The Great Liquidation

 

America is hanging by a thread.  A great liquidation is underway, with many of the structures that support American society..or, in some cases, any viable society…being kicked away, sold off piecemeal, or just wantonly destroyed.  I’m talking about physical structures, legal structures, and social structures.

I do not think it is too late to turn this trend around, but the situation is very serious, and I’m going to ask you to gaze into the abyss with me before I discuss some reasons for hope.

Consider:

–Significant parts of America’s energy infrastructure are being destroyed or targeted for destruction.  For example, the Indian Point nuclear plant, serving NYC, was closed in April, despite the fact that this closure will likely create grid instability–and will certainly result in the zero-emissions power it had previously produced being generated instead by sources that do generate emissions. (Yet at the same time, NYC is banning the use of natural gas in new buildings–which will further increase the demand for electricity!) The Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, the largest source of electricity in California, is also scheduled for closure in 2025.  The cost of Diablo Canyon was $14.5B in present-day dollars, and I estimate that this represents at least 50,000 person-years of labor.  Something like 1200 working lifetimes, being wantonly trashed. Only a society that is very rich (for now)–disrespectful of its past accomplishments–and uncaring about the future would act in this way.

And these examples represent only a small portion of the assaults being conducted on America’s energy infrastructure. Peaker plants which ensure continued output under tough conditions, are being closed, with much hand-waving about how ‘demand management’ will solve any problems.  Oil and gas production is being squeezed. Pipeline construction is being suppressed, at the same time Putin is given the US green light for a Russia-Germany pipeline.  Energy is being transformed from an American asset into an American vulnerability.

–Billions of dollars of American military equipment were abandoned in Afghanistan and are now in the hands of the Taliban.  If we use a conservative estimate of $40 billion, that represents at least 400,000 person-years of human labor, thrown away. But that’s not the worst of it, of course: much of that equipment will now be used against us or our allies.  There are already reports of formerly-American weapons on their way to Iran.

The effect of the horribly-executed Afghanistan withdrawal on our credibility as an alliance partner will be devastating.  While many foreign policy types expressed worry about what expecting Germany to pay a larger % of the NATO bill would do to our alliances, any imagined impact of that was trivial compared with the impact of the current debacle.  The negative effect on American military recruiting, also, will be considerable, as discussed by several commenters at this blog.  Overall, America’s actual and perceived power position in the world has been greatly reduced over the past few months.

–American manufacturing has been negatively impacted by numerous policy choices and social factors, and America is no longer the world’s factory: that role now falls to China.  We have become extremely dependent on China and other countries for many products and components of products–as we found out during last year’s Covid crisis when we were subject to threats that we would ‘burn in the fire of Covid’ if China should choose to deny us critical pharmaceuticals and ingredients thereof.  We have become highly dependent on other countries for electronics manufacturing, especially microchips: a single Taiwanese company, TSMC, acts as the ‘foundry’ for a whole range of chips produced to the designs of many different American companies.  A Chinese takeover of Taiwan could be devastating to our industry, and such a takeover appears considerably more likely than it did a couple of months ago.

Manufacturing was, for a couple of decades, considered by the approved-expert classes to be an increasingly-unimportant industry, populated only by those with inferior and uncreative minds. There is some recognition growing lately that this field may actually matter. But American politicians generally have so little comprehension of how the economy actually works that it is hard to believe that any remedies that they propose will be efficacious ones.  As example #1, I give you Joseph Biden: a man who asserted that anyone who can mine coal can ‘learn to code,’ and who apparently believes that manually shoveling coal into furnaces is an actual substantial occupation in America today.  Biden also said, referring to China: “They’re not competition for us.”  This was in mid-2019!

America has given up much of its potential in manufacturing. and the consequences are severe for national security and for millions of people.  

