i think this is something of a symptom. the cause is this deep seated marcusian idea that "tolerating ideas we do not agree with is itself oppression." it's perfectly orwellian "suppression is tolerance" and wraps perfectly around the idea of "we have special access to truth that you do not." it sets up a perfectly circular system of "it's true because we know it is and anything against this truth is oppression so we must oppress you until you stop being the oppressor."
difficult to imagine a better attractor for narcissists and crybullies. it's an all singing all dancing invitation to be beastly to everyone and take their things, their rights, their society so long as you "believe" what we tell you you must. small wonder it has drawn all the external identity weak minded crybully failures to its banner and radicalized them.
and they are sort of the perfect people for social movements for one reason: they show up. they have nothing better to do. going to have melt downs on street corners and council meetings is not keeping them from otherwise productive days. it's an army of misanthropic miscontent marginalia.
losing to that is shameful beyond belief. but that's what will happen if we're apathetic and they are apoplectic.
I agree. Well said. Perhaps thats why they quadruple down when faced with facts/evidence contrary to their worldview because in order to safeguard their beliefs they think that if they're just more devout it will protect their worldview from empirical evidence?
We are far from the original members of the Frankfurt School and their students. The true believers today are primarily mentally ill and unstable people in a degraded society.
What's being described is more of a religion than a philosophy. What's worrisome is that the logical conclusion is that facts are useless against people who espouse this (this actually helps me better understand why so many of them resort to ad hominems in an argument). It's like the perfect echo chamber and reinforcer of cognitive dissonance.
Nothing, and i mean nothing, encapsulates how bonkers higher education has become than a tranny rector suspending a professor who exposes another "professor" who committed serial plagiarism.
I didn't think that could be topped until 5 minutes later my wife showed me a bunch of women in pink shirts rallying for a woman who killed her 3 kids.
The key is the discontent among the Frankfurt School's army of useful idiots.
Those who work and accomplish and are proud of their own abilities and do not readily join self-destructive mass movements.
The solution is to encourage the idiots to develop their own abilities to the degree that they can. Everyone is capable of self-improvement, and those that start on that path are already immunized against the Frankfurt School.
At the same time, directly non-productive rent-seeking must be eliminated from the economy and all institutions to open up opportunities for accomplishment through personal hard work.
First of all the Fed must be eliminated entirely, because its purpose is to steal from the poor through inflation while protecting the elite through bailouts and asset boosting. This is the purest rent-seeking, a monopoly on the money supply.
The Frankfurt School had kindred spirits in Pol Pot, Ieng Sary and the Khmers Rouges. Diehard marxists I once knew viewed them as an aberration. In retrospect, they were true to the very essence of deconstructionism.
FYI—the Zionists are from the same school. Fun facts the Neocons are Trotskyites. One might begin to think it’s coordinated. (See my other comments/replies).
Doesn’t “reality” mean human nature which seems to fluctuate, but always returns to a norm where governance always wants to revert to dominance. Choose any form of governance (republic, democracy, fascism, kings, socialism, etc.) and the thing that really matters is the level of authoritarianism and how responsive said government is to the wants and needs of those governed.
Not sure if cat will tell you this so I will. I have had a change of heart. We have all been played. Our society has been polarized into 2 factions: Zionists (Neocons) and Bolsheviks (Neolibs). I didn’t sign up for either. At the top I don’t suspect they care about ideology as long as their Fascist financial unipolar system survives. Just look who Jeffrey Epstein worked for.
At this point it all needs to come down. Thank goodness countries like China, Russia, and Iran push back on it.
"Zionists." You're one of the Malcusians yourself.
Who do you believe Epstein worked for? Is this more "Mossad runs the entire world but somehow can't stop people from murdering Jews and can't get them to quiet down"?
Idiots will say idiot things so just ignore them. I realize that’s hard at times but you just drive yourself crazy trying to understand/communicate with the level of stupidity/crazy.
FYI I enthusiastically voted for DT 3x. I am a pragmatist not an ideological hardliner. I knew going into it there would be many promises DT could not fulfill. But this is ridiculous and he now disgusts me to no end. Jesus, look at the grifting. He makes the Democrats look reasonable. Ryan may be able to attest to this. I was trying to convince people to vote for him because he seemed like a reasonable and acceptable alternative to the Neolibs.
