The Secret Knowledge

performed no service.⁵⁵ Perhaps they did, and perhaps not, but a lot of people who gave over their money to them thought they did.⁵⁶ And one must reason that the money these folks played around with came, originally, from investors interested—I will not say “greedily,” but “intensely” in an increase of the entrusted funds. It is not “fair” to execrate the failed CEO and to exempt the failed pitcher. It is irrational. As the idea of “fairness” is, itself, irrational.

The baseball pitcher brought us some enjoyment, so he does not fall, in our Jacobin dreams; but if we did not possess the excess funds to dabble in the stock market, its director has brought us neither enjoyment, reward, nor hope of the same, so we award ourselves the enjoyment of his humiliation.

The socialistic spirit of the Left indicts ambition and the pursuit of wealth as Greed, and appeals, supposedly on behalf of “the people,” to the State for “fairness.”

But such fairness can only be the non-Constitutional intervention of the State in the legal, Constitutional process—awarding, as it sees fit, money (reparations), preferment (affirmative action), or entertainment (confiscation).

Ivan Boesky, stock manipulator and convict, said, in a speech at the University of California at Berkeley in 1986, Greed is good.

Greed is not good, greed is bad. Ambition is neutral, and the distinction is subjective, sometimes difficult, and no business of the State.

Who is to say that the success we applaud (that of the pitcher or quarterback, for example) stems from one and not the other? Can we know? Is it our business? It is not, save in a theocracy, whether Puritan, or its current remanifestation as Socialist—Humanist.

We cannot know, neither is it our business to know, what is in another’s heart. We can judge the results of his actions and reward them should they meet our needs. When we are no longer free to do so, we will have eliminated not Greed but Free Enterprise, and with it, all other freedoms.

24

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

I was teaching a seminar on dramatic structure at a university. All was going well, until I suggested that the heroine of the story we were constructing be kidnapped by some Arab terrorists. One student asked, “Haven’t the Arabs been picked on enough? Why,” he asked, “did you specify Arabs? As terrorists.” “I don’t know,” I said. “They came to mind, perhaps as Arab terrorists bombed New York.” Another student suggested the Pakistanis might be the villain of this piece, and a third said, “That’s just not funny.”

But, my golly, I said, can the piece have no villain? Are we to suggest that, since any actor must himself have characteristics, we strive to create a featureless villain, to our choice of which then, could be ascribed no attempt at derogatory racial or social comment? Whereupon the class degenerated in a way which, seemed to me, must be rather usual, for the students lapsed into rather stilted and formulaic repetition of pronouncements.

Everything, it seemed, was political, and their job was to inform the ignorant of it. The Ignorant, in this classroom, were myself and the young woman who suggested the Pakistanis. A young Idealogue broadened his thesis, it was not only the responsibility of the dramatist, he taught, to refrain from stereotyping, but to use every aspect of the drama to enforce upon the public a humanitarian view of the world. Homosexuals, for instance, he said, should be seen kissing onstage whenever possible, was it not an outrage that the part of Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire was always played by a woman? Why could it not be played by a man?

“Well,” I said, “it could be played by a man. Streetcar is essentially a gay fantasy written by a gay writer, and clothed in straight terms.” This gave the young fellow pause, for he was not sure if my comment supported or opposed his thesis.

For, in fact, he was not sure what his thesis was, but I think it could be reduced to this: all speech should be susceptible to his review on the basis of a series of precepts which, while they could not be cogently enumerated, might be inferred from the generalized precept that all people are equal, and anyone from whose actions a dedication to this principle could not be constantly inferred was a subhuman swine.

“Well, all right,” I asked, “are homosexuals human?” He answered that of course they were human. “Being human,” I asked, “are they entitled to the same rights as any other human?” “Of course,” he replied. “Well, then,” I said, “if one of those is the right to entertainment, might we not study to entertain them, by learning how to structure a play?”

But the class had ticked over into what I recognized was a usual stage of progression; someone had taken the high ground and shouted “racist,” or “homophobe,” first and loudest, and all who did not wish to be so branded must submit to his dominance, for did he not speak in the name of all the Good?

“All right,” I said. “Here’s my favorite joke: What did Custer say when he saw the Indians coming?” (PAUSE) “ ‘Here come the Indians.’ ” This was met with that pause we all know, within which the right-minded search for a clue as to the comment’s indictability. Was it a criticism of the Native Americans? How could it be otherwise? On the other hand, were not these people actually called Indians? “Here come the Native Americans,” of course, does not scan. And so on, ran that dreary brutally foolish pause which was the end of the class and is the end of Liberal Education.

What is Liberal Education? It has become an indoctrination in aggressive Identity Politics, a schooling, that is, in the practice of indictment, assault, exclusion, and contempt, all of which contradicts the statement of Universal Humanity upon which all its educational “ideology” rests.⁵⁷

But here was my question: On leaving the university, what would these Young Stalinists do? Who would pay them for the ability to bravely proclaim, “That’s not funny?” In what society could they live?

They were and are the children of privilege—in some the privilege is inherited, and the cost of college meaningless, in some the cost is huge, and families suffer; but in all cases the privilege taught, learned, and imbibed, in a “liberal arts education” is the privilege to indict. These children have, in the main, never worked, learned to obey, command, construct, amend, or complete—to actually contribute to the society. They have learned to be shrill, and that their indictment, on the economy, on sex, on race, on the environment, though based on no experience other than hearsay, must trump any discourse, let alone opposition. It occurred to me that I had seen this behavior elsewhere, where it was called a developmental difficulty.

A nine-year-old boy is rowdy—he needs to run, to subvert, to climb, to misuse, to expend his energies and explore.