Know Your President

[PoliticalChic]

It would be a mistake to believe that what is projected in our universities leaves no footprint on the political landscape. A grave mistake. Postmodernism has taken hold in both venues.

1. Graduate students in English who once would have learned to perform "close readings' of literary texts, which enhanced their understanding of the way in which a skillful use of language and structure creates an aesthetic effect, now learned absolutely nothing of such matters. Mark Bauerlein, English professor at Emory, writes that the postmodern humanities is nothing more than "catechism learning," a set of axioms to be assimilated: no in-depth research or critical thinking needed- just keep slinging rhetoric.





2. The roots of postmodernism can be traced to the anthropologist Franz Boas, who, in an effort to study exotic cultures without prejudice, found it useful to take the position that no culture is superior to any other. Thus was born the idea of cultural relativity.

3. The idea spread like wildfire through the universities, catapulted by the radical impetus of the sixties. ready and willing to reject "the universality of Western norms and principles." Bawer, "The Victim's Revolution"

4. This postmodernism is based on the conviction that "we live in a world without reliable truths or transcendent possibilities, without epiphanies, without absolute values, without teleology and without durable meanings."
David Solway.

a. What makes this view so very decadent and dangerous is that it forces us to reject the universality of such values as individual liberty, and to believe that "there are no barbarians, only different forms of civilized man."

b. "A distinguishing characteristic of Liberals and Leftists is an aversion to recognizing or acknowledging evil and its permutations, i.e., communism. On another level, it explains the Left’s dislike for capitalism, a system which produces winners and losers, a painful fact that the Left would rather not see."
Dennis Prager.

c. "Remember, for Progressives, postmodern relativism is the glue that binds all of their myths."
Berezow and Campbell, "Science Left Behind."






5. Compare post-modernism to classical liberalism, the optimistic doctrine that gave us liberty, democracy, progress, was a moral project. It held that human society could always better itself by encouraging the good and diminishing the bad. It rested, therefore, on a very clear understanding that there was a higher cause than self-realization: that there were such things as right and wrong and that the former should be preferred over the latter. But the belief that autonomous individuals had the right to make subjective judgment about what was right for them in pursuit of their unchallengeable entitlement to happiness destroyed that understanding. Progressives interpreted liberty as license, thus destroying the moral rules that make freedom a virtue.
Phillips, "The World Turned Upside Down," ch 14.

6.Postmodernism affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we envision truth are dependent on the community in which we participate . . . There is no absolute truth: rather truth is relative to the community in which we participate.
Grenz, S. J., "A Primer on Postmodernism", p. 8.





7. President Obama often speaks this postmodern language. For example, here is part of a discussion of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in his book, The Audacity of Hope:

“Implicit in [the Constitution's] structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties [notice cruelty: he's against it] of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad.” Obama's point here is that absolute truth and ordered liberty are incompatible, because absolute truth turns its believers into fanatics or moral monsters.

a. " He is a conviction politician determined to complete the progressive project of emancipating government from the Founders’ constraining premises, a project Woodrow Wilson embarked on 100 Novembers ago." Obama: the real radical - Washington Post

8.' The second new element in President Obama's liberalism is even more striking than its postmodernism. It is how uncomfortable he is with American exceptionalism—and thus with America itself. President Obama considers this country deeply flawed from its very beginnings. He means not simply that slavery and other kinds of fundamental injustice existed, which everyone would admit. He means that the Declaration of Independence, when it said that all men are created equal, did not mean to include blacks or anyone else who is not a property-holding, white, European male—an argument put forward infamously by Chief Justice Roger Taney in the Dred Scott decision, and one that was powerfully refuted by Abraham Lincoln.'

a. Unlike most Americans, President Obama still bristles at any suggestion that our nation is better or even luckier than other nations. To be blunt, he despises the notion that Americans consider themselves special among the peoples of the world. This strikes him as the worst sort of ignorance and ethnocentrism...' https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2010&month=0



With an education system such as this, one that turns out voters and a President such as we have....
...what future is there for America?




We must take back the nation, beginning with the education system.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

See, this is why I consider the Bushs traitors deserving of Dante's Ninth Circle. Dubya had a real opportunity to confront and rollback the Progressive Jihad starting with the Ministry if Truth (Department of Education) but instead he continued to allow the cancer to spread

 

[whitehall]

They haven't taught American history in public school in half a century. What kids get is a conglomeration of junk they call "social studies". Most kids have no concept of the Bill of Rights or the Constitution.

 

[PoliticalChic]

They haven't taught American history in public school in half a century. What kids get is a conglomeration of junk they call "social studies". Most kids have no concept of the Bill of Rights or the Constitution.

Worse.

Did you see this:

"D.C. public schools may drop U.S. government requirement
In the you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff category: The public school system in the nation’s capital may let high school students graduate without taking a high-school-level course in how their country’s government works.
The D.C. State Board of Education is proposing changes to graduation requirements from the system that would actually get rid of the current requirement that students take a U.S. government class,..."
D.C. public schools may drop U.S. government requirement



When will people realize that the educrats who decide and write the curricula are the fifth column.....either by error or by intent...they are out to destroy this nation.

 

[Truthmatters]

It would be a mistake to believe that what is projected in our universities leaves no footprint on the political landscape. A grave mistake. Postmodernism has taken hold in both venues.

