Who Decides? Part 2

A Reprint

originally posted 1/18/07

In my introduction to education and homeschooling I discussed my conversation with Prof. Rob Reich, who is seen as an opponent by most homeschoolers, and his view that parents should not have sole control of the education of their children. His opinion was echoed in comments by Elliot, who feels that the government should determine what is taught to all children. These two people, along with many others outside homeschooling who discuss how to ‘limit’ it, or structure it, or regulate it, etc. all seem to touch on the core topic involved without quite realizing what that core topic really is. Even Prof. Reich, with a Ph.D. in Political Science, at first didn’t realize that regulation of homeschooling is about the power of the state to control or eliminate pluralism.

Pluralism is, briefly, the concept that in a democratic society there will exist people and groups that disagree with each other and that this is OK. In deed, some argue that this disagreement is good and that the resulting dialogue can lead to discovery. Yes, multiculturalism is part of this idea of pluralism, but pluralism is more of a realpolitik acceptance of reality than an attempt to make a ‘rainbow coalition’ of enforced diversity.

In other words, pluralism is the acceptance of the fact that there are people who think electricity and automobiles are potentially sources of personal character erosion, there are other people who hope and plan for the transformation of mankind into technological creatures with little remaining attachment to their human roots, and that these two groups coexist, already, in the world. While the Amish and Transhumanist have little in common, they are both elements of American society (and world society, for that matter). I don’t know Prof. Reich that well, but I suspect that if I told him I planned to create a program that would convince the Amish that their lifestyle was backwards, mistaken, ‘wrong’, etc. he would at least be disturbed. After all, the Amish, although small, are part of what makes the world a rich, interesting place. They both reflect and raise interesting questions about the role of technology in human culture and how we can and should react to change.

At the same time, if I were to tell Elliot that ‘the State’ has guidelines that would force transhumanists to tell their kids (or, uh, whatever they consider their progeny) that posthumanist ideas are immoral, unnatural, or too fantastic to be believed, he would likewise be disturbed. While a fringe movement in as many ways as the Amish, transhumanists also raise questions about man and machine and how they can and should affect each other. The Amish and the transhumanists have radically different concepts of the nature of man and nearly-opposite views of the role of technology, views that they will likely never reconcile – and that is OK. Even if their differences in outlook and belief add nothing to the ‘greater good’ of the society around them, they are equal in their rights to hold their beliefs as they do – if we do, indeed, live in a free and pluralistic society.

I always become concerned when I hear discussion of what is good for ‘the state’ or for ‘society’, especially when discussing education. What if ‘the state’ we are talking about it, oh, Nazi Germany? Or Castro’s Cuba? Or Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge? All of these ‘states’ had clear ideas of what was good for ‘the state’ and made education a keystone in their creation of their vision of a better ‘state’, didn’t they? During the American Civil War the Confederacy had laws forbidding the teaching of literacy to slaves – once again, for the good of ‘the state’. When we look at the parents who taught their children that fascism was not perfect and Jews not inherently evil in the Austria of 1939, or the parents who teach modern Cuban children that speaking out against the ruler-for-life is not immoral, or Cambodians that insisted to their kids that a better life didn’t require the extermination of 1/3 of their fellow citizens, or the person who taught the children of slaves to read and write, we do not see someone who is working against the Good, do we?

No, what we see in these situations is people want to pass on their own values, despite what intentions or convictions ‘the state’ may have, and that the most powerful way of passing on those values is through teaching them to their own children. This is something so important, so central to the very concept of being a parent that we really can’t imagine it being separated from the very nature of parenthood. It is also the primary method that beliefs and values are passed down through generations. Groups as varied as the Assyrians and some American Indian tribes knew that the most effective way to eliminate an opposed group was to force their children to be raised in your own group. This forced assimilation was accomplished by simply taking these potential enemies while they were children and teaching them that your own ways were the best, even the only, methods and beliefs. In no more than a few generations the former opponents would vanish, absorbed into your own group and holding your own beliefs.

Remember all those feel-good examples of iconoclast parents breaking the rules to teach their kids in defiance of ‘the state’? Here’s the deal – in order to allow those sorts of heroes, you must also allow the other sort of hero – you know, the people who teach things you disagree with. Right now in Sweden, kids are being taught not to trust ‘the Jew’; in London, parents are teaching their children that Blacks are shiftless and lazy; in China kids are being told that Americans are all greedy and lazy; in San Francisco kids are being told that homosexuals are deviants; in Canada children are being taught that that Hitler fellow may have been right about a few things. You may disagree with every one of those positions (in fact, I hope you do), but if you think you can ban parent’s from teaching those things to their kids, what makes you different from the Nazi’s who wanted to ban the idea that Jews are just people? Why are you superior to the Klansmen of Indiana? In what substantial way do you differ from the faculty of Bob Jones University in 1968?

Plurality and a free society demand that for free speech to really be free, we must, and I mean must, tolerate the speech we like least. Most importantly, it means that we must allow the transmission of beliefs across the generations. You don’t like fascists? Fine, teach your kids to not like fascists, too. But does that mean that a grandson of someone who fought for the Royalists in the Spanish Civil War can’t teach his own kids that Franco was fighting for the life and future of Spain? Can he not teach them that the Falangists were the good guys and made the nation a better place?

