What It Means When Leftists Say Your Work Is “Discredited”

When leftists say a scholar has been “discredited,” you should translate this as: “He says things that displease us.”

I remember reading that I myself had been “discredited” in the wake of the various leftist and neoconservative (I know, I repeat myself) attacks on my Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. But how? Almost none of my critics had even tried to correct me on a matter of fact. I was instead scolded for my impertinence.

Thus the New York Times‘ response took this form: Woods says the Marshall Plan isn’t what revived European economies, that the idea of state nullification of unconstitutional federal laws is historically defensible, and that antitrust law has worked out badly; can you believe the nerve of this guy?

That’s how I was “discredited.” Not by being shown where I was wrong — a dissident like me isn’t entitled to such a demonstration — but in being the recipient of a laundry list of shocking and appalling things I had said.

All of those things happen to be true, needless to say.

Well, poor Charles Murray, fresh from his confrontation with the drama-queen brownshirts at Middlebury College, is getting the same kind of treatment even before he arrives at Barnard College on March 23.

It’s been happening a lot. At Virginia Tech, a student group had claimed Murray “was or is a member of the Ku Klux Klan.” One would have to be completely tone deaf about absolutely everything relating to how the world works to think a scholar like Charles Murray would have been a member of the Ku Klux Klan (and that no one would have known about it except a crack team of kids at Virginia Tech).

Incidentally, I don’t quite know what to make of the left’s obsession with the KKK. It has approximately 3,000 members in the entire country at this point, which makes for a grand total of sixty people per state. And since half of those are FBI informants, this is really not a major threat.

It’s almost as if leftist protesters are a bunch of hysterics detached from reality.

In any case, vandals are of course already defacing flyers advertising Dr. Murray’s appearance, calling him a “white supremacist.”

I don’t see any evidence that Murray has ever advocated a law that would involve legal privileges granted to whites and withheld from other races, but that’s not important anymore when deciding if someone is a white supremacist.

And of course, if someone is a white supremacist, this is an excellent excuse not to debate him, and ample pretext for shouting him down or even causing him physical harm. It’s a neat racket the left has going.

Therefore, expect more and more people to be called white supremacists.

Sure beats having to make an argument.

Guess where you can learn dissident points of view without threats of violence?

http://www.LibertyClassroom.com

(Of course.)