As far as Epstein’s bosses are concerned I will take him at his word. He boasts about them many times in the email releases. I guess you have to know how to read I reckon. He worked for the Rothschilds bud. You should probably know that by now.
We are controlled by a group of international elite (ZioBankers). They use dialing ideologicies to corral us cattle. That’s a big reason the Nation is hyper polarized right now. They can flip it off/on like a switch. They own the media and the intel agencies so there you go.
You can continue to remain either a shill or useful idiot. Frankly I’m not sure what cat is. He’s not stupid so I assume he’s on the take most likely. His mission is to make people like you disgusted with the left and not at the right/Trump. If I falsely accused you cat then apologies. Then you should probably stop being a stooge.
As for me, after 25 years of loyal support to conservatives and recently MAGA, I am done playing this game. I wish others would join me but I won’t hold my breath. I learned during COVID only severe pain will make the masses think again…..and so we wait.
After 50 years of watching this battle for civilization I conclude attacking the how, as EGM does in this post, is much more effective than attacking the who.
I honestly don’t see how our country survives in tact. The enemy fights using the long game and we fight a battle of holding the line. Sooner or later we will split like E. Germany and W. Germany in the Cold War. Covid showed me how many people are total followers and unwilling to stand up for their rights in the face of utter tyranny. That has left me convinced that we cannot stand.
You should elaborate. What do you think the Germans saw? I gotta be honest with you, it sounds like you think they correctly identified Jews as the problem. Correct me if I'm wrong
Bolshevism and communism were around for decades before 1934. And Hitler adored them until they became inconvenient to his own socialism. Same with FDR.
The idea that voting is some noble thing and not a trap set long ago has led us here. You can’t vote on fundamental matters of morality. These communist/socialist/Frankfurt demons are being pushed from a much higher level than the voting farce would let on.
That’s a good point. A society of trust is much more beneficial than any voting scheme. Voting makes it possible for those in power to perpetuate the illusion of government with the support of the governed.
“allowing these people to dominate academia and education has been a dire mistake.
education is not too important to be left to free markets and private actors, it’s too important not to be.
did you seriously think that state schools would not teach statism?”
This is a point I make as regularly as I can in my own writing. Especially for Christian parents there is no reason to submit your children to the government for their education. It is a rival system of faith and ethics.
The proper framing is that public schools are the nation’s established government churches. They have their priests(administrators) and deacons (teachers) and their tithe is mandatory!
The thing is that Christian parents don’t have to take control of the school boards or mount protests. All they have to do to put the system into a crisis from which it can’t recover is to pull their children from the public schools. Most public schools are funded based on attendance. If say 20 percent of Christian parents in the country that currently enroll their children in public schools took them out tomorrow their local districts would immediately face a funding crisis.
Unfortunately, despite the problems with public schools we can’t get a statistically significant number of Christian parents to take this step. Until that changes we can’t expect much to change in terms of leftist ideas gaining traction.
Government schools are funded by mandatory taxes which you are forced to pay even if you don't have children. Sending your children to a private school costs additional money which parents may not have, while the government schools are "free". Worse, living in an area with "good schools" means paying higher property taxes to support them, so money for private schools may be even harder to obtain. This is the financial reality for parents.
In my state of WA over 60% of property taxes goes to schools, mostly to schools outside of the district where I live. They like to spread the grift around. Btw - boys can compete with girls in sports & boys are allowed in girl’s locker room’s & bathrooms if they “identify as a girl”. This is a law for all public schools, & many private one also adopt. Though some religious schools don’t. The entire property tax system is just theft - simply another way to tax unrealized gains for as long as you’re a homeowner.
Yes it is true that regardless of whether or not you use the public schools you must pay for them. However, this is something that parents can and should plan for. Think of it as a sunk cost. You have to pay but you don’t have to use the service. Start by using the Khan Academy. It is free. If enough parents do this the property tax burden will decrease on account of the districts having to drastically reduce their budgets due to the decline in enrollment.
I'd say that at least one barrier is the need to have somewhere to put them. I suspect a lot of families can't home school, for one reason or another. There wouldn't be enough seats in private schools for that rapid an influx, and many couldn't afford to place their children there anyway.