Or, for an argument closer to home and the American homeschooling movement, can you demand that a homeschooler teach their child that evolution is “right”? If so, why? Here’s another step; a fair number of homeschoolers, especially the earliest, were radical Leftists, not Christian Fundamentalists. Can you demand that they teach their children that Capitalism is “right”? After all, Communism is a total failure as an economic system (see: the Soviet Union, pre-economic-reform China, Cuba, Cambodia, etc., etc.) and Capitalism is the system that runs the Western economy. It is obvious that those narrow-minded, doctrinaire Marxist parents are doing their kids no favors by giving them a sheltered, even blinkered, view of the world. I say that the government should demand that they be taught the truth about Communism being wrong and Capitalism being right; after all, it is in the best interests of the children…. Right?

Still not a clear example? State after state after state has passed bans on gay marriage. The concensus is obviously that the average American is opposed to gay marriage – does that mean that homeschoolers should instruct their kids that gay marriage is ‘wrong’? No? OK, then why should it teach that gay marriage is ‘right’? Because you think it is?

The list of contentious issues is a long one with these just a starting point. It is important that the contentious issues raised by opponents of homeschooling are not about math, or spelling, or handwriting.

Prof. Reich mentioned during our discussion that he was concerned that homeschooled kids could grow up so sheltered, so narrowly educated, so focused on the ideology of their own parents, that they were literally unable to interact with people from a different religion in a meaningful way (I find it telling that he discussed this in the context of religious belief, not politics or some other cultural element). He wanted to ensure that homeschooled children receive enough education about other points of view that they can interact with them. I asked him if he was aware of kids so narrowly indoctrinated and he admitted that he does not, even anecdotally. He also admitted when I asked that public school doesn’t really educate kids for this, either. I think that this attitude is more important than Prof. Reich realizes. There are no standards for comparative religion studies in the public school systems that I am aware of – why have higher standards for homeschooled kids?

The NEA’s stated opposition (well, at least in the situation mentioned) is about kids ‘not being exposed to people from a range of cultural and economic strata’ (to paraphrase). Now, I have no idea who diverse the students are in, say, Blake Elementary (with 11 students) or Russell High School, but if this exposure is so very critical (and I think that remains to be proven), then why must homeschoolers ensure it when it is so very absent from many public schools? Indeed, a great deal of the NEA’s focus in recent years seems to be beyond traditional education.

Prof. Reich’s example was not about kids unable to do enough math to make change, or unable to read well enough to fill out a job application (topics we will touch on next time), but about the cultural outlook of children and young adults. Indeed, all of these hot button topics about homeschooling are not about reading (homeschoolers are better), or writing (homeschoolers are better), or mathematics (homeschoolers are better) [again, the next article will be in academic performance, so be patient]. Nope, even the ‘socialization’ bugbear is really not the main issue. The issues, the hot buttons, all the things that get opponents of homeschooling frothed boil down to cultural outlook.

This is why many on both sides focus on evolution/creationism. Those homeschoolers who leave public schools because of evolution clearly state that they feel the public schools are being used to subvert the beliefs and values that parents want their children to develop and support. While many who want to force all children to learn evolution claim that understanding evolution is a pre-requisite for being a functional adult, let’s be honest – how many public-school educated adults (or high school seniors) can state what the definition of evolution is? [If you think that evolution is defined as “a change in allele frequency over time”, you got the question right. If not, maybe your education was lacking….]. Just as importantly, since many of the arguments for an imposed curricula is because it is for ‘the good of the child’ or ‘the good of the society’ or ‘the state’ – how important is an in-depth understanding of evolutionary theory to you?

I assume that it isn’t very important to your life at all. Unless you wish a career in evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology you really don’t have any need for an in-depth understanding of evolutionary theory. If you have a career outside of certain branches of biology, you might not need to know (or believe) anything about evolution at all. Isaac Newton developed calculus while quite ignorant of evolution, John Locke published his ideas that the legitimacy of government exists only with the consent of the governed 70 years before Darwin published The Origin of Species, the Bill of Rights for the United States was written and adopted also more than six decades before Darwin published on evolution, and the rules of logic, reason, and rational deduction were developed in ancient Greece by men who explicitly believed in the spontaneous generation of life.

In short, those ideas seen as cornerstones of democracy (natural rights, the nature of government, equality of people, etc.) and of science (rational deduction, logic, mathematics, etc.) can, have, and do, flourish even in the direct rejection of evolutionary theory. The claim that a child must be taught evolution to be a ‘good citizen’ is ludicrous and the claim that a child must have an in-depth understanding in and acceptance of evolution to be prepared for a career is only true if that child must have a career in evolutionary biology.

Is there any wonder than many homeschool advocates, even ones with degrees in biology and a deep understanding of evolutionary theory, suspect that the advocates of mandatory evolution education may have, shall we say, a deeper agenda? The public debate between the religious and secular elements of society has largely been centered around evolution since about, oh, 1859 or so. While many believers in religion accept evolution as a scientific fact in varying degrees, some (especially Fundamentalists) do not. Despite the rather broad acceptance of evolution among the general body of believers, it cannot be denied that evolution is still a primary tool of opponents of religion who attempt to portray religious belief as inherently wrong. While some proponents of demands that evolution be taught to children are honestly only interested in a well-rounded science education, to deny that some are motivated by anti-religious prejudice is, at best, naïve.

