Watchers Council picks have been up since Friday so I should probably get on the ball. The top non-Council pick was this post from the Brussels Journal about something that's come up once or twice on MR:

Thomas Hylland Eriksen... says point blank that in his view the most important thing to do right now is to "deconstruct the majority [population] so thoroughly that it can never be called the majority again." [He is a] professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, heads a multi-million project sponsored by the state trying to envision how the new Multicultural society will work. He is... [an] intellectual celebrity in his country, a frequent contributor to the public debate... Eriksen has proclaimed the death of (Western) nation states as if he derives pleasure from it, and has stated that the Nidaros Cathedral (Nidarosdomen), the most prominent church in the country, should no longer serve as a national symbol in our Multicultural society... Eriksen states that: "Is he [Anfindsen] asking us to once again repeat the obvious in that the murder of Theo van Gogh, various acts of terrorism and death threats against newspaper editors have nothing to do with Islam?"

An academic with grandiose utopian plans who says idiotic things about global conflicts and domestic terrorism? The hell you say. And now that we're a couple decades into educational programs based on this kind of intentionally muddleheaded thinking - insulated as it is by a combination of vulgar relativism and cheap self-esteem boosterism - let's check in with top Council pick Bookworm Room to see how it's going:

The other day, I attended my daughter’s middle-school play. The short review is that the school drama coach, neglected to teach these young thespians what is probably the most basic skill for a stage performance — elocution. Even though they were amplified, I was unable to understand a single word these young actors slurred, whispered and mumbled... Half the audience was made up of children attending the same school as those performing. And of these children, half talked non-stop throughout the performance. Keep in mind as you think about this rudeness that the show was one presented by their friends and peers. Nevertheless, they could not be bothered to stop talking, or even to lower their voices to a whisper. When we left the auditorium, I was buffeted left and right by middle schoolers who, in their own minds, had to get to their various destinations immediately, without regard to those luckless souls caught between them and their goals.

Tell students that every thought they have is the bestest and shiniest thing ever. Instead of teaching them "boring facts" teach them "how to think" abstractly (as if the latter was possible without the former). Then when they can't distinguish good argument from bad argument, essential differences from trivial distinctions, make them feel sophisticated by feeding them vapid phrases like "the problem isn't any particular religion it's religion in general" (because those Quakers...) The result is that we can't even have a genuine debate about the roots of global terrorism - financial, military, or, as non-Council runner-up ShrinkWrapped explores, ideological. Could be worse: we could have that kind of tangled faux sophistication screwing up US foreign policy and forming the basis for the incoming administration. Cf. my post on Obama's nuclear umbrella offer to Israel, which was the runner-up Council pick.

References and previously after the jump...