William S. Lind

A university is supposed to be a place where ideas are considered thoughtfully. Whatever philosophy or theory is advanced—and any may be—must be supported by facts, logic and reason. In turn, it is subject to critical analysis, where reason may prove it false.

As students on any politically correct campus know, this is no longer how it works. A student or professor who dares to ask whether in fact men and women are different, races are different, or homosexuality is against nature is not replied to in reasoned discourse. What he gets instead is personal vilification, threats, and sometimes charges before some college kangaroo court, all accompanied by a howling chorus of whatever PC "victims" group he has dared "offend." Political Correctness itself is subject to no rational examination or critique; it must be accepted as a given, like the facts that the earth is flat and the moon is made of green cheese.

How then does political correctness advance itself in an academic setting, if it will not engage in rational discourse? The answer is, through psychological conditioning.

As I’ve noted in earlier columns, political correctness is essentially Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. This translation was made largely by the Marxist intellectuals of the Frankfurt School—Horkheimer, Adorno, Fromm, Marcuse—and the key to it was their combining of Marx with Freud.

The Frankfurt School drew philosophy from Freud, especially from his later works; Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization is subtitled "A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud." But they drew more than that. From Freud and from psychology generally they also drew the concept and techniques of psychological conditioning.

As example of such techniques is "normalizing." If something that is by nature abnormal—say, homosexuality—is presented often enough in a normal context, it can be made to seem normal. The process works on the subconscious, not on the intellect. Hollywood, which is wholly dominated by political correctness, uses this process constantly. By filling the television screen with manly homosexuals, women who are stronger than men, children wiser than their parents, and so on, it makes us think those situations are real and normal, even though in fact they are artificial and rare.

Political correctness works the same way in the university. Often it begins with freshmen orientation. There, incoming students are conditioned to perceive that "belonging" to their new institution means accepting homosexuality, feminism, special privileges for racial minorities and the like, while questioning any of these things places them outside the group.

The process is continued in the classroom. As in so many public schools, attitudes are considered more important than facts, logic, or truth. The student is conditioned to believe that being wrong is not very important, while being "insensitive" is very important indeed—and very bad. The old motto, "the truth hurts," is inverted; the professor responds much more strongly to the hurt than to the truth.

Conditioning by "normalizing" runs strongly through most campuses. For example, it is "normal" to have certain departments, such as women’s studies and black studies, where students must accept a certain point of view and no other is tolerated. The fact that this contradicts the whole purpose of a university is never mentioned. Similarly, is it "normal" for politically correct radicals to make demands and have them accepted by a groveling administration, but abnormal for, say, fraternity brothers to do the same.

Unfortunately, this replacement of intellectual debate by psychological conditioning renders the university itself a fraud. It is no longer a school but a Skinner box. Its students may graduate with certain politically correct attitudes, but they will not have received an education. They will not know Pushkin from pushpin.

The solution is obvious: force political correctness to compete on a level playing ground, one where the conscious intellect is the dominant player. Why doesn’t it happen? Because the trustees and administrators of the university have themselves already been psychologically conditioned. Of such stuff are tyrannies ever made.