1. Graduate students in English who once would have learned to perform "close readings' of literary texts, which enhanced their understanding of the way in which a skillful use of language and structure creates an aesthetic effect, now learned absolutely nothing of such matters. Mark Bauerlein, English professor at Emory, writes that the postmodern humanities is nothing more than "catechism learning," a set of axioms to be assimilated: no in-depth research or critical thinking needed- just keep slinging rhetoric.





2. The roots of postmodernism can be traced to the anthropologist Franz Boas, who, in an effort to study exotic cultures without prejudice, found it useful to take the position that no culture is superior to any other. Thus was born the idea of cultural relativity.

3. The idea spread like wildfire through the universities, catapulted by the radical impetus of the sixties. ready and willing to reject "the universality of Western norms and principles." Bawer, "The Victim's Revolution"

4. This postmodernism is based on the conviction that "we live in a world without reliable truths or transcendent possibilities, without epiphanies, without absolute values, without teleology and without durable meanings."
David Solway.

a. What makes this view so very decadent and dangerous is that it forces us to reject the universality of such values as individual liberty, and to believe that "there are no barbarians, only different forms of civilized man."

b. "A distinguishing characteristic of Liberals and Leftists is an aversion to recognizing or acknowledging evil and its permutations, i.e., communism. On another level, it explains the Left’s dislike for capitalism, a system which produces winners and losers, a painful fact that the Left would rather not see."
Dennis Prager.

c. "Remember, for Progressives, postmodern relativism is the glue that binds all of their myths."
Berezow and Campbell, "Science Left Behind."






5. Compare post-modernism to classical liberalism, the optimistic doctrine that gave us liberty, democracy, progress, was a moral project. It held that human society could always better itself by encouraging the good and diminishing the bad. It rested, therefore, on a very clear understanding that there was a higher cause than self-realization: that there were such things as right and wrong and that the former should be preferred over the latter. But the belief that autonomous individuals had the right to make subjective judgment about what was right for them in pursuit of their unchallengeable entitlement to happiness destroyed that understanding. Progressives interpreted liberty as license, thus destroying the moral rules that make freedom a virtue.
Phillips, "The World Turned Upside Down," ch 14.

6.Postmodernism affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we envision truth are dependent on the community in which we participate . . . There is no absolute truth: rather truth is relative to the community in which we participate.
Grenz, S. J., "A Primer on Postmodernism", p. 8.





7. President Obama often speaks this postmodern language. For example, here is part of a discussion of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in his book, The Audacity of Hope:

“Implicit in [the Constitution's] structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties [notice cruelty: he's against it] of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad.” Obama's point here is that absolute truth and ordered liberty are incompatible, because absolute truth turns its believers into fanatics or moral monsters.

a. " He is a conviction politician determined to complete the progressive project of emancipating government from the Founders’ constraining premises, a project Woodrow Wilson embarked on 100 Novembers ago." Obama: the real radical - Washington Post

8.' The second new element in President Obama's liberalism is even more striking than its postmodernism. It is how uncomfortable he is with American exceptionalism—and thus with America itself. President Obama considers this country deeply flawed from its very beginnings. He means not simply that slavery and other kinds of fundamental injustice existed, which everyone would admit. He means that the Declaration of Independence, when it said that all men are created equal, did not mean to include blacks or anyone else who is not a property-holding, white, European male—an argument put forward infamously by Chief Justice Roger Taney in the Dred Scott decision, and one that was powerfully refuted by Abraham Lincoln.'

a. Unlike most Americans, President Obama still bristles at any suggestion that our nation is better or even luckier than other nations. To be blunt, he despises the notion that Americans consider themselves special among the peoples of the world. This strikes him as the worst sort of ignorance and ethnocentrism...' https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2010&month=0



With an education system such as this, one that turns out voters and a President such as we have....
...what future is there for America?




We must take back the nation, beginning with the education system.

take it back to where?


you swim backwards all you want little fish.

your school is small and dont expect all the other fish to swim backwards too

 

[rightwinger]

It would be a mistake to believe that what is projected in our universities leaves no footprint on the political landscape. A grave mistake. Postmodernism has taken hold in both venues.

1. Graduate students in English who once would have learned to perform "close readings' of literary texts, which enhanced their understanding of the way in which a skillful use of language and structure creates an aesthetic effect, now learned absolutely nothing of such matters. Mark Bauerlein, English professor at Emory, writes that the postmodern humanities is nothing more than "catechism learning," a set of axioms to be assimilated: no in-depth research or critical thinking needed- just keep slinging rhetoric.





2. The roots of postmodernism can be traced to the anthropologist Franz Boas, who, in an effort to study exotic cultures without prejudice, found it useful to take the position that no culture is superior to any other. Thus was born the idea of cultural relativity.

3. The idea spread like wildfire through the universities, catapulted by the radical impetus of the sixties. ready and willing to reject "the universality of Western norms and principles." Bawer, "The Victim's Revolution"

4. This postmodernism is based on the conviction that "we live in a world without reliable truths or transcendent possibilities, without epiphanies, without absolute values, without teleology and without durable meanings."
David Solway.

a. What makes this view so very decadent and dangerous is that it forces us to reject the universality of such values as individual liberty, and to believe that "there are no barbarians, only different forms of civilized man."

b. "A distinguishing characteristic of Liberals and Leftists is an aversion to recognizing or acknowledging evil and its permutations, i.e., communism. On another level, it explains the Left’s dislike for capitalism, a system which produces winners and losers, a painful fact that the Left would rather not see."
Dennis Prager.

c. "Remember, for Progressives, postmodern relativism is the glue that binds all of their myths."
Berezow and Campbell, "Science Left Behind."