This, again, cuts to the cultural basis of this debate. While the most often stated reason homeschoolers cite for their decision to teach their own kids is to give their children a better education, over 38% cite religious reasons and over 12% state that they object to what the local/available public school teaches. These parents obviously want to control the cultural, moral, and ethical education of their children. I do not see how this can be opposed without opponents admitting that they want control of the moral, ethical, and social education of children to be taken, in whole or in part, from parents. Prof. Reich was kind enough to simply state that as his own position. Elliot simply states that parents have no such control if ‘the state’ decides that certain morals, ethics, etc. are ‘minimum requirements’.

Remember those examples of parents bucking the trends and teaching their children their own morality I gave above? This is because in any society there will be people who disagree with one another – that’s just the way it is. When those people are a minority or distrust/disagree with some element of society they will attempt to avoid it and/or replace it with their own version of it. One example from the American education experience is the Catholic school system. When Catholic immigrants began to reach America in large numbers they found that the existing public schools were anti-Catholic with explicitly anti-Catholic sentiments expressed by teachers and textbooks. This attempt by the mainstream to forcibly assimilate Catholics was met with the creation of a separate network of schools built, maintained, and funded by Catholics. These schools were opposed by the Know Nothing Party, a group that also wanted to mandate minimums in education for all children – mainly to make sure they were taught the ‘proper’ (read ‘Protestant’) version of the bible.

Do any readers wish to argue that Catholics were wrong to want to preserve their culture and beliefs in the face of this hostility? If you think that they were, what do you have to say about the history of mandatory public schools as a tool to purposefully destroy American Indian culture? After all, the intent of those who determined that American Indian children would be forbidden to speak their language and taught that their religion was superstitious nonsense had, at heart, the very best interests of those children. Did the parents of those children have any right to reject public schools and the ‘minimums’ the state had determined? To insist that they, the parents, could determine what their children should learn, thank you? According to Elliot – no, they didn’t. If ‘the state’ determines that all kids must learn that animism is silliness, irrationality, and superstitious; well, that’s a minimum to get by in the modern world, isn’t it? And Prof. Reich with his concern that parent’s not be allowed to completely determine what their children learn is just a few steps back, in my opinion.

How about today, when public school curricula actively promote stances that conflict directly with Catholic beliefs? If parents concerned with these issues can send their kids to Catholic schools, why not homeschool them? The Amish won a long court battle that allows them to have their own schools so that their children can be taught as their parents wish – including not following the compulsory education laws. Why are the legitimate desires of the Amish to pass on their beliefs and culture worthy of being honored, but not homeschooling parents who happen to be, say, pagans?

This desire to strip parents of their authority over their children or to claim that the interests of ‘the state’ trump the interests of parents in their own children are, at heart, anti-democratic. The essence of democracy is that each person is inherently valuable and all are equal before the law. The natural rights that we pre-suppose when we discuss democracy include the rights to think, speak, and believe as we wish. Our children are, ultimately, the most powerful agent of change that exists in any society, especially in a democracy. After all, our children will continue to work, vote, and act within a democracy long after we are dead. People do not work hard to pass on frivolities to their children, and they do not sacrifice their time, money, and opportunities to educate their kids in things that they, the parents themselves, find unimportant. Homeschoolers do what they do not only to provide a superior education for their children, but to attempt to preserve and spread their own beliefs – in effect, to preserve their own culture.

Limiting this ability is, in the end, limiting the speech and beliefs of the parents in a very critical manner. Prof. Reich is stating, implicitly, that parents do not have an unfettered right to exercise their beliefs or to express in speech their heart-felt thoughts. Elliot is saying that ‘the state’ (which is, after all, the people in a democracy) trumps the desires of its citizens. In each case, the underlying statement is ‘you can believe whatever you like, I guess, but don’t expect us to allow you to promulgate it’.

In many ways, the desire to determine what homeschoolers can and cannot, must and must not, teach their children is just a shade of the Know Nothings and the Indian Office. It is someone determining that they know best, or at least better. It is the belief that someone, either yourself or an ‘expert’, is better/smarter/better educated/more ‘mainstream’ than a parent and that you need to intervene in how they raise their child – for the good of the children, of course! Eventually, with enough education, you can finally get the population all thinking the right things, believing the right truths, and acting in the proper manner….

You ever read Brave New World?

Words You Just Don’t Hear Anymore

Reprehensible

Condemnable

Deplorable

Cad

Bounder

Callow

Good-for-nothing

Demimondaine

Idler

Wastrel

Bad for Kids

Outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins, a biologist and proponent of evolutionary theory, not so long ago embarked on a new venture; a series of videos where he openly attacked religion. Called The Root of All Evil, Dawkins claims in these films that religion is inherently evil because it is not rational and, further, claims religion is responsible for many, if not most, ills of society. He calls teaching children religion a form of child abuse and obviously wants to ban it in ‘the best interests of children’. Let us look beyond the fact that Dawkins admits he knows virtually nothing of theology. Let us ignore the fact that the BBC would blanche at the mere idea of allowing a fiction story portray Catholics or Baptists as being correct and condemning those with differing beliefs as being in a ‘permanent state of infancy’, but have no problem producing and airing an atheist’s blatant attack on all religious believers, everywhere. Let us even overlook how Dawkins’, a self-proclaimed rationalist with advanced degrees in biology and zoology, can be so concerned with overpopulation in face of the evidence that it is not, and never has been, a true concern (see the rest of this blog).

