[lbo-talk] Destroying the humanities

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Oct 14 07:32:54 PDT 2010


Andy wrote: It's his way of saying, "You're cute!"

Actually, I'm quite serious. Interesting and sometimes useful conversation goes on in some humanitiesd classrooms, but to see the (possible) "destruction" of those classrooms as a major tragedy, at the level of the everyday horror of capitalism is so much bullshit.

As of 55 years ago I ossessed the highest security clearance the U.S. has, for NSA, and I even did some fairly brilliant work in my discovery that Czech Border Guard traffic was not one-time pad but rather used isomorphic key. My "humanist" beliefs were wholly compatible with my 'deserving' that security clearance. And when I first taught Swift's "Modest Proposal" in freshman comp classes at Michigan, I taught it as a satire on "utopian" projects (e.g. Marxism). In other words, all my humanist training nicely supported reactionary views of the world and comfort with such outrages as the overthrow of Mossedegh or the fury of the U.S. bombing of North Korea or the subversion of Arbenz in Guatemala, etc. I remember 5 Michigan Grad students sitting around a table in a Ypsilanti Bar at 2 a.m., 4 of us veterans (Army, Navy, Air Force), the fifth a woman who questioned whether the S.U. was an threat to us -- What would they have to gain, she asked. We all four jumped on her. We were all brilliant students of the humanities!

Might makes right is the central principle of the struggle for human freedom.

Carrol

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