An Appetite for Truth
I have an admission to make – some days I blissfully ignore the world and it’s troubles. Unfortunately, today isn’t one of them. I thought I would share the following link to a very informative and articulate podcast regarding education, racism, free thought and free speech that was passed on to me – Jordan B. Peterson Podcast – Bill 67 & Free Speech.
I know, you may be thinking that’s a bit heavy, isn’t it? And yes, it is. But sometimes in order to preserve what we have we need to inform ourselves and take action. I don’t like to take the high and mighty approach to subjects like this because, frankly, I don’t want to chase people away. I have found getting one’s point across generally doesn’t fair too well that way. But this is a very important subject that will affect your freedom, so please read on to learn the impact of what is happening in our schools, not only the United States, but in the lovely nation across our northern border.
The podcast is about an hour. That’s a lot of time in this world of instant news bites and minimal attention spans. Most podcasts are often repetitive and not engaging or intelligent enough to invest that amount of time. I can tell you this one is. It is thoughtful, earnest, persuasive and on target. It will at once allow you to see the social complexity and yet philosophical simplicity of what we are allowing to happen.
There has been a long, ongoing perversion to the logic of rational thought towards the concept of individual rights and the sovereign individual. Our Constitution holds the individual is the supreme, absolute and independent holder of powers in the United States; that the individual delegates only the powers expressed in the Constitution to the federal government. That is the definition of sovereign according to Webster. But we are ever more rapidly disallowing any expression of independent thought. That inevitably turns to disallowing any action of independence as well. It is the next logical step in that illogical and irrational process that now pervades our society and has invaded our schools.
Like most anthropologists, activists know change takes place through indoctrination. The most effective form of indoctrination is the public education system. That’s where activists are headed today. The common man has no rights because special interest minority groups demand, and receive, preferential treatment. Critical Race Theory, non-gender bias, unconscious racism (no one can know what that might be unless they can read minds) – these are the non-sensical perversions of individual rights that are foisted on our children, beginning in kindergarten! Teachers are being mandated to become agents of politically-motivated thought enforcement. Race activists want them to be watchdogs and judges of racist behavior, not teachers of subjects. Politics and thought control are now the motivation, not the pursuit of subject learning for the sake of self-improvement. If that isn’t propaganda and indoctrination, I don’t know what is. It is the classic tactic used by Hitler in Nazi Germany, by every leader in Russia since the Bolshevik Revolution, by Kim Jong-Un in North Korea, and every other authoritarian regime.
The core purpose of education and teaching is to impart the skills of the 3 Rs – reading, writing and arithmetic. To provide each individual the ability to learn, acquire skills, and to responsibly conduct their affairs as they productively enter society. Lastly, it is to instill the ability to think and assess freely, critically and independently. Think about it – does the ability to do those things without open hostility exist today? We have moved past the point where we are chastised for acting in a discriminating way; we are now moving toward the point you cannot be allowed to think that way. And if someone thinks you are thinking that way, you will be punished for it – lose your job, your place in society, your right to make a living. What happened to physical proof of harm, proof of action? How do the thought police prove something that hasn’t manifested itself in a direct action against another person? Nor is it possible for an individual to defend themselves against such accusations, as one cannot prove a negative.
These are not the acts of accepting diversity. These are the acts of eliminating it. Lock step and like-minded. There is no free thinking, there is no discriminating about anything – about the food you like, the books you read, the sports you want to participate in, the profession you want to pursue. One must ask – where does this perversion end? The truth is, it doesn’t end, it has no end. It can only pursue its absolute goal – 100% conformity and control. That’s what totalitarianism always seeks.
If you think I have taken a leap of logic too far, read The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom. Published in 1987, it clearly predicts the issues of our educational dilemma. An equally timely book is Pete Hegseth’s recently released, “Battle for the American Mind.”
I am deeply saddened by all this because we are distancing ourselves from each other. We are using differences as our excuse for not interacting, or for interacting poorly. That is precisely the opposite of the traditional American dogma where individuality is celebrated. Civility and respect are the watchwords of progressing societies; divisiveness and intolerance are those of disintegrating ones.
Telling people we need to get past race or gender or religion and then making it the constant subject of every consideration for acceptance only increases our preoccupation with them. What gets us past making those aspects of human existence non-essential to our thinking is both stopping to think about them, and to respect and expose ourselves to people who live life differently from us, who have different challenges; fear is generally in the unknown, not in the substance or the doing.
Live and let live. Experience the positive, ignore the negative. Speak up and defend the right of all to be who they are. Do not tell others who they must be, how they must act, what they must do. There is only one person we need be wary of – the one who tells us what we must be, do, see, and think. I will listen to the positives and the negatives and then I will decide for myself. We all owe ourselves that.