–And, speaking of China: The United States has increasingly adopted a submissive position regarding that country.  Major corporations are bending over backward to avoid offending the leadership of that country…see my post here for some examples.  Universities, too, have become increasingly dependent on Chinese students and money.  At MIT, a board member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research raised concerns about whether a certain research collaboration with China was appropriate on national security grounds…other board members took offense, and even said that any serious inquiry into the ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party would be “racist.” She was told to ‘stick to science’ and not to mention China again.

The situation is unpleasantly like what Churchill observed in the Britain of the late 1930s, where he wrote of “the unendurable..sense of our country falling into the power, into the orbit and influence of Nazi Germany, and of our existence becoming dependent upon their goodwill or pleasure”…A “policy of submission” would entail “restrictions” upon freedom of speech and the press. “Indeed, I hear it said sometimes now that we cannot allow the Nazi system of dictatorship to be criticized by ordinary, common English politicians.” (quote from William Manchester, The Last Lion)

At the same time that the Biden administration is pushing for total electrification of transportation, they seem to have little concern about the fact that the US is far from self-sufficient in the minerals required for electrification technologies–and Biden’s son Hunter has been involved in a deal to give China a strengthened position in the supply of cobalt, a key material needed for battery production.  We are being positioned for a return to the kind of extreme energy dependence on other nations that for years gave the OPEC nations so much power and hence contributed to Middle East instability.

America’s relative strength vis-a-vis China is under threat not only as measured by traditional military, economic, and geopolitical factors, but in terms of the influence of the CCP on American internal politics and affairs.

–Media, academia, and increasingly business, indeed the majority of institutions in our society…are being taken over by an obsession with race and ethnicities.  People are not seen as individuals, but rather as members of ‘communities’, which term now refers to demographic categories.  Those who dare deviate from the political and social views assigned to members of their groups are denounced; see for example the attacks on the new Virginia Lt Governor Winsome Sears.

According to this 2018 survey, favorable race relations in the US peaked in 2009, with 66% of people rating them ‘good’…falling to only 26% assigning a ‘good’ evaluation in 2018.  A more recent Gallup poll shows that favorable views of race relations have fallen sharply over the past several years.

America’s colleges have been particularly race-obsessed:  see for example some college reading lists, with their assumption that “diversity is defined by race or gender.” The link in the last sentence is from 2017…the obsession has clearly gotten much worse since then.

And it has gone way beyond colleges. “I’m so exhausted with being reduced to my race,” a girl at Grace Church School, an upscale private school in Manhattan said. “The first step of antiracism is to racialize every single dimension of my identity.” Kindergarten students at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx are taught to identify their skin color by mixing paint colors. The lower school chief in an email last year instructed parents to avoid talk of colorblindness and “acknowledge racial differences.”  These cases are only one example of a much wider phenomenon.

If this sort of thing continues, then at best…at best…America becomes something like the Austro-Hungarian Empire, about which historian AJP Taylor wrote:

The appointment of every school teacher, of every railway porter, of every hospital doctor, of every tax-collector, was a signal for national struggle. Besides, private industry looked to the state for aid from tariffs and subsidies; these, in every country, produce ‘log-rolling,’ and nationalism offered an added lever with which to shift the logs. German industries demanded state aid to preserve their privileged position; Czech industries demanded state aid to redress the inequalities of the past. The first generation of national rivals had been the products of universities and fought for appointment at the highest professional level: their disputes concerned only a few hundred state jobs. The generation which followed them was the result of universal elementary education and fought for the trivial state employment which existed in every village; hence the more popular national conflicts at the turn of the century.

A creaky and dysfunctional society like Austria-Hungary is the best outcome for America if the race obsession continues on its current path…it is possible, even likely, that the actual outcome will be something much darker. Categorizing people by groups and defining them by the single dimension of membership in such groups is very, very dangerous.  I’m reminded of something Ralph Peters wrote:

Man loves, men hate. While individual men and women can sustain feelings of love over a lifetime toward a parent or through decades toward a spouse, no significant group in human history has sustained an emotion that could honestly be characterized as love. Groups hate. And they hate well…Love is an introspective emotion, while hate is easily extroverted…We refuse to believe that the “civilized” peoples of the Balkans could slaughter each other over an event that occurred over six hundred years ago. But they do. Hatred does not need a reason, only an excuse.

