H.L. Mencken once remarked that for every problem, there is always and everywhere a single, well-known, and generally accepted solution readily available that is reliably “neat, plausible, and wrong.” Worse, often the popular support that many of these fallacies boast is by-itself enough to endow their propagandists a with a smug certainty of conviction, a sickening hubris begotten solely from belonging to an intellectual mob, and finally a proselytizing desire to spread the truth to any unenlightened holdouts.
At any rate, it would be obviously unfair to test this Mencken hypothesis against the material being taught in any given public school of primary, secondary, or higher education in the country. This reason of course is that while it is at least barely conceivable that there could be narrow segments of our society in which the most fatuous, imbecile, and demagogic theory is not preferentially selected for, only someone with the intelligence of the average university professor could consider this exception applying to the average university professor. After all, it might really be true that the prevailing opinion regarding how to fix a leaky faucet, repair a television set, or re-shingle a roof is both well informed and correct. Arguably, it is unlikely that any repairman, wishing to remain employed as such, could long afford to practice his trade according to ruinous fix-it misconceptions however popular. But while plumbers, brick masons and the like may be able to escape Mencken’s criticism owing to their obligation to compete in the marketplace for the scarce funds of consumers, is it not obvious that no such restraint applies in the case of university professors? Paid largely from funds forcibly confiscated from an unwilling citizenry, professors are in the enviable position of being able to extract an income without being obliged to provide something that someone else would voluntarily agree to buy. Secure in their monopoly over education, professors are free to be as ignorant and deranged as they please and to spew their sanctimonious agitprop with jubilant and nitwit abandon. Concerning the state’s intellectual bodyguards, literally desperate to justify the existence and expansion of the state in their own self-interest, it is simply not possible for a man, neither dishonest nor insane, acquit them of Mencken’s devastating indict. Any professor not recklessly ignorant, wholly enamored with the power of the state, and without a finger held constantly to the wind ever ready to change their beliefs should they fall out of popular favor, should be considered an anomaly, an accident, and unnatural, rather than a typical representative of the profession at large.