Don't Be Afraid to Call It Grooming

Sometimes a mask is so completely torn away that only the willfully and ideologically blind or the stupid cannot see what the real game is. Frank Bruni of the New York Times kindly provided those who desire to see with such an opportunity with his own Two Minutes Hate against Florida's protection of 5- to 9-year-olds from groomers.

The gist and heart of Bruni's tirade is that in this latest incarnation of the culture war, too much emphasis has been put on "parental rights." Public schools, he emphasizes, don't exist "as some bespoke service attending to the material wants and political whims of only those Americans with children in the science lab and on the soccer field." Instead, their purpose is to service all Americans, whether they have children or not. Everyone has a stake in them. As such, he declares, "Enough about 'parental rights.' I want to talk about nonparental rights."

This is an illuminating statement. For the last several decades, the dominant narrative has been that liberty advances when rights expand. By this neo-Whiggish interpretation of history, Western civilizations have become steadily more free since the end of WWII, culminating in the present moment, which should be the apex of human liberty. How much freer can an individual become after the Supreme Court declared that the heart of liberty consisted of the right of every individual to define the meaning of life and the universe for himself? With the raising of six hands, every Joe Schmoe was transformed into an avatar of Zeus with the power (if not the wisdom) to create his own Olympus.

What a great article.

I usually don’t cut and paste large portions of an article, but this is an important portion that I hope will seep into the minds of all who read it:

Excerpt:

The real purpose of education was not to learn democracy or ecumenism, but to pass to the next generation what they would need to flourish and keep the right of self-government. It was an understanding nearly as old as the Puritans’ landing. The first American public education bill was the Olde Deluder Satan Act (linked below), passed by Massachusetts in 1647, which mandated a public teacher once a town consisted of 50 households and a grammar school once it reached 100 households. The impetus behind the bill was to ensure that the next generation would be able to read — Scripture especially (the bill begins, “It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures ...”) — and ensure that “[l]earning may not be buried in the graves of our fore-fathers in Church and Commonwealth.” Nor did this end with the Puritans. Wisdom, knowledge, and virtue were so vital for the people to exercise their rights and liberties (including self-rule) that John Adams included the support of all seminaries of literature and sciences into the Massachusetts constitution. The Northwest Ordinance mandated the encouragement of schools since religion and morality were inseparable from good government. The modern public education system itself was created in the 19th century so American children would learn the Bible and thus be immune to the then perceived threat of Catholic immigrants.

Today, American public schools — our “centers of democracy” — have produced a population where 54% of 16- to 74-year-olds have only a 6th-grade reading level, 24% of high school seniors have proficiency in math, and 12% graduate with proficient knowledge of history. That’s a system that went from having the number-one ranking in high school and college education in 1992 to being 24 in science and 30 in math compared to the other 35 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Curiously, this modern decline in knowledge among the citizenry has correlated with the growing prominence of the Deep State. Americans went from being a nation of yeoman farmers who read Virgil to a nation of obese screen-starers who binge on the streaming platform de jour. Almost as if once education was separated from its higher purposes, self-government started eroding. If our “civic values” now demand this ignorance — of our past, the world we live in, and hatred of the faith of our fathers, with queer theory poured in as substitute — they are as evil as the teachers grooming children and the bleaters who cheer them on.

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Old Deluder Satan Law of 1647
It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the
Scriptures, as in former times keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these later times by
perswading from the use of tongues, that so at least the true sense and meaning of the Originall
might be clowded by false glosses of Saint-seeming deceivers; and that Learning may not be
buried in the graves of our fore-fathers in Church and Commonwealth, the Lord assisting our
indeavors: it is therefore ordered by this Court and Authoritie therof;
That every Township in this Jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of
fifty Housholders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as
shall resort to him to write and read, whose wages shall be paid either by the Parents or Masters
of such children, or by the Inhabitants in general, by way of supply, as the major part of those that
order the prudentials of the Town shall appoint. Provided that those which send their children be
not oppressed by paying much more then they can have them taught for in other towns.
2 And it is further ordered, that where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred
Families or Housholders, they shall set up a Grammar-School, the Masters thereof being able to
instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the Universitie. And if any town neglect the
performance hereof above one year then everie such town shall pay five pounds per annum to the
next such School, till they shall perform this Order. [1647]
The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts, Reprinted from the Copy of the 1648 Edition
in the Henry E. Huntington Library, with an introduction by Max Farrand. Harvard
University Press, 1929.

Source:
https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2016/08/ob/deludersatan.pdf

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