Faux Morality of the Left

Connecticut College students cosplay revolution

Fanning Hall (Photo by Connecticut College)

In modern times, many astute cultural commentators have diagnosed contemporary society with the fatal disease of relativism. In particular, the late Cardinal Ratzinger in a homily to the College of Cardinals which would elect him Supreme Pontiff, spoke against a culture that dismissed supernatural faith and exalted a creed of narcissistic egoism:

Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine," seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.

Relativism, the dissolving of any and all moral conviction, was seen by Ratzinger as the antithesis to the clear conviction of Christianity. There is much insight into his diagnosis. In contemporary society, there is indeed an anti-morality which is totally incompatible with the Creed of Christian charity. This creed is egotistical and this creed is a stifling dictatorship that does not tolerate dissent. 

But I dare to disagree with the late pontiff in this central regard. This creed is not relativistic. It is highly, performatively, and ostentatiously moralizing. Call it what you will, political correctness, professional activism, or race narcissism; it is, as I have argued, the state ideology of Connecticut College. 

It views the world in, no pun intended, totally black-and-white moral categories. It animates real fervor in the psyches’ of its true believers. And it empowers them to simultaneously indulge in their own shallow narcissism and castigate those who don’t play along with their faux moral categorization.

This adolescent activist narcissism has long been a feature of college life. In 1968, barricades were again erected on the streets of Paris and the bloody red banner of the revolution was paraded through the boulevards of France. But these partisans were not trade unionists or the urban poor, they were the affluent and sexually self-indulgent sons and daughters of the French elite whittling away their time in France’s great universities reading pornographic and communistic literature.  

The great conservative government of Charles de Gaulle, which saved France from the economic and international catastrophe caused by the socialist governments of the 1950s and restored France to greatness, was shaken not primarily by the old French Revolutionary left, but by a student protest movement motivated by a desire to study less, get better dorms, and totally and violently overthrow consumer-capitalist society.

Back in the day, the powers that be had the good sense to send in riot police to knock some sense into these professional malcontents. Unfortunately, in the year 2023, the generation of the ‘Summer of Love’ has grown up to be the geriatric, rapidly graying, and utterly contemptible powers that be, which would overwhelmingly endorse an entirely unreasonable, disruptive, and anti-institutionalist protest movement. And do so in such a way as to optimally signal their perceived moral superiority in an oozing display of ill-deserved self-righteousness. 

The Conntrarian @The_Conntrarian

New Development🚨: 162 @ConnCollege faculty members put out a letter, calling for “Empower(ing) the DIEI with real institutional authority” and a search for a new president of the college.

Which brings us to the immediate situation of the fake controversy over President Bergeron’s canceled fundraiser to the Everglades Club. Much of what I said in my previous piece has been entirely vindicated. 

The extreme moralizing characteristic of the protest movement: 

Every ship that sailed in the Spanish Armada had a priest, in the Red Army every unit had a political commissar, and in modern America every college has a Dean of Institutional Equity and Inclusion. The function each plays in their respective system is essentially identical: to ensure ideological purity and orthodoxy and in each system this aim is held as a higher goal than the success of the organization managed by the clerical class. For the Spanish, Soviet, and College alike, purity of doctrine is more important than military or academic success in any traditional sense.

The gangsterish shakedown tactics: 

And like any shakedown, the subtext of the message is obvious to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear: give us more money. 

@blackvoicesconncoll: “DIEI is overworked, underpaid, and constantly disrespected.” Emphasis on underpaid. 

Which now includes, in addition to simply an indefinite sum of money for the DIEI office, establishing racial hiring quotas, and mandatory college-wide ideological training. 

The Conntrarian @The_Conntrarian

These demands include the resignation of @ConnCollege President Katherine Bergeron, increased funding for DIEI, and the "immediate prioritization of hiring more BIPOC faculty and staff throughout all offices with the inclusion of mandatory DIE sensitivity."

And an extraordinary display of theatrics, even as Conn’s theater is on a prolonged intermission:

the chorus of public whining, er… I mean “activism,” of the Connecticut College Connmunity will transform him overnight into a hot commodity in the fastest growing industry in America: professional race hustling.

But I must say that on this last point, the Connecticut College Community has exceeded my greatest expectations in both the scale and duration of their public tantrum against President Bergeron’s continued existence. The most recent stages in this drama even go beyond whining to actual disruption of college life. From play cancellations, to a takeover of college buildings, to most tellingly, a boycott of all academic life in the name of full-time activism.

sve.conncoll

A post shared by Student Voices For Equity [SVE] (@sve.conncoll)

The shadow of Rodmon King looms large over New London. All of these things are not the result of some genuine moral outrage over an actual injustice. The only true injustice is that Dean King had a salaried job in the first place. But the fact that white liberals at Connecticut College were deluded into creating an office with a title as ridiculous as Dean of Diversity Institutional Equity and Inclusion (deliberately more self-important and preposterous sounding than the typical Diversity Equity and Inclusion) shows the way in which the Left in this country has monopolized a new public faux morality. 

Like the morality of the student protestors of May of ‘68, this inane ideology has, as its stronghold, the adolescent self-serving narcissism of college students. Speaking from personal experience, I know the sort of student who engages in full-time agitation doesn’t need an excuse to skip class, but now this laziness is cloaked in moral self-righteousness. But it is unique in the extraordinarily and uniquely American way in which it places petty race grievances, not Marxist analysis, at the ideological center of its movement.

In the present controversy, the single most salient factor is that President Bergeron, a white woman, was accused by Rodmon King, a black man, of some wrongdoing. That fact alone under the faux morality of Connecticut College condemns her, ensures that the entire student and faculty body views her as a great villain, and guarantees her early retirement. 

I know full well that my public sympathy undermines, not strengthens, President Bergeron’s position. But this is simply the truth of the matter. President Bergeron will not continue to serve as Connecticut College’s president and the quality of the campus will objectively deteriorate as a new college president, a new empowered DIEI head, and a new self-righteous student and faculty body implements a college-wide black nationalist program. 

The only thing left for the minority of us who are not pleased with these facts is to utterly and entirely reject the faux morality of the left and embrace a new, good, and true moral framework.