Posted on 12/23/2021 8:30:28 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Partially paralyzed Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, who attended a Christian college for one semester before dropping out, urged conservative youth on Tuesday to drop out of college if they aren’t studying medicine, law or engineering because higher education is “a scam.”
“People will call me a radical for believing that you should be a Christian, you should get married young, you should have as many kids as possible, you should try and have a great job, you should be as successful as you possibly can. They’ll say I’m extremist for that,” Cawthorn said at AmericaFest 2021.
The “large patriotic celebration of all things red, white and blue” was organized under the banner of Turning Point USA and held in Phoenix.
“I genuinely just care about dining room politics,” the 26-year-old added. “I care about that young family who’s sitting around the dinner table. And what are they thinking about when they’re seeing their young children eat? They’re thinking about 'am I going to be able to send them to a good school?'” he continued before boasting about being homeschooled.
"One, I think you should home school. I was homeschooled all the way through,” he said to cheers. “I am proudly a college dropout. If you are not becoming an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer, I highly encourage you to drop out. It’s a scam.”
While some may find the congressman’s comments shocking, his attitude towards higher education isn’t uncommon, as many former students have been left with diminishing financial returns in post-college employment and large student debts.
Some 32.1% of the U.S. population 25 years of age and older holds at least a bachelor’s degree, according to data from the American Community Survey.
In recent reports, however, as college-educated women grapple with the diminishing returns from degrees, many men have cited diminishing returns as they are now completely choosing to forgo college.
“If I was going to be a doctor or a lawyer, then obviously those people need a formal education. But there are definitely ways to get around it now,” Daniel Briles, 18, who graduated in June from Hastings High School in Hastings, Minnesota, recently told The Wall Street Journal. “There are opportunities that weren’t taught in school that could be a lot more promising than getting a degree.”
But in a September report titled “The Great Divide: Education, Despair and Death,” husband and wife research team, Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton Princeton University, contend that Americans who don’t have a college degree face a “bleak” and deadlier future compared to those who do.
They found that increasing deaths by drugs, alcohol and suicide, known as “deaths of despair,” are largely concentrated among Americans without a college degree. Meanwhile, a college degree appears to act as a talisman against them. The research built on previous work examining the relationship between mortality and education in America.
Cawthorn was left partially paralyzed at age 18 after a 2014 car crash, which occurred while returning from spring break with a friend in Florida.
In a deposition cited in The Citizen-Times in Aug. 2020, Cawthorn revealed that he had enrolled in Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, in 2016 but dropped out after only one semester.
The small evangelical Christian school is a magnet for homeschoolers because it is known to place graduates into federal government positions successfully.
Cawthorn, who was studying political science at the time, earned mostly D letter grades. He testified that his injuries from the crash that left him paralyzed affected his ability to learn. When he was further questioned about his reason for leaving the school by an insurance-company lawyer, he said it was because of “Heartbreak.” He said his then-fiancé left him for another classmate because she “didn’t get along with my mother.”
"The MAGA doctrine that Donald Trump started, when people say Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, I say, 'I think he started a revolution in this country where now we are the leaders of the conservative movement,'” he said.
“I’ll tell you, I’m a devout Christian. I’ve got a great relationship with my Lord and Savior. And so, of course, I love being able to help people. I love taking care of people. I think we should send missionaries out into the world. We should bring people to Christ,” he continued.
Cawthorn said he believes America should have a “strong economy” and the “way we should do that is by encouraging people to be able to go out and take risks.”
"Instead of taking out that $100,000 student loan as an 18-year-old, which is worthless as an 18-year-old, why doesn’t the government allow us to be able to take out a $10,000 business loan at 18 to be able to go and create an economy and create work and create all these great things,” he said.
Cawthorn argued that there needs to be a greater focus on domestic issues, like taking care of veterans, rather than the U.S. trying to police the whole world. He also dismissed the notion that the U.S. is not a nation of Christians.
"I think the most important thing for us to do is to save souls for Jesus Christ. But that’s our jobs as Christians, and I believe we are a Christian nation,” he said. “Almost every single one of the signers, they were regular church-attending Christians. If anybody wants to tell you they were atheists or deists, they’re idiots. Don’t listen to them.”
“When people say we’re not a Christian nation and we’re founded by racists, by evil men, that’s wrong,” he maintained. “The people who founded this nation should be revered and they should talk to the next generation as the heroes of the 18th century.”
He also urged followers of Christ to engage in civil disobedience.
“I used to pray all the time. I would say, ‘God, why did you not let me be alive in the 1940s fighting against World War II or be alive during the revolution. I want to be a warrior for you. I want to save my country. I want to do all these great things. But you have me born in 1995, the height of the most peaceful and prosperous time the world has ever known,’” he said.
