William A. Donohue
Where does all the hatred come from? Beginning in the spring, we have seen violent thugs take to the streets from Lancaster to Los Angeles. They have killed cops, murdered innocent bystanders, burned buildings and looted stores. Some of the violence has been coordinated; some of it has not been.
There are several contributing factors that account for the carnage, but there is only one reason why it continues, month after month: It continues because there is little or no pushback. Our elites in government, particularly governors and mayors, have allowed the mayhem to continue, and in some cases have actually promoted it.
I live on Long Island and work in New York City. Never has New York crashed so quickly, and so catastrophically, as it has in 2020. The homeless and the criminals are everywhere, relieving themselves in public and assaulting innocent persons. When I get to work at 7:15 a.m., a man who works for the building where our offices are is hosing down the sidewalk. That’s to keep the crazies from sleeping there. Or worse.
The criminals know it. There are also more criminals on the street—the mayor released as many as he could from prison. Moreover, bail reform (there is no bail for most crimes) has meant “catch and release,” the result being that the thugs are back on the street before the cops have completed the paper work.
It took Rudy Giuliani to turn New York around in the 1990s after the disastrous years of Mayor David Dinkins. Now there is no Giuliani on deck. Mayor Bill de Blasio is term-limited and cannot succeed himself; his time is up at the end of 2021. Waiting to take his place are more losers like him, at least at this juncture.
On the west coast, Portland looks like it was destroyed by the Taliban, but that honor goes to Antifa and Black Lives Matter, our own home-grown terrorists. In Los Angeles, after two young police officers were shot, simply because they were cops (they were sitting in their patrol car), rioters blocked ambulances from the hospital screaming, “We Hope They Die.”
So where does all the hatred come from? It comes from many places, but none is more prominent than education, especially higher education.
The lead story in this issue of Catalyst is about a hate-filled anti-Catholic professor who teaches at Texas A&M University. The middle part of this issue, pp. 8-9, is a story about a hate-filled anti-American curriculum, sponsored by the New York Times; it is working its way into our schools.
It is a lot easier to teach hatred than it is to teach love. Love is caught—it is not taught—meaning it is a residual, a byproduct of human interactions that touch us in a special way. To be sure, we can learn to love, but the learning is a function of experience, not tutoring. Hatred is different. Unlike love, it can be learned in the classroom.
The Texas A&M professor teaches his students to hate Catholics. But he does not stop there: he teaches them to hate Catholicism. His goal is to punish Catholics and proscribe Catholicism.
The “1619 Project,” initiated by the New York Times, does not aim to challenge students to think about racial injustice. No, it aims to indoctrinate them into thinking the worst about their country. To do this it distorts history, skewing the facts to feed its hate-filled propaganda.
Those who have taken to the streets, many of them members of the white pampered class, are seething with rage. They have been taught to hate America. They excel. It is a pity they know nothing of the true story of American greatness.
Those who won the American Revolution could have grabbed more power for themselves and established a comfortable dictatorship. That’s what those who have emerged victorious have always done in history. Instead, the Founders crafted a constitution that limited their own powers. But this verity is no longer taught to students.
Why go after Catholics? Those who hate America have no other choice. If the goal is to crush the Republic, then those responsible for our Judeo-Christian heritage must be singled out. That means Jews and Christians. But Jews are too few, and Catholics are an easy target.
It all begins in the academy, in the colleges and universities. How many professors hate America? I would estimate that the Left commands around 20 percent of the faculty; 10 percent are moderates or conservatives; 70 percent are liberals. So why does the Left prevail? Because the Left is ruthless and liberals are intimidated by them. Also, the ranks of the administrators are at least as left-wing as the faculty.
There you have it. Mind-control savants in education are poisoning young minds, and spineless mayors and governors are failing to stop them from rioting. The corporate world—from Nike to the NFL and from Big Tech to Wall Street—has also played a shameful role. Ditto for the media.
Can conditions turn around? Certainly. But for that to happen, our elites need to exercise clear thinking, unaffected by political correctness. And fortitude. They can’t get enough of it.
