How an Op-Ed Praising the 1950s Triggered Leftist Snowflakes

RUSH: What essentially happened here at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn, a couple of professors, one of them working at the University of Pennsylvania, the other one University of San Diego, wrote an op-ed suggesting that what might be needed in the United States is a return to some of the nation’s values and moralities of the 1950s. And what happened after that op-ed ran is the story.

“To the list of forbidden ideas on American college campuses, add ‘bourgeois norms.’” In other words, the old advisories of hard work, self-discipline, marriage, respect for authority. When people talk about going back to the fifties, when people talking about reemerging with values from the fifties, they’re basically talking about what?

Well, I’m 66, people my age and one generation younger grew up with certain undeniable truths: hard work, studiousness, seriousness, self-discipline, self-reliance, and patience, those were the values that were rock solid, that had the best chance of leading to a happy, healthy, productive life with the likelihood of an expanding, increasing standard of living. Those were time-honored values, and people would think — and they’ve been time-honored for generations. They have been time-honored since days prior to this country.

Those were active ways of living that led to the best life: seriousness, studiousness, hard work, no cutting corners, no cheating, no pacing yourself, self-discipline, telling yourself “no,” self-reliance, don’t have kids before you get married, respect for authority. That’s what we all grew up with. I’m sure most of you in this audience did as well.

Well, last month, two law professors published an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer calling for a revival of that cultural script that prevailed in the fifties and still does among affluent Americans. Affluent Americans still live by those philosophies: hard work, self-discipline, self-reliance, no cutting corners. Affluent Americans still live by those values, and they still try to inculcate those values in their kids. Get married before you have children, strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, avoid idleness, don’t delve into a life of crime. All of these things that were just common-sense ways to grow up, common-sense ways to live.

Anyway, they write an op-ed suggesting that a revival of all of that would be beneficial for our country and everybody. They said, “The weakening of these traditional norms has contributed to today’s low rates of workforce participation, lagging educational levels and widespread opioid abuse, the professors argued.” They made the point that getting away from these values has led to a raft of people unable to support themselves, single-parent homes, and all of these things which create disadvantage and obstacle after obstacle for people to have to overcome, which could have been avoided with a different set of values.

Well, this op-ed triggered an immediate uproar at the University of Pennsylvania. Remember this op-ed was in the Philadelphia Inquirer. One of the authors of the op-ed, Amy Wax, a woman that teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. The dean of the Pennsylvania law school, a guy named Ted Ruger, published an op-ed in the student newspaper noting the contemporaneous occurrence of the op-ed and a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

In other words, those values were attributed to white to white supremacy by the dean of the law school at the University of Pennsylvania. Hard work, self-discipline, self-reliance, don’t have kids ’til you get married, try to stay married, all of those things to pursue were called white supremacy in an op-ed by the dean of the law school. His name is Ted Ruger. He suggested that Amy Wax’s views — she’s one of the authors — were divisive and even noxious.

“Half of Ms. Wax’s law-faculty colleagues signed an open letter denouncing her piece and calling on students to report any ‘bias or stereotype’ they encounter ‘at Penn Law’ (e.g., in Ms. Wax’s classroom). Student and alumni petitions poured forth accusing Ms. Wax of white supremacy, misogyny and homophobia and demanding that she be banned from teaching first-year law classes.” Because the 1950s is when racism and slavery and bigotry and homophobia were the definitions of the day. They ruled the day.

The white supremacist, the white majority of the 1950s were indeed racist and sexist and misogynistic. It was the fifties that all of the modern-day -isms had to overcome. Feminism, all of these other things. It was the dreaded evil, the horrid 1950s. Where all of the modern ideological and philosophical ideas have to overcome.

So the point of this is is that two professors advocating a return to basic human philosophy of hard work, self-reliance, self-discipline, respect for authority, don’t cut corners, don’t become slothful, don’t become a welfare state dependent, take care of yourself, strive to be the best person you can be, that’s nothing more than white supremacy. That is misogyny and it’s homophobia.

More From Rush Limbaugh: