It’s been said that fundamentalists are people who don’t realize that they have a hermeneutic. If that’s true, it’s also the case the progressives are people who have nothing other than a hermeneutic.
In other words, progressives cannot get beyond the lens they use to view the world–it’s like a looking into a dark room through heavily tinted glasses.
A case in point is they way race is handled on university campuses today. The Wall Street Journal offers a particularly pointed critique of the Yale situation, “Yale’s Little Robespierres” read it here.
Rather than suggest that minority students at universities are whiners who have a victim mentality, I’d like to suggest that the way we think about race, power, and other accompanying issues produces a comprehensive view of the world that identifies not only actual injustice, but elevates subjective and minor matters
In other words the way these students are taught makes it impossible difficult for them to see through their glasses to distinguish actual substantive injustices from small, perceived injustices (like halloween costumes). That’s why the response to the Yale email is so out-of-proportion and so unhelpful.
Surely there is a more constructive way forward than protesting and abusing faculty whose opinion is offensive to the crowd.
[Note: I am commenting here only on the Yale situation and not the Missouri situation]
Jeff Gissing 