How Political Correctness Makes Us Dumb

Francis J. Beckwith notes that political correctness is making it difficult for young people to distinguish between universal judgment and mere prejudice :

In class, I took an example from the textbook (Peter Kreeft’s Socratic Logic, 3.1e) and asked my students whether the following is an argument or an explanation: “Men pitch baseballs faster than women because they have more upper body muscle strength.” The right answer is that it is an explanation, because a reason is offered – “men have more upper body muscle strength” – in order to explain a fact that is not in dispute, “men pitch baseballs faster than women.” Or so I thought.

My students, like virtually the whole lot of them at Baylor, are bright and eager to learn. But like most of their peers at other institutions, they have been formed by a wider culture, including the schools they attended and the media they consume, that has taught them that universal judgments about the nature of things is inherently unjust. There is, of course, some wisdom in this, but it is only wise insofar as it depends on universal judgments.

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