Election Signals Cultural Decline

Submitted by Dave (United States), Oct 17, 2016 at 15:38

While it's tempting to focus on the personal shortcoming of Clinton and Trump, each embodies unsavory, but pervasive traits of our culture.
In Clinton we see political correctness in all its anti-intellectual glory: criticizing, or even openly analyzing Islam is racist; likewise with illegal immigration, or even discussing any immigration restrictions; likewise with minority crime rates or Black Lives Matter's love affair with terrorist groups. It's no wonder she concocted the video excuse for Benghazi, since the video involved a breach of her anti-free speech, hands-off-Islam agenda. Yet all of this is de rigueur in today's colleges, where the "wrong" views are shouted down.

In Trump, we see anti-political correctness: take all of the above and invert it, but then marry it to vulgarity and intellectual laziness. This is the visceral reaction of those who missed out on an elite education, and so have retained some common sense.

Blame our universities. They have tended to replace speculation with dogma, producing intellectual inferiority, so we get a knee-jerk leftist and a low-life jerk. Absent a radical change in higher education, America will continue to decline. But sure, I'll write in Pence.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".