We Get It – You CAN’T Speak Up!

Your livelihoods demand your silence. Speak out and you don’t just face ostracization but the potential loss of your employment. You see what’s going on in the country, but your employer, be it a public or private one, will overtly fire you or surreptitiously label and mark you if you don’t tow the leftist party line. The cancer has spread so far that iconic American companies have gone woke.

Why have they done that? Marketing. Some years back it was environmentalism. Companies had to demonstrate how ‘green’ they could be. That was yesterday’s woke. Today it’s jumping on the defund the police or LGBTQ+ bandwagon. Speak up and tell your employer how you REALLY feel about these topics and you do so at your own peril.

What’s so insidious about all this silencing is that the Damocles sword hanging over your head allows the evil to spread – silence equals tacit approval. But aside from an extremely small number of individuals who are so repulsed by the leftist agenda they’d rather suffer the consequences of quitting their jobs instead of putting up with the constant diet of idiocy, the majority of us keep quiet, bite our tongues and draw our paychecks.

The frustration I hear of teachers who are forced to deliver a curriculum they know is toxic for the children they teach, that of police officers I know who are forced to work with both hands tied behind their backs, the productive rank and file who are being told they can’t come to work unless they get the vaccine…all have muzzles on their faces, unable to say what they really think.

One of the things the Left is so good at is setting up a demagogue who can fill the heads of a critical mass of gullible, brain-addled sheep to believe their lies and drivel. These become acolytes and because they gravitate towards others who nod and go along to join the crowd and feed their other-directed egos by joining the team, they clump together and speak the dogma and talking points to create memes. These are then amplified by the media and whoosh, the Leftist drivel becomes gospel. It’s because of their collectivist hivemind that the weak losers of the Left become lemmings and don’t even know they’re headed to the sea and certain destruction. They just play follow the leader.

But it’s effective, because the demagogues thus have numbers on their side. In elections, that’s what matters. Millions of unthinking, weak-minded sheep follow the shepherds and in the aggregate, the Left prevails. That demagogue Jonathan Gruber, so-called architect of Obamacare, famously revealed the truth when he said “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage…And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass.”  

The last thing the Democrats want is for people to question their diktats. Through lies, deceit and manipulation, not to mention high production values, clever slogans and memes, the Left pushes and pushes, screams louder and louder, uses its tech power to silence/cancel opposition, essentially saturates and carpet bombs the airwaves, billboards, cocktail party speech to petulantly, obstinately get their way.

So the Left, a.k.a. Democrats, prevail.

On the Right, because of individualism, self-reliance, critical thought, justified skepticism, we deliberate before acting, we consider others and the nation as a whole, we don’t clump and recite the canon. Thus it’s a lot harder to organize and control the masses. This hurts during an election.

But wait. Look at what’s happening in school board meetings around the country. Pushed over the edge, parents who would ordinarily never speak up have coalesced and with one voice thrown the bullshit flag onto the field. The Southwest pilots, in another display of solidarity, were able to send a strong message to the airline’s management by walking out en masse. Street cops and firemen in New York are together defying the vaccine mandate.

In other words, if the Right sets its mind to it, or gets pushed too far, the Left will get a taste of their own medicine.

This coming Tuesday’s election for governor in Virginia will be a real harbinger. First, it will be a test as to whether sufficient pressure has been generated by the outcry from November 2020 to ensure the vote is honest and fair. Second, if Youngkin, the GOP candidate, prevails, decisively, it will be another example of the repudiation of Leftist authoritarianism and nonsense, and perhaps represent a push of the pendulum to the Right. Third, it will demonstrate how the Right can succeed in vanquishing the Leftist behemoth.

We can only hope.

Educational Indoctrination

What is happening in our schools is beyond shocking. A whole generation has been brainwashed to believe things we and our parents would have written off as lunacy.

A firsthand account by a public school teacher in Gross Pointe, Michigan of what’s going on in the halls, academic lounges and in kids’ heads these days alarmingly summarizes what we should find frightening if we care about our children and grandchildren. The article, entitled “Worse Than Ever: Government Schools After 35 Years“, by Lawrence M. Ludlow (American Thinker, August 15, 2019) describes what he found upon returning to the classroom after a hiatus because the local high school was unable to replace a retiring Latin teacher.

The first clue was the difference between the certification process in 1982, when he previously taught, and 2018. In his own words: “The 1982 certificate only listed the courses I could teach.  In contrast, the 2018 version had a 300-word “Code of Ethics” that amounted to a profession of faith in collectivism, egalitarianism, state schools, and diversity (typically limited to superficial things like skin color and gender, not ideas).”

