Nietzsche’s vision Ubermensch (Superman), now dances in the heads of most young people in our society today. Nietzsche’s Ubermensch (Superman) stood blithely beyond the conventional categories of good and evil and determined the meaning of his life through his limitless will to power. Full Article
By now the whole world has heard about comedian Kathy Griffin’s appalling staged-photo of herself holding a mock-up of the bloody, severed head of Donald Trump. Despite her rather pathetic apology, a firestorm of protest has broken out pretty much everywhere. To say that this stunt was in poor taste or, in the parlance of our times, “offensive,” would be the understatement of the decade. At a time when the most barbarous people on the planet are, in point of fact, decapitating their enemies and holding up the h
eads as trophies, it simply beggars belief that Griffin would have imagined this escapade as an acceptable form of social protest.
But I would like to situate what Griffin did in a wider context, for it is but a particularly brutal example of what is taking place throughout our society, especially on university campuses. Speakers of a more conservative stripe, ranging from serious academics such as Charles Murray and Heather McDonald to provocateurs such as Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos, have been shouted down, obstructed, insulted, and in extreme cases physically assaulted on the grounds of institutes of higher learning throughout the United States. Very recently, at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, a tenured professor was compelled to hold his biology class in a public park. His crime? He had publicly criticized a planned “Day of Absence” during which white students, staff, and faculty were coerced into leaving the campus, since people of color claimed they felt “unsafe” at the college. For calling this blatantly racist move by its proper name, the professor was, of course, himself labeled a racist and mobs of angry students shut down his classes, forcing him to lecture in the park.
What is most striking to me in all of this is the obvious lack of anything resembling rational argument. Students are not posing counter-positions, marshaling evidence, drawing logical conclusions, proposing more convincing scenarios, etc. In a word, they are not arguing with their opponents. They are bullying them, drowning them out, intimidating them, physically attacking them. This is not only irrational; it is deeply disrespectful, for it fundamentally denies the humanity of their adversaries. Nowhere is this de-humanization more patently evident than in the case of Kathy Griffin’s protest.
