The Hermeneutic of Suspicion: Deconstruction Gone Wild

An interesting article.

Progressives have been re-engineering children's stories for decades in order to tell their side of the big picture. They argue that Aesop and the Brothers Grimm got it all wrong. Progressives come at the retelling from two different angles: (1) they don't want to offend anyone, and (2) they deny natural law.

It's worth recalling that 'natural law' is based on "what IS." Thus, to some degree, that denial is a denial of reality, or truth.

For example, the London Daily Mail reported in 2007 that in a dramatic reproduction of the classic story the script was rewritten to omit references to pigs, so that people of Islamic faith would not be offended. The effort to please backfired, however, when actual people of Islamic faith regarded the effort as "misguided and said decisions like this were turning Muslims into 'misfits' in society.

Similar abortive re-engineering happens with Baa Baa Black Sheep, and threatens the 7 Dwarves.

What's going on here is the operation of what is called the "hermeneutic of suspicion."

...the phrase is technically redundant. What it captures, however, is the post-modern tendency to de-construct the fundamental understanding of reality itself, to, in effect, be suspicious of every perspective that is handed down from one generation to the next.

But to me, the most telling text is this:

The result is ultimate paralysis as the culture itself falls down and curls into a fetal position.

That is the fate of the Intellectualoid re-designer of nature: the eternal fetal position. Incapable of maturing (as are the teachers who famously battled Chris Christie with juvenile prattle and rhymes), they want a world devoid of humans, devoid of nature, humanity, and CERTAINLY devoid of testosterone.

...in all of the retelling of the classic tale, the common thread, apart from not wanting to offend any powerful constituencies, seems to be the denial of natural law. The wolf, for example, isn't "bad," but merely misunderstood.

Reminding one of Obama's self-accusation that he 'didn't communicate clearly' about ObamaCare.

HT: Eyes of Faith