Melbourne's Age gives space, as nobody else can, to the smug sanctimony and delusion of the PC mind

There is on today's Age website an opinion piece by Dr Leslie Cannold who is given the imposing title "ethicist and author". On her website she tells us that "in 2005, Leslie was selected as one of Australia's top 20 public intellectuals." Well, we must be careful not to be struck dumb in awe of all this. But more of Dr Leslie's website in a moment.

Her piece is headlined: All's fair in battle of ideas. She sets up the issue thus:

ON TUESDAY, the website Crikey broke a story about the publication in conservative magazine Quadrant of an essay on scientific criticism by Sharon Gould, who is described as having a PhD in applied science (biotechnology) and being employed as a biotechnology informatics consultant.

But Gould is not a real person. Her essay "Scare campaigns and science reporting" was a hoax, as Quadrant editor and cultural warrior Keith Windschuttle discovered to his dismay when the journalist who broke the story, Margaret Simons, rang him for comment. According to Simons, the essay contained "false science, logical leaps, outrageous claims and a mixture of genuine and bogus footnotes", that Windschuttle should have spotted.

Holding herself aloof from such unworthy behaviour she says that Windshuttle's critics were jubilant about his humiliation, Robert Manne especially, whose hilarity was hardly containable. Well, yes, Manne's sneering expressions of triumph are for us conservatives really galling at any time. Manne is a formidable opponent mixing scorn and ridicule with a disconcerting breadth of knowledge and argumentative ability which is in sharp contrast to most of the class he now represents.

Let me admit the sting was a fair one, well aimed and successful. Windshuttle should have been far more careful, knowing how quick the opposing class is to seize on any opportunity to ridicule and discredit. Let it be a warning to all conservatives crouching in the trenches seeking to take the battle up to the dominant political class in Australia. Don't let overzealousness blind you to the well-known tactics of our opponents. They hold political power in Australia which means they don't have to worry too much about the intellectual defence of their position - and they don't - but will take as a bonus any opportunity to discredit their non-PC opponents by making fun of them.

Dr Leslie, as I say, pretends to hold herself aloof from such low behaviour as ridicule. Giving the impression she has purified her surroundings by incensing her monitor and sprinkling Keating-blessed Tasmanian river water around her keyboard she is ready to apply her intelligence impartiality to the question of fairness. Was the hoax fair or fair enough, she asks? She starts her impartial exploration of fairness with this claim:

The use of shame and humiliation to discipline those who break the rules and flout the powerful has fallen out of fashion in recent years...

This is the sort of assertion that prompts me to exclaim frequently - as regular visitors to this site know - that most members of the PC-class live in a fantasy world. Nobody in touch with reality would dare to make such an outrageous claim - unless they were cynical liars. I don't think Dr Leslie is a liar. Ridicule, smear, humiliation, belittling are the weapons of people like Philip Adams and Paul Keating. Sneering ridicule is a main weapon of Robert Manne. He has no hesitation in belittling and calling his opponents stupid. Think of the twenty-five years of vilification that John Howard was subjected to. But wait, Dr Leslie is really setting herself up for claims that are even more outrageous.

Embarrassment is not always the main objective, she says, in hoaxes; destroying the opponent often is. And who are the people she has in mind as earmarked for destruction?

...intellectual interlopers. Those artists or scholars who dare to challenge existing orthodoxies and, by so doing, threaten the power of those who promulgate them...

The appearance of ingenuousness is endearing, isn't it? I think we know at this stage which intellectual interlopers she means. The following confirms our suspicions

But the latest hoax offers something new. Instead of orthodox practitioners (traditional poets, scientists) holding their nascent challengers (post-modernists, humanities academics) up for laughs, the Windschuttle affair sees the intellectual gatecrashers fighting back... Indeed, it's hard not to feel that insofar as the cultural left evinces exuberance about Windschuttle's downfall, this flows from relief that, for once, they are not the ones being played as fools.

This is embarrassing stuff. It's hard to believe that anyone with a jot of perception or experience in Australia's intellectual life could assert something so insane - let alone someone who tells us she has been called one of Australia's top twenty intellectuals. Let me guess: was it Dr Leslie's feminist clique that has elected her to that status - the status of constantly repeating a litany of feminist dogma blindly believed?

It's not clear to me why she characterises people like Keith Windshuttle as "orthodox practitioners (traditional poets, scientists)" but conservatives are obviously meant. To suggest that conservatives are at the top of the intellectual life in Australia and hold power over the educational sector, and post-modernists and humanities academics are the down-trodden and have to fight to be heard is...well, I don't have words for my bemusement. It's just so obviously untrue. The empirical evidence is overwhelming. I know from my own experience. It is just so obviously clear that the PC-class hold almost total power in Australia's educational sector. But, wait, there's more.

I will leave aside her failure to distinguish between literary satire and the sort of analysis that "demonstrates adequate scholarship (logical precision, accuracy, evidential rigour)." Word-weaseling around (thank you, Don Watson), she moves to a judgment of whether, given Windshuttle's own intellectual standards, he deserves the humiliation and professional damage caused by the successful hoax. She says "yes". I won't argue with the fundamentals of that judgement. Windshuttle has to cop it sweet. Conservatives have to cop it sweet, and prepare for another day. And I will leave aside the tendentiousness of some observations about Windshuttle and his fight with people like Henry Reynolds. I will move to the final howler in this piece. It begins thus:

At the heart of the culture wars was a conflict over different ways of knowing.

I could not agree more. I have said many times both here and in conversation that the problem of the PC-class is that they think their framework of thinking is correct and that any deviation from that mode of thinking is wrong. More specifically, the PC-class "vision" rests on the assumption that an empiricist epistemology and a materialist metaphysics are true, although most members of the PC-class would not have a clue of what I am talking about. First of all, empiricism and materialism do not possess the means to prove themselves. Second, the epistemology and metaphysics of classical realism is a substantial intellectual position with a pedigree that goes back to Plato and Aristotle. The argument has not yet been decided in favour of the PC-class assumption. But this is not the distinction Dr Leslie has in mind. She goes on.

Against the "elites", trained to use careful and critical discourse to make their point, were those deploying more traditional ways of asserting authority: fear, force, ridicule, exclusion.

One has to laugh - one has to scream laughing - at this nonsensical self-serving prejudiced distinction. It's the sort of dopey thing Tracee Hutchison writes in her spot in the weekend Age. Fictitious Gould is not the only one who is guilty of false science, logical leaps, outrageous claims....

Dr Leslie is "Honorary Fellow at the School of Philosophy, Anthropology, & Social Inquiry (PASI) at the University of Melbourne..." The philosophy department at MU has obviously taken a dive since I attended first year lectures on Descartes and Plato given by Prof. Max Charlesworth.

A final point: the following paragraph appears in my about me pages

A critical factor in the triumph of the PC-class has been their success in infiltrating and gaining control of Australia's major institutions. Skirting the democratic process, radical feminists and homosexual activists now fill important roles and functions in many official decision-making bodies. The law, education (most importantly schools), public service, and the media are now for the most part the territory of the dominant class where radical feminist and homosexual propaganda is spread uninhibited while their opponents are held in check by legislation and slander. The proof of what I am saying is all around us.

For evidence against Dr Leslie's silly piece in The Age and of what I am claiming I recommend the reader peruse the biography section on Dr Leslie's website: http://www.cannold.com/

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