You're a Professor, Really?

Without a doubt, the most frequent left-wing attack on me and my writing is some variation of, "I can't believe you're a professor."

The "I can't believe you're a professor" attack is not really a repudiation of ideas (the slur almost never comes with an actually rebuttal of the issues at hand), but is meant ultimately to excoriate, to harm, to indict, and to inflict pain against those who refuse the progressive party line. And Lenin forbid (not God, for they are atheist) a professor of political science deviate from the left's ongoing campaign to dominate all the institutions of cultural values and learning.

Note here that I am just reporting this, not complaining. Leftists have no power over me as an activist and thinker, since I don't let them.

Still, it's just extraordinary how the "I can't believe you're a professor" attack reveals how entrenched is the totalitarian mindset among secular progressives. The thought that someone who holds traditional views would actually be standing in front of a classroom filled with young people, debating issues with facts and reason, is simply horrifying to those marinated in an ideology of hated and intolerance. Leftists mean to intimidate. Their goal is to shout down, to repudiate, to scourge, and to demonize those who find reason in faith and values, and especially those who are best able to cut through the postmodernist clutter to reveal the left's project of nihilistic relativism and destruction of culture.

The left wants to obliterate right and wrong. What happens on my blog - the attacks and the endless trolling by the nihilist extremists - is a miniature version of the media establishment's campaign against Carrie Prejean. Just the thought that someone like Prejean could hold traditional values, and especially that she'd stand up for them in public, brings out the cultural barbarians of the left. They constantly attempt to beat down people like Carrie Prejean, and in so doing they only reveal the depths of their own depravity.

I wrote the other day on Tristero at Hullabaloo, and his embarrassingly lame defense of atheistic culture (in his ignorance, Tristero attacked Sam Harris as an "asshole," although Harris' books are at the top of the pantheon of popular atheist radicalism).

In response, I get this in the comments from "Anonymous":

It boggles the mind to think that you are employed at an institution of higher learning. The intelligence one finds in your writing is typical of a junior-high school student. A very sheltered and rather unimaginative one.

"Anonymous" makes absolutely no effort to defend Tristero's stupidity, nor does he make any argument of his own. "Anonyomous" just attacks. He rejects my intelligence and my standing as a professor. How dare you deviate of the prevailing ideological program!

As noted, these attacks are common. I saved a classic example of the "I can't believe you're a professor" slur from a post last year, "Matt Yglesias, Jennifer Palmieri, and the Third Way." As some readers know, Matthew Yglesias is an American communist. There is no position that's too far to the left for that man. Thus my takedown of Yglesias at the post above brought out this attack from "chrsux," who took saw my "pro-victory" profile at the sidebar, and bared his fangs:

Re: "pro-victory Associate Professor of Political Science" ...

So, is this a tenure track position?

Perhaps if you taught at some place other than long beach community college, your vocation might carry some weight. As it stands, your position affords you the same amount of respect as someone whose profile reads: "pro-victory guy standing on a random street corner"

Note something about this one: It's not just the "I can't believe you're a professor" attack, but it's also the "you're not really a professor" variant, since I teach at a two-year college. The attack on my status as professor at community college is particularly informative. By attacking community colleges as "not real colleges," leftists provide the perfect signal of their alliance with nation's cultural elite (especially the tenured radicals who long ago infiltrated the universities, turning them into training grounds for the shock troops of the revolution). Leftists thus demonstrate the total hypocrisy of their ideology. Radicals care nothing about the lives and hardships of many in the classic community college demographic: the minorities, the poor, and those without even the basic reading skills to comprehend a Marxist tract.

It's not just in the comments either.

The appropriately-named Deranged Left-Wing Baker wrote an entire post chronicling his disbelief and frustration at my rationalism: "A Professor, Really?":

The more I read American Power, the harder it is for me to believe that Donald Douglas is actually a professor. He has to be either intellectually dishonest or have severe comprehension problems. Either way, I pity the student who has to suffer under his tutelage.

The last sentence is especially key, the "pitying the student" who's not under the allegedly superior tutelage of some far left-wing professor ramming doctrines of anti-capitalist hatred and postmodern anti-rationalist epistemology down the throats of his students.

Deranged Left-Wing Baker links to one of the prominent antagonists of this blog, TBogg at Firedoglake.

TBogg's cultivated the "I can't believe you're a professor" slur to high art: I'm smeared as the "JuCo Toynbee," which includes the snarky reference to "junior college," itself a term that's out of fashion in the community college academy as derograting the crucial role in education that two-year colleges serve.

But the resistance to me is clear from all of this: I stand up for moral clarity, reason, and truth. But we can't have that in the 21st century. Pretty soon, if leftists had their way, I'd be down on my knees apologizing to the commissars at the gates of the gulag, repudiating my offenses to the high collectivist state as a capitalist roader and a traitor to his eminence, "The One."

As was true of Carrie Prejean, leftists won't stop their campaign of villification until they control all of the institutions of the cultural superstructure.

This is why I fight. It's a battle for the soul of the nation, and every minute I'm engaged is worth the effort to preserve, what little I can, the exceptionalism that's made this country great, not to mention the liberty that allows the secular collectivists to mount their program of cultural extermination in the first place.