Instead of looking at his hypocrisy (he mocks people whom criticize biology without understanding it, but refuses to study the theology he, in turn, criticizes), his prejudice (his assumption that believers are inherently inferior is quite obvious, and often admitted), or his use of mass media to denigrate a majority of the world. No, let us instead focus on… children. Dawkins claims that it is ‘bad’ to raise children in a religious atmosphere. Let’s do what he would like and – look at the scientific evidence.

There have been a lot of studies into religious people vs. non-religious people. Since it can be really hard to figure out who really has faith and who doesn’t, statisticians (and other researchers) usually use the shorthand of measuring how often a person or family attends church, synagogue, or temple and calling people who go at least once a week ‘religious’. Sure, this may not be perfect, but statistically it seems accurate. What do these studies show? Are religious people, as Dawkins claims, infantilized by their beliefs?

Overwhelmingly, being religious is good for you. Regular church attendance leads to lower blood pressure, less anxiety and depression, a stronger immune system, and are less likely to commit suicide, all contributing to religious people having a mortality rate about 25% lower than people who do not attend worship regularly with the end result that religious people outlive the non-religious by, on average, seven years. Not only do religious people live longer, they are healthier and happier, leading to a higher quality of life! Indeed, the correlation of church attendance and happiness is pretty strong, and diverse. People who regularly attend church are more likely to have strong, lasting marriages where both members are happy.

Scientific research seems to point toward a result that surprises religious people not at all; they are healthier, happier, and live longer than non-religious people. Heck, religious people make more money and the sex is better, too! It should be obvious, then, that a rational person, looking only at the scientific literature, should advocate for more religion in peoples’ lives. Not only is it good for them as individuals and families, it is good for society as a whole – after all, healthier, happier, wealthier people need less of the services governments provide these days.

But I was speaking pretty specifically about kids, wasn’t I? And while we hope each and every child grows up to be an adult (and also, we hope, benefit from the advantages of being religious), they are kids first. Does religion affect kids, too? Yes, it does.

Research shows that even low levels of religious life make adolescents less likely to use alcohol, drugs, tobacco, engage in criminal activity, become suspended from school, run away from home, engage in sexual activity, or require emotional counseling. Religious children (again, even at low levels of church attendance) are less likely to drive drunk or engage in casual vandalism. Church attendance improves school attendance, work activity, and homework completion. It even improves their chances of escaping childhood poverty. As religious faith and participation increases, the positive effect on children also increases. At the other end, just having a mother that attends church regularly also improves the odds of adolescents not engaging in self-destructive behavior. Religious children grow up to have more education.

To sum up; scientific research shows that religious people are healthier, happier, wealthier, and live longer. Religious children are happier, less prone to depression, more likely to get an education and escape poverty, and better at avoiding self-destructive behavior. These things are all positives for children. For Dawkins to oppose religion as ‘child abuse’ is to place his prejudices above the actual welfare of children.

McCarthyism, Paranoia, and Things that Really Happened that You Don’t Know About

While reading about the newest Superman movie and how the writers decided to purposefully omit the phrase “the American way” from the movie, I ran into a phrase a few times that intrigued me. So, curious, I did what any geek would do; I googled it. When asked, Google reported that over 700,000 pages contained both the word ‘paranoia’ and the term ‘Cold War’, virtually always in reference to western feelings (especially American feelings) about Communism.

The conventional wisdom is, and has been since at least the ‘80’s, that the American fear of Communism, especially Soviet communism, was completely overblown. When I write “conventional wisdom” I mean it in the same way as the writers for Newsweek, Time, and the New York Times do – what academics, journalists, and Hollywood believe and tell the unwashed masses is true.

This sort of division between the self-appointed ‘intelligentsia’ and the ‘common man’ plays itself out in pop culture all the time. Overtly patriotic songs are automatically considered Country Music; critics pan patriotic films movies like Red Dawn and Invasion, USA while they do great business in the theaters; critics praise anti-American movies like Three Kings and Three Days of the Condor, films that are demonstrably no better than stuff like Rambo and certainly don’t pull in nearly as much money.

Quick Aside: before its release I read time and time again how super realistic Three Kings was supposed to be; heck, in one interview a member of the crew had to deny the use of a cadaver in filming a scene of a bullet entering a body. As a veteran of the Gulf War I was looking forward to seeing this film and went to a matinee on the first day it was open. Everything from uniforms to attitudes to gear to physics was so wrong I left after 35 minutes and demanded my money back.

So now, of course, ‘everybody knows’ that the paranoia of the Cold War was just a Red Scare; an unreasoning terror of Communism artificially created by Conservatives to whip up fervor for foreign wars and pump money into the military-industrial complex whole garnering the votes of the terrified sheep or middle America for the Republican war machine. Just ask Glenn Greenwald, Clint Willis, Jack Huberman, and Noam Chomsky. These best-selling authors, the critics who promote them, the academics who assign their books, and the actors who shill for them all want you to know that what was really going on during the height of the Cold War was a group of rabid Conservatives trying to gain fascist control of the nation by unfairly portraying innocent artists and Liberals of being baby-eaters, charges believed by the easily-deluded inhabitants of flyover country.

