Table of Contents
Praise
Title Page
Dedication
Preface
PART ONE - SIGNPOSTS ALONG THE WAY
LETTER 1 - No, Zachary, Glenn Beck Isn’t Charles Manson
LETTER 2 - How Being for Equality Makes You Better than Other People
LETTER 3 - “The Trees”
LETTER 4 - Social Security and Racism
LETTER 5 - Roger Bannister and the Twenty-Five-Year Mile
LETTER 6 - The Unholy Trinity of Diversity
LETTER 7 - Explaining Unexplained Variance
LETTER 8 - How to Slay Goliath with Just One Stone
LETTER 9 - Trading Live Babies for Government Programs
LETTER 10 - Blood Money
LETTER 11 - Punishing Abortion
LETTER 12 - The Law of Outliers
LETTER 13 - Liberals N the Hood
LETTER 14 - How LBJ Abandoned Kitty Genovese
LETTER 15 - Camelot
LETTER 16 - The Case for Transistor Control Legislation
LETTER 17 - Government Subsidies and Spousal Abuse
LETTER 18 - We Don’t Need No School of Education
LETTER 19 - I Earned My B.S. in Victimology
LETTER 20 - The Fear of Ideas
LETTER 21 - Tolerance Presupposes a Moral Judgment
LETTER 22 - Fox and Foes
LETTER 23 - Rester in Peace
LETTER 24 - The F-Bomb
LETTER 25 - Of Mice and Mensa
LETTER 26 - Profiles in Anonymity
PART TWO - THE HEART OF THE MATTER
LETTER 27 - The Constitution Is Dead (Because God Isn’t)
LETTER 28 - Like a Good Neighbor
LETTER 29 - Mickey’s Last at Bat
LETTER 30 - The Silent Scream
LETTER 31 - Killing Till
LETTER 32 - Men without Spines
LETTER 33 - How to Answer a False Accusation of Homophobia
LETTER 34 - Matthew 23
LETTER 35 - How Great Mao Art
Acknowledgments
Index
Copyright Page
PRAISE FOR LETTERS TO A YOUNG PROGRESSIVE
“When it comes to skewering liberal academia, Mike Adams has no peer. But in this book he goes beyond skewering. Letters to a Young Progressive is a full-on indictment of the radical secularism on our university campuses that relentlessly attacks our kids’ faith in the God of the Bible and encourages them to embrace radical ideologies. As a professor, Adams has seen the results from the inside, and he’s also directly combating these forces and making a positive difference. This book is essential—as is Adams’s work on campus dealing with young adults. We need more like him in the trenches if we are to help save the younger generation from the onslaught of forces militantly hostile to God and traditional values.”
—DAVID LIMBAUGH, New York Times bestselling
author of The Great Destroyer, Persecution,
and Crimes Against Liberty
“Quite often it’s not what you don’t know that causes you problems, but what you think you know that really isn’t so. With the wit of Twain and the logic of Buckley, Mike Adams shows why much of what liberals teach our kids really isn’t so. Adams exposes the false assumptions liberals make about human nature, and how many liberal positions are literally logically self-defeating. Don’t go to college or join the next victim movement without reading this book!”
—FRANK TUREK, founder and president
of CrossExamined.org, co-author of
I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist
and Legislating Morality, and author
of Correct, Not Politically Correct
“I thank God for Mike Adams. His book is way more than an entertaining read, though it is that! It’s a call to a self-righteous generation to give up imaginary causes that inflate the ego but do nothing to promote real justice in the culture. The chapters on abortion alone are worth the purchase price! If you are a conservative student or parent, read this to engage a center-left nation that would rather feel than think!”
—SCOTT KLUSENDORF, president
of the Life Training Institute
“Four decades ago I could have used a professor like Mike Adams who cared enough to challenge the Marxist thinking into which I fell. If you love a student who is also succumbing, this book is an ideal present. Two hours with it can awaken a propagandized brain that will otherwise wallow in two or more years of misery.”
—MARVIN OLASKY, editor in chief of World News Group,
and author of The Tragedy of American Compassion
To Marilyn Adams,
a praying mother who never gave up on me
Preface
The story you are about to read is true, though the hero of our tale is a composite character, representing countless students I’ve taught over the years. They enroll in universities for a valuable education and instead become increasingly enraged at the world and disgusted with other people. This is unfortunate, because they are getting angry over things that aren’t even true. They are misled by a miserable generation of professors acting on the principle that misery loves company.
In North Carolina, where I teach, parents who didn’t get to go to college themselves work and save and sacrifice so that they can proudly send their kids to join the alleged best and brightest and be successful. But after a short time on a university campus, the kids start rejecting their parents’ values—the very values that have provided for their education. Ironic, isn’t it? Sometimes the parents begin to wonder whether they’re making a wise investment by sending their kids to college—or at least to a secular college. Tensions arise between kid and parent, and the parent notices that the kid has stopped respecting the parent’s point of view. I notice, too. When I comment on students’ angry outbursts of disdain for other people, suggesting they might show a little more humility, I inevitably hear back, “You sound just like my dad.”