5. Compare post-modernism to classical liberalism, the optimistic doctrine that gave us liberty, democracy, progress, was a moral project. It held that human society could always better itself by encouraging the good and diminishing the bad. It rested, therefore, on a very clear understanding that there was a higher cause than self-realization: that there were such things as right and wrong and that the former should be preferred over the latter. But the belief that autonomous individuals had the right to make subjective judgment about what was right for them in pursuit of their unchallengeable entitlement to happiness destroyed that understanding. Progressives interpreted liberty as license, thus destroying the moral rules that make freedom a virtue.
Phillips, "The World Turned Upside Down," ch 14.

6.Postmodernism affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we envision truth are dependent on the community in which we participate . . . There is no absolute truth: rather truth is relative to the community in which we participate.
Grenz, S. J., "A Primer on Postmodernism", p. 8.





7. President Obama often speaks this postmodern language. For example, here is part of a discussion of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in his book, The Audacity of Hope:

“Implicit in [the Constitution's] structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties [notice cruelty: he's against it] of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad.” Obama's point here is that absolute truth and ordered liberty are incompatible, because absolute truth turns its believers into fanatics or moral monsters.

a. " He is a conviction politician determined to complete the progressive project of emancipating government from the Founders’ constraining premises, a project Woodrow Wilson embarked on 100 Novembers ago." Obama: the real radical - Washington Post

8.' The second new element in President Obama's liberalism is even more striking than its postmodernism. It is how uncomfortable he is with American exceptionalism—and thus with America itself. President Obama considers this country deeply flawed from its very beginnings. He means not simply that slavery and other kinds of fundamental injustice existed, which everyone would admit. He means that the Declaration of Independence, when it said that all men are created equal, did not mean to include blacks or anyone else who is not a property-holding, white, European male—an argument put forward infamously by Chief Justice Roger Taney in the Dred Scott decision, and one that was powerfully refuted by Abraham Lincoln.'

a. Unlike most Americans, President Obama still bristles at any suggestion that our nation is better or even luckier than other nations. To be blunt, he despises the notion that Americans consider themselves special among the peoples of the world. This strikes him as the worst sort of ignorance and ethnocentrism...' https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2010&month=0



With an education system such as this, one that turns out voters and a President such as we have....
...what future is there for America?




We must take back the nation, beginning with the education system.

Where the hell did you learn to write?

 

[jwoodie]

It would be a mistake to believe that what is projected in our universities leaves no footprint on the political landscape. A grave mistake. Postmodernism has taken hold in both venues.

1. Graduate students in English who once would have learned to perform "close readings' of literary texts, which enhanced their understanding of the way in which a skillful use of language and structure creates an aesthetic effect, now learned absolutely nothing of such matters. Mark Bauerlein, English professor at Emory, writes that the postmodern humanities is nothing more than "catechism learning," a set of axioms to be assimilated: no in-depth research or critical thinking needed- just keep slinging rhetoric.





2. The roots of postmodernism can be traced to the anthropologist Franz Boas, who, in an effort to study exotic cultures without prejudice, found it useful to take the position that no culture is superior to any other. Thus was born the idea of cultural relativity.

3. The idea spread like wildfire through the universities, catapulted by the radical impetus of the sixties. ready and willing to reject "the universality of Western norms and principles." Bawer, "The Victim's Revolution"

4. This postmodernism is based on the conviction that "we live in a world without reliable truths or transcendent possibilities, without epiphanies, without absolute values, without teleology and without durable meanings."
David Solway.

a. What makes this view so very decadent and dangerous is that it forces us to reject the universality of such values as individual liberty, and to believe that "there are no barbarians, only different forms of civilized man."

b. "A distinguishing characteristic of Liberals and Leftists is an aversion to recognizing or acknowledging evil and its permutations, i.e., communism. On another level, it explains the Left’s dislike for capitalism, a system which produces winners and losers, a painful fact that the Left would rather not see."
Dennis Prager.

c. "Remember, for Progressives, postmodern relativism is the glue that binds all of their myths."
Berezow and Campbell, "Science Left Behind."






5. Compare post-modernism to classical liberalism, the optimistic doctrine that gave us liberty, democracy, progress, was a moral project. It held that human society could always better itself by encouraging the good and diminishing the bad. It rested, therefore, on a very clear understanding that there was a higher cause than self-realization: that there were such things as right and wrong and that the former should be preferred over the latter. But the belief that autonomous individuals had the right to make subjective judgment about what was right for them in pursuit of their unchallengeable entitlement to happiness destroyed that understanding. Progressives interpreted liberty as license, thus destroying the moral rules that make freedom a virtue.
Phillips, "The World Turned Upside Down," ch 14.

6.Postmodernism affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we envision truth are dependent on the community in which we participate . . . There is no absolute truth: rather truth is relative to the community in which we participate.
Grenz, S. J., "A Primer on Postmodernism", p. 8.





