Are Intellectuals at War with Reality?

Canadian left-wing intellectuals have a habit of saying the darndest things.

And most of the darndest things they say are associated with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government.

Some intellectuals, for instance, like to suggest Harper is on the verge of establishing a reactionary Star Wars-style military dictatorship, while others fear he will turn Canada into an Evangelical Theocracy, where citizens will be forced to worship an Alberta-spawned deity carved out of oil sands.

But that’s not the worst of it.

What really seems to get their collective academic knickers in a knot, is their growing belief that Harper is “anti-science.”

What’s the left wing intellectual proof for this charge?

Has Harper burned astronomers at the stake? Has he banned technology? Has he imprisoned Bill Nye “The Science Guy”?

Nope.

It seems one of Harper’s main crimes against science is he has cut back funding to certain government-sponsored research projects.

Now before you lose any sleep over this, it should be pointed out that reducing government funding for “science” will not necessarily plunge Canada into a Dark Age of superstition and ignorance.

In fact, lots of scientific progress actually occurred on our planet before government funding for academics was even invented.

Important technological advances for civilization like the wheel, the telephone, the light bulb, the airplane, the steam engine and Playstation 3, were all created without government handouts.

That’s not to say government funded research isn’t important. After all, thanks to government money we were able to create a useful gadget that’s made the world a much better and happier place. It’s called the Atom Bomb.

Still many academics are concerned that Harper’s cutbacks will hurt the environment.

They pine for the days, I suppose, when the Jean Chretien Liberals poured unlimited amounts of money on scientists, while allowing them to dictate government policy.

Indeed, I’m sure it was Canada’s top scientists who came up with the brilliant idea for the Chretien government’s main environmental initiative known as the “One Tonne Challenge” program.

This program, which surely must have been based on “evidence-based” research and rigorous scientific analysis, concluded the best way to reduce Canada’s “greenhouse gas emissions” was to pay CBC comedian Rick Mercer lots of tax dollars to star in Kyoto Accord TV ads.

Anyway, in an effort to restore those glory days of scientific reason intellectuals are starting to emerge from their Ivory Towers to convince the unwashed masses (those who lack post-graduate degrees) that more taxes must be spent on science.

Just recently, in fact, close to one hundred intellectuals made their case in a letter to the editor to the Montreal Gazette.

And what a letter!

It paints a scary portrait of what a “dark” place Canada would become if the government doesn’t immediately divert tax dollars from things like health care and national defence so they can used to subsidize academic pursuits like history, literary criticism, philosophy, political science, anthropology, critical legal studies, political economy and feminist studies.

How dark would Canada become if these “sciences” are not properly funded?

Well get this: we would be unable, says the letter, to confirm things like Canada’s “long-standing colonialism in dealing with the First Nations” or the “patriarchal dividend” in employment or the “scapegoating of racialized immigrants.”

(Note: You probably have to be a government funded intellectual to understand what “patriarchal dividend” or “racialized immigrants”actually means.)

But wait there’s more. Harper’s war on science, the letter writers warn us, will also mean Canadians won’t have access to “data-based interpretations … that document elite, corporate, European and male abuse.”

Darn those elite corporate European males!

The letter also suggests the cutting of science funding will cause widespread “de-gendering”, which I must admit sounds awfully painful.

And finally, the letter writers bewail how the Harper government is embracing “reactionary commemorative practices, to militarize patriotic mythology.”

I’m not certain, but I think they are referring to all those War of 1812 events … you know the ones where middle aged guys in redcoats shoot muskets into the air.

At any rate, the bottom line for these intellectuals is that “in face of global capitalism’s mounting crisis, critical interrogation of social phenomena, causes and consequences is urgently needed.”

Translation: Only a massive influx of government cash will cure Canada’s drastically dangerous shortage of literary criticism

Clearly, a lot of superior intellectual brain-power went into writing this letter to the editor, yet I somehow doubt it will generate much public support for a social “science” crusade.

I suspect Canadians are more worried about how they will pay for their mortgages and about the price of groceries than they are about “patriarchal dividends”.

If anything, this letter might cause Canadians to demand these guys get even less money.

But then again, maybe I’m suffering from de-gendering at the hands of Canada’s elite, corporate, European males.