Pop Quiz
The founder of what organization said: “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”?
Who wrote: “One can’t believe in impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice…why I sometimes believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”?
Which pundit said: “Some people educated at Andover and Yale have nonetheless lived useful lives.”? Extra credit: About whom was it said?
What world leader said: “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”?
Who said: “Education is a system of imposed ignorance.”?
What President said: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”?
Education has two basic objectives: Addressing ignorance and developing the ability to think critically for the purpose of preparing students for an active, productive life. Over the last 30 years or so this mission has been all but abandoned by educators in America.
One of the most sobering experiences in life is to be exposed to the products of the American education system. In the past the schools dispensed knowledge: the events of history, an understanding of the people who participated in those events and the literature that served as the narrative of our history and civilization. Then, using those building blocks, we were taught to think critically so the knowledge could be applied to our experiences in the world we would encounter.
Today teaching is more akin to propaganda. Highly politicized school administrators dispense opinion not facts and critical thinking/dissent is frowned upon. The real tragedy is that students are bludgeoned into accepting what they are told through a grading system that throttles any disagreement with what is dispensed in class. Students are expected to reflexively regurgitate what the teachers wish to hear. Listen to Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, for five minutes and you will understand why high school graduates today embrace socialism and a stream of politically correct fantasies such as climate change as an existential threat. You will understand why the government can so easily control the people through fear, fear of an ongoing calamity that is variously blamed on Donald Trump, white supremacy and/or capitalism. The system is designed to perpetuate and reward ignorance.
It also explains why young people are addicted to the siren song of the Ministry of Truth: Facebook, Twitter and Google. There are three wonderful books that every parent should read: Speechless by Michael Knowles, Deleted by Allum Bokhari and Big Tech Tyranny by Senator Josh Hawley. These thoughtful volumes drive home two points: (1) our language is being debased to make communication opaque, obscure history and distort the truth; and (2) the Ministry of Truth is engaged in an active censorship of ideas and facts that are not politically acceptable. Note that the term censorship is carefully avoided. Rather we are told that they are merely protecting an unwitting public from mis or disinformation. The first question should always be: Who defines what is misinformation? Whoever that is controls the national agenda.
So, for example, any suggestion that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election will get you banned from social media. Put aside the fact that there is a growing body of evidence that voting in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania was subject to provable fraud. The 47 electoral votes in these three states would have swung the election to Trump. The Justice Department is threatening anyone who even suggests that an audit is called for. What are they so afraid of?
How about the Wuhan virus? For over a year anyone who raised the possibility that the virology lab in Wuhan was the source of COVID was labeled as a racist and a science denier. It was enough to get you booted off Facebook or Twitter. Now there is a growing body of evidence that the lab was, in fact, the source…but you have to work hard to find any coverage of this developing story.
President Trump was banned for life by the Ministry of Truth in January 2021 while he was still in office. The Ayatollah of Iran, who routinely calls for the destruction of Israel, remains active on social media. The explanation for this hypocrisy is that the Ayatollah is a “Head of State” and therefore immune from censorship. This is said with a straight face…Trump was, after all, still a Head of State when he was banished.
That these abuses of power are ignored by the general public speaks volumes about the ignorance and apathy of young people who have been awarded meaningless high school diplomas and college degrees. Somewhere Pavlov is smiling!
It is troubling that when you raise these topics to allegedly educated people they are taken completely by surprise. They are comfortable in their ignorance. The mention of Fox News is the equivalent of holding a cross in the face of a vampire. Speakers such as Ben Shapiro and Michael Knowles are routinely shouted down on college campuses by closed minded leftists whereas blithering idiots like St. Greta of Thunberg are feted wherever they appear.
There is good news to be found however. There have been a rash of parental challenges to local school boards in many Blue cities and counties. Strangely they don’t like the schools messing with their children. There are a number of YouTube offerings of these peasant uprisings which are worth watching. The guidance from the school boards requires that parents adjust their expectations. This will get worse because the aforementioned Randi Weingarten (Note: she is part of the misnamed EDUCATION establishment) has made noises about shutting down the schools again. This may lead to mass exodus from public schools to online offerings such as K12. Something to be devoutly wished for but you can be assured the response by our Oberfuhrers in Washington with be swift and harsh. Since when did the unwashed masses begin to think they had any control over their lives?