7. President Obama often speaks this postmodern language. For example, here is part of a discussion of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in his book, The Audacity of Hope:

“Implicit in [the Constitution's] structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties [notice cruelty: he's against it] of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad.” Obama's point here is that absolute truth and ordered liberty are incompatible, because absolute truth turns its believers into fanatics or moral monsters.

a. " He is a conviction politician determined to complete the progressive project of emancipating government from the Founders’ constraining premises, a project Woodrow Wilson embarked on 100 Novembers ago." Obama: the real radical - Washington Post

8.' The second new element in President Obama's liberalism is even more striking than its postmodernism. It is how uncomfortable he is with American exceptionalism—and thus with America itself. President Obama considers this country deeply flawed from its very beginnings. He means not simply that slavery and other kinds of fundamental injustice existed, which everyone would admit. He means that the Declaration of Independence, when it said that all men are created equal, did not mean to include blacks or anyone else who is not a property-holding, white, European male—an argument put forward infamously by Chief Justice Roger Taney in the Dred Scott decision, and one that was powerfully refuted by Abraham Lincoln.'

a. Unlike most Americans, President Obama still bristles at any suggestion that our nation is better or even luckier than other nations. To be blunt, he despises the notion that Americans consider themselves special among the peoples of the world. This strikes him as the worst sort of ignorance and ethnocentrism...' https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2010&month=0



With an education system such as this, one that turns out voters and a President such as we have....
...what future is there for America?




We must take back the nation, beginning with the education system.

take it back to where?


you swim backwards all you want little fish.

your school is small and dont expect all the other fish to swim backwards too

I was going to say that the OP is way over the heads of most posters on this site, but TM makes that an understatement...

 

[PoliticalChic]

It would be a mistake to believe that what is projected in our universities leaves no footprint on the political landscape. A grave mistake. Postmodernism has taken hold in both venues.

1. Graduate students in English who once would have learned to perform "close readings' of literary texts, which enhanced their understanding of the way in which a skillful use of language and structure creates an aesthetic effect, now learned absolutely nothing of such matters. Mark Bauerlein, English professor at Emory, writes that the postmodern humanities is nothing more than "catechism learning," a set of axioms to be assimilated: no in-depth research or critical thinking needed- just keep slinging rhetoric.





2. The roots of postmodernism can be traced to the anthropologist Franz Boas, who, in an effort to study exotic cultures without prejudice, found it useful to take the position that no culture is superior to any other. Thus was born the idea of cultural relativity.

3. The idea spread like wildfire through the universities, catapulted by the radical impetus of the sixties. ready and willing to reject "the universality of Western norms and principles." Bawer, "The Victim's Revolution"

4. This postmodernism is based on the conviction that "we live in a world without reliable truths or transcendent possibilities, without epiphanies, without absolute values, without teleology and without durable meanings."
David Solway.

a. What makes this view so very decadent and dangerous is that it forces us to reject the universality of such values as individual liberty, and to believe that "there are no barbarians, only different forms of civilized man."

b. "A distinguishing characteristic of Liberals and Leftists is an aversion to recognizing or acknowledging evil and its permutations, i.e., communism. On another level, it explains the Left’s dislike for capitalism, a system which produces winners and losers, a painful fact that the Left would rather not see."
Dennis Prager.

c. "Remember, for Progressives, postmodern relativism is the glue that binds all of their myths."
Berezow and Campbell, "Science Left Behind."






5. Compare post-modernism to classical liberalism, the optimistic doctrine that gave us liberty, democracy, progress, was a moral project. It held that human society could always better itself by encouraging the good and diminishing the bad. It rested, therefore, on a very clear understanding that there was a higher cause than self-realization: that there were such things as right and wrong and that the former should be preferred over the latter. But the belief that autonomous individuals had the right to make subjective judgment about what was right for them in pursuit of their unchallengeable entitlement to happiness destroyed that understanding. Progressives interpreted liberty as license, thus destroying the moral rules that make freedom a virtue.
Phillips, "The World Turned Upside Down," ch 14.

6.Postmodernism affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we envision truth are dependent on the community in which we participate . . . There is no absolute truth: rather truth is relative to the community in which we participate.
Grenz, S. J., "A Primer on Postmodernism", p. 8.





7. President Obama often speaks this postmodern language. For example, here is part of a discussion of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in his book, The Audacity of Hope:

“Implicit in [the Constitution's] structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties [notice cruelty: he's against it] of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad.” Obama's point here is that absolute truth and ordered liberty are incompatible, because absolute truth turns its believers into fanatics or moral monsters.

a. " He is a conviction politician determined to complete the progressive project of emancipating government from the Founders’ constraining premises, a project Woodrow Wilson embarked on 100 Novembers ago." Obama: the real radical - Washington Post

8.' The second new element in President Obama's liberalism is even more striking than its postmodernism. It is how uncomfortable he is with American exceptionalism—and thus with America itself. President Obama considers this country deeply flawed from its very beginnings. He means not simply that slavery and other kinds of fundamental injustice existed, which everyone would admit. He means that the Declaration of Independence, when it said that all men are created equal, did not mean to include blacks or anyone else who is not a property-holding, white, European male—an argument put forward infamously by Chief Justice Roger Taney in the Dred Scott decision, and one that was powerfully refuted by Abraham Lincoln.'

a. Unlike most Americans, President Obama still bristles at any suggestion that our nation is better or even luckier than other nations. To be blunt, he despises the notion that Americans consider themselves special among the peoples of the world. This strikes him as the worst sort of ignorance and ethnocentrism...' https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2010&month=0



With an education system such as this, one that turns out voters and a President such as we have....
...what future is there for America?




