To the Editor:

I would like to pick up on Ron Shirtz’s and McKay Burley’s recent submissions, and perhaps expand a bit. As with Mr. Shirtz, I too think that young people becoming engaged civically and politically is a wonderful thing.

Throughout the 20th Century, which was not long ago by any objective measure, we (and by “we” I refer to human beings) ran the Social Equity experiment. Marxism, and that is really what the doctrine is, does not work. And we literally have 100 million corpses to show for it.

After taking power in the 1920s, Stalin killed at least 9 million people through mass murder, forced labor, and famine, but most historians believe that the true figure may be as high as 60 million. Similarly, Mao was responsible for 1.5 million deaths during the actual Cultural Revolution, and between another 35 to 45 million for the “Great Leap” Famine.

I noticed that the principal qualification on the resumes for the Socialist presidential candidates’ engagement at SUNY Potsdam is that of “popular educator”. I think therein lies the rub.  Our universities, by and large, are no longer what they once were just a couple of decades ago from when I was a young student. The administrations are now bloatedly top-heavy, particularly in the Humanities, and Faculties of Education, with DEI inspired folks educating our young people now that there is a white male dominated Partriarchy which is the source of all of our society’s ills.

I often ask my Democratic and left-leaning friends and colleagues a simple question, which is, “When does the Left go too far?”. Fair Question. I have yet to receive anything resembling an honest answer. I think it’s very easy for us to determine when the Right goes too far (racial identity, xenophobia, etc.). I would submit that the answer would be when the Left strives for Equality of “Outcome”, rather than Equality of “Opportunity”. 

And this is one of the main reasons, by the way, that so many decent and hard working citizens are now aligning themselves with Cult of Personality we now call Trump. They are more frightened by the prospect of this utopian vision on the Far Left, than they are with the election denying on the Far Right, although I personally happen to think that the latter is currently much worse.

So what I would leave McKay with is, yes, education is important. But do your own research outside of the lectures and classrooms. And I would say if you’re not studying Medicine, Science, Law, or Business/Economics, take it all with huge healthy doses of skepticism, and avoid the Gender and Women’s Studies curriculums altogether. 

Leland Farnsworth
Massena