[Well] guys, I’m sorry for praying that prayer. I think God has answered in a big way. He said, ‘you know what? Here’s tyranny, here are people trying to censor your speech, here are people trying to control every bit of your life.”
Cawthorn said he was aware some Christians might point to Scripture that calls them to obey the government placed over them but argued that it isn’t that simple.
“I understand that, but does anybody know what the preamble to the constitution says? What are the first three words? ‘We the people,’” he recited. “So in our founding documents, it says we are the authority. It says that people like me, a congressman, I serve you, and so, when the government is not working on your behalf, it is your duty to disregard their orders.”
Apparently there is such a screaming need for tradesmen and women, that if you are good at it, you can pull in a 6 figure income with no problem at all.
Having a marketable skill instead of a degree in sociology or gender studies, is going to put food on your table for your life time.
And if conservatives are the ones who can fix things, they have the liberal snowflakes over a barrel. They will survive if/when TSHTF.
RE: Says the man who was a going to be a Poli Sci major before flunking out after a semester.
I guess you can say he speaks from experience.
Also, one can get into those gender studies and “soesh” classes to upend their lockstep one-sided ideology. Those ideologues don’t have a lock on knowledge.
Cawthon is an idiot.
Not really since I didn't flunk out. But I work in banking, have two degrees in business, and would not have my job without them so I wouldn't agree with Cawthorn's blanket statement at all.
RE: Cawthon is an idiot.
Please elaborate.
Xi Jinping approves of this message.
Why would he?
Because he was poorly home-schooled and dropped out after a semester of college, he thinks no Conservatives are going to benefit from a college education? It depresses me that this is what passes for a Conservative intellectual these days. He and Boebert are mental midgets.
Cawthorn’s wife is a pretty sweet girl who had no idea of the pressure of having a husband who is both paraplegic and a member of Congress. Best they part now as both are young and hay no children. Sam Rayburn who went through a similar short lived marriage at the start of his very long career said few women in the small city he was from could juggle a DC political life and small town America. Those he reconned could already had tied the knot
Mr Sam never we’d again.
BS. He is exactly right.
Therefore, we are world filled with people who are dependent upon those who do understand these things and who can repair, maintain and do these things for them.
This way they can go about their busy lives doing their important things, while they depend upon other people to: cook for them, clean up after them, take care of their homes, yards and vehicles for them, educate and sometimes even raise their children for them, and take care of their retirements for them, too.
If you know how to do any of these things, then you are presented with a world of opportunities for life-long income and an undergraduate degree is not required.
I stumbled upon a Reddit called “antiwork”. Reading was genuinely depressing. So many young people are so far underwater with college debt. It’s hard to say who scammed them. Their parents? Teaching them “everyone’s a winner” for the last 35 years? Their high schools? Society itself? The kids themselves? How much common sense can you actually expect out of 17 year olds these days, and why is that so?
“Therefore, we are world filled with people who are dependent upon those who do understand these things and who can repair, maintain and do these things for them.”
This is a large contributor to “the rich become richer” IMO. Simply because I can fix my cars and house, I live a better life and HAVE more than someone making the same money who can’t. The mind-boggling, intricate complexities of a toilet-flushing mechanism would completely befuddle least a third of college students these days.
A less educated US is a weaker opponent.
ALL of those type of jobs will be erased from the “need” list. We are fast coming to a time of austerity, whether we like it or not.
Take a graduate from a Home schooling family today, or a High school educated person from the 60’s, give them a piece of paper saying “DEGREE”, and aside from engineering, physician, scientist or Lawyer they could do any job better than a College graduate.
There is very little to be gained from a University degree that you cannot get faster, cheaper and better from a CC.
My grandmother taught generations of children, with a HS diploma and a teaching College that took two years as an apprentice. Two years, working alongside other teachers, then 40 years on the job,she turned out 100% literate without going to a University. I would put those young men and women against the current product coming out of schools today. What she had was called a “Teachers College” with classes at night, and teaching by day. She had a certificate of completion, but was teaching before the paper was given.
All that generation did was build the industrial world we have today, and went to the moon. I wonder why we haven’t been back? Universities, churning out miseducated idiots for at least 40 years.
There are places besides college to receive education and gain skills.
My oldest met her husband 1st semester of college. He left and took a full time job with a credit union, worked his way up to Branch Manager and is now an independent mortgage officer. He calls his own hours.
Also got his pilot’s license and worked off his hours requirements by flying skydivers on weekends
They married at 22, bought a duplex and lived in half, then bought a single family home a few years later.
They didn’t have a TV for the first 5 yr of their marriage, but they owned 2 houses and 2 airplanes before age 30. Their children have the benefit of both parents being home to raise them.
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