We must take back the nation, beginning with the education system.

take it back to where?


you swim backwards all you want little fish.

your school is small and dont expect all the other fish to swim backwards too

Fish....school!!!
You are really getting better at this!

Bravo!

 

[PoliticalChic]

It would be a mistake to believe that what is projected in our universities leaves no footprint on the political landscape. A grave mistake. Postmodernism has taken hold in both venues.

1. Graduate students in English who once would have learned to perform "close readings' of literary texts, which enhanced their understanding of the way in which a skillful use of language and structure creates an aesthetic effect, now learned absolutely nothing of such matters. Mark Bauerlein, English professor at Emory, writes that the postmodern humanities is nothing more than "catechism learning," a set of axioms to be assimilated: no in-depth research or critical thinking needed- just keep slinging rhetoric.





2. The roots of postmodernism can be traced to the anthropologist Franz Boas, who, in an effort to study exotic cultures without prejudice, found it useful to take the position that no culture is superior to any other. Thus was born the idea of cultural relativity.

3. The idea spread like wildfire through the universities, catapulted by the radical impetus of the sixties. ready and willing to reject "the universality of Western norms and principles." Bawer, "The Victim's Revolution"

4. This postmodernism is based on the conviction that "we live in a world without reliable truths or transcendent possibilities, without epiphanies, without absolute values, without teleology and without durable meanings."
David Solway.

a. What makes this view so very decadent and dangerous is that it forces us to reject the universality of such values as individual liberty, and to believe that "there are no barbarians, only different forms of civilized man."

b. "A distinguishing characteristic of Liberals and Leftists is an aversion to recognizing or acknowledging evil and its permutations, i.e., communism. On another level, it explains the Left’s dislike for capitalism, a system which produces winners and losers, a painful fact that the Left would rather not see."
Dennis Prager.

c. "Remember, for Progressives, postmodern relativism is the glue that binds all of their myths."
Berezow and Campbell, "Science Left Behind."






5. Compare post-modernism to classical liberalism, the optimistic doctrine that gave us liberty, democracy, progress, was a moral project. It held that human society could always better itself by encouraging the good and diminishing the bad. It rested, therefore, on a very clear understanding that there was a higher cause than self-realization: that there were such things as right and wrong and that the former should be preferred over the latter. But the belief that autonomous individuals had the right to make subjective judgment about what was right for them in pursuit of their unchallengeable entitlement to happiness destroyed that understanding. Progressives interpreted liberty as license, thus destroying the moral rules that make freedom a virtue.
Phillips, "The World Turned Upside Down," ch 14.

6.Postmodernism affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we envision truth are dependent on the community in which we participate . . . There is no absolute truth: rather truth is relative to the community in which we participate.
Grenz, S. J., "A Primer on Postmodernism", p. 8.





7. President Obama often speaks this postmodern language. For example, here is part of a discussion of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in his book, The Audacity of Hope:

“Implicit in [the Constitution's] structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties [notice cruelty: he's against it] of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad.” Obama's point here is that absolute truth and ordered liberty are incompatible, because absolute truth turns its believers into fanatics or moral monsters.

a. " He is a conviction politician determined to complete the progressive project of emancipating government from the Founders’ constraining premises, a project Woodrow Wilson embarked on 100 Novembers ago." Obama: the real radical - Washington Post

8.' The second new element in President Obama's liberalism is even more striking than its postmodernism. It is how uncomfortable he is with American exceptionalism—and thus with America itself. President Obama considers this country deeply flawed from its very beginnings. He means not simply that slavery and other kinds of fundamental injustice existed, which everyone would admit. He means that the Declaration of Independence, when it said that all men are created equal, did not mean to include blacks or anyone else who is not a property-holding, white, European male—an argument put forward infamously by Chief Justice Roger Taney in the Dred Scott decision, and one that was powerfully refuted by Abraham Lincoln.'

a. Unlike most Americans, President Obama still bristles at any suggestion that our nation is better or even luckier than other nations. To be blunt, he despises the notion that Americans consider themselves special among the peoples of the world. This strikes him as the worst sort of ignorance and ethnocentrism...' https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2010&month=0



With an education system such as this, one that turns out voters and a President such as we have....
...what future is there for America?




We must take back the nation, beginning with the education system.

Where the hell did you learn to write?

Hey!

Look who's back!

It's the renewable energy source for hot air balloons!

 

[Toronado3800]

Ok, so from 68 to 92 there was a four year stretch when jimmy carter ruined the DOE.

Not saying public schools have no room for improvement. They do. It is just a larger issue than this liberal/conservative team cheering name calling thing.

 

[PoliticalChic]

It would be a mistake to believe that what is projected in our universities leaves no footprint on the political landscape. A grave mistake. Postmodernism has taken hold in both venues.