Excuses for inter-group resentment are now being manufactured at high speed…on an assembly line, so to speak.  Really want to go there?

–A high percentage of America’s public schools…and even some ‘elite’ private schools…are failing to meaningfully educate their students. In Baltimore, not a single graduate of the public school system reached minimal competency in math.  I have spoken with a carpenter who said recently-hired people can’t read a ruler because they don’t understand fractions, and a machinist who expressed a similar finding regarding micrometer-reading and decimals.  And even among those who achieve numeracy and literacy, how many have learned anything at all about science and technology?  How many can read and understand a document of any length and complexity, like say the US Constitution? How many have a reasonable understanding of history, or are familiar with the great literature of the past? How many have the furnishings of the mind that would have been expected of a high-school-educated person a couple of decades ago?

The Biden administration is apparently again attempting to establish racial quotas for school discipline.  Imagine trying to actually run a school under such regulations–“Well, this kid threw a bottle at a teacher, but we’ve over the discipline-incident maximum goal for his ethnic group this month, so we’d better just let it go.” The outcome will surely be in many cases a very chaotic school environment making things hopeless for those kids who do want to learn.

And at the same time that so many schools are failing to effectively teach actual knowledge and skills, some of them are focused on promoting extremely bizarre content, as with this California program in which students are expected to clap and chant to the Aztec god Tezkatlipoka.

All too many of our schools are failing to educate, while engaging in political indoctrination instead.  The overweening power of the teacher’s unions stands as an especially hideous example of the principal-agent problem.

–The whole idea of free speech is under sustained assault, to a degree never seen before in the United States.  Speech and writing that someone doesn’t like are regularly referred to as ‘dangerous’ or ‘harmful.’  According to a 2020 survey, almost 2/3 of Americans are afraid of sharing their political views. And with some reason, it seems: among ‘liberals’ and ‘strong liberals’, 44% to 50% would support firing a business executive who had privately donated to the Trump campaign. Among ‘conservatives and ‘strong conservatives’, a lower but nontrivial number…22% to 36%…would support firing an executive who donated to Biden.

See my post The Multi-Front Attack on Free Speech.

Dissident speech is particularly under attack when it involves any disagreement with the more extreme forms of ‘trans’ ideology.  Abigail Shrier wrote a book suggesting that the trend for female>>male transitioning among young girls has something to do with social pressure, a concept that should be no surprise to anyone who has ever known any teenagers, or ever been a teenager. She has been denounced viciously and has received a very large number of death threats.

Even scientific research is subject to ‘cancellation’ on political grounds.  See this appalling story about a mathematical study in support of one of Darwin’s hypotheses, which was withdrawn after being already accepted for publication, on grounds of Wrongthink.

Not only are people defriending those who deviate from approved opinions…in some cases, they are demanding that other people defriend their ideological enemies. And the turning-in of Wrongthinkers to the ‘authorities’, whoever those authorities might be, is all too often encouraged and too often actually done…see this story about a son who reported his own mother for ‘racism’, that ‘racism, consisting of her have posted a quote from Martin Luther King.

When free speech is lost, the feedback system of society is destroyed–and very bad things tend to happen.

–Far from protesting threats to freedom of speech and the post,  much of the media sees itself as the source of approved opinion and the rightful choosers of the country’s leadership.  For example, this former New York Times reporter says that the newspaper held her article about the Kenosha riots until after the election.  And the refusal of most of the media to report anything about the Hunter Biden laptop story…going so far, in the case of social media, as to suppress any mention of that story…is now well known.

