The university used to be a word that carried in its root the idea that there is a unified world view that needed to be imparted to students if they were to get their money's worth.

But the masters of the university no longer believe that. They have rejected the notion that the institution exists to teach ethical character and independent thinking. The new paradigm is taken from the German university model designed to let professors do whatever they want. Teaching can be left to graduate students who are dependent for their job tickets on these same unaccountable professors.

Why no guidance? Why no insistence on teaching per the old paradigm? The modern intellectual consensus is that there is nothing certain that can be known (except that they are certain that nothing is certain). Since there is no way to say what is right or wrong, professors should be free to do whatever they want.

This view in the humanities fields is known as multiculturalism. Multiculturalism teaches that all cultures are equally worthy except for traditional western Christian civilization. That, as we all are supposed to know, is bad.

There are very deadly consequences that flow out of this point of view. If western civilization is bad, then any attack on it, no matter how outrageous or lethal, is not the fault of the attacker. Actually, we Westerners have it coming.

This is how we sink to the blame-the-victim perversity that has taken nearly total control of America�s universities. This also helps us understand why those in academe who celebrated the carnage on 9/11 and lionized the murderers were never fired from their cushy university jobs. Of course those professors have a right to say what they want, but those who pay their salaries also have a right not to be forced to pay them to say it.

While "blaming the victim" is not in vogue in most non-western schools, it is all the rage in our contemporary American schools.

Zero tolerance is rooted in multiculturalism and blame-the-victim thinking. When the ordinary actions of an elementary school kid drawing a soldier with a rifle or using his fingers to represent a gun -- gets him suspended from school, we have just about hit bottom.

Jim Nelson Black is the author of Freefall of the American University. He describes how multiculturalism is at work in much the same way Big Brother operated in George Orwell�s 1984. When a people have their history concealed from them long enough, there is eventually no one left who can remember what really happened. Then reality is only what we hear from Big Brother (aka, the PC Speech Police who enforce multiculturalism).

We are at the point now that bedwetting is taken for the highest level of argumentation -- critical thinking and knowledge of history having all but disappeared. Bringing up an obvious fact, such as Muslim Jihadis quote from the Koran to justify their insatiable desire to murder their way to worldwide dominion, is considered offensive. Anything offensive is not permitted. Certainly no one will be allowed to call Islamic Jihadism evil. Calling something evil might lead some people to want to defend themselves from it.

That the Jihadi�s reading of the Koran has fueled 1400 years worth of murder and oppression is not considered to be relevant. Jihad is not the problem. The West is. Remember. Blame the victim. The victim has it coming.

Black makes a compelling argument that if you do not want your children and grandchildren to be intellectually and morally neutered, then great care is needed in choosing a university. And even with that, one is not finished with due diligence. Keep talking to your students. It would also be a good idea to subscribe to the campus newspaper. If there is more than one on campus, make sure you get the one the administration likes. That�s where the nutcases write.

If we fail to pay attention to, and ultimately take control of, American universities, our students will be graduating with a hatred of the very culture and Constitution that has produced and fostered the richest and freest country in the world. Students influenced by the professors of Big Brother U. will eagerly vote their freedoms away.

One of the signs that the multiculturalists have won will be the illegalizing of self defense. As in England now, people defending themselves against criminal attack will be the ones going to jail.

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My interview with Black can be heard by going to the Live Fire archives at http://gunowners.org/radio.htm. Freefall of the American University has many excellent suggestions for protecting students from professors and university administrators. Freefall is as important for home defense as is a good gun.

� 2006 Larry Pratt - All Rights Reserved

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