Open Letter to Salient (a student newspaper) -- edited.

Your interview with Professor John Pratt (September 2003) revealed the loose thinking that you get from Left-Wing ideologues at universities. He explained Tony Ryall's criticism of "ivory tower academics" as anti-intellectualism. This is a self-serving misunderstanding. The point is that academics -- having lots of power to fail students but no one (in practice) to whom they are answerable when they abuse their power -- routinely pass off Left-Wing prejudice as intelligent thought. I, for one, would certainly not characterise Victoria University's Criminology staff as "intellectuals"!

Professor Pratt quoted his colleague Jan Jordan as saying that politicians such as Ryall had been wrong to focus on crime at the last election, since the murder rate had remained steady. However, on the page http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/PA0205/S00562.htm you can see that Tony Ryall on 23 May 2002 referred not to murder rates but to "bashings and thuggery".

Irrespective of whether crime rates are going up or not, however, any level of crime is a legitimate cause for concern. The public's level of concern may well be a result of the amount of crime-reporting that surfaces in the media, but that does not invalidate the public's concern, either. Arguably, one cause of the increased crime since the 1960's has been the break-up of the traditional family, with step-parents and step-children unable or unwilling to have the same non-sexual and disciplined relationship with one another that real parents and real offspring generally have. The break-up of the traditional family, in turn, is the result of the Sexual Revolution and of Feminism's brainwashing of women out of the home and into the workforce -- where temptations to new relationships abound. Without even looking at the relevant webpages, I can be certain that Victoria University's Left-Wing ideologues will not have researched those sorts of topics -- in case they got the "wrong" results, from their pro-Feminist perspective,

Pratt mentions public concerns about crime rates and soft sentences, but offers no solutions. Instead, he says that high rates of imprisonment are "worrying". That change of topic -- from the evaluating the problem to criticising what is usually considered to be the solution -- is irresponsible. The most important issue is obviously the crime rate. Members of the public feel that the solution is deterrence and prevention by means of longer sentences. Almost no one at University dares to challenge bullying Feminazis by researching the causative role of Feminism in crime, which might lead to a more realistic solution. Inevitably, the need for a solution must take priority over Pratt's worries about imprisonment rates.

Pratt falls back on calling New Zealand a "modern, democratic, liberal society that values freedom and liberty" as an argument against imprisoning people, but those platitudes cut no ice. Present-day countries are always "modern", by definition. Nazi Germany was also "modern" in 1940. Also, it is patently ridiculous to say that freedom and liberty should be extended to criminals. Moreover, I don't agree that New Zealand is democratic and liberal, since most politically relevant information is controlled by the unelected, Leftist MUC (Media University Complex), of which Professor Pratt's own university is a particularly totalitarian part. A Leftist lecturer has complete freedom to brainwash her students and force them to regurgitate her propaganda at exam-time, for example. Those students then go on to apply the results of the brainwashing in their careers.

See also:

• Media Sexism and Stupidity in Alliance with University Sexism and Stupidity

• Send Jan Jordan Back to the Uranium Tower!

  Cambridge University is a Women's Kindergarten

• Harvard University President Summers

• Feminist Jurisprudence Proves that a Woman's Place is in the Home.

• Hostile Sexist Feminist Psychologist Misinterprets Research to Attack Men

• Dominance and Entitlement: the Rhetoric and Lies which Feminist "Academics" Use to Control Men

• Female Academics' Power and Control over Male Academics

• Feminist Dumbism in Cherry (1995)

• Feminist Mob Rule at Universities

• Incompetence and Unprofessionalism of the American Psychological Association

• Bruce Arrigo & Stacey Shipley are Incompetents or Liars.

• Happy Wife; Happy Life: Academic Patriarchs as both Victims and Perpetrators of Female Supremacism

• Is Professor Matthew Palmer incompetent and totalitarian?

• Moronic Women at Oxford University

• Psychologists and Women Don't Have the Brains to Study Intelligence

• Research Sexism

• Vice-President Biden Lies to Chinese Students.

• What Female Politics Lecturers Do Instead of Thinking