1. Graduate students in English who once would have learned to perform "close readings' of literary texts, which enhanced their understanding of the way in which a skillful use of language and structure creates an aesthetic effect, now learned absolutely nothing of such matters. Mark Bauerlein, English professor at Emory, writes that the postmodern humanities is nothing more than "catechism learning," a set of axioms to be assimilated: no in-depth research or critical thinking needed- just keep slinging rhetoric.





2. The roots of postmodernism can be traced to the anthropologist Franz Boas, who, in an effort to study exotic cultures without prejudice, found it useful to take the position that no culture is superior to any other. Thus was born the idea of cultural relativity.

3. The idea spread like wildfire through the universities, catapulted by the radical impetus of the sixties. ready and willing to reject "the universality of Western norms and principles." Bawer, "The Victim's Revolution"

4. This postmodernism is based on the conviction that "we live in a world without reliable truths or transcendent possibilities, without epiphanies, without absolute values, without teleology and without durable meanings."
David Solway.

a. What makes this view so very decadent and dangerous is that it forces us to reject the universality of such values as individual liberty, and to believe that "there are no barbarians, only different forms of civilized man."

b. "A distinguishing characteristic of Liberals and Leftists is an aversion to recognizing or acknowledging evil and its permutations, i.e., communism. On another level, it explains the Left’s dislike for capitalism, a system which produces winners and losers, a painful fact that the Left would rather not see."
Dennis Prager.

c. "Remember, for Progressives, postmodern relativism is the glue that binds all of their myths."
Berezow and Campbell, "Science Left Behind."






5. Compare post-modernism to classical liberalism, the optimistic doctrine that gave us liberty, democracy, progress, was a moral project. It held that human society could always better itself by encouraging the good and diminishing the bad. It rested, therefore, on a very clear understanding that there was a higher cause than self-realization: that there were such things as right and wrong and that the former should be preferred over the latter. But the belief that autonomous individuals had the right to make subjective judgment about what was right for them in pursuit of their unchallengeable entitlement to happiness destroyed that understanding. Progressives interpreted liberty as license, thus destroying the moral rules that make freedom a virtue.
Phillips, "The World Turned Upside Down," ch 14.

6.Postmodernism affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we envision truth are dependent on the community in which we participate . . . There is no absolute truth: rather truth is relative to the community in which we participate.
Grenz, S. J., "A Primer on Postmodernism", p. 8.





7. President Obama often speaks this postmodern language. For example, here is part of a discussion of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in his book, The Audacity of Hope:

“Implicit in [the Constitution's] structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties [notice cruelty: he's against it] of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad.” Obama's point here is that absolute truth and ordered liberty are incompatible, because absolute truth turns its believers into fanatics or moral monsters.

a. " He is a conviction politician determined to complete the progressive project of emancipating government from the Founders’ constraining premises, a project Woodrow Wilson embarked on 100 Novembers ago." Obama: the real radical - Washington Post

8.' The second new element in President Obama's liberalism is even more striking than its postmodernism. It is how uncomfortable he is with American exceptionalism—and thus with America itself. President Obama considers this country deeply flawed from its very beginnings. He means not simply that slavery and other kinds of fundamental injustice existed, which everyone would admit. He means that the Declaration of Independence, when it said that all men are created equal, did not mean to include blacks or anyone else who is not a property-holding, white, European male—an argument put forward infamously by Chief Justice Roger Taney in the Dred Scott decision, and one that was powerfully refuted by Abraham Lincoln.'

a. Unlike most Americans, President Obama still bristles at any suggestion that our nation is better or even luckier than other nations. To be blunt, he despises the notion that Americans consider themselves special among the peoples of the world. This strikes him as the worst sort of ignorance and ethnocentrism...' https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2010&month=0



With an education system such as this, one that turns out voters and a President such as we have....
...what future is there for America?




We must take back the nation, beginning with the education system.

take it back to where?


you swim backwards all you want little fish.

your school is small and dont expect all the other fish to swim backwards too

I was going to say that the OP is way over the heads of most posters on this site, but TM makes that an understatement...

Actually, I believe you are correct in that most aren't aware of the poison known as postmodernism....

But, given the main idea, I hope that they will see what is being perpetrated, and by whom.

 

[jwoodie]

The unionization of teachers has ruined public education.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Ok, so from 68 to 92 there was a four year stretch when jimmy carter ruined the DOE.

Not saying public schools have no room for improvement. They do. It is just a larger issue than this liberal/conservative team cheering name calling thing.

You misunderstand.

I have objections to neither teachers, nor unions.

The educrats are the academics who suppose they have the secrets to improve society, and substitute their latest fad for actual education.


They have altered what is taught from making all into Americans, to teaching that each separate identity has it's own version of history, reality, and truth.

The attack on America by the Leftist ‘fifth column’ has been neither abrupt nor obvious. Rather, it has been slow, imperceptible, and unctuous. But it has been successful. Professor James Banks, major textbook author and prime mover in the development of the development of the National Council for the Social Studies guidelines on multicultural education, “To create an authentic, democratic unum (one) with moral authority and perceived legitimacy, the pluribus (diverse peoples) must negotiate and share power.” Educational Leadership:Educating for Diversity:Transforming the Mainstream Curriculum

 

[PoliticalChic]

Ok, so from 68 to 92 there was a four year stretch when jimmy carter ruined the DOE.

