A Footnote on Campus Craziness
4th December 2015
Steven Hayward at PowerLine blog passes on some observations by a commenter on the parallels between Now and Then:
One of the main characteristics they share is an obsession with “identity.” Reading on the collapse of Nazi Germany, about the last thing that went for them was “identity.” Even at the bitter end they were obsessed with it. Everyone had an identity – some mix of “race” or “ethnicity,” occasionally spiced with “gender” or conduct (usually misconduct). But by and large the identity you were born with defined you forever. It could never be transcended. Jews who had been heroes in World War I found themselves pilloried, at best barely tolerated. Successful (even lapsed) “Jewish” businessmen or doctors or academics found themselves scooped up almost as easily as the most mundane but orthodox Jewish clerk. Jews were simply irredeemable and no matter what they did to serve the Reich, they were always doomed. The same, only in a slightly lower degree of vehemence, went for Freemasons (whom the Nazis had an inexplicable obsession with), Gypsies, Slavs, et al.
Pace Godwin’s Law, there is a lot of resemblance between what is going on now on campus and what was going on then on campus. If the Black Lives Matter people start singing Tomorrow Belongs To Me, it’s time to leave.