It is certainly true that many families have not prepared for and are not ready to make the change of pulling their kids from public schools.
Much of that is due to their valuing of other things like two new cars in the driveway, larger house and mortgage than necessary for their situation, etc. They can afford it, however they have decided that the car payments are more important than the nature of the education their children receive. It is also tradition at this point because they themselves were likely publicly educated and it is just what you do. It is hard to break generational habits.
Before we got married my wife and I discussed and committed to not sending our children to public schools. We structured our life together around that as a non-negotiable. This means we drive older, paid off cars that are inexpensive to insure. We have no consumer debt other than our mortgage. This means one income is enough.
The reason I went with 20 percent of Christian families pulling their children is I think it is reasonable to think that there are that many who from a financial perspective could immediately make the change. There is probably another 20 percent that could make the change within 6 months or a year depending on how long it would take them to reorient their lifestyle and finances.
The bigger point is that for Christian parents we must value our child’s education more than luxury items or convenience. The Khan academy is free for K-12 curriculum. Many other homeschool curriculums are very inexpensive and finding a local group to be a part of is as easy as a Facebook search.
This is one area where I think most pastors are failing their congregations. They have to regularly make the point that education is not a neutral endeavor. The compounding effect of a large number of Christian parents doing this over say two or three decades would be immense.
We did the same except we enrolled at the local Charter School which is free and required only a contract that learning was to be taken seriously and behavioral problems would result in expulsion. ( We were not Christian at the time) Sacrifices needed to be made and that's of course a choice. For our way of thinking the choice was " things" or our child's mind. No brainer. We gave up one income, drove old, used cars and put off a mortgage until he was in 11 th grade.
He learned advanced math, French, Latin , economics, history, comparative religion, classic literature and more. At home, he learned compassion, service to others in our community, personal responsibility, commitment and prioritizing. Every school day, we discussed at least three things he learned that day. It helped us monitor what he was being taught, counter with our beliefs when necessary and created a space for quality time and parental influence. One of us was always available to attend events, parents' conferences, fund raisers etc.
He grew up to be a delightful young man with a heart for giving, excellent critical thinking skills and self reliance. Best investment we EVER made.
Thanks for sharing your experience Sue! You counted the costs and made a decision to put your child’s education ahead of your personal wants. And the thing is that it is temporary. You didn’t have to sacrifice for a lifetime but only for about a decade and that sacrifice has paid off for your son’s lifetime. This is what we need a lot more of.
why should people who don't want a government school education for their children have to be at a funding disadvantage? It's only because of the unequal playing field government has created. The tax funds need to be able to follow the children.
> why should people who don't want a government school education for their children have to be at a funding disadvantage?
They shouldn't. That said, "should" and the corollary "should not" most often describe desired states, as opposed to what "is". And at the moment -- irrespective of my desire that education funding be tied directly to students -- it simply *is* the case that the government has effectively claimed a semi-monopoly on education via taxation.
I would be *delighted* for that to no longer be the case.
> The reason I went with 20 percent of Christian families pulling their children is I think it is reasonable to think that there are that many who from a financial perspective could immediately make the change.
Fair enough. I am almost certainly not as well tied into the gestalt and knowledge of that group of people as you.
> The bigger point is that for Christian parents we must value our child’s education more than luxury items or convenience.
I don't think it applies to just Christians. I am neither a parent nor a Christian, but I would no more willingly send a child to the American Public Education System than I would feed them raw plutonium machining swarf.
So, needless to say, I fully support your position. :D
Watch how quickly the supply of charter schools and other options will increase, when people become free to choose how their children are educated with their own tax dollars! If the best argument for public schools is that they'll close down if people have options, I think that tells you the size of the problem.
"Unfortunately, despite the problems with public schools we can’t get a statistically significant number of Christian parents to take this step."
Because the governments, Federal and most states, have ensured that the playing field between government schools and private or religious schools is unequal. We must demand that taxpayer money follows the students to whichever schools they freely choose from. And without government strings as to educational content. Home schooling while a great option, will never have the market share of "public" schools because of the financial disincentives where you pay for others' schooling and have to pay again for your own children's.
