Why I Hate New Brunswick, part 3 of Infinity

I hate New Brunswick.

What has set me off this time? Further proof that this province embodies all that is wrong with contemporary Canadian society, of course. I went out last night with a good friend, and while we were engaged in our usual scandalous follies, we encountered something shocking. The attractive young woman working the door at the club had a Military History degree, but had never read Clausewitz.

You read that correctly. She had never read excerpts from Vom Krieg. She didn't even know why she should have. Oh, she read Jomini all right, but no Clausewitz. For those of you who aren't into the whole military theory thing, Jomini was a contemporary of Napoleon who wrote a manual essentially stating that war could be won using the strict application of principles and battlefield geometry. Clausewitz was his polar opposite, claiming that war had no set rules, and that victory was the result of a commander influencing his enemy through manoeuvre on both the moral (mental) and physical planes. Jominian thought is responsible for the bloody mess that was World War I. Studying Clausewitz is what allowed the German army to make fullest use of the tank and blitzkrieg (neither of which they invented). At this point, the only impact Jomini still has on military thought is that NATO armies have general principles of war, but they are so broad and encompassing that there is nothing mathematical or precise about them.

So why does a young woman with a BA in Military History not knowing this upset me so much? Because it tells you how modern universities, at least civilian ones, work. This young woman wasn't taught how to think; she was taught what to think. Her professor didn't even discuss the possibility that there was an opposing view. There was no open marketplace of ideas, there was only what the prof allowed the students to see. This prof, to steal an allegory from Plato, deliberately shackled students in the cave and told them the shadows on the wall were the extent of reality.

I took courses at two different military academies. At no point was I ever limited in this way. At any point in my studies, when there were two opposing views I was forced to examine both and then make up my own mind. My english courses were taught by feminists. I had history courses from both Dr. Sean Malloney (sorry if I spelled that wrong, sir) and Dr. Jane Errington. Look them up- you can't get much more variety than that. My politics courses? I got them from Dr. Alan Whitehorn (probably the only Leftist I truly respect) and Dr. Joel Sokolsky. When I went south of the border for a semester, I took courses from US Army officers who had participated in the Iraq war, and then received courses on Arab and Jihadi political thought from Dr. Assaf Moghadam, himself an Iraqi. At every turn, I was encouraged to seek out opposing views to the popular mode of thought. I got psychology courses that warned of groupthink, and every time I wrote an essay, I was subjected to ruthless academic standards. I can proudly say that when I agree with the government position, it's because I understand it and its justification, not because they paid for my education.

Is it any wonder university students voted so overwhelmingly for Obama? I'm willing to bet that if a Military History student was shielded from the most influential Western military thinker of all time, economics students are being shielded from evidence that government intervention is bad. Politics students are being shielded from analysis of Democratic Party tendencies. Law students are probably being shielded from the Constitution, though thanks to Justice Antonin Scalia that's probably an uphill battle.

Universities are becoming echo-chambers. No wonder an undergrad degree is losing its value.

In other news, I'm on Monique Stuart's Blogroll! Awesome! Go check her out, she's very intellectually stimulating, and unabashed smokers are worthy of respect.