When I began writing these letters, I didn’t realize I was writing a book. In fact, when I first wrote the first letter, I was already at work on a completely different book. But after a series of encounters with students whose worldview had been soured by progressive education, I thought of all the other bright kids across the country, tens of thousands of them, who are intellectually impressionable because they are bright, and how they are being led astray by professors who take pleasure in making students angry and alienated. I wanted to do something to counter that.
If this account sounds personal, that’s because it is. I was once one of those bright kids, lost for seventeen angry years because of professors who lured me into their reasonless angst. It almost killed me. But I survived.
Unlike most true stories, this one has a happy, if surprising, ending. Start reading and keep on reading. Don’t cheat by flipping forward to the last chapter. The destination requires a journey.
PART ONE
SIGNPOSTS ALONG THE WAY
“Rhetoric is no substitue for reality.”
—Thomas Sowell
LETTER 1
No, Zachary, Glenn Beck Isn’t Charles Manson
Dear Zach,
I hope your semester is going well. I’ve been pleased to have you in my class on famous American trials (CRM 425 or “Trials of the Century”), and I’m taking the time to write in response to a remark you made during our recent discussion of the Manson case.
As you undoubtedly recall, we were discussing Charles
Manson, who directed members of his “Family” to commit a series of grisly murders in 1969, and when I noted that Manson had exploited his followers through fear, you interrupted, “Sort of like Glenn Beck?”
I probably have too many pet peeves for a man of my age, and students’ blurting out questions or comments without raising a hand—particularly when I am in the middle of a sentence and the comment leads the discussion astray—is one of them.
But I haven’t written to scold you. I can’t do that because I don’t have the moral authority to do so. You see, I used to be like you. Let me explain.
A fundamentalist Baptist mother and an atheist father raised me, and when I went off to college in 1983, I declared myself an agnostic. Had I remained an agnostic, things might not have been so bad. But instead, while I was a graduate student, I declared myself an atheist. There was nothing intellectual about my decision to become an atheist; it was behavior-driven.
In 1989, I began a short career as a professional musician to help pay for school, and started experimenting with amphetamines and methamphetamines. The drugs nearly killed me. In late 1990, I had a fight with my girlfriend and suddenly found myself taking a trip to the emergency room after my heart stopped beating. That was a direct result of the pills. I later realized I also had a serious problem with alcohol.
I was passionate about being an atheist. I once told a fellow graduate student, the wife of a pastor, to “Go [rhymes with ”truck“] yourself” when she tried to “witness” to me.
I adopted leftist politics to go with my atheism. The connection to the progressive worldview was clear and simple. In rejecting Christianity, I had rejected the Judeo-Christian view of man as a fallen being. Instead, I believed that we could create a utopia through politics. I felt contempt for conservative Christians who stood in the way of progress, who did not realize that man was fundamentally good and perfectible. We didn’t need God; we only needed the right laws, the right people in office, and the right social conditions, and then everything would be perfect—all the world’s problems would be solved.
I pretended to be an intellectual atheist, but really I had adopted this worldview because it allowed me to live a life unencumbered by morality, to sleep with a different woman every night, and not to feel bad about it—or so I thought. What really happened was that treading the path of militant liberal atheism made me an angrier and angrier person—the sort of person, in fact, who would compare a talk show host to a serial killer.
That is why I am writing to you today. I know that you have been spending a lot of time on left-wing websites like the Daily Kos and Media Matters, the latter of which is run by billionaire communist George Soros. I have also noticed that you have been increasingly virulent in your attacks on Republican politicians such as George W Bush and Sarah Palin. Your demeanor is increasingly hostile and arrogant. It reminds me of a time in my own life when I thought I was being clever and cynical and wise.
In a nutshell, you are acting a lot like I acted when I carried the banner of progressivism, and that is why I say I lack the moral authority to look down on you. But I hope I can warn you.
Zach, you are so bright and have so much potential that I think it’s a shame you are so angry at such a young age. I also think it’s a shame because I know that so much of your anger stems from misinformation. That is why I plan to (at least try to) do something about it.
After the end of this semester, I will be driving out to Colorado to teach at Summit Ministries. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to write to you periodically over the summer to share some of what I learned on my journey from being a progressive atheist to becoming a conservative Christian.
Meanwhile, I’ll see you in class. Before I forget, congratulations on getting the highest score on our last test. Finals will be here before you know it—good luck on your exams!
LETTER 2
How Being for Equality Makes You Better than Other People
Greetings from Manitou Springs, Colorado, Zach.