While I loathe the Frankfurt school and their French follow-ons, there is perhaps a grain of truth in Foucault's critique of Power. Of course, he was interested in destroying everything, including the family, rather than building, truth, or beauty. Tolkien had a far better take: that Power is the One Ring which corrupts and enslaves all who touch it.
I don't like the 'caucus' style primaries in my current state. Unless you formally belong to a party you have no say in bringing candidates forward. They thrust forward the same people each season and you are forced to choose between Party Chump A and Party Chump B and do not have any choice in their presentation.
Open primaries have their issues as well. I don't know if any are better.
Nixon won, but Vindman outspent her 20-to-1. The plan was to put Vindman in the seat as the Anti-Trump candidate, but it seems Crazy Woke is beating TDS by a wide margin.
Yes, fortunately. Only my crappy Orlando district and about three others in the state have higher Dem voter rolls than Republican so should be easy win if voters show up.
The problem with the red states where I've lived, NC, AZ, and FL is that with few Democrats having a chance of winning, Liberals and RINOs go undercover as conservative candidates. Maria Salazar, the representative for Miami Beach, is barely a Republican. She talks like a MAGA Trump supporter but votes like a conservative Democrat.
My current rep is Maxwell Frost. I agree with your assessment of Maria Salazar and trend towards RINOs in uncontested areas but at this point I would gladly take a RINO over a 20 something progressive socialist.
The frankfurt school moved to the USA & implemented their plan to destroy western civilization. Their cousins remained in eurabia & did the same. So far, the cousins are winning.
It’s a very good layout but misses an essential element: the concept of discourse that the French poststructuralists introduced. Interestingly, in this they were Nietzschean. Nietzsche was the first to lay down what became this Western Left’s concept of *truth*:
——What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms …——
Truth is an “army,” a thing deployed so as to seize power, and it’s built entirely of tropes. It *is* rhetoric, and nothing more. Even scientific or mathematical truths are attempts to impose power—the power of the one teaching them. Even if one tries to attain objectivity, Nietzsche says No. One is doing *rhetoric*. In order to overcome the listener, student, crowd, whatnot.
Truth, outside this grasping for power, *doesn’t exist*.
It’s the formula at the base of Derrida’s deconstruction. In academia, taken up by the Left, it ends up something like: “Since the ‘reason’ and ‘science’ and ‘ethics’ they teach are just power plays, we will answer with *our own* power plays.”
Add this to the Frankfurt School Marxist element, shift the focus of “the Left” from economic classes to oppressed identity groups—et voila! You have our current fake-ass Left.
That shift away from class and toward identity was also determined by the pesky fact that orthodox Marxism, by the 1980s, had been proven simply wrong. So academic leftists put identity groups into the blank that used to read “proletariat.”
How does it end? Like this: “I’m going to go to Harvard to *speak my truth*.”
Yes, the Frankfurt School was key. But the Nietzschean shift in epistemology also was.
Of course Nietzsche would’ve loathed it. His philosophy was finally seized and weaponized by the very resentniks he hoped to overcome. Poor fellow.
“God is dead, you said, but look what happened to you!”
“What?” Nietzsche says.
“That barista over there, with the nose ring and blue hair, that’s your Overman!”
The Workers Revolution was too benign, this new, fashionable version of Marxism is using a new foot soldier. They are leaning into those with questionable psychological balance. Truly ill people to shout down the reasoned.
When you get on a subway and you encounter a person wearing a pink pirate shirt, gold shorts, and no shoes picking and eating their scabs while yelling at the lights in the car, what do you do? You typically move to another car, it's too much stimulus. The garish are their foot soldiers now because they KNOW that the reasoned will move aside. Hell, the true leaders of this new Marxist movement don't even socialize with these people, they are pawns. A clone army conscripted for Palpatine.
However, in order to fight this new army back we must enter the gutter with them and become comfortable with the garish and face them. To paraphrase Commissioner Gordon, "In a moment like this, I hope you have a friend like I did, to plunge their hands in the filth so that future generations can keep theirs clean."
The war between freedom and subjugation in this country has never been more in the balance. In the past, the Marxists were a vast minority, but this system of education has created a lot more. Now the numbers are tipping. I fear if we wait two more political cycles it will be too late to come back from.
