ASU event: 🔥 Burn It Down to Build Community

(And Other Fine Lessons from Your Tax Dollars)

As Los Angeles smolders—police cars torched, buildings defaced, and Mexican and Palestinian flags waved—Arizona State University is holding an event featuring a social justice book with a chapter titled “Burning It Down Means Building Community.” The book’s cover shows, well, something burning.

That sounds like academic nonsense, the kind that professors chat about over their wine and cheese parties while they hand awards out to each other and cash their sizable state salary checks, until you look at the action in question:
The event centers on a book whose cover features flames burning and chapters that include:

• “The Cost of the System of White Supremacy”

• “After Inclusion: A Trans Relational Meditation on (Un)Belonging”

• “Starting with the Children” [Yikes. Leave them kids alone]

• “Incorporating Antispeciesism in Social Justice Praxis” [At last! I've been suffering from species guilt for years]

• And, my personal favorite, “Burning It Down Means Building Community.”

Yes, you read that right. Burning things down is now community-building. Someone tell the insurance companies—they’ve got it all wrong.

But it’s only a metaphor about “radical unmaking of existing oppressive structures, with the aim of building transformative communities,” you’ll need to tell that to those in Los Angeles.

And this is not fringe. This is not some flyer left in the faculty lounge by a confused grad student who read Foucault one too many times. No, this is an official ASU event advertised on their my.asu page. Celebrated. Promoted. Funded (spoiler alert) by you.

Which raises a burning question (no pun intended): how long have professors been preparing students for just such a moment?

The philosophy on display in Los Angeles is simple, if you’re brave enough to descend into its absurdity:

• The United States? Built on stolen land (false, but never mind that).

• Its Constitution? An oppressive artifact best replaced with something more like Mexico (have you been to Mexico?).

• Material envy and class resentment? Virtues in the new order—no longer the seven deadly sins but the necessary credits for graduation (learning to hate your neighbor).

It’s an old idea really. Wallowing in misery and blaming others for what you consider to be life’s misfortunes, is much easier than building a virtuous character. It’s the attitude of a child that we must grow out of as we learn to be disciplined, mature, and take personal responsibility.

Now, back to the book and ASU’s event, the timing seems terrible. And here’s the thing: these aren’t professors at a private Marxist reeducation camp. These are state employees. That’s right—public servants drawing their salaries from the pockets of the very people they accuse of injustice. They make way more money than I do, perhaps I should cultivate some envy.

Call me old-fashioned. I believe in the quaint idea that the state shouldn’t pay its employees to dismantle the state. If you want to publish a cultural Marxist manifestos about how burning down builds community (metaphorically), you are more than free to do so (metaphorically. But the First Amendment doesn’t obligate the state to give you a pension and a corner office for it.

As state employees, these professors swore to uphold the Constitution—national and state. Instead, they host book events with burning cities on the cover while activists torch the actual cities outside and call it justice. The timing is terrible, right?

Parents, I’m sorry to say this, but this kind of event isn’t just permitted at ASU. It’s awarded. Celebrated. Enshrined.

You will not find a counter-event titled:

• “Why the United States Is Worth Defending”

• “Justice Without Arson”

• “Against Envy: The Virtue of Gratitude and Wisdom”

No, no. Balance would ruin the fun. Free speech at the modern university means all speech is welcome—as long as it burns in the same ideological direction.

And so we see the fires in Los Angeles. The slogans become smoke. Democrats baling everyone except the persons lighting things on fire. And ASU thinks it is a good time for this kind of event about a book with those chapters titles.🧐

Stay watchful. Stay wise. And parents—if you love your children, teach them to love wisdom and develop a virtuous character free of envy and hate. Give them an example of a mature adult who takes personal responsibility and doesn’t let the success of others drive them to Marxist envy. The proof is they will learn to build healthy communities that are not based on burning things down and hating your neighbor.