As usual with the topics I pick, all is not as we are told in school.

Long before World War II began, the Soviet Union was placing spies throughout the US. By the beginning of the war, the Soviet Union had spies placed very highly within the United States Government. While there had been some early successes for Soviet spymasters, the true breakthrough was the New Deal, when FDR and his cabinet swept hundred of academics into positions of political and economic control – academics who were unelected, untested, and largely uninvestigated. This led to literally hundreds of agents of the Soviet Union being in positions of power within the US on the eve of war.

During WWII a highly-classified program led to the decryption of thousands of classified telegrams from the Soviet Embassy. This project, called Venona, was so secret and its discoveries so profound that some presidents weren’t told of its existence, although they were told of some of the results. What Venona revealed was that Soviet spies were working at literally the highest levels in the US government, including agents within the OSS, the wartime precursor to the CIA, the State Department, Treasury Department, and War Department. Even a top presidential aide was a Soviet agent. Together, these various assets worked to not only hide and protect Soviet spies within the government, but to actually divert funds to allow these spy rings to exist; in effect, the US government was so badly compromised that taxpayer money was being used to fund Soviet spy rings in the US government.

The system was working so well, in fact, that the Soviet Union failed to properly ‘compartmentalize’ its system; members of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) working in espionage routinely interacted with Soviet Intelligence agents doing the same. In the end, the defection of just a few people threw a bright light onto what was occurring in the shadows. These defectors painted a harsh world where a high-ranking member of the US State Department who attended Yalta and helped write the charter of the United Nations was, in fact, a Soviet agent. That the production and allocation of war materials to the Soviet Union was planned and controlled largely by Soviet agents, and that these agents were also stealing nuclear secrets and facilitating the illegal shipment of nuclear materials to the Soviet Union.

In the ‘30’s the Soviet Union had used its intelligence agencies (then called the NKGB or NKVD) to provide military assistance to the Republican government of Spain, to round up tens of thousands of Soviet citizens for the gulags, abduct Spanish anti-communists for torture and execution, to assassinate political leaders all over the world, and to destabilize foreign governments in preparation for Communist takeovers of power. The Soviet Union had begun WWII as an ally of Hitler and wasted no time after the war in seizing control of as many European nations as they could, in direct violation of a number of treaties and agreements. The level of oppression within the Soviet bloc was horrendous, the spectre of deportation to the gulags omnipresent, and the use of torture and murder by the leaders routine.

Communism had never made secret its disdain for Capitalism, Democracy, or America. The fomentation of war and revolution all over the globe was not only their stated goal, but an active project. Through the 1950’s it became more and more obvious that the brutal, oppressive Communist regime of the Soviet Union, a group that was publicly bent on world domination and the eradication of differing political and economic systems and openly advocated the use of assassination, terror, and violence to achieve their goals, had a large number of spies and agents highly placed within the US government. As time went on there was increasing proof that agents and sympathetic ‘fellow travelers’ in the media and entertainment were working to paint Communism and the Soviet Union in the best possible light as a way of aiding the subversion of existing political and economic systems, and that similar agents were well-placed in academia, as well.

In the face of this, is it any wonder that many people were openly terrified? Soviet tanks were crushing the native governments of Poland, Lithuania, and other Warsaw Pact nations – would that happen here? The KGB routinely assassinated people all over Europe and Asia – would that happen in America, too? The Chinese government had been subverted by Soviet agents and overthrown by violent revolutionaries – was America next? The government not only seemed powerless to stop foreign incursions, but all evidence seemed to point to America’s own government being unable to root out Communist agents inside itself. Many people reacted not with paranoia, but with genuine, justifiable fear.

The reaction of the media? Largely ridicule. Newspapers routinely referred to concerns about Communist agents ‘paranoia’. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, comparing the search for Communist agents to a witch hunt. Movies since that day extol the “Hollywood 10” as heroes, unjustly accused of being foreign agents. The movie Good Night, and Good Luck, released recently, again painted the search for Communists as a fool’s errand, or the work of fanatics. Indeed, years later when James Angleton, a counter-intelligence agent with a stunning record of dedication and insight, warned that there must be Soviet agents within US counter-intelligence groups, he was laughed right out of his career.

The term witch hunt is still commonly used today, implying that the House Un-American Activities Committee was chasing after something that never existed. Even at the time the Crucible was written many people pointed out that, while witches are a superstition, Communists were real and busily butchering millions of their own people. A number of people in Hollywood came forward and agreed that yes, there were Communists in Hollywood doing their best to create propaganda, not art. Philip Dunne, who actively opposed the HUAC for potentially trampling American civil rights stated that in Hollywood “the industrious Communist tail wags the lazy Liberal dog”, admitting that Communists existed in Hollywood and often dictated projects and message. Of the Hollywood 10, one had fought with the Soviet-supplied pro-Communist forces in the Spanish Civil War and another had raised funds to supply them with arms, three were members of the Communist Party, some of whom admitted that officers of the CPUSA gave them orders on what to include and exclude in their work to promote Communism, and many of the rest were identified by witnesses as pressuring people to include pro-Communist propaganda in their films and books.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in the ‘90’s western researchers gained access to the Soviet archives and many KGB records. This allowed for definitive proof of a number of allegations; Angleton was right and American counter-intelligence had been deeply compromised for over a decade; the CPUSA was funded by the Soviet Union and was explicitly and espionage and subversion tool; Alger Hiss was a Soviet Agent; the witnesses who testified to the HUAC that they were former Soviet spies were, indeed, ‘turned’ Soviet spies; the ‘loyalty boards’ and ‘loyalty oaths’, investigations, and clearances forced on Truman by Republicans (to cries of outrage from the Left) did force spies out and did make it much, much harder for the Soviets to introduce new spies.

