Friday, June 4, 2010

Forgetting Who We Are

I thought this letter worth posting. ~Bob

Many Americans are feeling queasy about a president whose criticisms of America on occasion seem to resemble those of our enemies, terrorists who hate capitalism and think America deserves a “come-uppance.” These uneasy citizens see Mr. Obama remaining as the least-known president ever, refusing to unseal a giant paper trail of documents of the type that every other president made public. However, there is much that is already public: his family history, friends, teachers, and supporters, organizational memberships, radical advisor-appointees, and his brazen criticisms of our Constitution. He is deeply steeped in radical socialism. In bookstores one can find such copiously footnoted exposé’s as The Manchurian President (Klein), and To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine (Gingrich), with much information not well-publicized until after Obama’s election.

The election of a seriously socialist American president critical of his own country was probably inevitable, given the educational background of voters that helped make his election possible. In the words of American educator Samuel Blumenfeld, “…There has been in this country a deliberate plan to change the nature of American education so that the American people could be easily led into socialism.” (“The Dumbing Down of America,” in Faith for All of Life, Nov/Dec, 2005, p. 20; doubters of this observation should Google the flamingly Marxist, best-selling text, A People’s History of the United States, by the late Howard Zinn.) This “deliberate plan” over the last half-century is too often accompanied by a gradual dumbing-down and denigration of our national self-image. We may be the only country which educates its citizens to feel guilty about our past history and present prosperity.

I doubt if most voters have heard a sober explanation of why capitalism is the best economic system, nor have they been taught about the historic failures of socialism, the proverbial road paved with the good intentions. While it can be couched in Christian terminology and misconstrued Biblical texts, socialism invariably hurts the very people it seeks to help. Too many have been educated to believe (a) that socialism wouldn’t be all that bad with good people to oversee it, and (b) that the Constitution is an old-fashioned document. These biases are also often accompanied by (c) an intemperate, revisionist view of American history which concentrates on every past mistake or injustice, while neglecting completely the enormous amount of good accomplished. Such revisionism, although rightly rejecting the unhealthy attitude of “my country, right or wrong,” replaces it with “my country, always wrong.” Having learned through this dumbed-down revisionist template, too many high school graduates view their own nation as a socially unjust, imperialist exploiter of the world founded by ignorant ethnic bigots in powdered wigs.

The developing fashion in higher education is to require courses on global perspectives or diversity which often reinforce this leftist programming. Things will never get better for our nation as long as the “global perspective” of the American electorate includes demonizing capitalism, promoting social guilt, and caricaturing patriotism as corny. This produces college graduates who see American exceptionalism only as arrogance.

On revisionist history: http://www.westernconservatory.com/article/2010/01/why-public-school-system-teaches-revisionist-history

On capitalism: http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/

On American exceptionalism: http://www.prageru.com/index.php?option=com_hwdvideoshare&task=viewvideo&Itemid=53&video_id=7

J. Michael Gibson

2 comments:

  1. Although "queasy" may be the understatement of the decade, the letter is sadly all too accurate.Socialism snuck in by changing its name to "postmodernism" which the elite found to be far more sophisticated - and less threatening.


    Under cover of academic freedom and educational "philosophy," postmodernists have managed to do what other strains of totalitarianism only dreamed of: insinuate their beliefs into every aspect and level of education.

    I wrote a piece at American Thinger along those lines: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/postmodernism_a_unified_theory.html

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  2. There are really good and bad points about each system. One of the things that bothers me about the Eco friendly people are that they're so entrapped in their own way of thinking that just like some conservatives, it's their way or no way. They will preach to you all day about how the world is coming to an end unless we all do something, but they're themselves unwilling to let up on anything they believe, such as social values.

    The other conservative ideas that I don't like are how most of the conservatives I read emails about are more than willing to tell everyone to join the military and wave the flag in their faces about how to be a "better" American. Yet the moment they learn about an American family (who because of the current economy) child gets sick and needs an operation, the conservative will say they're just not working hard enough, or they can choose to pay for the medical bills for the rest of their lives, nor perhaps have their home taken from them. That's not the America I want to live in, goodwill is dead if that's the case. Such an advanced society where a big screen TV is valued more than a person's health.

    I also recently told someone who couldn't afford to pay for their child's medication $1000 a month that they might just move to a Scandinavian country, sure the taxes are higher, and you have to learn a new language, but those people (yes being socialists) seem to actually care about their own people, and most of them don't have massive TVs either, but they somehow survive and are quite happy.

    Further, the idea of not throwing things like motor oil or antifreeze onto the plants because it will kill them. Taking care of the environment is now considered a new "socialist" idea? That's been around for much longer than 30 years - respect where you live and it will respect you and treat you well. I guess then I'm more of a socialist, than a throw your used motor oil and antifreeze wherever you want, capitalist. Aren't labels annoying anyway?

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