Power through Symbol
December 10, 2012
I WAS mostly away from the computer this weekend and was able only to post quickly the entry about the changed University of California logo. When I returned, I found a half a dozen or so comments that captured the significance of this symbol. The comments so perfectly demonstrated the good sense and insight typical of the readers of this site.
I suggested that the logo, which will not replace the traditional symbol on diplomas, is an expression of the “meaningless university.” But obviously it — both the university and the logo — is filled with meaning.
Liberalism rejects pomp and pageantry and so it seems to eschew symbolism itself. And yet it uses its very pretension to un-pretentiousness quite effectively. This anodyne logo, as seemingly inoffensive as a transit authority sign, is as good as a declaration of hostility upon the culture that created the University of California, the culture of the book, the culture of the Christian West.
As Consultus says:
The removal of the book says, “No content here.”
Of course, that’s not right, either. There is content. It’s all Leftist propaganda.
These changes to accommodate PC do not create peace among factions. Typically, they further embolden those who think their own special group is entitled to take offense.
It is similar, as another reader points out, to this other of bit of liberal regalia:
— Comments —
J.N. writes (also posted in the previous entry on the subject):
I think some of your readers are misinterpreting the implications of the proposed new U.C. logo. So far as I can tell, it has been universally rejected by the U.C. professoriate. The new logo is instead an outcome of the increasing corporatization of UC. Modern academia, however liberal, still has some remnant of traditional scholarship. It is the modern corporation that has emptied itself of all meaning and cares solely about branding and nothing about truth. The corporatizing influence (carried out in the name of “business efficiency”) is an even greater danger to traditional values than leftist faculty.