Not saying public schools have no room for improvement. They do. It is just a larger issue than this liberal/conservative team cheering name calling thing.

1. Department of Education is, of course, unconstitutional. The Constitution clearly states that powers not granted to the federal government belong to the states.


2. So where is the impetus for its creation? Unions. The National Education Association (NEA) “In 1972, the massive union formed a political action committee…released ‘Needed: A Cabinet Department of Education’ in 1975, but its most significant step was to endorse a presidential candidate- Jimmy Carter- for the first time in the history of the organization.” D.T. Stallngs, “A Brief History of the Department of Education: 1979-2002,” p. 3


3. When formed, its budget was $13.1 billion (in 2007 dollars) and it employed 450 people. IN 2010, the estimated budget is $107 billion, and there are 4,800 employees. http://crunchycon.nationalreview.co...-department-education-not-radical/mona-charen


4. “In November 1995, when the federal government shut down over a budget crisis, 89.4 percent of the department’s employees were deemed ‘nonessential’ and sent home.” Beck and Balfe, “Broke,” p.304

 

[Toronado3800]

Ok, so from 68 to 92 there was a four year stretch when jimmy carter ruined the DOE.

Not saying public schools have no room for improvement. They do. It is just a larger issue than this liberal/conservative team cheering name calling thing.

1. Department of Education is, of course, unconstitutional. The Constitution clearly states that powers not granted to the federal government belong to the states.


2. So where is the impetus for its creation? Unions. The National Education Association (NEA) “In 1972, the massive union formed a political action committee…released ‘Needed: A Cabinet Department of Education’ in 1975, but its most significant step was to endorse a presidential candidate- Jimmy Carter- for the first time in the history of the organization.” D.T. Stallngs, “A Brief History of the Department of Education: 1979-2002,” p. 3


3. When formed, its budget was $13.1 billion (in 2007 dollars) and it employed 450 people. IN 2010, the estimated budget is $107 billion, and there are 4,800 employees. http://crunchycon.nationalreview.co...-department-education-not-radical/mona-charen


4. “In November 1995, when the federal government shut down over a budget crisis, 89.4 percent of the department’s employees were deemed ‘nonessential’ and sent home.” Beck and Balfe, “Broke,” p.304

So with out calling Jimmy Carter the great communicator who could inflict more of his will on Americans than a dozen years of impotent Ronald Reagan or Bush 1, what changes would you like to make?

Are our educational problems more lack of thought process lessons or???

I think we have a cultural issue where we over value the soft science degrees like communications studies and under value the hard science degrees.

Couple that with how easy it is to just keep paying and eventually passing and college means nothing, or at least delays our launch into adulthood.

In the lower levels I would like to see more kids held back also.

Perhaps the answer is the dreaded "national test". Can't do this or that? No second grade or eigth grade or diploma for you next year kid. While further empowering the national government it woukd take power and obligation from dear Mrs Smith who does not want to see poor Jimmy held back.

Ideas?

 

[PoliticalChic]

Ok, so from 68 to 92 there was a four year stretch when jimmy carter ruined the DOE.

Not saying public schools have no room for improvement. They do. It is just a larger issue than this liberal/conservative team cheering name calling thing.

1. Department of Education is, of course, unconstitutional. The Constitution clearly states that powers not granted to the federal government belong to the states.


2. So where is the impetus for its creation? Unions. The National Education Association (NEA) “In 1972, the massive union formed a political action committee…released ‘Needed: A Cabinet Department of Education’ in 1975, but its most significant step was to endorse a presidential candidate- Jimmy Carter- for the first time in the history of the organization.” D.T. Stallngs, “A Brief History of the Department of Education: 1979-2002,” p. 3


3. When formed, its budget was $13.1 billion (in 2007 dollars) and it employed 450 people. IN 2010, the estimated budget is $107 billion, and there are 4,800 employees. http://crunchycon.nationalreview.co...-department-education-not-radical/mona-charen


4. “In November 1995, when the federal government shut down over a budget crisis, 89.4 percent of the department’s employees were deemed ‘nonessential’ and sent home.” Beck and Balfe, “Broke,” p.304

So with out calling Jimmy Carter the great communicator who could inflict more of his will on Americans than a dozen years of impotent Ronald Reagan or Bush 1, what changes would you like to make?

Are our educational problems more lack of thought process lessons or???

I think we have a cultural issue where we over value the soft science degrees like communications studies and under value the hard science degrees.

Couple that with how easy it is to just keep paying and eventually passing and college means nothing, or at least delays our launch into adulthood.

In the lower levels I would like to see more kids held back also.

Perhaps the answer is the dreaded "national test". Can't do this or that? No second grade or eigth grade or diploma for you next year kid. While further empowering the national government it woukd take power and obligation from dear Mrs Smith who does not want to see poor Jimmy held back.

Ideas?

Sure....make sure educators are in charge, not the Left-wing academics.



Here's the answer, and it is proven: content rich education.


