DAVID SOLWAY: Common Sense and Common Folk.

Having recently moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, my wife and I decided, as part of our intention to integrate into the community, to attend a Vancouver Canucks hockey game. It was something of a special occasion as the game featured the only meeting of the season at the Rogers Arena between the Canucks and the Montreal Canadiens, the team I grew up rooting for and, indeed, once dreamed of playing for.

What surprised us was that the stadium seemed packed with Canadien fans, red white and blue sweaters everywhere around us, cries of “Go Habs Go” (from the team’s French nickname, les habitants) and loud cheers erupting for every Canadien goal dwarfing the vocal enthusiasm for the home team. Raised in Vancouver, Janice was appalled. Where was the municipal spirit, the fan loyalty, the pride of place? Was this the residue of rampant multiculturalism? I, of course, a native Quebecker, was delighted. And after all, win or lose, les Canadiens are a storied franchise akin to myth, going back to the founding of the National Hockey League in 1927, recalling the “flying Frenchman” of old, and comprising a pantheon of hockey greats that dominates the history of the sport. Canadien games are always sold out.

But there was something else we found equally if not more conspicuous, namely, the good nature, spirit of camaraderie, courtesy, respect and conviviality we were surrounded by. Recovering from a serious soccer injury, I was hobbling on a cane, as a result of which I was treated as a VIP. Security personnel escorted us to the Call Wicket and picked up our reserved tickets for us. The jammed corridors parted like the red sea for my halting passage. The fast-food vendors were patient, not fast, in serving us. Our row and seat neighbors were the soul of concern and graciousness. The aisle usher was unfailingly attentive. We were among real people, the so-called common folk from all walks of life, some well-off, some not so much, all standing for the anthem (no one, so to speak, taking a knee), most participating in the spirit of the game in an amiable and welcoming atmosphere.

On the Skytrain back to our new home, Janice and I, both early-retired professors after years of exposure to the nasty complexities of academic life, fell into conversation about the gaping difference between “the world” and “the academy,” between ordinary folk doing the world’s work and the cloistered parasites of the university hothouse, between lively people in the stands and bored students in the amphitheaters, between practical people and theoretical people, in short, between the do-ers and the talkers.

This summary is obviously to some extent a facile generalization -- there are some estimable people in Academe and unprepossessing people among the general public -- but it expresses a larger truth. We have far better relations and interesting encounters with tradespeople, for example, than we do with the general run of academics. Academe, we agreed, has increasingly come to resemble a hen party of professional backstabbers, cultural sycophants, sanctimonious prigs, administrative mercenaries and intellectual supremacists who regard themselves as elite opinion-makers and bellwethers of social progress. And, of course, they are the most influential pedlars of leftist hallucinations, graduating an army of gainfully unemployable millennials and propagandized radicals trained to carry forth their program of social destabilization and “egalitarian” coercion.

It's a long piece, but very much a worthy reads. Go there.