His next exposure was to the students themselves, who were woefully deficient in English grammar much less ready to study Latin. In what was supposed to be a superior school system, many students didn’t bring books to class, complained incessantly about homework, expected to receive high grades regardless of proficiency and performance and the Principal was instituting a process whereby students would not be compelled to take any more than one test in a day! And this kind of education was supposed to be college preparatory!

The warping and rewriting of history, the Leftist brainwashing on the topics of socialism versus capitalism, communism versus democracy, globalism versus nationalism, nepotism versus meritocracy, redistributionism versus self-reliance, moral relativism, collectivism versus individualism, the blatant promotion of gender dysphoria, group identity, victimology and outrage culture…THIS is what’s being taught to our children and grandchildren in elementary and secondary schools and on college campuses today. (I will leave for another time the attack on boys and boyhood, men and manhood.) Oh yes, occasionally the three R’s are thrown in, but increasingly, this kind of harmful, Leftist nonsense permeates every subject.

It’s no wonder that home-schooling is taking off. It’s no wonder the competition for private school slots is cutthroat. And despite ever increasing spending per capita, it’s no wonder “Johnny [still] Can’t Read.”

Where does the fault lie, and who’s responsibility is it to fix this problem?

As regards fault – I chalk this up to the natural impact of what I call the “fat and happy syndrome.” Briefly, I submit that the Boomers, recipients of the peace and prosperity won by the Greatest Generation and not having to struggle through a Great Depression, allowed boredom, indolence, envy, drugs, moral depravity and many other societal ills to infect a “fat and happy” population.  “Free Thinking”, “Free Love”, anti-establishment rhetoric and the abandonment of God or thousands of years of right and wrong moral yardsticks resulted in a new educational approach. The result, “New Math” (remember?) and now, the Common Core panacea. In short, the hippies took over academia.

Regrettably, George Bernard Shaw was right. “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” With exceptions, for example shop and trade-school teachers who pass on truly useful skills and learning, academicians are so caught up in complying with the orthodoxy established by teacher union leadership, publishing or perishing the “proper” material in the case of college professors, or crushed by the collective mob if they try to deviate from the dogma, that there is little chance of a return to the basics.

As for the solution. Somehow, and by smarter people than I, we must eliminate the ability of teacher unions to impose their Leftist canon on our system. Whether we do this by abolishing teacher unions altogether (and ALL government employee unions by the way) or through some other means, we must break up the monopoly and MAKE OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM GREAT AGAIN.

I also suggest that those parents who can place their children in private schools do so. If unable to do so, I urge them to strongly consider home-schooling. Something like 2 million school-age kids are being home-taught today, with extraordinary results as compared to public schooling, and that figure is growing exponentially.

Finally, I urge parents to demand that their children reduce their obsession with social media and technology and create opportunities for them to interact in healthy ways with one another. Supervised play dates for the youngsters, organized sports (left me emphasize here the importance of competitive TEAM sports), participation in interpersonally engaging, non-technical social activities like music and theater, science and outdoors clubs for adolescents.

It’s been argued that our ability to influence our children ends about the age of 8. While that’s debatable, those of us who have raised children know that somewhere around the onset of adolescence we become the enemy and what we say is far less important than the current “meme”.

Yet judging by what I see in college and twenty-something, even thirty-something age kids today, when reality bites and they’re forced to become increasingly self-reliant…they become receptive to guidance and influence once again. All of sudden they discover that their parents have grown up. (As an aside, there is nothing more heartwarming than hearing our own words coming out of the mouths of our older children as they instruct their younger siblings, or their children!)

I urge us to find ways of resisting the temptation to become our children’s friends as they morph into grown-ups and, hopefully, adults, but rather continue to set an example for them, teach them correct principles, and help them understand what was right and what was wrong about the subject matter they were just exposed to over the previous 12-16 or more years.

If they haven’t learned them already, teach them about skepticism and critical thinking. Teach them the manners, decorum and civility that they didn’t receive during their ‘formal’ education. Teach them self-reliance and how to rise on the basis of merit, not political maneuvering or nepotism. Teach them about determination and perseverance. Teach them thrift and self-discipline, and teach them by example whenever possible, the difference between Right and Wrong, and Right and Left.

I submit that the blatant Leftist indoctrination of our children and grandchildren in today’s schools and colleges (whether public or private) is the REAL DOMESTIC TERROR threat in our country. May we who believe in Traditional Values be strong enough and wise enough to arm and teach our loved ones how to fight this scourge.