Hungary's government orders that no more gender studies classes be offered at its universities, as the degree is "useless" in the job market.
Well of course it's useless. That's because gender studies is intended to be the highest truth. The highest thing isn't supposed to be useful for anything else; everything else is supposed to be useful for pursuing it.
It is said that when you can do everything, you can't do anything. I will extend that to say that when a field of study is about everything, it's about nothing.
ReplyDeletePart of me enjoys this news because I agree that gender studies are a waste of time. Another part of me doesn't like it both on libertarian grounds, and also that because a European rightist (Orban) is doing this, it has a tarring effect on us on the American right. I find myself saying now and then that with Orban, even a broken clock is right twice a day, but because he's doing things against the left, he's right in some sense a little too often for that saying, and at the same time, he's still a thug fascist.
ReplyDelete@ douglas - I predict that level of left-right extremity will be the norm in Eastern Europe for a long time. Elections in Romania when I was there were between fascists and communists, under different names.
ReplyDeleteIt's also necessary to keep in mind that the American right has little overlap with the European right, which has little overlap with the PRC right, which has little overlap with the Russian right, which has little overlap with.... Similarly, there's little overlap among the lefts of the US, Europe, the PRC, Russia, etc.
ReplyDeleteIit also tends to be the the various lefts that have the most trouble recognizing the differences among the groups having the same labels. Maybe that's why the American left is so insistent on parsing out finely differentiated labels for its identity politic bigotries.
Eric Hines
Yes, the American left refers to Iranian mullahs as "conservative." Well, maybe in some sense of the word; but they're as like to American "conservatives" as Thomas Jefferson is to Muhammad. Maybe less; Muhammad at least was original.
ReplyDeleteOn, indeed, which was why I made the distinction in the first place. It's just that it's difficult to explain to people who don't know it already, or don't want to know. I say that the European's are looking at politics from roughly 90 degrees where we do- by our standard, the Europeans are almost all on our left.
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