JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
- 63,590
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The old classic liberal will be the salvation of this country one day again. Real liberals will have to recapture the Democratic Party from the Marxists, anarchists and moral degenerates that are causing it to implode.
But much of this comes from the Marxists penetrating and corrupting our public school system to such an extent that it is beyond saving. We need to simply end the public school system and replace it with a voucher system steadily over time. Some competition should clean the bilge out of our public schools once and for all.
Three Rich Boys from America
In 1987, Allan Bloom wrote “The Closing of the American Mind,” a warning that “higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today’s students.” Bloom’s book landed like a bomb in the middle of the culture wars of the 1980s, as he contended that the top universities in the country were no longer giving their students the type of education they needed in order to protect and preserve the best aspects of American culture.
At the time, there were major fights over many aspects of the curriculum, all centered around one basic question: whether the brightest young Americans should be trained in a shared culture that would expose them to the best of this country and Western civilization.
In general, of course, the Left won those wars. The college freshmen who were 18 years old in 1987 are now 47 years old — meaning that relatively few people under the age of 60 received a solid grounding in the humanities of the type Professor Bloom thought were essential.
They learned very little about how the Founders viewed the world, how the English-speaking world developed in a different direction from the rest of European culture, or how, and why, the Americans fought and won so many terrible wars. They learned very little about how the typical American thinks — what she considers to be fair (or unfair), why so many Americans believe in a Triune God, and why they are so much more tolerant of gun ownership and the death penalty than other Westerners.
Few of them were ever taught to see things from the perspective of Thomas Jefferson, or Andrew Jackson, or even Harry Truman — men who built their careers fighting on behalf of what they called “the people” against the wealthy and powerful. Few of them ever learned of the many defeats Americans suffered — how Washington and Hamilton spent much of the Revolutionary War running for their lives, how the British burned the White House in 1812, how many American families have suffered generations of poverty and despair.
But much of this comes from the Marxists penetrating and corrupting our public school system to such an extent that it is beyond saving. We need to simply end the public school system and replace it with a voucher system steadily over time. Some competition should clean the bilge out of our public schools once and for all.
Three Rich Boys from America
In 1987, Allan Bloom wrote “The Closing of the American Mind,” a warning that “higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today’s students.” Bloom’s book landed like a bomb in the middle of the culture wars of the 1980s, as he contended that the top universities in the country were no longer giving their students the type of education they needed in order to protect and preserve the best aspects of American culture.
At the time, there were major fights over many aspects of the curriculum, all centered around one basic question: whether the brightest young Americans should be trained in a shared culture that would expose them to the best of this country and Western civilization.
In general, of course, the Left won those wars. The college freshmen who were 18 years old in 1987 are now 47 years old — meaning that relatively few people under the age of 60 received a solid grounding in the humanities of the type Professor Bloom thought were essential.
They learned very little about how the Founders viewed the world, how the English-speaking world developed in a different direction from the rest of European culture, or how, and why, the Americans fought and won so many terrible wars. They learned very little about how the typical American thinks — what she considers to be fair (or unfair), why so many Americans believe in a Triune God, and why they are so much more tolerant of gun ownership and the death penalty than other Westerners.
Few of them were ever taught to see things from the perspective of Thomas Jefferson, or Andrew Jackson, or even Harry Truman — men who built their careers fighting on behalf of what they called “the people” against the wealthy and powerful. Few of them ever learned of the many defeats Americans suffered — how Washington and Hamilton spent much of the Revolutionary War running for their lives, how the British burned the White House in 1812, how many American families have suffered generations of poverty and despair.