That was the entire purpose of the Frankfort school and Marcuse in particular. Finding the oppressed and convincing them they were oppressed is the origin of identity politics. The change needed to happen at the societal level, because capitalism actually provides for economic benefit and therefore why the Soviet model wouldn't work in the US.
Agreed. I'm making the point that the selected foot soldiers have devolved into very, very twisted psychosis. Not just the oppressed...but the deranged. Like I said, reasoned ones, or pre-reasoning individuals don't want to engage with them because they are afraid of the unpredictable result. This allows them to pass through without resistance to multiply and coerce the weaker minded in our society.
yeah, this boils down to trying to police reality and make empirical knowledge/evidence seem as though it's bigotry,etc.
i think this is something of a symptom. the cause is this deep seated marcusian idea that "tolerating ideas we do not agree with is itself oppression." it's perfectly orwellian "suppression is tolerance" and wraps perfectly around the idea of "we have special access to truth that you do not." it sets up a perfectly circular system of "it's true because we know it is and anything against this truth is oppression so we must oppress you until you stop being the oppressor."
difficult to imagine a better attractor for narcissists and crybullies. it's an all singing all dancing invitation to be beastly to everyone and take their things, their rights, their society so long as you "believe" what we tell you you must. small wonder it has drawn all the external identity weak minded crybully failures to its banner and radicalized them.
and they are sort of the perfect people for social movements for one reason: they show up. they have nothing better to do. going to have melt downs on street corners and council meetings is not keeping them from otherwise productive days. it's an army of misanthropic miscontent marginalia.
losing to that is shameful beyond belief. but that's what will happen if we're apathetic and they are apoplectic.
I agree. Well said. Perhaps thats why they quadruple down when faced with facts/evidence contrary to their worldview because in order to safeguard their beliefs they think that if they're just more devout it will protect their worldview from empirical evidence?
Or maybe thats just a symptom too.
We are far from the original members of the Frankfurt School and their students. The true believers today are primarily mentally ill and unstable people in a degraded society.
They have always been.
What's being described is more of a religion than a philosophy. What's worrisome is that the logical conclusion is that facts are useless against people who espouse this (this actually helps me better understand why so many of them resort to ad hominems in an argument). It's like the perfect echo chamber and reinforcer of cognitive dissonance.
This might be an example of what you're talking about:
https://x.com/nathancofnas/status/2090416033072861245
Nothing, and i mean nothing, encapsulates how bonkers higher education has become than a tranny rector suspending a professor who exposes another "professor" who committed serial plagiarism.
I didn't think that could be topped until 5 minutes later my wife showed me a bunch of women in pink shirts rallying for a woman who killed her 3 kids.
Somethings got to give.
"if we're apathetic" - the crux of the matter. The temptation to hope someone else will take up the cudgels on our behalf.
They are absolutely tolerant of things they agree with, or that further their goals.
The key is the discontent among the Frankfurt School's army of useful idiots.
Those who work and accomplish and are proud of their own abilities and do not readily join self-destructive mass movements.
The solution is to encourage the idiots to develop their own abilities to the degree that they can. Everyone is capable of self-improvement, and those that start on that path are already immunized against the Frankfurt School.
At the same time, directly non-productive rent-seeking must be eliminated from the economy and all institutions to open up opportunities for accomplishment through personal hard work.
First of all the Fed must be eliminated entirely, because its purpose is to steal from the poor through inflation while protecting the elite through bailouts and asset boosting. This is the purest rent-seeking, a monopoly on the money supply.
I have many other ideas, too many perhaps:
https://patrick.net/post/1303173/2017-02-19-patrick-s-platform
The Frankfurt School had kindred spirits in Pol Pot, Ieng Sary and the Khmers Rouges. Diehard marxists I once knew viewed them as an aberration. In retrospect, they were true to the very essence of deconstructionism.
FYI—the Zionists are from the same school. Fun facts the Neocons are Trotskyites. One might begin to think it’s coordinated. (See my other comments/replies).
https://matthewehret.substack.com/p/peter-thiels-secret-doctrine?r=nvvvu&utm_medium=ios
Doesn’t “reality” mean human nature which seems to fluctuate, but always returns to a norm where governance always wants to revert to dominance. Choose any form of governance (republic, democracy, fascism, kings, socialism, etc.) and the thing that really matters is the level of authoritarianism and how responsive said government is to the wants and needs of those governed.