The arrogance of these organizations is remarkable.  Jeffrey Zucker, the head of AT&T subsidiary CNN, asserted “You cannot be elected President of the United States without CNN.”  (See my post Should AT&T Select the President of the United States?.)  Yet there is not much in the way of actual knowledge or judgment to support that arrogance.  Obama advisor Ben Rhodes remarked, “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

The major media is increasingly not focused on reporting what actually happened, or even what will likely happen, but on controlling the ‘narrative’, which they see as driving how people think (and vote).  Many of them see themselves as being like the Prince-Electors of Medieval Europe, a small group of nobles who were the exclusive choosers of who the next Emperor would be.

–The very concept of the United States of America…its value and indeed its very physical existence…is under assault.  President Biden, in clear violation of his oath of office, is refusing to enforce the immigration laws, resulting in a flood of illegal immigrants in numbers sure to be socially disruptive and economically harmful to people in many fields…and, given the almost complete lack of screening, sure to include many dangerous criminals and carriers of Covid and other diseases. This completely irresponsible behavior is also further empowering the gangs which have been so harmful to Mexico and increasing their foothold on this side of the border.

Even worse are the attacks on the very idea that there might be anything good in America’s history and culture. The ‘1619 Project’, which holds that the American Revolution was driven by the leadership’s desire to maintain slavery, is quite mainstream, having been sponsored initially by the New York Times. Despite the fact that most credible historians have rejected its thesis, this project continues to be taken seriously and is apparently being taught as factual history in many schools.

The narrative that ‘America’ is at best irrelevant…or more likely, a repository of world-historical levels of unique evil…is being pushed hard.

And it’s not only America as a nation that is under attack–it is the cultural achievements of the West over the past hundreds of years.  To the ‘woke’, it seems that nothing matters, nothing is of value except power struggles…usually but not always race-based power struggles.  Science, art, music–all are viewed as nothing but theaters in which the endless power struggle unfolds itself.  ‘Educators’, especially, seem to be too often lacking in the emotions of intellectual curiosity and aesthetic enjoyment, and to project these deficiencies onto their students, and to eagerly frame ever subject as a group-against-group power struggle.

Last October, the Art Institute of Chicago fired its (unpaid) docents, on grounds of their lack of ethnic diversity (most of them were older white women).  Doesn’t matter how much you know about art or how much you love it; what matters is your role as a pawn in the power struggle!  And read about what has happened at the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of NYC, a museum that was dedicated to the experiences of the Irish, Jewish, German, and Italian immigrants who had lived in that area.  Not anymore.

Every aspect of our culture’s accomplishments since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment is under attack…the UK’s clownish Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, went so far as to call the steam engine, the enabler of the Industrial Revolution, a doomsday machine.  Indeed, the very concept of excellence, in any field, is considered as subject to cancellation…read about what happened when a professor wanted to introduce a Great Books program at his university.

Wide swaths of destruction–of academic fields, of practical professions, of friendships, of relationships between the sexes–are being cut and cleared by the never-ending politicization and obsession with power.  

I could go on…I could talk, for example, about the increasingly out-of-control crime in major cities, enabled largely by leftist prosecutors who have arrogated to themselves the function of legislators, as well as by the hostility toward police which has become a hallmark of accepted opinion–and the ongoing marauding of Union Pacific freight trains, which is the kind of thing you expect to see in a Third World country which is also a failed state…or the inflation of the currency and the almost-uncontrolled growth of debt…but I’ll stop here and switch to talking about what happens next.

Is there any hope?

Yes, I think there is.  The very breadth of the assault on America, on civilization, and on sanity itself is likely to make people pause and say, hey, wait a minute here.  Seeing how rapidly and malignantly all the above trends are playing out will have the same effect.  Someone might have supported some of these things to some less-extreme level…perhaps they had had bad personal experiences with police, or heard from credible friends about such experiences, and believe that better training and management is necessary, for example–without having even intended that dangerous felons be turned loose to prey on the general population.  Someone might have wanted to ensure that those who are genuinely uncomfortable with the sex they were born in were treated fairly, without having intended that their impressionable teenage kids be pressured to have irrevocable surgery at a ridiculously young age.  Company executives who have felt it necessary for their companies to come across as ‘woke’ if they are to be able to recruit millennials and younger as customers or employees…may do some rethinking when they are unable to run their factories because energy prices have gotten so high, or forced to close dozens of their stores due to out-of-control crime.

