Enjoying the view from Limbo
“We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!” So everyone says these days, quoting a character no one remembers from a movie no one has seen — repeatedly, incessantly, droningly, ad nauseam. Our performative riling up, on cue and at the cracked whip of our preferred “news sources,” is not a call to action, let alone to serious reflection,...
It’s all relative.— I have never felt particularly brave in my life. Nor do I believe I have ever acted with any special degree of courage even in an isolated moment. On the contrary, I have often been disappointed at what I have regarded as a deficiency in this area. These days, however, judging myself relative to what I see around me, I...
Death by Education / Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost
by Daren Jonescu · Published June 4, 2021
The sense of urgency governments are exuding today over the universal push to vaccinate everyone against COVID-19 is palpable — as is the reason for the sense of urgency. If the world were allowed to emerge from the pandemic without universal vaccination having been achieved first, the people who advised restraint, moderation, and the necessity of reaching herd immunity from the outset would...
President Joe Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki, asked during an official White House propaganda session to address Senator Tom Cotton’s concerns about U.S. colleges being used to “indoctrinate” students, replied smugly — I did not hear her voice, but how else can a progressive sound when defending totalitarianism? — with the following: “Well, without much detail on where he thinks our youth are...
Washington Post headline at the moment of this writing: “Trump alleges ‘left-wing indoctrination’ in schools.” My first reaction: “Gee, what a revelation.” My second: “Does the Washington Post really expect its readers to find Trump’s claim wild and outrageous?” My third: “Yes they do, and their expectation will prove true. The indoctrinated rarely know they are indoctrinated — and what is more, they...
This morning, I received an e-mail from a regular reader noting that this might be a boom time for my Case Against Public Education, given that there is a lot of “chatter” these days about “the dangers of public education.” My immediate reply: The “dangers of public education” chatter is just that — chatter. Nothing will happen, no one will change. Everyone is...
Progressive globalists have found in the current Pandemic that Ate a Planet a ready-made dream come true, a real-life “anthrax bomb,” as in Huxley’s dystopian forecast of the mechanism whereby mankind’s natural freedom reflex would finally be subdued, and the World State’s quasi-benevolent totalitarian social control achieved. In keeping with the standard operating procedures for the development of state paternalism, as infamously articulated...
For people whose education began and ended in public school, “summer reading” typically means celebrity gossip rags, romance novels, or spy thrillers. For those, however, who somehow salvaged a portion of their minds from the State’s spiritual mass production process, summer is often a great opportunity to dig into more substantial fare, such as that big “difficult” book you’ve been meaning to get...
The family, which loves its child, is calibrated to guide that child out of his dependent condition and into mature adulthood. The state, which loves its power, is calibrated to prevent that development from occurring. That is why Dewey, like Fichte and all other progressive advocates of compulsory schooling, ultimately sees the family as an enemy. And that is why such men have...
A Massachusetts high school teacher gave his students this debate question as a homework assignment: “Some People Claim that Donald Trump is a Fascist: Time to check it out!” If that assignment bothers you, dear Trump supporter, then I have a little suggestion: It’s time to check out alternatives to sending your children to public school, where they will always and perpetually be propagandized...
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