Our Cult-Like Education System: Stella Morabito on the Ideological Cold War
Posted: February 13, 2017 Filed under: Censorship, Education, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Activism, Alternative school, American Humanist Association, Americans, college campus, Donald Trump, Left Wing, Marxism, propaganda, Radical Left, Riots, Supreme Court of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, United States, University, Violence 1 CommentRiot-Prone Mobs Are A Product Of America’s Cult-Like Education System
‘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
Stella Morabito writes
…Those who are pushing for sustained street resistance seem to be banking on two things. First they are betting that mainstream Americans won’t realize until it’s too late that we are in the midst of a virtual civil war that could turn violent. Dennis Prager recently wrote of this Second Civil War, warning Americans to wake up to it. Second, agitators are also wagering that Americans will not have the stomach for the prolonged fight they intend to bring to the streets, a point noted by psychologist Tim Daughtry in his book “Waking the Sleeping Giant.”
“What brought us to this place where the losing side has so utterly and violently rejected the peaceful transfer of power from one president to another, and previously agreed-upon electoral process and rules?”
So is this some kind of a joke? Revolution in the streets of America that overturns the election results? So far it all sounds so goofy, at least where it doesn’t get violent. We can watch in wonder as a shrieking NYU professor verbally assaults numerous police officers with the sort of impunity only afforded to the far-left. We can assure ourselves that there aren’t that many irrational people. Even if true, however, that’s beside the point. Too many citizens are at sea in understanding what freedom even means.
“Let’s face it. Today’s street theater is the culmination of decades of radical education revision. The radical Left’s systematic attack on the study of Western Civilization has essentially been an attack against the study of any and all civil societies. It is an attack on the features that make a society civil and free.”
We need to ask ourselves: What brought us to this place where the losing side has so utterly and violently rejected the peaceful transfer of power from one president to another, and previously agreed-upon electoral process and rules? It’s past time to ponder the quote from Thomas Jefferson: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
Destroying Our Education System Got Us Here
Let’s face it. Today’s street theater is the culmination of decades of radical education revision. The radical Left’s systematic attack on the study of Western Civilization has essentially been an attack against the study of any and all civil societies. It is an attack on the features that make a society civil and free. Those features include freedom of expression, civil discourse, the Socratic method of figuring out truth, value of the individual, and a common knowledge of the classics of history and literature that help us understand what’s universal in the human experience. All of that had to go.
[Read the full story here, at thefederalist.com]
Now, as we see students marching to demonize as “fascists” proponents of free speech, their ignorance is in full view. This is really a full frontal attack on the rule of law, the Constitution, and a system of checks and balances that guards against the consolidation of centralized power.
“The last 50 years have produced a huge wave of kids who are functionally uneducated.” https://t.co/4r0v3Lv6tm
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) February 13, 2017
That’s the whole point of the education these students have been fed. In fact, a lot of 1960s agitators, including domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, decided to place their bets on radical education revision. For at least 40 years, Ayers has been devoted to transforming schools from places of actual education to places of coercive thought reform. As Andrew McCarthy recently pointed out in National Review: “It was a comfy fit for him and many of his confederates, once it dawned on them that indoctrination inside the schoolhouse was more effective than blowing up the schoolhouse.”
If you review the history of radical education reform, it’s clear these agitators have been committing mind arson on the children, undermining their ability to think independently and clearly. (For more on this, read Robin Eubanks’ book “Credentialed to Destroy.”)
How to Short-Circuit a Child’s Thinking
Radical education reformers have made a point of removing context from children’s education, and to squash their natural curiosity, undermining their capacity to think. Read the rest of this entry »
Childishness and Intolerance on College Campuses Embody What’s Wrong with American Liberalism
Posted: November 18, 2016 Filed under: Education, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Academia, American Dream, Bernie Sanders, Bruce Springsteen, Carl Higbie, college campus, Donald Trump, Free speech, George Will, Hillary Clinton, Millennials, Washington Post Leave a commentAcademia should consider how it contributed to, and reflects Americans’ judgments pertinent to, Donald Trump’s election.
George Will writes: Many undergraduates, their fawn-like eyes wide with astonishment, are wondering: Why didn’t the dean of students prevent the election from disrupting the serenity to which my school has taught me that I am entitled? Campuses create “safe spaces” where students can shelter from discombobulating thoughts and receive spiritual balm for the trauma of microaggressions. Yet the presidential election came without trigger warnings?
“Only the highly educated write so badly…the point of such ludicrous prose is to signal membership in a clerisy.”
The morning after the election, normal people rose — some elated, some despondent — and went off to actual work. But at Yale University, that incubator of late-adolescent infants, a professor responded to “heartfelt notes” from students “in shock” by making that day’s exam optional.
Academia should consider how it contributed to, and reflects Americans’ judgments pertinent to, Donald Trump’s election. The compound of childishness and condescension radiating from campuses is a reminder to normal Americans of the decay of protected classes — in this case, tenured faculty and cosseted students.
