Posted on 11/13/2008 6:32:23 AM PST by Notary Sojac
I can’t disagree with a lot of it. Not being able to read is something I simply cannot fathom.
He is suffering from up is down, in is out syndrome. Liberals exist because of the death of Liberal Arts in western civ. Liberal Arts being the training of the mind in rational thought through logic and symbols, and the ability to communicate that thought. We are intellectually neuterd, so Change worked.
This author knows the problems, but fails to see their source- THIS is the leftist blind-spot.
The left has spent the past 70 years destroying generations of school children and turning them into stupid adults for the express purpose of building and maintaining its own power base.
It would appear that this author is one of the victims, and is just beginning to see the dangers HE faces, as well.
Ping for when I get back home...
Boils down to ; I am responsible for my own actions and beliefs.
Look at the conservative authors I read in my teens and twenties: Russell Kirk, Wilmoore Kendall, Leo Strauss, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek.
Who's filling their shoes today?? Maybe Thomas Sowell - maybe - but otherwise it's a pretty steep intellectual drop to the likes of Hannity, Coulter, etc.
Actually he did indict the public school system as a cause of this, and an effect, in that the ignoramuses’ children are trapped in the public school system, perpetuating the cycle.
It’s clear that America has been dumbed down to a third world country already. Now we get the reckoning that comes with it.
I agree with the article for the most part, in fact, I was just having a conversation with someone the other day, stating some of these very same sentiments. The author lost me though with the following:
“Huge segments of our population, especially those who live in the embrace of the Christian right and the consumer culture, are completely unmoored from reality. They lack the capacity to search for truth and cope rationally with our mounting social and economic ills. They seek clarity, entertainment and order. They are willing to use force to impose this clarity on others, especially those who do not speak as they speak and think as they think. All the traditional tools of democracies, including dispassionate scientific and historical truth, facts, news and rational debate, are useless instruments in a world that lacks the capacity to use them.”
It seems the author sees the Christian right as the epitomy of the unwashed, idiotic masses. The author is revealing his/her personal bias with the above and it ruins the argument by substituting opinion for objectivity. The author plays into the whole stereotype of the elite liberal who sees anyone who doesn’t have his particular world view as a knuckle dragging, drooling, quasi-violent fool. The lack of self awareness on the part of the author is actually pretty amusing.
A good example would be the opponents of Proposition 8.
bump and wow
from the article: “They still cannot protect their children from dysfunctional public schools.”
Of course none of the people he’s writing about would be able read his article much less comprehend it. His assertion about the Christian Right is wrong and it would have made the article much better if he had left it out.
Brain/hand coordination problems this AM: “agrued” -> “argued”, of course.
Hannity and Rush don’t write. They talk.
I’ve long told my kids to read, with the admonition that if you don’t read, you can’t think. And despite that, they do not read nearly enough. I devour two dozen books per year, almost exclusively history. Thanks to that, I don’t suffer from the amnesia that afflicts so many Americans. And unfortunately, ignorance is bliss. I know exactly who and what 0bama is, and where he will take this country. We are not going to like it.
The author is correct insofar as the ability to read opens up the path to more data, but is wrong in the assumption that it makes the processing of that data any more logical. The automatic assumption that readers are able to think, reason and discern manure from shinola is simply not the case. The written word provides more opportunity for obsfucation and meaningless filler than visual.
Which is more factual; a menu item describing chopped sirloin, with the chef’s special blending of creams, presented on a fluffy sesame roll, or an actual photo of a big mac?
I think the author is correct in his observations but wrong in his conclusion, that it's the fault of religious faith and the consumer-culture.
ping
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