Letters to the Editor - The Dispatch 9/4/02
Freedom and Humanity vs. Statistical Equality
Columnist Ellen Goodman informs us that the academics used to be worried that there were too few female college students - but are now worried that there are too few male students. It is all based upon statistical measurements. The assumption behind these concerns is that the goal of our society is a statistically measured equality of outcomes.
In the real world, real people make private decisions about education, careers, and family without reference to the statistically dazzled campus sociologists. The last thing that a private individual cares about is how his private decisions affects the numbers. However, he or she might well be influenced by considerations of family, culture, gender, temperament, social ties, religion, tradition, class, economic needs and wants, not to mention ambitions and personal dreams.
Things like gender, ethnic group, race, or culture may indeed have an influence on what some people want out of life. To deny this is to deny reality. Others may want to break out of old norms and build a new life based upon a new dream. This is the nature of freedom. The politically correct advocates of statistically measured equality are the enemies of freedom. Freedom does not produce tidy statistical outcomes.
It is not only a question of freedom. It is a problem of a narrow and cramped reductionism in how we think. Politically correct thinking with a focus on statistical outcomes is the enemy of rationality and humanity. It is inhuman because it ignores the extraordinary complexity and depth of what it means to be a human being. It is irrational because it assumes that people are the product of blind forces and that exclude the effect of reason, and free-will, and impulses contrary to the simplistic assumptions of the politically correct moguls.
Fred Hutchison
2952 Stillmeadow Dr., Dublin, OH 43017
(614) 799-0472
Readers: A condensed version of this letter was published in the Columbus Dispatch. An answer from a campus statistician was published which I thought made no sense. My rebuttal was not published. A challenge to the irrationality of politically correct thinking can not be answered with reason. They are helpless to do other than to try to discredit their critics, to appeal to the opinions of “authorities,” and to repeat their unproven assertions.