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QOTD: On CRT
“Critical Race Theory is liable to end for reasons very similar to the reasons the Salem witch trials ended.” – Gamaliel Isaac
You can read his entire column here.
It’s worth reading. I’m a little less optimistic than he is, primarily due to the indefatigable social media feedback loop that fuels much of the moral grandstanding. As Theodore Dalrymple has observed in a different context, there are few feelings more congenial than a sense of moral superiority.
Published in General
Very astute observations in your 2d paragraph. I would also add the pervasive influence of the MSM (especially the NYT, WaPo, CNN and MSNBC). As I watch/read them, it’s evident that they do not seek to inform the general public; they are merely talking to each other, buttressing their own views and, most importantly, loudly signaling their own virtue.
Of course, they’ve become useless and tiresome but, at this point, they don’t really care. They consider themselves warriors even though the rest of us see them as little more than clowns.
Andrew Klavan has similarly argued that these hyped-up moral crusades run their course and expire. I suspect he is correct, as is the author of the piece you cited.
Unfortunately, Critical Race Theory is likely to fuel resentment and division — as bigotry and injustice always does. For some, the toxic effect will outlast the academic proponents of this foolishness; there will be a generation that left college after having spent years being told that skin color is important, that character is secondary, and that one pigment demographic is morally inferior to another. That’s going to leave a mark.
The problem with this analysis is that it’s based on how Salem wound down once it was personalized. Those most responsible for CRT–the education establishment–are isolated from its effects and are likely to remain so. They are tenured professors and unionized public school teachers who can continue their efforts without being “burned at the stake.”.
Because they killed all the witches??
So, you are saying this whole Marxism thing is just a fad and after ~170 years is set to just stop? I am betting that just as Marxism 1.0 was replaced with Marxism 2.0, which was replaced with Marxism 3.0, that there will be Marxism 4.0 coming down the track.
The urge to collectivize and oppress is independent of the various specious arguments marshaled to achieve that end. Marxists will always be with us. That doesn’t mean promoting racial division will always work as a tool of Marxism.
CRT is only one symptom of the leftist derangement. It really shouldn’t be discussed by itself alone. Take away CRT and you’ll still have plenty more BS to go around.
What we see now is a bubble in the education establishment. One way to regain some control of higher education would be to eliminate federal guarantees for college loans. There is little economic reality to what is being taught in US university liberal arts programs. This is largely caused by these guarantees, which has allowed so many useless degrees to proliferate. Eliminate the guarantees and the need to create new teachers and professors will also go down. Rooting out the diversity mafia will be the next big challenge.
Even those of us who predict that CRT will run the same course as the Salem Witch Trials have to hope (or pray) that it doesn’t go down a different route, the one that Russia experienced after the 1917 return of Lenin.
What I do not understand is, now that CRT is becoming part of the education system. Why are we trying to put laws in about what is being taught in school? Would it not be better to use this to destroy the public schools system? Wipe it out and replace it with vouchers and private schools. This is the way to fix it. Not large institutions but instead smaller independent schools where people can send their kids to be taught what their values are and not the values of the elites that control the public purse.
Public schools are not going away. I agree that CRT is a wake-up call, but I’m not entirely comfortable with laws, which are a quick solution.
The way to go is to push for school choice, shine a light on the likes of Randi Weingarten as partisans, not educators, and get people elected to school boards. In the latter case, it’s quite obvious that the roots of the problem are there.
I know, which is why we will lose, we pay for the Left to indoctrinate our children and protect their right and method to do so. If you wonder why the younger generations have pagan morality, it is because we let the Left do it and supported the dong so.