1. "[T]eachers and principals had trained at Columbia University’s Teachers College, a bastion of so-called progressive education, and militantly defended the progressive-ed doctrine that facts were pedagogically unimportant. Like A Nation at Risk, Cultural Literacy came under fierce attack by education progressives, partly for its theory of reading comprehension but even more for its supposedly elitist presumption that a white male college professor should decide what American children learn. Critics derided Hirsch’s lists of names, events, and dates as arbitrary, even racist. Because [Allan] Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind appeared just above Cultural Literacy on the bestseller lists for most of 1987, many liberal commentators paired the two writers, calling them conservatives agitating for a return to a more traditional, elitist education. In fact, Hirsch is and always has been a liberal Democrat. Far from being elitist, he insists, cultural literacy is the path to educational equality and full citizenship for the nation’s minority groups.


2. The “Massachusetts miracle,” in which Bay State students’ soaring test scores broke records, was the direct consequence of the state legislature’s passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, which established knowledge-based standards for all grades and a rigorous testing system linked to the new standards. And those standards, Massachusetts reformers have acknowledged, are Hirsch’s legacy.

2a. In the new millennium, Massachusetts students have surged upward on the biennial National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—“the nation’s report card,” as education scholars call it. On the 2005 NAEP tests, Massachusetts ranked first in the nation in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and fourth- and eighth-grade math. It then repeated the feat in 2007. No state had ever scored first in both grades and both subjects in a single year—let alone for two consecutive test cycles. On another reliable test, the Trends in International Math and Science Studies, the state’s fourth-graders last year ranked second globally in science and third in math, while the eighth-graders tied for first in science and placed sixth in math. (States can volunteer, as Massachusetts did, to have their students compared with national averages.) The United States as a whole finished tenth.

3. “I came to see that the text alone is not enough,” Hirsch said to me recently at his Charlottesville, Virginia, home. “The unspoken—that is, relevant background knowledge—is absolutely crucial in reading a text.”… he received an endowed professorship and became chairman of the English department at the University of Virginia.[He found that] the reading and writing skills of many incoming students were poor, sure to handicap them in their future academic work. In trying to figure out how to close this “literacy gap,” Hirsch conducted an experiment on reading comprehension, using two groups of college students. Members of the first group possessed broad background knowledge in subjects like history, geography, civics, the arts, and basic science; members of the second, often from disadvantaged homes, lacked such knowledge. The knowledgeable students, it turned out, could far more easily comprehend and analyze difficult college-level texts (both fiction and nonfiction) than their poorly informed brethren could. Hirsch had discovered “a way to measure the variations in reading skill attributable to variations in the relevant background knowledge of audiences.”

4. Hirsch was also convinced that the problem of inadequate background knowledge began in the early grades. Elementary school teachers thus had to be more explicit about imparting such knowledge to students—indeed, this was even more important than teaching the “skills” of reading and writing, Hirsch believed. Hirsch’s insight contravened the conventional wisdom in the nation’s education schools: that teaching facts was unimportant, and that students instead should learn “how to” skills. …expanded the argument in a 1983 article, titled “Cultural Literacy,” in The American Scholar.

5. [He] launched the Core Knowledge Foundation, which sought to create a knowledge-based curriculum for the nation’s elementary schools. A wide range of scholars assisted him in specifying the knowledge that children in grades K–8 needed to become proficient readers. For example, the Core Knowledge curriculum specifies that in English language arts, all second-graders read poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Emily Dickinson, and Gwendolyn Brooks, as well as stories by Rudyard Kipling, E. B. White, and Hans Christian Andersen. In history and geography, the children study the world’s great rivers, ancient Rome, and the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, among other subjects."

E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy
A content-rich pedagogy makes better citizens and smarter kids.
E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy by Sol Stern, City Journal Autumn 2009


If you want education.....get the Liberals/Progressives out!

 

[Toronado3800]

This is getting kinda strange around here with all the name calling.

I agree we need to teach more dates and facts in school. When WWII started, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, these need memorized. Let the kids decide if FDR was a foreign policy visionary or if Reagan was kicking Soviet butt or arming future terrorists. Those are difficult spots for a school to be in.

So in between the rants about progressive this or that did you have a set of standards you want to apply to grade schools? Something like if 70% of your 6th graders do not pass this test you are all fired.

 

[Toronado3800]

I honestly think we are close together in ways to fix the situation. Just folks who wanna teach snotty nosed kids are bleeding heart types.

 

[PoliticalChic]

This is getting kinda strange around here with all the name calling.

I agree we need to teach more dates and facts in school. When WWII started, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, these need memorized. Let the kids decide if FDR was a foreign policy visionary or if Reagan was kicking Soviet butt or arming future terrorists. Those are difficult spots for a school to be in.

So in between the rants about progressive this or that did you have a set of standards you want to apply to grade schools? Something like if 70% of your 6th graders do not pass this test you are all fired.

"...do not pass this test you are all fired."

It is only minimally about teacher.

It is about what is to be taught.

Content.

Memorization.

Go back to earlier times, and see how difficult exams were.

 

[Toronado3800]

I think the first step is actually failing kids in the lower grades and you may as well take that on to college as well.

To use an adult view, if folks know they can ride the welfare system they will. Teenagers are no different.

I also think a disinterested third party needs to administer the tests.

Cirriculum I have fewer answers for. My schools had acceptable cirriculum. Just it was too easy to pass.

The changes in the last couple decades seem odd to me. Then again the kids I speak with seem ok. But face it, if I am bothering to talk with a 12 year old family member it is the mature one, not the idiot cousin's kids who are somehow in the same grade.

Darn diploma factory private high school and state college I attended. (the local public hs was the same)