Jonathan Kay [National Post, “From The Academy, Portraits In Pathology”, March 13] is shamefully generous toward leftist academics such as Ward Churchill and Noam Chomsky who venomously attack the West and Western values. Such creatures are not motivated by a “sense that life is inherently unfair” and a desire to support the “underdog.” Otherwise, they wouldn’t be so indifferent to victims of brutal dictatorships.
Ayn Rand, in essays such as “The Age of Envy,” demonstrated that the academics’ hatred of the West is rooted in post-Enlightenment philosophy, particularly its assault on the efficacy of reason and its advocacy of subjectivism (including moral relativism). This tragic development logically led to modern nihilism and what Miss Rand called “hatred of the good for being the good.”
Abandoning reason makes one a slave to one’s feelings and impotent to deal with reality. Since reality doesn’t conform to feelings, subjectivists experience frustration and self-loathing, which gets projected outwards as hatred toward reality and others, especially those individuals (or countries) who are successful and self-confident. Such subjectivists try to expose flaws in that which they hate, and thereby pretend a noble purpose, but what drives them is pure hatred of Western values such as reason, individualism and the pursuit of excellence.
By whitewashing their motives, Mr. Kay helps safeguard these haters from a proper public condemnation, thereby keeping them entrenched in the universities where they corrupt students and block pro-reason individuals from entering academia.
