I appeared on the Laura Ingraham show tonight to talk about the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, “allegedly” by Luigi Mangione, a graduate of U.Penn., and whether the radicalization of campuses can contribute to violence.My portion came after Ingraham had a fairly long monologue about the murder, the cheerleading by college profs, particularly one U. Penn. professor who has tried to walk back her comments about how proud she was to teach at U. Penn. after learning of the murder.Part of the monologue showed a clip of Mangione shouting about “lived experience” and we discused that.(Partial Transcipt added, auto-generated, may contain transcription errors).
WAJ: It’s disgusting, but it’s not surprising. I’ve observed over the years, both at Cornell and elsewhere, a growing radicalization of the faculty—a growing attitude that activism as a faculty member is part of your teaching mission. You just quoted a couple of people who expressed that view. They view themselves as being there in order to ignite the students, in order to encourage the students to protest.This has been building for a long time; it didn’t just happen. You’ve played some scenes from the anti-Israel protests on campuses, which have been, in many cases, very violent—a lot of violent rhetoric. Campuses are imbued with the concept that we will get what we want by any means necessary. That’s the common phrase that you hear.There’s a very radicalized culture. Whether it impacted him is something that needs to be looked into. We need to understand it.Ingraham: well—just what happened to him, period. He did spend six years there. It’s not that much time; he graduated in 2016 from high school. So he was there when the cauldron was clearly brewing. But here’s what Senator Elizabeth Warren took away from all of this:
“Look, we’ll say it over and over—violence is never the answer. This guy gets a trial who’s allegedly killed the CEO of UnitedHealth, but you can only push people so far, and then they start to take matters into their own hands.”
They weren’t saying that on January 6. They never say that when a pro-life protester protests outside of an abortion clinic. They think it’s fine to arrest those people, as we see happening all over the Western world.
WAJ: How was it that he couldn’t be pushed any further? When you get somebody from that background—and a lot of domestic terrorists in our history have been from privileged backgrounds, like the Weather Underground people—if you’re going to have the Elizabeth Warren attitude that you’re entitled to do whatever you need to do by any means necessary because you’ve been pushed too far in your own lived experience, that’s a recipe for disaster. Unfortunately, it’s a recipe that is prevalent on a lot of campuses.
Ingraham: Aren’t I right about this whole “lived experience” phrase that he shouted out while he was being escorted into the courthouse? That is the usual claptrap we hear at small group seminars at any Ivy League institution—or any institution today—justifying just about anything.
WAJ: Well, “lived experience” is the wording used when somebody can’t prove something, when they don’t have a real argument. It’s like, “Well, in my experience…”
Ingraham: Here’s a good example: “My truth.”
WAJ: There’s no objective reality. That’s the whole critical theory destruction of the academy, of education—that there’s no real truth. It’s just how I experience things and how I feel about things. That’s the prevalent ideology on campuses just about everywhere, but certainly at Penn, Cornell, Yale, and the so-called elite institutions.
How you feel is most important—not what the truth is. And when you hear a truth you don’t like, you get angry.
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