The weather outside does not bode well for the global warming apologist. It is 37 degrees here in Colorado in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of May. The light rain is expected to turn into snow this afternoon. So it’s a good time to sit down at the computer and do some writing.
Congratulations on finishing CRM 425 with flying colors. I really appreciated you stopping by my office to discuss the letter I sent you at the end of the semester. This will be the first installment in the correspondence that I promised you this summer.
I’d like to use this letter to discuss a topic I have already broached with you. The comment you made—suggesting some similarities between Glenn Beck and Charles Manson—has been weighing on my mind.
I want you to know that your comment, which trivialized Manson’s moral culpability, was actually not the worst comment I’ve ever heard about Charles Manson. That honor goes to a remark by a professor I once heard characterize Manson as a “poor little guy who got railroaded by the system.”
Of course, Zach, you’ve heard the basic facts of the Manson case; and you know him to be guiltier than—for lack of a better term—sin. The suggestion that Manson is innocent is one of the most careless I’ve ever heard. Let me be blunt. It takes a Ph.D. to be brash enough to say something like that.
Make no mistake about it—your idea about Charles Manson and Glenn Beck was bad. But not all ideas are equally bad. There is a serious movement in the academy—ironically, a movement obsessed with equality in all areas of life, economically, culturally, and morally—that is much worse than the cheap shot you took in class. It’s that ideology that the professor was expressing when he called Manson a “poor little guy.” You’ve heard of Marxist economics, but you may not have heard about the approach to morality that tends to go along with it.
In economics, Marxism is a proven disaster. According to Marx, we should take from each person according to his ability and give to each person according to his need. I once illustrated the disastrous consequences of that economic policy in a column I wrote, entitled “My New Spread the Wealth Grading Policy.”
I suggested that people who made an “A” on the first test really did not need the four grade points associated with a grade of “A,” since it only takes a 2.0 average to graduate. So my column suggested that those with an “A” should give a grade point away to students making an “F” in order to facilitate a more equal grade distribution—one with just three levels: “B”, “C”, and “D.”
My column also suggested that additional modifications could be made after the second exam. I specifically proposed taking a grade point away from those with a “B” test average and giving that point to those with a “D” average. That would mean everyone would have a grade of “C,” which is worth the two grade points everyone needs to average in order to graduate.
Any undergraduate is capable of figuring out the point of my satire. If every student were guaranteed the exact same outcome, no student would put forth any kind of effort on class assignments or tests. Put simply, “My New Spread the Wealth Grading Policy” would destroy academic productivity and create a shoddy and embarrassing academic work product. Academic standards would plummet under such a system.
Socialism, of course, would do exactly the same thing to our economy. If every worker is guaranteed the exact same outcome—via the redistribution of wealth—then no worker will put forth a strong effort on the job. The average standard of living for the nation as a whole will plummet—or, rather, actually has plummeted wherever Marxist economics has been tried.
As a conservative, I take a far different approach to the subject of equality. I believe that our only obligation is to provide people with equal opportunity. We are not obliged to guarantee everyone an equal outcome. We cannot do so. Nor should we even try.
This is good news for you, Zach. You are much brighter than the average student. You are also much more motivated. You will soar to far greater heights if you are merely given the opportunity.
It sounds harsh to say that Marxism is for the lazy and untalented. But that is what I believe. Who else would consider mediocrity to be a satisfactory outcome?
Ironically, equality-loving socialists obviously think they’re morally superior to capitalists. Which is odd, because isn’t equality the whole point? Even odder, the people who call themselves Marxists are usually the same people who subscribe to cultural and moral relativism. In theory, they don’t think there are any universal moral standards to judge other people by.
Just as they want economic equality, they want everyone to be on an equal moral plane. They want to believe that all people are morally equal—for example, that a brutal murderer such as Charles Manson is not particularly guilty. They dub anyone who fails to adopt their relativist views as “ethnocentric.”
I once espoused this “all people and all cultures are equal” mentality. But my moral relativism came to an abrupt end one afternoon when I spent a few hours in an Ecuadorian prison. One day, in another letter, I’ll tell you the whole story of how that visit changed my whole outlook on life. But right now I want to tell you the story of how an editor with an enlightened, progressive attitude didn’t want me to tell that original story.
I wrote an article about that prison visit. But when I submitted the article to a human rights journal, it was nearly rejected by the editor. Two parts of the article offended her. The first was where I acknowledged that the work of Chuck Colson had piqued my own interest in prison conditions in Third World countries. The second was where I complained that the food in the prison had a very bad smell.
Her first issue with the article is of little interest. It would appear that the editor harbored some anti-Christian bigotry, which is not uncommon. But her second complaint is of greater interest, and more thought is required to dissect it.
Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand Page 1