Things to think about…
From the liberal racist files: Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas are incredibly accomplished Black Americans. Thomas has been described by the left as Charlie McCarthy to Antonin Scalia’s Edgar Bergen. (Look up the reference) In Jason Riley’s excellent biography of Sowell, Maverick, the author notes that Sowell (a brilliant economist) was seen by liberals as a puppet of Milton Friedman and George Stigler of the Chicago School of Economics from which Sowell received his PhD. A very subtle racism that is immune from criticism.
The Smithsonian has issued a “guide for talking about race”. It includes a condemnation of those whites who push the evils of self-reliance, being polite and hard work. Another subtle form of racism?
In Speechless Knowles is tracing words deemed to be offensive such as simpleton. He notes that a physician in Massachusetts S.G. Howe founded, in the mid-19th Century, the School for Idiots and Feeble Minded Youth. Uttering the name of that school today would win you a one way ticket to the internet Gulag. (Look up the reference) Knowles helpfully points out that Howe’s school was “not to be confused with nearby Harvard.” Wish I had written that line!
Sowell has pointed out that bureaucrats tend to be people with”soft value degrees and no economically meaningful skills” and are motivated by copious quantities of resentment. A lethal mix and should dispel any thought that we are governed by the best and the brightest.
Personal anecdote: For two years I tried to rely on my “white privilege” at school and at the end of my sophomore year I had a 1.8 GPA. Then I learned to work harder and pay attention in class and had a 3.3 GPA for the last two years. Go figure.
W.E.B. Du Bois, a 19th Century Black intellectual argued that Blacks must “lose the omnipresent excuse for failure: prejudice.” Can I get an Amen?
For an American citizen to get a gun they must submit to a thorough background check. To get a nuclear arsenal all Iran has to do is make a deal with John Kerry. Irony absent the amusement.
From our etymology department we find the pejorative “chauvinist” meaning aggressive or exaggerated patriotism, as in “Trump is a (fill in the target) chauvinist.” The word comes from a legendary French soldier Nicholas Chauvin who was wounded 17 times fighting for Napoleon and France. This suggests that stereotype of a French soldier may be unfounded.
Did you know…Utopia actually means “no place” rather than “a perfect society”? So the word is inadvertently properly used because outside of Cuba and Venezuela there is “no place” that is “a perfect society.” Although the protests in Cuba suggest that, contrary to the arguments from the denizens of AOC’s fever swamp, perfection may not yet have been achieved.
There is a gaggle of cretins called The Trump Accountability Project which meets regularly in some asylum, perhaps the School for Idiots and Feeble Minded Youth. It is the goal of this band of halfwits and imbeciles to punish anyone who helped elect, staffed the administration of, served, funded, supported or represented President Trump. Target group has been narrowed down to 75 million voters.
Margaret Sanger of Planned Parenthood fame wanted compulsory sterilization of people with mental or physical disabilities. The silver lining of the climate crisis hoax is that idiots are voluntarily sterilizing themselves because they believe it would be a crime to bring a child into a world that will perish in twelve years. The average IQ is bound to rise!
Quotable quotes: “Politics is downstream of culture” Andrew Breitbart. Best explanation yet for the disaster that is the Biden administration.
“Knowledge cannot be centralized so control cannot be successfully centralized.” Frederic Hayek. With the growth of computers and government databases has this statement been made obsolete?
Something to ponder: Critical theory is a social philosophy that focuses on reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures. It is an entirely negative exercise. See, e.g. Critical Race Theory. It is not to be confused with critical thinking which is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment or solve a problem, i.e. the opposite of critical theory.
Pop Quiz answers:
The founder of what organization said: “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”? Greenpeace. The reflexive defense when challenged is “the science is settled.”
Who wrote: “One can’t believe in impossible things.” I daresay you haven’t had much practice…why I sometimes believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”? Charles Dodgson reporting a conversation between Alice and the Red Queen. You probably thought it was Jen Psaki.
Which pundit said: “Some people educated at Andover and Yale have nonetheless lived useful lives.”? Extra credit: About whom was it said? George Will about George H.W. Bush.
What world leader said: “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”? V. I. Lenin totalitarian leader of the Soviet Union and genocidal maniac.
