Warnings from a quarter of a century ago

 From a lecture, Language and Freedom, by Noam Chomsky.  

A vision of a future social order is in turn based on a concept of human nature. If in fact humans are indefinitely malleable, completely plastic beings, with no innate structures of mind and no intrinsic needs of a cultural or social character, then they are fit subjects for the "shaping of behavior" by the state authority, the corporate manager, the technocrat, or the central committee. Those with some confidence in the human species will hope this is not so and will try to determine the intrinsic human characteristics that provide the framework for intellectual development, the growth of moral consciousness, cultural achievement, and participation in a free community. In a partly analogous way, a classical tradition spoke of artistic genius acting within and in some ways challenging a framework of rule. Here we touch on matters that are little understood. It seems to me that we must break away, sharply and radically, from much of modern social and behavioral science if we are to move toward a deeper understanding of these matters.

This was delivered in 1996 when social justice theory and critical theory were the feted darlings of progressive university thought.  Allan Bloom had already blown the whistle on the emerging danger of a new intolerant and totalitarian ideology in universities in The Closing of the American Mind in 1987.  

Chomsky had no way of knowing how far and deep the poison would spread.  We are now, a quarter of century later, finally waking and confronting this poison in the media, in all academia, in the bureaucratic state and now in the streets of our cities.  

I trust we are not too late to break away from this regression and resume our Classical Liberal ways.  But who could have anticipated just how much nonsense could be believed so passionately by so many.