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This is my original unedited interview with Professor Bruce S. Thornton of the University of California at Fresno, published in Greek on Davlos Magazine (No. 238. Oct. 2001. pp.15255 15264)
Q. Would you comment please upon the two trends currently influencing American Academia today, that is, “Postmodernism” and “Multiculturalism?”
Postmodernism is an intellectually incoherent and childish fashion whose inconsistencies and errors of logic are easily identified. Briefly, postmodernism denies the possibility of stable truth, meaning, identity, etc. but of course itself is an ideology which claims to be meaningful and true. It’s like the old Greek riddle: ´All Cretans are liars.’ A Cretan said this! Postmodernism is not new, the radical Sophists of the later fifth century B.C. are their forefathers.
Multiculturalism is the heir of the romantic nationalism that emerged in Germany in the 19th century and whose monstrous offspring include fascism. The idea that individuals are to be defined and validated by their accidental birth into an ethnic category possessing mystical, unique qualities is irreconcilable with liberal democracy, which sees individuals as the locus of rights, not groups. Multiculturalism spawns identity politics, the attempt to secure privileges, rights, etc. for whole categories. Finally, these categories in the U.S. are predicated on victimization of the groups have validity because they are presumably the victims of oppression and exclusion. Thus, multiculturalism insidiously institutionalizes inferiority, since the victim is by definition less powerful than the victimizer.
Q. Why in your opinion these tendencies were created and supported by so many influential professors and how the academic society can accept the scientific falsehood (with pseudoscientific arguments and techniques) in the American Universities?