The arrogance of the Dems with respect to what is taught in the public schools proved their undoing in the recent Virginia gubernatorial election.  Across the country, the at-home schooling driven by the Covid lockdowns had given many parents their first true glimpse of what is really being taught in the schools, and a lot of them don’t like it.

The Democrat coalition is showing signs of fracturing.  Nonwhite voters do not necessarily like the ‘woke’ posturings that are largely driven by well-off and highly-educated white people.  A lot of people, including lifelong Dem voters, are tired of the arrogance of the teachers’ unions and of the arbitrary and high-handed way that schools have dealt with the Covid situation.

Numerous individuals have written about their personal turns away from leftist ideology.  See for instance this piece by Liel Liebovitz.  (“When I saw the left give up everything I believe in, I changed politically. You can, too”) Also Angie Schmitt’s piece in The Atlantic.   I’m sure there are a lot more who are moving in that direction but aren’t quite there yet, or who are there but haven’t written about it.

The worship of degree-based credentialism is starting to be questioned…too many people have seen the worthlessness of the degrees that they went into debt to get, too many have seen idiotic policies adopted by highly credentialed people,  (In 1969, Peter Drucker wrote: “It is highly probable that the next great wave of popular criticism, indignation, and revolt in the United States will be provoked by the arrogance of the learned.”  I would substitute credentialed for learned, but with that change, I think we’re now beginning to see what Drucker predicted.)  Many companies are reducing their emphasis on Degrees in hiring, and the FAA has recently stopped requiring college degrees for candidates for air traffic controller jobs.  At lower levels of education, a lot of people are noticing the widespread failure of the public schools.  And the education establishment–both in higher ed and in the K-12 schools and their largely-controlling unions–is a keystone of the ‘woke’ movement in general and the Democrat Party in particular.

Time to improve the situation is not unlimited, though…see John Ellis in the WSJ:  Can politics get better when higher education keeps getting worse?

So, I believe that there is indeed hope, but it’s not going to be easy.  And 2022 will be critical.

(An earlier version of this post appeared at Chicago Boyz a couple of weeks ago; extensive comment thread)

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  1. CACrabtree Coolidge
    CACrabtree
    @CACrabtree

    Two generations of Americans being taught what to think instead of how to think. Two generations of Americans being taught useless pap instead of mathematics and science.  Two generations of Americans being taught to hate their country, their culture and even their God.

    That’s a lot to overcome.

    • #1
  2. DonG (CAGW is a hoax) Coolidge
    DonG (CAGW is a hoax)
    @DonG

    Great post.  Thank you.

    How much money was wasted in Iraq?  $ 9 Trillion?   How much cash was thrown at Covid that ended up in fraud?  $3 Trillion? 

    • #2
  3. Dr. Bastiat Member
    Dr. Bastiat
    @drbastiat

    David Foster:

    Is there any hope?

    Yes, I think there is.  The very breadth of the assault on America, on civilization, and on sanity itself is likely to make people pause and say, hey, wait a minute here. 

    Somewhere I have an op-ed from The Wall Street Journal that said the exact same thing.  It was published early in the Carter administration.

    Maybe we’re serious now.  Perhaps.

    Or perhaps we’re just letting it happen…

    • #3
  4. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):
    Somewhere I have an op-ed from The Wall Street Journal that said the exact same thing (about hope).  It was published early in the Carter administration.

    Well, the Carter administration was followed by the Reagan administration, and a lot of the craziness was at least held in abeyance.

    Nothing is saved forever, as writer Connie Willis said…it has to be saved again and again.