Despite the evidence of the day, the revelation of the Venona transcripts, and the contents of the Soviet archives, many still dismiss the time as period of oppression by America and point to Conservatives as fanatics and fools for believing there was any danger. This view is especially prevalent in the “reality-based community”. No matter what was really going on, despite the fact that history has proven McCarthy and the HUAC correct, regardless of the violence, oppression, and slaughter inherent in every Communist regime, and in defiance of the stated Communist goal of making America just like the Soviet Union, all of the Conservative of the time were in the grips of “paranoia”.

The Communists were probably most effective in their penetration of art and academe. As the New Left spread out in an attempt to find a niche, it took root in academia, often with a vengeance. The basic ideology of the New Left was the use of Marxist theory applied to culture rather than labor in an attempt to transform society and seize control through social engineering, not violent revolution. For example, some openly Marxists historians argued that America was not responding to outside pressures but rather actively building an Empire; this highly revisionist picture, virtually devoid of actual evidence, became accepted as fact for decades before rebuttals were published. The revisionists scholars ignored the rebuttals and continued to paint the Soviet Union (with its purges, gulags, totalitarian policies, and assassinations) as morally equal to America. This attitude was accepted in academia and was the ruling paradigm in the 1960’s and 70’s, continuing on to the present day.

The fall of the Soviet Union was a heavy blow to Leftists everywhere. Over the course of the 20th Century Communism had had every chance to succeed; the sole result was economic collapse, the loss of civil and human rights, and the slaughter of tens of millions of innocent people. Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism – all had proven completely incompatible with their goals (equality, freedom, plenty), but very efficient at oppression and murder. Cultural Marxism flourished in the West within academia, the arts, and the media; what were its adherents to do? Well, the same thing they had been doing. After their success in portraying America as no different than the Soviet Union (despite the lack of secret police, gulags, or work quotas in America), they decided to portray America as the worst nation on Earth. While portraying America’s victories as defeats, triumphs as evil, and ideals as false, they also focused on undermining the core institutions, morals, and concepts of the society. The main tool of this attack is Critical Theory.

By ‘critical theory’ I don’t mean the majority of thought about the nature and structure of literature. I am referring to the philosophy coming out of the Frankfort School. The Frankfort School was a collection of Marxist ideologues in Frankfort, Germany. The academics of the Frankfort School were dedicated Communists of one stripe or another, primarily what would be called in modern America “paleo-Marxists”. They seemed dismayed by the opposition to Communism they saw in Europe and how Fascists were able to tap into this opposition to gain power. Over the course of decades the various members of the Frankfort School (who spent WWII in America to escape the Nazis) developed Critical Theory. Unlike sociology prior to this, critical theory is not conceptualized as a method of observing and understanding society/culture as it is but is rather designed to be a tool to attack culture/society and change it into what the theorist wants it to become.

This proved to be a very fruitful path for Marxists everywhere. Much of the early work of the members of the Frankfort School was aimed at discrediting reason itself as a tool; the argument that reason leads to totalitarian societies was routinely put forward. Another common argument is that morals and ethics are totally subjective or arbitrary side-effects of language. Oddly, there is also the occasional argument that all morals other than Marxist ones are subjective (perhaps not so odd when you consider the rejection of logic). A common tactic is to change the definitions of words to “subvert” the culture that uses them, or to deny that words have any meaning other than what the reader decides to give them (where the Frankfort School’s critical theory overlaps with literary critical theory).

The concepts of Critical Theory are very seductive to some; if you don’t like a particular aspect of society or believe that you have a superior vision of society, simply redefine the terms, attack what exists, describe a utopic vision of what you want, and stick to the script. Elements of this are strong in feminist theory, regional studies (especially post-colonial conceptualizations and studies of the Middle East), and the entire crop of new “disciplines” such as Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, etc. Indeed, it can be argued that these various “disciplines” were created out of whole cloth via Critical Theory specifically as a praxis of the subversion of culture/society.

Two threads that can be seen running through all these various fields of discourse are a commitment to Marxist theory and a disparagement of Western society, especially American society. Key members of the Frankfort School felt the Enlightenment itself was the key step toward fascism and only by rejecting reason and positivism can Man be free of the tyranny of, well, reason. Government, politics, mass culture, popular music, popular art, norms of speech, selection of words, literature, folktales – all are attacked, all are torn down, each is shown (through new definitions, the rejection of reason, or the imposition of meaning that the critic wishes the thing to have) to be a tool of fear, oppression, slavery, and death.

After 50 years Critical Theory suffuses academia; from [something] studies to sociology to literature to political science, Critical Theory holds sway. It is the cornerstone of people such as Noam Chomsky or Ward Churchill and the basis of feminist theory. The entirety of gender theory boils down to a redefinition of words (or the stripping of meaning from words) in an attempt to change society. Journalists and educators are trained in the halls of Critical Theory and yearn for acceptance by the ideologues (if they do not, in fact, hope to some day join them), motivating them to embrace Critical Theory in the classroom and in the media. Entertainers, so very desperate to appear erudite, clasp Critical Theorists to their bosom and hope that some of the sheen of the self-appointed intelligentsia clings to them like fairy dust.

