I said at one point that Charlie Kirk is a drop out of community 18:34 college and I got some flack for it, but it's just I'm stating a fact which is this is someone who's masquerading as an academic, but actually there are some 18:40 requirements that you have to fulfill in order to have an academic background that's worthy enough for you to speak on certain things. And that's not that's 18:47 not to be elitist. That's just to say, for example, if you're a doctor, you probably have to go to medical school. 18:52 That's not an elitist. I don't want my brain surgeon to just to have done his own research.
From a video she did for and on the channel of "Rationality Rules":
Cambridge Debate Trainer Reveals How She Humiliated Charlie Kirk
Rationality Rules | 28 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn0_2iACV-A
There are a few professions that definitely
do require a specific Academic background taken to a sufficient high level. My mother never became Med Dr, but she did become Med Cand, and I think 9 terms, before she could do internships. A barrister, a judge, a prosecutor, a judicial officer, even a litigations lawyer, absolutely needs a certain level (not sure if it's the same in each and not sure which one it is) in Law. A Civil Engeneer or a Military Engineer clearly needs a specific level in Engineering.
Can I give a little tip? Each of these professions is clearly used, not mainly in debating about the issues, but in a specific practical application. Medical doctors and sometimes candidates are engaged in getting ill people well, very typically (shrinks are a deplorable exception, of course, and abortionists too). Lawyers are engaged in making sure that quarrels that could blow up to civil wars if the people involved are sufficiently powerful or turn out to have sufficiently powerful backers are instead settled by application of a usually accepted body of law. Engineers make sure that bridges last (there was one in Genua, where they perhaps didn't do their job) or that medications don't poison (Grünenthal GmbH, Distillers (Biochemicals) Ltd and in Sweden Astra did a horrible mistake with Talomid).
I think the parallel isn't to having a Masters or PhD in History before you speak up on historic events or periods or a Masters or PhD in Sociology before you speak up on a societal matter, the parallel is getting an education as cook or baker so, when you serve in a Restaurant or sell in a Bakery, you don't accidentally cause food poisoning and ideally not even a bad surprise in the taste.
It is total Prussian or Communist* rubbish to pretend that there is such a thing as
"an academic background that's worthy enough for you to speak on certain things...." unless they are Medical, Juridic or Engineering advice offered to someone needing to get rid of an illness, get his rights back or to a private person or city planner trying to give a new building the best possible access to the newest green and environment friendly water supply.
Now, when I went to university, the one exam I took in specifically the subject "Linguistics" was a five point (quarter speed for one term, Swedish university points back then one per full speed week) exam, that I failed. But before failing, I did learn some on certain debates, and I did learn from Jean Aitchison** how language change works. I did however study Latin, (Ancient) Greek, German, Polish, Lithuanian, all of which are to a large part language subjects (in the first three of them, I also came to literature) as well as two subjects of Cultural History (of Lithuania, in parallel with Lithuanian, of the Baltic Countries, in parallel with Polish). The cultural history subjects, as well as the cultural history parts of the first three also give me a somewhat better edge on history than I had when leaving High School ... which already was more than the instruction in class would by itself have given me ...
Philosophy is by definition not a subject to teach unless you add a specific school of philosophy. My school is Medieval Scholasticism, that's
not what they teach at Universities, you are likelier to get references to Russell's Tea Pot, which I hope he made some decent tea in before throwing it out into an orbit in outer space for no use in argumentation at all, since his argument is a strawman. It would have been even better if he had actually kept his tea pot in his hobbit hole or whatever served him as such ... it's basically the school of the Inklings, Medieval Scholasticism, so, apart from St. Thomas, apart from Bishop Tempier, I do take some arguments from C. S. Lewis as well*** (including, on occasion, to refute him°).
No veterinary will treat your pet any worse for being a Young Earth Creationist. What a Vet needs to know, a Vet usually knows. And your Budgerigar won't die because he rejects the idea of your Budgerigar descending from feathered relatives of T Rex. There is a real difference between subjects of immediate practical application and subjects of curiosity. Not recognising that won't help make public discourse more safe from fake news, it will just impoverish it and make academically accepted fake news less likely to get exposed. Whereas, in subjects of practical application, disasters will expose the mistake that experts make despite being experts. This side of Doomsday or the Grave, you won't have a shining halo from believing the right and lots of fire for believing the wrong thing on the Creation vs Evolution debate. The fossils already went through their disaster (it was a Flood) and being wrong about what it was won't mistreat them any further, they are already dead. Even if Mary Schweitzer claims her T Rex lived 65 or more million years ago, it's not likely to rotate in its grave.
And on Sociology, I actually do back my arguments with some statistics.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Sts. Cosmas and Damian
27.IX.2025
Aegeae natalis sanctorum Martyrum Cosmae et Damiani fratrum, qui, in persecutione Diocletiani, post multa tormenta, vincula et carceres, post mare et ignes, cruces, lapidationem et sagittas divinitus superatas, capite plectuntur; cum quibus etiam referuntur passi tres eorum fratres germani, id est Anthimus, Leontius et Euprepius.
PS, in case anyone would bring up Catholic theology actually being there to save souls, I'd agree. I'd not agree with needing to get degrees from Seminars (one now closed) where everyone pretends everything prior to Moses is myth and the Seminar's Head on top of that denying the actual existence of the Devil. I'm keeping the source anonymous for now, on request. I would say 5 Catechisms with (usually pre-Vatican II) imprimatur, St. Thomas, some decent theology from SSPX (on issues other than their relation to the papacy), I'm pretty good. I also usually try to keep the level simple or as simple as the Apologetic situation allows.
/Hans
* As Chesterton mentioned, Communism essentially is Prussian, so, I'm actually repeating myself. ** From her book. The edition from 1991:
Language Change: Progress or Decay?
Jean Aitchison, Cambridge University Press, 30 Aug. 1991
https://www.amazon.fr/Language-Change-Progress-Jean-Aitchison/dp/0521422833
*** French Resumé of his argument for God's existence in the book
Miracles,
L'argument de C. S. Lewis. I agree with him the resurrection happened, but I disagree more with his reasoning in
that part. ° His book on Theodicy,
The Problem of Pain, has an appalling chapter on the fall of man, which I refuted here:
"Adam was not an individual, the fall was collective" - Evil or Just Wrong?
