350
PARTISAN REVIEW
the ideology. Many of them don't. But to use your phrase, this combi–
nation of naivete and cynicism is not a good prescription for a healthy
citizenry. Also, you said we should distinguish between the leading insti–
tutions and other institutions. There is a distinction to be drawn there,
but it seems to me the second- and third-rung institutions have no
greater amibition than to emulate the elite institutions. The way they
accomplish this is by hiring the graduate students and the younger
professors away from the elite institutions. They are never happier than
when imitating the greatest excesses of the Dukes, the Yales, the Prince–
tons, and so on.
In his prepared paper, Roger Kintball elaborated:
We are all fa–
miliar with the horror stories: the stories about teachers who teach his–
tory as a battle for ethnic pride or political re-education, administrators
who seek to inculcate virtue by outlawing the expression of unfashion–
able opinions, and professors who assure us that the possession of a high
level of melanin is a necessary presupposition of superior mental develop–
ment. I will take for granted that we need not spend the day agonizing
over whether the phenomena of multiculturalism and political correct–
ness are problems. Whatever differences of opinion may separate us, we
know that we are facing a serious problem in our schools and universi–
ties, and we can be most productive if we work toward establishing
some common ground.
We should begin by abandoning the myth of the middle. It is com–
mon in gatherings like this for speakers to position themselves in this
realm of indeterminate moderation, speciously distinguishing themselves
from caricatured versions of the right and the left. As the English critic
William Hazlitt recognized, this procedure is both intellectually dishonest
and needlessly divisive.
In
his essay on the "common-place critic," Hazlitt
lampooned this timid creature, the common-place critic, who searches
for truth in the middle, "between the extremes of right and wrong."
There are some issues - and the battle over multiculturalism and political
correctness is one - that cannot be decided by splitting the difference.
One must take a stand.
There is the related problem of rhetoric. The temptation to position
oneself in a specious middle ground on these issues is exacerbated by the
high rhetorical stakes involved. Like most modern tyrannies, the dicta–
torship of the politically correct freely uses and abuses the rhetoric of
virtue in its effort to enforce conformity and silence dissent. This is part
of what makes it so seductive. How gratifying to know that one is
automatically on the side of virtue! How heartwarming to know that
one is enlisted in the party of history! Who wants to declare himself a
partisan of reaction? Who isn't on the side of innovation?