In the end, the result of the constant attacks, redefinition of terms, and utopic visions of what could be if the nature of Man/the world were different, is that Western culture in general and America in particular is portrayed not as imperfect, or flawed, or even evil – but as the most evil, the worst ever nation/culture/society. All elements of American society must be remade/abolished to erase the stain of being successful and surviving when socialism has failed and died.

And thus we return to the new Superman movie. Of course the Hollywood writers refuse to have an American icon support the American way. After all, what is so great about life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, hard work, sacrifice, democracy, and the certainty that good is its own reward? While foreigners may be dying to come to America and live here, that doesn’t mean they want to hear something as offensive as the concept that America is worth living in, or that the ideals that it is built upon are worthy of respect or emulation.

In a few months the outrage over this most recent attack on America will fade, then become accepted, and then the attack will shift. In 20 more years another Superman movie will come out and they will drop the ‘justice’ (after all, how can an American icon speak of justice? Don’t you know that America is the most unjust nation ever?). And by the time another restart is made in about the year 2050 ‘truth’ will be dropped as an archaic notion, too (since you can’t be sure that anything is true. Well, other than Marxism, of course).


Thanks to the Miami Art Exchange

And hello to The Blorg

Civic Virtue, Civilization, and Society

There is a concept that I don’t hear much about anymore; civic virtue. Heck, virtue in general is seen as a quaint, obsolete idea. But these two closely linked but distinct ideas, virtue and civic virtue, are as critical today as ever.
The simple definition of "virtue" is ‘ a character trait that is inherently good’, so that developing and holding these traits is something that makes a person better than they would otherwise be. The Four Cardinal Virtues are Prudence, Temperance, Courage, and Justice. While I grew up hearing of these traits (for all his faults, my father is of the Greatest Generation, after all), they are so outrÈ today that many don’t know what they mean.
‘Prudence’ is not caution (although that is the usual modern meaning) or timidity – it means ‘sound judgment’, the ability to distinguish between acting with courage and acting recklessly, for example. Prudence is seen not as action, but the knowledge and wisdom that guides actions.
‘Temperance’ is usually seen as another word for ‘moderation’, but it is more. It really means ‘moderation through control of the self’. The ability to control oneself is a key element of acting virtuously. After all, a person with the prudence to know which actions are proper and which are immoral but without the self-control to avoid the immoral in favor of the good cannot act in a proper manner. Temperance is seen as guiding not just eating, drinking, and sex, but also the choice of words and courses of action.
‘Justice’ is the impartial treatment of all individuals, regardless of race, creed, or origin, and thereby according them what they actually deserve. This is not some blanket ‘everyone is OK’ PC tolerance concept. Justice encompasses punishment as well as reward, rejection as well as acceptance. A stranger is judged by his actions, not the color of his skin – but if his actions merit punishment, then the color of his skin is no shield against justice. This is also true of gender, religion; you name it.
The fourth cardinal virtue is Courage. ‘Courage’ means the trait of acting in a moral manner in the face of fear. Regardless of shame, pain, loss, or death, the courageous man acts properly.
These virtues are Cardinal because they are each necessary; without prudence, you cannot know when or how to act; without courage, you will not act when it is risky (and moral behavior is almost always risky); etc. In short, you either have them all, or you effectively have none of them.
The ancient Greeks, especially Socrates, identified these virtues and their central, critical role is moral life and it was soon assumed by his intellectual heirs to be proven that these virtues were key to living a proper, moral life. Thus, these virtues form the foundation of the concepts ‘good’ behavior.
This brings us to the Civic Virtues. Where the Cardinal Virtues are seen as the elements that make a person’s own life worthwhile, the Civic Virtues are the elements that make a person a good citizen and the building blocks of a good society. In other words, just as the Cardinal Virtues make you an objectively good person, Civic Virtues build an objectively good society.
There is some debate on exactly what is meant by ‘civic virtue’, with some arguing that it means simply to be involved in the community, or even to send our children to public school. In the end, however, the definition of ‘Civic Virtue’ boils down to the core concepts that each individual has a duty to society as a whole and that this duty is to act in a moral, selfless manner. In The Discourses, Machiavelli sets out to use history to prove that a classical republican government founded upon the concepts of liberty and civic virtue as co-dependent ideas is the most just form of government possible. Political leaders and philosophers from Hannah Arendt to Thomas Jefferson agree with Machiavelli both in regards to republican government and the concept that liberty is only achievable in conjunction with the classical view of civic virtue as ‘selflessly moral actions by citizens for the society’. Machiavelli’s conclusion that when citizens reject civic virtue in favor of self-interest the inevitable result is subjugation (either to a despotic ruler or a despotic foreign invader) is also widely accepted.
The fascinating thing about civic virtue is that it is a virtue of individuals, not the group; it is not about the government helping the people or forcing certain activities with laws, but about individuals placing the common good above their own narrow interests of their own free will. Especially in the initial conceptualization of America by the founders, government was seen as a tool to prevent citizens from being denied freedom, thus allowing citizens to act as they should. It was assumed that proper citizens (i.e., those practicing the Cardinal Virtues) would be driven by their very character to embrace Civic Virtue. An untrammeled version of this drove the Anti-Federalists to aim for a very limited government. A fear that some day the majority would discard the Cardinal Virtues drove the Federalists to do such things as insist on the Bill of Rights being added as amendments to the Constitution.
