arizona has forbidden discrimination based on ‘individual style.’ The University of Connecticut has banned ‘inappropriately directed laughter.’ Brown University, sensing unacceptable gray areas, warns that harassment ‘may be intentional or unintentional and still constitute harassment.’ (Yes, we're talking 'subconscious harassment’ here. We're watching your thoughts ...)." And, for UD’s French readers, Paul Ricoeur’s encounter with the French left in the ’seventies, recalled by Le Monde in his obituary: " …Ricoeur, qui a déjà été choqué par Mai 68, vit assez mal les événements qui marquent les premiers mois de 1970 sur le campus de Nanterre, alors livré aux agissements de toutes sortes de factions violentes. Victime d'attaques injustes et même d'agressions physiques, déçu par l'incompréhension du gouvernement aussi bien que par l'impossibilité de moderniser les structures de l'enseignement supérieur français, il finit par démissionner de son poste de doyen (1970). Il s'exile alors pour trois ans à l'Université catholique de Louvain, avant de regagner Nanterre où il enseigne à nouveau jusqu'à sa retraite (1981). " Eager to escape being beaten up on in France, Paul Ricoeur also decided to accept an invitation to teach each winter semester at the University of Chicago. As a result, UD - though in over her head in the class - had a once in a lifetime intellectual experience as a participant in Ricoeur’s seminar on metaphor. |