Christina Hoff Sommers on "The Tyranny of Niceness" — Transcript

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1. 0:01a fire what I love is it's bipartisan
2. 0:04because I don't think
3. 0:06that caring about Liberty is a
4. 0:08conservative issue or a a liberal
5. 0:10Doctrine it's it unites conservatives
6. 0:12and liberals as As
7. 0:14[Music]
8. 0:20Americans I'm Christina Hoff Summers and
9. 0:23I'm a resident scholar at the American
10. 0:24Enterprise Institute I wrote a book
11. 0:26called the war against boys and it did
12. 0:28it in 2000 now today there have been a
13. 0:32lot of books and articles and
14. 0:34documentaries and 60 minutes they're all
15. 0:36talking about the precariousness of boys
16. 0:37in fact now people are talking about the
17. 0:39end of men so that's the latest but when
18. 0:41I wrote this book it was news and people
19. 0:44weren't attending to boys it was all
20. 0:46about the short changed girl and her low
21. 0:49self-esteem and what I tried to do in
22. 0:51the war against boys is show that was
23. 0:53the idea that girls were suffering from
24. 0:54a self-esteem crisis was greatly
25. 0:56exaggerated there was no evidence of any
26. 0:59kind of pathology that the Fallen girls
27. 1:03and in fact girls were doing better than
28. 1:04ever so I tried to tell that
29. 1:07[Music]
30. 1:08story well it was considered politically
31. 1:10incorrect because it was said to be
32. 1:13backlash against girls now I failed to
33. 1:16see how pointing out the misfortunes of
34. 1:18boys is backlash against girls I mean
35. 1:20the well-being of girls depends on the
36. 1:22well-being of boys we're all in this
37. 1:24together it's not a zero some game but
38. 1:27unfortunately there's a very powerful
39. 1:28women's Lobby and they are enthrall to a
40. 1:32style of feminism that was popular in
41. 1:35the 70s and they've never given it up so
42. 1:37no matter how much progress women make
43. 1:39they're still talking about women being
44. 1:41an oppressed class and subordinate so
45. 1:43when I spoke up for boys it was thought
46. 1:46to be a challenge to that worldview
47. 1:47which it
48. 1:49[Music]
49. 1:52was I wrote a book called One Nation
50. 1:54Under therapy with a psychiatrist Sally
51. 1:56satel and we very much believe that
52. 2:00there are people who are mentally
53. 2:02fragile and people mental disorders that
54. 2:04need treatment but the average child the
55. 2:07average adult is not a metal patient and
56. 2:11this therapeutic approach to normal men
57. 2:14and women and especially to normal
58. 2:15children is harmful I feel that we've
59. 2:18just raised a a whole generation of kids
60. 2:20who are kind of in in a moral fog and um
61. 2:24again it's misguided tolerance and it's
62. 2:27kind of the tyranny of niess people
63. 2:29think well be nice but being too nice
64. 2:32being nice in the face of depravity is
65. 2:35is the opposite of nice it's being
66. 2:36tolerant of callousness and cruelty as a
67. 2:39philosophy professor of many years I saw
68. 2:42that over the years students became more
69. 2:44and more relativistic and more and more
70. 2:46diffident about taking a moral stand and
71. 2:49ethics professors will talk about this
72. 2:50they'll sort of exchange horror stories
73. 2:52about something you'll propos to a class
74. 2:54to try to get them confidently to um you
75. 2:58know to speak against it and it in some
76. 3:02classes it I found it to be impossible
77. 3:05they would not confidently take a moral
78. 3:07stand against anything what they are
79. 3:10supposed to be doing is developing uh
80. 3:13ideas challenging them learning how to
81. 3:15debate and we have a generation of kids
82. 3:18who can't argue they think that that's
83. 3:20you know uh would create tension or
84. 3:23there's something wrong with it well
85. 3:24that means you if you can't argue you
86. 3:25can't think
87. 3:26[Music]
88. 3:31the ideal of Liberty and freely speaking
89. 3:34your mind is so quintessentially
90. 3:36American so much of our tradition and
91. 3:38how we've raised a generation of
92. 3:40students who don't know that don't
93. 3:42appreciate that my basic belief is that
94. 3:44kids are strong and resilient and smart
95. 3:47and they will discover uh what is going
96. 3:50on and I think we'll see Rebellion I
97. 3:52already see signs of it