[Read the full text of George Will’s column here, at The Washington Post]
As “bias-response teams” fanned out across campuses, an incident report was filed about a University of Northern Colorado student who wrote “free speech matters” on one of 680 “#languagematters” posters that cautioned against politically incorrect speech. Catholic DePaul University denounced as “bigotry” a poster proclaiming “Unborn Lives Matter.” Bowdoin College provided counseling to students traumatizedby the cultural appropriation committed by a sombrero-and-tequila party. Oberlin College students said they were suffering breakdowns because schoolwork was interfering with their political activism. California State University at Los Angeles established “healing” spaces for students to cope with the pain caused by a political speech delivered three months earlier . Indiana University experienced social-media panic (“Please PLEASE PLEASE be careful out there tonight”) because a Catholic priest in a white robe, with a rope-like belt and rosary beads, was identified as someone “in a KKK outfit holding a whip.” Read the rest of this entry »
Elite Campuses Offer Students Coloring Books, Puppies to Get Over Trump
Posted: November 16, 2016 Filed under: Censorship, Education, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: American Dream, Angus Deaton, Berkeley High School (California), Bernie Sanders, Boston, Brown University, college campus, Daily Beast, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Left Wing, Mental Illness, Princeton University, propaganda, Republican Party (United States), Special Snowflake, Triggered, Twitter, Yale Daily News, Yale University Leave a commentThe post-election freak-out on elite campuses is total, and is made all the worse because students on these campuses never meet anyone who disagrees with them.
Robby Soave writes: In the wake of the election, many college students at elite colleges and universities have come down with serious cases of PTSD: President Trump Stress Disorder.
Their inability to anticipate this outcome—the election of Donald Trump—should prompt the Ivy League to consider whether it’s really preparing students for life outside the liberal bubble of campus.
To equip students with the resources they need to refute Trumpism, colleges have to stop shielding them from ideas that offend their liberal sensibilities. They have to stop pretending that shutting down a discussion is the same thing as winning an argument. Silence is not persuasion.
“There were actual cats and a puppy there. The event as a whole seemed to be an escape from the reality of the election results.”
— UPenn student, Daniel Tancredi
Elsewhere, at campuses across the country, students begged professors to cancel classes and postpone exams, citing fear, exhaustion, and emotional trauma. Such accommodations were frequently granted: Academics at Columbia University, Yale University, the University of Connecticut, and other institutions told students to take some time to come to terms with what had happened, as if the election of Donald Trump was akin to a natural disaster or terrorist attack.
That wasn’t all. Law students at the University of Michigan were provided with a post-election “self-care with food and play” event, complete with “stress busting” activities like play dough, coloring books, legos,
and bubbles. Columbia University’s Barnard College offered hot chocolate and coloring. The University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution, created a healing space: more coloring books, and also puppies.
[Read the full story here, at The Daily Beast]
“There were actual cats and a puppy there,” one UPenn student, Daniel Tancredi, told The College Fix. “The event as a whole seemed to be an escape from the reality of the election results.”
One wonders whether some campuses have routinely provided too much of an escape from reality, if the election has reduced their students to tears, play dough, and a whole lot of coloring books.
TRIGGER WARNING: It’s Roy Rogers’ Birthday
Posted: November 10, 2014 Filed under: Education, Entertainment, History, Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: college campus, Cowboy, Cowboys and Indians, David Burge, horses, media, Political Correctness, Popular Culture, Rape culture, satire, Trigger Warning, TV, Twitter, Victimhood 2 CommentsTRIGGER WARNING: It’s Roy Rogers’ birthday pic.twitter.com/WIB8erJPGs
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 10, 2014
A recent history of hate-crime hoaxes
Posted: August 24, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: Aimee Whitchurch, Alexandra Pinell, Alicia Hardin, Alta Rae Merkling, college campus, fakehatecrimes.org, hate crimes, hoaxes, Kerri Dunn, Khalilah Ford, Kristel Conklin, Meg Lanker Simons, Montclair State University, Oberlin, Olivia McRae, Quinn Matney, Safia Jilani, swastika, Tanasia Linton, University Leave a commentRacism and hate are real. Hate crimes do happen — some violent, some just threatening.
But unfortunately, there is no shortage of wannabe heroes — who in most cases have never suffered discrimination — actively undermining the cause by committing fake hate crimes, often with the idea of drawing attention to an issue.
The Daily Caller had a piece this week on a recent and especially pernicious hoax at Oberlin College, perpetrated by an overzealous, outspokenly liberal Obama campaigner and his friend. The two young men terrorized their campus with racist graffiti, flyers, and emails sent from a fake address using the name of the university’s president, at one point placing a flag with a swastika in a campus building. The incidents received national news coverage.
Incredibly, once the hoaxers had been discovered, suspended, and removed from campus, university administrators concealed their knowledge that it had been a hoax, leaving other students (and Americans in general) to fear that their campus was a far more dangerous and hostile place than it actually was.
Fake hate crimes are sometimes politically motivated, designed to get a reaction from people and convince them that hate is a really big problem — this is usually done by liberals, but in at least one prominent case (see below) it was done by a conservative. In other cases, the perps have other motives, such as financial fraud or a need for evidence to bolster a discrimination lawsuit.