Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Volume 31 Number 14. June 25, 1968

How Valid?

How Valid?

"Bull" does baffle brains, especially when clothed in a uniform, not of sergeants' stripe but of learned credentials.

Just how valid are these shrieks of moral outrage with which we are regaled at frequent intervals?

Have the protesters any right to seek to impose their views on others by using a camouflage of apparent learning?

To this writer it seems they have no such inherent right. Their views are of no more value than those of any diligent reader of the press. Most important of all, they are just as susceptible to the same vices—greed, intolerance and illiberal thought.

For some time we have been accustomed to pay undue attention to the thoughts of our scientists and academics.

This enchantment of their value as educators in widely disparate fields appears to be a product of modern times.

With the increasing complexity of living in the late 19th and 20th centuries, the layman is unable to comprehend all the marvels of civilisation laid before him.

The man with the key to these marvels is the man with the degree, for, are we not told that knowledge is power?

Previous to this age, the gifted amateur could often take his place among the learned. With persistence, he could stand on equal terms with the best of them.

Sometimes he could produce theories of his own which would compete with those of the professors, and which might even become accepted.

That time is now long past. We are, at present, in an age where man who knows everything about something is presumed to know something about everything.

This is a highly dangerous doctrine, creating as class of super-men. A "brave new world" where Huxley's "alphas" dominate.

In one way it is worse than Huxley's dream, for these intellectual super-men have not earned the right to dominate.

Their qualifications do not equip them to rule. But they are willing to arrogate to themselves this right to dispute the wishes of the rest of the people, however democratically expressed.

It matters little, apparently that with one voice they ask for their "rights" (freedom of thought and expression) and with another voice deny those rights to others.

When a noted pediatrician—Dr. Spock— counsels young men to defy the laws of his country, laws that have been passed by an elected and fully democratic legislature, he is not merely attacking a policy that he dislikes, but also attacking the whole right of a free people to regulate society in the manner it wishes.

When a lecturer at VUW, Mr. Chris Wainwright, peddles a cyclostyled sheet around a Wellington pub, in an effort to gather signatures and money for an advertisement in the New Zealand press supporting Spock and others, he is helping by implication to subvert democracy as we know it.

For a student entering a university, one of the first lessons to be learned is academic integrity.

It is not considered enough to read a right-wing critique of Karl Marx if one is studying him for a Political Science unit—it helps to read Marx himself.

When a Professor of Geography at VUW, Prof Keith Buchanan, writes a petulant letter to the University International Club, returning an invitation to attend a public address on the grounds that he does not agree with the political persuasions of the speaker, it bodes ill for the future of academic impartiality.

Or is International Club to promulgate a new Index Prohibitorum, and exclude those whose views are not orthodox—whatever that classification might entail?

The intellectual arrogance that can expound the old Jesuit credo of "the end justifies the means" is becoming too common.

"All men are equal, but some are more equal than others" is an appealing thought to the students and professors willing to cause disruption and take part in violence.

A feature of the rise of Fascism in Nazi Germany was the public burning of books and literature.

Books by "non-Aryans", books which advocated democratic ideals—in fact any literature which was inimical to the regime, was thrown on the pyre.

This book-burning ritual was also the routine in Indonesia at the time of confrontation and has been a feature of despotic and illiberal regimes around the world.

It was in this finest tradition of thought that students of Columbia University, New York, acted recently.

To round off their campaign of rioting and looting, they burnt the books and manuscripts of a professor, thought to oppose their aims.

One of the more fascinating displays of academic deviousness is offered by the liberal intellectual who pays lip-service to the virtues of democracy.

Ask him if it is right that the will of the greatest number should be carried out, and he will answer in the affirmative.

He will angrily defend the right of Kenyatta's government to dispossess Kenyan Asians of their lands and property—after all, it is the will of the people!

Then remind him that the latest public opinion polls show 74% of Britons support the views concerning racial problems of the much-misrepresented Enoch Powell — and listen to our careful university liberal change his tune.

With nauseating adroitness, he will explain exactly why it would be wrong for the two major parlies to carry out the wishes of the people.

Joan Baez . . . should we encourage her refusal to pay part of her taxes?

Joan Baez . . . should we encourage her refusal to pay part of her taxes?