    • #4
  5. Chuck Coolidge
    Chuck
    @Chuckles

    Oh, I hope, I hope, you’re correct.  But really? I don’t believe it.  

    We have been in fast moving waters for a very long time now, they have been moving faster and faster and now we are just at the falls’ precipice.

    • #5
  6. Jimmy Carter Member
    Jimmy Carter
    @JimmyCarter

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    Two generations of Americans being taught what to think instead of how to think. Two generations of Americans being taught useless pap instead of mathematics and science. Two generations of Americans being taught to hate their country, their culture and even their God.

    That’s a lot to overcome.

    Two generations being taught dependence instead self reliance.

    • #6
  7. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    A couple of other things I’ve run across that I thought were very positive:

    Andrew Sullivan on opinion & voting trends among Hispanics.

    A Cuban immigrant at Syracuse works to dismantle the socialist deception.  I’ve seen quite a number of other immigrants from totalitarian or near-totalitarian countries who are appalled at what they’re now seeing in the US, and are not shy about speaking out against it.

    • #7
  8. Gossamer Cat Coolidge
    Gossamer Cat
    @GossamerCat

    Great post.  Thank you for the linked material too, it was both upsetting and uplifting.  I wanted to share another little glimmer of hope.  I have been diligently learning Italian through the Duo Linguo app.  Of course, left wing politics has infected it as well.  Their translations sentences contain little jabs like:  “Build bridges not walls” and “America is a continent and not a country” which I dutifully translate between Italian and English.  These are not blatant so I shrug them off, along with all their multicultural icons, but last night, I was asked to translate “These words are violence” and that is obviously right out of the left.  I was pleased to see in the chat though that most of the discussants took exception to this statement and instead asked how to translate “sticks and stones may break my bones…” into Italian, which led to a long discussion.  I was also surprised to see a fellow Duo  Linguo user with the handle “OnlyTwoGenders” and an icon that represented male and female.  The left infects big tech, that is for sure.  But they haven’t infected everybody.  Let’s just hope this glimmer isn’t snuffed out.

    • #8
  9. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    Gossamer Cat (View Comment):
    last night, I was asked to translate “These words are violence” and that is obviously right out of the left.  I was pleased to see in the chat though that most of the discussants took exception to this statement and instead asked how to translate “sticks and stones may break my bones…” into Italian, which led to a long discussion.

    Great to hear this kind of pushback!

    • #9
  10. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot) Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot)
    @ArizonaPatriot

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    Two generations of Americans being taught what to think instead of how to think. Two generations of Americans being taught useless pap instead of mathematics and science. Two generations of Americans being taught to hate their country, their culture and even their God.

    That’s a lot to overcome.

    I disagree with this diagnosis, quite strongly.

    People have to be taught what to think.  This is how moral values are transmitted.  There is no system of morality founded on reason.  It is impossible to devise such a system, because reason cannot tell you what to value.

    The problem, I think, is that people have been taught to think the wrong things.

    • #10
  11. Kelly B Inactive
    Kelly B
    @KellyB

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    Two generations of Americans being taught what to think instead of how to think. Two generations of Americans being taught useless pap instead of mathematics and science. Two generations of Americans being taught to hate their country, their culture and even their God.

    That’s a lot to overcome.

    I think it’s much worse than that. I’m 60; my husband is 72. Yes, we were taught math and science, and I consider both of us to have had better-than-average primary and secondary education for our age group. Compared with the Founders, we are gaping ignoramuses (ignorami?) – little Latin, no Greek, hardly any acquaintance with the Great Books or history beyond the past 200-ish years. 

    I think education has been set up to generate drones since the dawn of the 20th century. Dewey was, apparently, a master. And it’s going to take a monumental effort to recover from the mess made. 

    • #11
  12. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    Two generations of Americans being taught what to think instead of how to think. Two generations of Americans being taught useless pap instead of mathematics and science. Two generations of Americans being taught to hate their country, their culture and even their God.

    That’s a lot to overcome.

