In addition to more concentrated philosophical “dissolvers” such as Richard Rorty, spurious other types of one man bands dotted the educational and public source book shelves of the 1990’s and 2000’s…a priori PhD’s in assorted disciplines who would crank out books trashing order as a proof of God on through existence of souls as “independent researchers” in outright vanity or subsidized fashion (although not all went this route), and get distributed through political and educational media spin machines; usually, these works were filled with one-sided outright dismissals that anything negativing them or relied-upon prior philosophers/scientists COULD exist, often on the dismissive edict “I the author have nothing in my awareness which contradicts these statements”. In other words, one was “smart” if one overlooked or didn’t know some PhD was re-hashing many imperfect propositions and ate up everything such PhD hurled at them as “breakthrough reasoning”.

A Soros-friendly PhD in this regard was a Mr. Elbert, PhD in physics of all things and never then known to have much interest in other than giving his own opinions in marketed books, all derived from his own unilateral work (perhaps no one was as “enlightened” as he).

In his 2000 book “Does The Soul Exist?”, Elbert offered that because he personally believes no other data exists besides his opinion and further that he believes no God of any kind exists, thus souls cannot exist. If he would appear to underpin Rorty types in this way, he more blatantly supported Rorty’s position on morality.

In “Does”, at the end of all God-trashing, Elbert concludes directly that because no one standard of morality could fit anything at all, and since there’s no Divinity, it is unfair to punish any kind of criminal of any kind as each is just doing what is best for them! He claims the State should compensate crime victims in every conceivable way (odd, sounds like a moral standard, but positivists ARE fond of saying no propositions can be laid down while themselves constantly laying them), but should not punish absolutely any kind of act in the nature of even heinous criminality.

There are so many such lecturers who held sway with government, media, and officials from the 1980’s into present, I don’t mean to single out one or some; but I found and still find a lot of such repetitions on the New Order theme that all philosophy even law should be dissolved, all governments should just provide healthcare and nihilistic lives to all people, and all “normal” people should be overridden and ignored as “unfair” racists/religionists/nationalists/whateverists keeping back natural social Darwinism where the State knows best which are the fittest for the State’s health. In the case of the Salem-Keizer School District (Oregon), per the “Statesman-Journal” at (http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20100401/NEWS/4010343/1001), it appears this now includes issuing regular diplomas to special education cases so that they’ll be indistinguishable from other students and compete for the same jobs and educational grants but of course on quota basis…one wonders if these will be amongst tomorrow’s nationalized health care specialists.

Recalling my own simple morality proposal: “What say that when you describe one thing and do/don’t do in accordance with its own terms, you’re a liar or contract breaker?”, and knowing how much Rorty-Elbert a priori synthesis has been going on in schools and colleges, I can only ask if following the “best ideas in philosophy for the highest standards of human progress” works for you, readers.