Don’t submit to woke, academic urges

“Diversity based on race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity are foundational sacraments in the Cult of Diversity. On the other hand, intellectual and political diversity are heretical ideas that need to be expunged.”

That one paragraph sums up the heart of Gad Saad’s 191-page “The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.”

The infectious ideas are Political Correctness and Wokeness.

These are unusual ideas from an academic, which Gaad is, but he is an unusual academic: Having actually lived under authoritarian despotism, he knows it crushes economies and destroys souls.

He is a Lebanese-born Jew whose family fled to Canada during Lebanon’s civil war, when his family feared death because of their religion.

He pulls one little sleight-of-hand when he says he is Canadian and therefore neutral on U.S. politics and culture.

He is Canadian, but he is a conservative and is not neutral to cultural and political changes in the U.S. He is not neutral, and shouldn’t be.

One other point of disagreement I have with him is his idea that symbolic protests on social media, say, are pointless and useless. Changing your Facebook profile to a Ukrainian flag, as an example.

Given that his academic specialty is marketing and consumer behavior, he should know better.  

The use of the Ukrainian flag makes a statement of where your sympathies lie, joining a community of like-minded individuals, and creating a brand.

We can’t all pick up a rifle to fight the Russians, and not all of us can afford to make a donation to the Ukrainian cause. The profile picture may be as significant as writing a letter to the editor (that may not be published) or writing a letter to your elected representatives (that may not be read).

So much for the bitching.

The rest of the book makes a variety of points, and presents a cache of ideas, starting with the notion that freedom of speech is the mainspring of America, the value that clears the way for all the rest, and it should be ferociously defended against all comers.

To put this in a different context, if you live in an entirely sanitized world, any little germ will knock you off your feet, and maybe kill you. Having your feelings hurt is the price we all pay for free speech, which the Founders realized was even more important than guns. That’s why they made free speech, association, religion and peaceful protest the First Amendment. Guns were 2nd (written, many believe) to enforce the first.

Anyway, back to “Parasitic,” and I don’t want this to come off like Oprah’s book club, but after investing a lot of time in reading a book, I have a yen to share.

In one paragraph, he assembles most of the bad ideas (“parasites”) that infect many minds:

“Postmodernism posits that all knowledge is relative [no objective truths] while generating obscure and impenetrable prose that is tantamount to random gibberish… Social constructivism proposes that the great majority of human behaviors, desires, and preferences are formed not by human nature or our biological heritage, but by society, which means, among other things, that there are no biologically determined sex differences, but only culturally imposed ‘gender roles.’ Radical feminism asserts that the gender roles are due to the nebulous and nefarious forces of the patriarchy. Transgender activism purports that biological sex and ‘gender’ are non-binary fluid constructs… all of which,” he says, are based on demonstrable falsehoods.

He then provides examples.

Sometimes, he reduces it to hilarity by simply recounting facts.

Such as Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s promise that her choice for Secretary of Education would be cleared by a 9-year-old transgender boy. She actually said it.

If you agree with her, turn the page. There is nothing I can say that will cure you.

Saad allows for actual transgender people, but questions the improbability of the large number of people who claim that status.

The number of non-binary people has gone through the roof in recent years, and I questioned why in a column last year.

Naturally, asking questions about the numbers gets us called “haters” or “transphobes” by people who have suppressed their intellect in their surrender to an ideology. To me, that summarizes the woke belief that demands that all actions must be seen through the prism of race.

A short list of things that wokesters have called “racist” includes math, meritocracy, apple pie, mass incarceration, grammar, Apple watches, gentrification, and boot strap theory.

Gaad’s message is not to shrug off these idiotic ideas, but to fight back, and expunge the heretical ideas. He does that, I do that, and we hope you do, too.