Cal Thomas: A mind is a terrible thing to lose

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, December 14th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. WORLD Commentator Cal Thomas says author C. S. Lewis can help us understand the new wave of anti-Semitism on campus.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: We are constantly told how necessary it is to find the “root causes” of everything, from crime, to illegal immigration, to the wave of antisemitism spreading across many college campuses.

Often, this call to examine root causes is simply a distraction that avoids coming up with solutions. Some may celebrate last weekend’s resignation of Liz Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, after she refused to unequivocally denounce genocide against Jews. But it’s worth pointing out Magill will stay on as interim president until a replacement is found and will also remain a tenured professor. Let’s not kid ourselves that Magill’s resignation is going to solve anything so long as this attitude prevails among many faculty members and the boards that hire university presidents. The latest news involves a panel hosted by George Washington University that defended Hamas’ “right of resistance.” It will likely not be the last of such revelations as other universities confront this issue and their conduct codes.

Over the last decades, many academic institutions jettisoned basic standards by which right and wrong, good and evil can be defined and judged. If everybody is right; if truth is subjective, then nothing can be said to be wrong which has brought us to the current moral chaos.

Author C.S. Lewis knew right and wrong and how wrong dominates when standards disappear. In his classic book The Abolition of Man, Lewis wrote: “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

It’s difficult to improve on that critique, but Lewis does in this quote that also has modern implications: “For every one pupil who needs to be guarded against a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity…The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes.”

The propagandists are in place throughout America’s education system, especially at the college level. The rotting intellectual fruit of their excesses can now be seen on campuses and in the streets as some students call for the elimination of the Jewish democratic state and the murder of Jews.

Lewis isn’t finished in his critique of academia: “An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man’s mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut…”

Yes, a mind is a terrible thing to waste. It is also a terrible thing to lose.

I’m Cal Thomas.

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