As the Anti-Federalists saw it, the benefits of living a virtuous life were so overwhelmingly positive and so readily apparent that there was little need to do more than make sure people knew what they were and were afforded an opportunity to see the results; the rest was inevitable. At first it seemed hard to argue with them; a life lived virtuously is one that leads to peaceful prosperity, after all. Prudent people married with as much attention to the future as to their impulses, thought issues and events through, and were courteous. Temperant people saved their money, invested carefully, and avoided excess. Just people were open-minded, but not to the point of being gullible. Courageous people did what needed doing. Combined, these traits were the character traits that formed the core of the American Dream [while Hollywood may tell you that the American Dream is to ‘get rich or die trying’, the real American dream is to live free beholden to no one]. Rich or poor, virtuous people live the best life they can, strive to better themselves, and also strive to help fellow citizens.
The Federalists were quick to point out that even in the face of evidence plenty of people weren’t virtuous. Furthermore, vicious people (people of virtue are virtuous; people of vice are vicious) were capable of taking advantage of the virtuous society around them to simultaneously ‘artificially’ improve their own life, avoid contributing to society, and make that same society worse. This threat, they argued, was serious enough to warrant safeguards.
In the end, I fear the Federalists were correct. More and more people "realized" that if they lived within a virtuous society and acted in a selfish manner, they could reap the benefits of both society as a whole and of the hard work of others without developing virtues of their own. This is attractive in the short term because being virtuous is hard work; you must live by the most onerous of all limitations – self-imposed limitations. Why deny yourself anything if most of the tab is going to be picked up by someone else?
Indeed, the ethos of the Baby Boomer generation is just that; discarded virtue. ‘Turn on, tune in, and drop out’ is a pretty thorough rejection of virtue, after all – ‘turn on’ is ‘forget temperance and indulge in whatever you want’; ‘tune in’ is ‘ignore prudence and do what’s popular; and ‘drop out’ is ‘justice and courage are for saps who enjoy hard work, man’. The problem is, so many people of that generation rejected personal and civic virtue that the remaining virtuous couldn’t maintain stability as it had been.
Thus we have the fruits of the embrace of vice. The horrifying escalation in violent crime of the ‘70’s, the siphoning of billions of dollars to murderous drug lords in the ‘80’s, the financial malfeasance of the ‘90’s, the devil-may-care explosion and collapse of businesses in the early ‘00’s. Police are the most visible personification of authority and order, so they were hated and reviled (and under-funded and demoralized) – resulting in robbery, rape, and murder. ‘I’m just getting high, man, I’m not hurting anyone’ led to murderous billionaire criminals that effectively control the governments and armies of a handful of nations. ‘greed is good’ led to junk bond fiascos and the dot.com bust as people focused not on building, but looting.
The personal toll is worse. Addiction, fatherless children, alcoholism are endemic, especially in the young (who are told that temperance is a bad thing). The phenomena of ‘helicopter parents’ is a symptom, showing how a broad section of people reject prudence and justice in favor of their own child getting special treatment. Even the sharp declines in fertility are symptomatic; our primary social responsibility, the social group we are to sacrifice for first and most, is our family. More and more people are refusing to have children, and most openly admit that it is because they are ‘too selfish’ to endure the hard work, expense, and emotional investment children demand. In the end, when these childless people are elderly, society as a whole will be forced to care for them when they can no longer care for themselves. Of course, if enough of their fellow travelers join them in having one or none, then there won’t be enough young people to pay for and care for them as they age. Their abandonment of family duties and rejection of the future will not be deferred until after they are dead, but only until they face death.
While many in the blogosphere and MSM speak of a ‘clash of civilizations’, I think this lack of virtue is more critical. Indeed, the rejection of virtue and civic duty is a clash f civilization itself with barbarism.
The Greek writers who coined the term ‘barbarian’ originally used it to refer to ‘someone who doesn’t speak Greek’. It was expanded, however, until it meant ‘cowardly hedonists unable to control their own appetites’. The rejection of reason and culture was assumed to be inescapable from these self-same traits. Interesting, isn’t it, that the same Greeks who formalized logic, prized reason, invented geometry, etc. dismissed those who ‘turn on, tune in, and drop out’ as being incapable of reason?
Today, the barbarians aren’t at the gates, they are in the university faculty lounge. From Hollywood to New York they fill printed pages, the airwaves, and theatres with glorification of a life without virtue while painting the virtuous as stupid, foolish, or actively evil. Attempts to teach virtuous behavior (abstinence education, for example) provoke howls from the tribes of hedonists who shriek that teaching temperance is fruitless, even evil.
So immorality and selfishness are described by the self-styled intellectuals of the West as good, while morality and selflessness are derided as traps for the foolish. Like the grasshopper and the ant, the barbarians mock those who built the city they are burning, not noticing how very close Winter has become. When the snows do arrive never doubt that the barbarians will insist, nay demand! that the builders put them up and feed them until Spring comes.