    All obtuse displays of forced contrarianism aside, you are (of course) exactly correct.

    • #12
  13. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    I’m concerned with the fatigue that is being generated by the continual onslaught. It’s hard to wake up every day to a war that seems never-ending. I grasp at the stories of small victories to re-energize myself, to give myself hope that we can turn things around. It’s not only going to be hard work. But I have to hope that I have he stamina to fight these battles Every. Single. Day.

    Great post, David. Thank you.

    • #13
  14. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    David Foster: How many have the furnishings of the mind that would have been expected of a high-school-educated person a couple of decades ago?

    I often compare my own public education with that of my in-laws and my children.

    My in-laws (at least my father-in-law) had an 8th-grade education, at best. He spent part of his youth growing up in a sod hut (with 10 siblings!) in Oklahoma. He was one of the most capable men I’ve ever known – lumberjack, window washer entrepreneur in Seattle, Airborne Ranger, medic, Model-A (and MGA and Mercedes and . . .) restorer and auto mechanic, manager of the signs and markings department for the city. . . He read the newspaper from cover to cover every day. He often talked about how disciplined his one-room-school teacher was and how she required him to recite and to sing in class. He was still exchanging letters with her into his 70’s when she must have been 90-something.

    My own children were educated in classical charters, once I figured out what was happening in the public schools (Elder was in 2nd grade). Their curriculum in high school came from Hillsdale College. They had years of Latin, studied ancient history as the root of Western civilization and the classics as the fruit, and even read the Bible in literature and history classes. I’m convinced my kids are better educated than 99% of college graduates.

    My generation was cheated by public education, but it’s only gotten worse. Much worse. And even my children with their amazing experiences of learning have to live in this failing civilization. They have to answer with their “preferred” pronouns at the OB/GYN office.

    Yes, it’s a lot to overcome. I’m not optimistic.

     

    • #14
  15. Gossamer Cat Coolidge
    Gossamer Cat
    @GossamerCat

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):
    They have to answer with their “preferred” pronouns at the OB/GYN office.

    I answer with an eye roll but I think I’m going to start saying that they have to guess.  

    • #15
  16. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Gossamer Cat (View Comment):

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):
    They have to answer with their “preferred” pronouns at the OB/GYN office.

    I answer with an eye roll but I think I’m going to start saying that they have to guess.

    My answer is, “the correct ones.” But, I’m going to add, “I will not be bullied!”

    • #16
  17. DaveSchmidt Coolidge
    DaveSchmidt
    @DaveSchmidt

    “. . . favorable race relations in the US peaked in 2009, with 66% of people rating them ‘good’…falling to only 26% assigning a ‘good’ evaluation in 2018.”  A gift from Obama.  One that keeps on giving.   

    • #17
  18. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    “Furnishings of the mind”, compared with prior eras in America….browsing in a used bookstore, I ran across some old copies of the magazine of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen.  These are the guys whose job it was to throw coal into the boiler furnaces.  The job requires more thinking and judgment than one might imagine, still, it is not one of the more intellectual jobs on the railroad.  No college graduates among them, I feel sure, and probably not all that many high school grads, either.

    The magazine has articles that are pretty long, with writing that is far from simplistic…not just trade-related subjects, but short stories, poetry, etc.  I have to wonder how many of America’s present-day college graduates have both the ability, the mental context, and the patience to read a magazine such as this.

    See as an example this issue from January 1880.

    • #18
  19. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    It’s on the member feed only, but my August post Larry the Liquidator is Now Your CEO is very relevant to this subject.

    There is an earlier version of the post, Larry the Liquidator is On the Line, from August 2020 (ie, before Larry was hired as the American CEO), at Chicago Boyz.

    • #19
  20. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    Two generations of Americans being taught what to think instead of how to think. Two generations of Americans being taught useless pap instead of mathematics and science. Two generations of Americans being taught to hate their country, their culture and even their God.

    That’s a lot to overcome.