Not sure if cat will tell you this so I will. I have had a change of heart. We have all been played. Our society has been polarized into 2 factions: Zionists (Neocons) and Bolsheviks (Neolibs). I didn’t sign up for either. At the top I don’t suspect they care about ideology as long as their Fascist financial unipolar system survives. Just look who Jeffrey Epstein worked for.
At this point it all needs to come down. Thank goodness countries like China, Russia, and Iran push back on it.
"Zionists." You're one of the Malcusians yourself.
Who do you believe Epstein worked for? Is this more "Mossad runs the entire world but somehow can't stop people from murdering Jews and can't get them to quiet down"?
Of course it is.
Yawn.
Idiots will say idiot things so just ignore them. I realize that’s hard at times but you just drive yourself crazy trying to understand/communicate with the level of stupidity/crazy.
FYI I enthusiastically voted for DT 3x. I am a pragmatist not an ideological hardliner. I knew going into it there would be many promises DT could not fulfill. But this is ridiculous and he now disgusts me to no end. Jesus, look at the grifting. He makes the Democrats look reasonable. Ryan may be able to attest to this. I was trying to convince people to vote for him because he seemed like a reasonable and acceptable alternative to the Neolibs.
As far as Epstein’s bosses are concerned I will take him at his word. He boasts about them many times in the email releases. I guess you have to know how to read I reckon. He worked for the Rothschilds bud. You should probably know that by now.
We are controlled by a group of international elite (ZioBankers). They use dialing ideologicies to corral us cattle. That’s a big reason the Nation is hyper polarized right now. They can flip it off/on like a switch. They own the media and the intel agencies so there you go.
You can continue to remain either a shill or useful idiot. Frankly I’m not sure what cat is. He’s not stupid so I assume he’s on the take most likely. His mission is to make people like you disgusted with the left and not at the right/Trump. If I falsely accused you cat then apologies. Then you should probably stop being a stooge.
As for me, after 25 years of loyal support to conservatives and recently MAGA, I am done playing this game. I wish others would join me but I won’t hold my breath. I learned during COVID only severe pain will make the masses think again…..and so we wait.
After 50 years of watching this battle for civilization I conclude attacking the how, as EGM does in this post, is much more effective than attacking the who.
I've always looked at voting as who will leave me alone.
That's why the last time I voted was for Ross Perot.
All the rest have been the same damned thing.
Folks like Angie Nixon should be deconstructed, with a baseball bat.
Aluminum, not wood.
What’s wrong with a few splinters?
Aluminum splinters are harder to remove.
Lolol.
When you don't vote, they can cross you off the list of people to give a shit about.
They want you to give up, so don't give up.
You don't have to get your guy elected to make a big difference.
They should always feel you breathing down their neck.
You thought Perot was going to leave you alone?
Did you actually LISTEN to anything he said?
Yes. Did you?
I honestly don’t see how our country survives in tact. The enemy fights using the long game and we fight a battle of holding the line. Sooner or later we will split like E. Germany and W. Germany in the Cold War. Covid showed me how many people are total followers and unwilling to stand up for their rights in the face of utter tyranny. That has left me convinced that we cannot stand.
Ok, I'll go there: it's almost like the Germans saw something in 1934 that we didn't, and should have. And should now. The question is, what's next?
You should elaborate. What do you think the Germans saw? I gotta be honest with you, it sounds like you think they correctly identified Jews as the problem. Correct me if I'm wrong
I'm going to go with, what were incipient Bolshevism and Communism for 300 Alex.
Bolshevism and communism were around for decades before 1934. And Hitler adored them until they became inconvenient to his own socialism. Same with FDR.
It’s all so depressing to think people would vote for a socialist.
And then, a “democratic” socialist walks into a bar: https://lizlasorte.substack.com/p/a-democratic-socialist-walks-into?r=76q58
The idea that voting is some noble thing and not a trap set long ago has led us here. You can’t vote on fundamental matters of morality. These communist/socialist/Frankfurt demons are being pushed from a much higher level than the voting farce would let on.
That’s a good point. A society of trust is much more beneficial than any voting scheme. Voting makes it possible for those in power to perpetuate the illusion of government with the support of the governed.