Who said: “Education is a system of imposed ignorance.”? Noam Chomsky.
What President said: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”? Thomas Jefferson
The Observer
Your observation are indisputable. The education system is radically left-leaning. The social media (and the media) is perfectly aligned with the same worldview. The question is why? Why would all these fundamental institutions be the leading progressive revolt?
admin
You have asked a very good question and the answer is complex. The French Revolution unmoored government from morality and, although America held out for a long while, we have now descended into a world of moral relativism. When you couple this with the decline of American education the result is a kakistocracy…rule by the mediocre. To understand the wasteland that is public education you should read The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom. Schools became totally secular and reading great literature has disappeared. The education system and the media are products of that public education. Because they don’t study history or read the classics they have no frame of reference. They cannot define the socialism that are clamoring for and I have witnessed in college classrooms the fear of “confrontation”, by which I mean the expression of contrary arguments. The media and many school teachers are censoring what people can hear or see. Question the vaccine and you are banished from social networks. Put aside the fact that many on the Left said they would never, ever take a vaccine that was developed during the Trump Administration. The obvious solution is a vigorous, informed debate but the “establishment” will not allow that. From personal experience I can report that when people are presented new evidence they are better able to make informed decisions. The one thing our government will never allow is vigorous, informed debate. We are in a perpetual do loop of ignorance and the media and the Ministry of Truth now control the information highway. There is good news: I wear a “Don’t blame me I voted for Trump” T-shirt and the most positive responses have been fro kids between 17 and 25. They are the underground from Fahrenheit 451.
The Observer
I understand your observations. However, it does not really fully explain the perceived bias – especially the media bias. You are suggesting the education system ultimately produces liberals that run our media and, that’s how the dominos fall. But it does not fully satisfy the question (i.e. why then is the education system left-leaning, an so forth).
I may offer there are two possible explanations here. 1. the mainstream media in the US is neutral. It only appears left leaning to right-leaning people. 2. it is to somebody’s advantage to have a liberal society. I would further guess somebody gains financially from liberalism and borderless-globalization drive in our society.
admin
We need some definitional work here. A liberal advocates civil liberties with an emphasis on economic freedom. I think you mean Leftists who believe in the concentration of power at the highest level, i.e Communists, Nazis and the Empire in Star Wars. That concept is synonymous with the so-called “progressive” movement. The progressives starting with Teddy Roosevelt embraced the idea that the country (later the world) should be managed by an elite cadre of self-identified graduates of our top schools. This elite group populated not only the government but also the media, the universities and the think tanks. They abandoned classical liberalism and today they are captives of the Left. They talk down to people, e.g. calling opponents deplorables and use an array of pejoratives to denigrate and isolate anyone who disagrees with them. The movement is like a black hole that absorbs all power and uses the government to “educate” the people as to the wisdom of centralized power. Anybody who is anybody wants to be part of the inner-circle which smart observers note is filled with jerks. Hence the term.
The mainstream media have never been neutral but prior to Watergate they were less overt in their biases. Now the Ministry of Truth is openly engaged in censorship and they are 100% opposed to liberalism and all Conservatives. The last Conservative that the Democrats admired was John C. Calhoun. Leftist bias is part of the elite DNA. They are counting on the leftist apparatus. schools and media, to perpetuate ignorance and muffle dissent. This is why Trump so terrified them. Limbaugh always said it is easy to be a leftist…all emotion, no thinking. Just make the case that you care even if the policies are destructive. As to the advantage…please explain the obscene wealth of the Obama’s and the Clintons and Bernie Sanders…none of whom ever held a real job. The ultimate goal is for the UN to take over the whole program…to visualize that watch the Star Wars scene with the Imperial Senate meeting…20,000 representatives and one Emperor. Always remember that you can’t centralize knowledge so no central power will ever know enough to govern effectively.
The Observer
Interesting. Your argument boils down to your quote “Leftist bias is part of the elite DNA. They are counting on the leftist apparatus. schools and media…” . You are probably right.
However, is it possible there is something more nefarious behind this? Is it possible the globalization drive is behind your observation? Consider the thought that in many advanced economies globalization often has little effect on the incomes of the poor but benefits immensely some ultra rich. Government policies matter in advancing globalization and perhaps Trump was hated for his stance against it. Just an interesting thought to contemplate.
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