Draft:DisOriented: the 13 Isms That Will Send You To Intellectual La-La Land

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Great and terrible Books

On our shelf:

Intrinsic Inclinations Model America's War on Sex Great man theory Not in Our Genes Anti-Oedipus Ra Material

Writer's block

H. P. Lovecraft Jiddu Krishnamurti John Shelby Spong Arthur Koestler Lucretius Ma Kwang-soo v - t - e

DisOriented: the 13 Isms That Will Send You to Intellectual La-La Land (may also be titled DisOrientation: How to Go to College Without Losing Your Mind) is the overly long title of an essay collection edited by John Zmirak that your author was forced to read in her senior year of high school. The book has several editions, with the first being published in 2010 and the version referenced here being the 2016 edition. The book claims to be a way for you to avoid brainwashing by those stupid libs when you go into higher education, based on the notion that you will be bombarded with evil progressive ideologies the moment you set foot on your campus.

Above all else, the book argues that you, as a Catholic, are in a fight against the intellectual elite that makes up every public university in the United States and/or that makes up the world itself, and it is your job to think differently and make your own decisions. You know, like deciding to think for yourself and not listen to the drivel that the Church- er, that your professors feed you. The back-cover blurb and the introduction by Zmirak rely on anti-intellectualism, while the articles themselves are somewhat varied in tone, direction, and intention.

Sophomore Follies

Multiculturalsim

This chapter was written by Robert Spencer, an author and anti-Jihadist. Though unrelated to the other Spencer, Robert is very similar to Richard in that he hates Muslims. A lot. He is the founder of the Jihad Watch blog, a blog dedicated to spreading Islamaphobic rhetoric. Notably, it was discovered that two of his books were used in FBI training modules as recently as 2009.

Spencer opens the chapter with a quote from Saul Bellow, a fellow author and critic of postmoderism and multiculturalsim: "Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans? I'd be glad to read him." From there, Spencer argues that although a proponent of diversity (read: someone who is not racist) would argue that such a person does exist, and that their work is not read as the result of things like white supremacy or other nonsense like that, the truth is that some people simply don't want to acknowledge that maybe some nations are just inherently better than others, because I said so. Spencer then goes on to defend mass murderer Nidal Hasan because if someone had reported him beforehand, the Muslim interest groups would rise up; argue that multiculturalists actually hate Catholicism and Judaism; and state that the fact that many European countries have open borders is leading to a world where their views are respected, and the views of white society are being diminished. Yeesh.

The rest of the chapter is more or less the same drivel: false equivalences of "Nazi Germany and... human-sacrificing Aztec Mexico" being "essentially moral[ly] equivalent," how modern feminists have sympathy for Muslim women, etc etc. Moving on.

Junior Delusions

Cynicism

This chapter was written by Fr. George Rutler of St. Michael's Church in New York City. He is an author and alleged sexual assaulter. Aside from that, he has done a lot of positive social work for the city of New York, and has contributed to scholarly articles on the faith and the church.

This chapter is a little disjointed. It begins with Fr. Rutler arguing that cynicism is present among young, college-age people because when he was in college in the mid-1960s, students had pride for their schools and sang to their alma maters with reverence, and now they don't, instead treating it like a joke or object of mockery. Now, one would think that a guy who became a Catholic priest would love the idea that young people don't treat their schools of choice like false idols to worship, but logic is not a driving factor in the writing of these essays. He continues on to say that modern students feel cynical as the result of (insert whatever buzzword you want in here), and because they don't have enough Jesus in their lives, and so on. Despite having been a college student in one of the most turbulent points in American history, Fr. Rutler skims over some reasons why students both then and now would have reason to be nervous or cynical about life, such as the Kent State massacre, the civil rights movement, the threat of nuclear annihilation, the Manson murders, or any of the other awful things that happened between 1965 and 1972. No, it's those damn cellphones and rock musics and... ugly campus buildings. Yes, architecture is a labelled section in this essay, and also a non-sequitur, considering that many supposedly ugly campus buildings (presumably brutalist or modernist in design) were built before the 1960s and are thus not a product of the most evil decade in American history.

The most illogical part of this chapter has to be the provided definition of cynicism, not from any dictionary but from Fr. Rutler himself:

an intellectual stance that seeks to debunk the motives of other people and “expose” commonly treasured ideals -- generally for the sake of making the cynic feel superior to others, or freeing him from the necessity of attaining difficult virtues.

When you deconstruct this definition, Fr. Rutler's position makes less sense. In essence, he is saying here that anyone who dares to challenge tradition, to think freely, or to go against an establishment is a cynic in some way. But wait, isn't the point of this book to challenge the establishment? Yes. See, your takeaway from this chapter (and this whole book) is that you can criticize whomever you want, as long as it isn't the Church, because that's always correct, no matter what, and everyone else is always wrong, no matter what.

Moreover, this definition has some interesting implications. Although Fr. Rutler uses his definition to decry young free-thinkers, atheists, modern art enjoyers, and anyone with a shade of progressivism as a cynic, by his own definition Jesus Christ would be a cynic. After all, Jesus rallied against an establishment (the Sanhedrin/Jewish faith/Roman empire), challenged tradition (Jewish Law), and thought for Himself rather than just blindly followed whatever everyone around Him was saying. Many saints and historical religious leaders would also fall under this definition for similar reasons. Even some of the great scientific minds of the past -- such as Galileo Galilei, Albert Einstein, and Isaac Newton -- people that Fr. Rutler would likely agree were significant and important figures, are also cynical skeptics who dared to challenge established scientific and religious teaching, and who refused to back down or give in to the establishment.

Overall, Fr. Rutler fails to make a real point in his essay. He conflates a dislike of college traditions with the rejection of all that is good (read: old and traditional), and does not recognize the hypocrisy in his own definitions and arguments.

Bonus Essay: Commencement Heresy

Commencement Heresy sounds like the name of a Testament album.