    I disagree with this diagnosis, quite strongly.

    People have to be taught what to think. This is how moral values are transmitted. There is no system of morality founded on reason. It is impossible to devise such a system, because reason cannot tell you what to value.

    A counterpoint is the biblical story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. 

    • #20
  21. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Gossamer Cat (View Comment):

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):
    They have to answer with their “preferred” pronouns at the OB/GYN office.

    I answer with an eye roll but I think I’m going to start saying that they have to guess.

    If I’m ever asked that I suppose I could drop my pants and check to be sure. 

    • #21
  22. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    Two generations of Americans being taught what to think instead of how to think. Two generations of Americans being taught useless pap instead of mathematics and science. Two generations of Americans being taught to hate their country, their culture and even their God.

    That’s a lot to overcome.

    I disagree with this diagnosis, quite strongly.

    People have to be taught what to think. This is how moral values are transmitted. There is no system of morality founded on reason. It is impossible to devise such a system, because reason cannot tell you what to value.

    The problem, I think, is that people have been taught to think the wrong things.

    I disagree with this somewhat strongly, but I see your point.  I once made a remark about drinking and 4-wheeling, which lead to the deaths of four adult teenagers.  I said to a Christian crowd, So that’s another good reason not to drink.  And the whole room said that we weren’t to drink because it’s a sin.  And I thought, Well then Jesus was a sinner, and he abetted sinning, and Christians sin every time they take communion.

    I think that I took the ‘how to think’ path, and those who said that drinking is a sin, took the ‘what to think’ path.  I think ‘how to think’ is more important.

    • #22
  23. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    Two generations of Americans being taught what to think instead of how to think. Two generations of Americans being taught useless pap instead of mathematics and science. Two generations of Americans being taught to hate their country, their culture and even their God.

    That’s a lot to overcome.

    I disagree with this diagnosis, quite strongly.

    People have to be taught what to think. This is how moral values are transmitted. There is no system of morality founded on reason. It is impossible to devise such a system, because reason cannot tell you what to value.

    The problem, I think, is that people have been taught to think the wrong things.

    I disagree with this somewhat strongly, but I see your point. I once made a remark about drinking and 4-wheeling, which lead to the deaths of four adult teenagers. I said to a Christian crowd, So that’s another good reason not to drink. And the whole room said that we weren’t to drink because it’s a sin. And I thought, Well then Jesus was a sinner, and he abetted sinning, and Christians sin every time they take communion.

    I think that I took the ‘how to think’ path, and those who said that drinking is a sin, took the ‘what to think’ path. I think ‘how to think’ is more important.

    Yeah, I strongly disagree with the separation of faith and reason. 

    • #23
  24. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    Two generations of Americans being taught what to think instead of how to think. Two generations of Americans being taught useless pap instead of mathematics and science. Two generations of Americans being taught to hate their country, their culture and even their God.

    That’s a lot to overcome.

    I disagree with this diagnosis, quite strongly.

    People have to be taught what to think. This is how moral values are transmitted. There is no system of morality founded on reason. It is impossible to devise such a system, because reason cannot tell you what to value.

    The problem, I think, is that people have been taught to think the wrong things.

    I disagree with this somewhat strongly, but I see your point. I once made a remark about drinking and 4-wheeling, which lead to the deaths of four adult teenagers. I said to a Christian crowd, So that’s another good reason not to drink. And the whole room said that we weren’t to drink because it’s a sin. And I thought, Well then Jesus was a sinner, and he abetted sinning, and Christians sin every time they take communion.

    I think that I took the ‘how to think’ path, and those who said that drinking is a sin, took the ‘what to think’ path. I think ‘how to think’ is more important.

    Yeah, I strongly disagree with the separation of faith and reason.

    I thought of it as the difference between rote and reason, but I think “faith and reason” is deeper.  Some things, including articles of faith, should be taught by rote, but eventually they must stand up to the scrutiny of reason.

    • #24
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