I would change Chairman Meow to Chairman Mao See Dung.
It would be Chairman Meow Bury Dung.
“allowing these people to dominate academia and education has been a dire mistake.
education is not too important to be left to free markets and private actors, it’s too important not to be.
did you seriously think that state schools would not teach statism?”
This is a point I make as regularly as I can in my own writing. Especially for Christian parents there is no reason to submit your children to the government for their education. It is a rival system of faith and ethics.
The proper framing is that public schools are the nation’s established government churches. They have their priests(administrators) and deacons (teachers) and their tithe is mandatory!
The thing is that Christian parents don’t have to take control of the school boards or mount protests. All they have to do to put the system into a crisis from which it can’t recover is to pull their children from the public schools. Most public schools are funded based on attendance. If say 20 percent of Christian parents in the country that currently enroll their children in public schools took them out tomorrow their local districts would immediately face a funding crisis.
Unfortunately, despite the problems with public schools we can’t get a statistically significant number of Christian parents to take this step. Until that changes we can’t expect much to change in terms of leftist ideas gaining traction.
Government schools are funded by mandatory taxes which you are forced to pay even if you don't have children. Sending your children to a private school costs additional money which parents may not have, while the government schools are "free". Worse, living in an area with "good schools" means paying higher property taxes to support them, so money for private schools may be even harder to obtain. This is the financial reality for parents.
In my state of WA over 60% of property taxes goes to schools, mostly to schools outside of the district where I live. They like to spread the grift around. Btw - boys can compete with girls in sports & boys are allowed in girl’s locker room’s & bathrooms if they “identify as a girl”. This is a law for all public schools, & many private one also adopt. Though some religious schools don’t. The entire property tax system is just theft - simply another way to tax unrealized gains for as long as you’re a homeowner.
Yes it is true that regardless of whether or not you use the public schools you must pay for them. However, this is something that parents can and should plan for. Think of it as a sunk cost. You have to pay but you don’t have to use the service. Start by using the Khan Academy. It is free. If enough parents do this the property tax burden will decrease on account of the districts having to drastically reduce their budgets due to the decline in enrollment.
This is the thing that has to change- make the tax money follow the students.
I'd say that at least one barrier is the need to have somewhere to put them. I suspect a lot of families can't home school, for one reason or another. There wouldn't be enough seats in private schools for that rapid an influx, and many couldn't afford to place their children there anyway.
It is certainly true that many families have not prepared for and are not ready to make the change of pulling their kids from public schools.
Much of that is due to their valuing of other things like two new cars in the driveway, larger house and mortgage than necessary for their situation, etc. They can afford it, however they have decided that the car payments are more important than the nature of the education their children receive. It is also tradition at this point because they themselves were likely publicly educated and it is just what you do. It is hard to break generational habits.
Before we got married my wife and I discussed and committed to not sending our children to public schools. We structured our life together around that as a non-negotiable. This means we drive older, paid off cars that are inexpensive to insure. We have no consumer debt other than our mortgage. This means one income is enough.
The reason I went with 20 percent of Christian families pulling their children is I think it is reasonable to think that there are that many who from a financial perspective could immediately make the change. There is probably another 20 percent that could make the change within 6 months or a year depending on how long it would take them to reorient their lifestyle and finances.
The bigger point is that for Christian parents we must value our child’s education more than luxury items or convenience. The Khan academy is free for K-12 curriculum. Many other homeschool curriculums are very inexpensive and finding a local group to be a part of is as easy as a Facebook search.
This is one area where I think most pastors are failing their congregations. They have to regularly make the point that education is not a neutral endeavor. The compounding effect of a large number of Christian parents doing this over say two or three decades would be immense.
We did the same except we enrolled at the local Charter School which is free and required only a contract that learning was to be taken seriously and behavioral problems would result in expulsion. ( We were not Christian at the time) Sacrifices needed to be made and that's of course a choice. For our way of thinking the choice was " things" or our child's mind. No brainer. We gave up one income, drove old, used cars and put off a mortgage until he was in 11 th grade.
He learned advanced math, French, Latin , economics, history, comparative religion, classic literature and more. At home, he learned compassion, service to others in our community, personal responsibility, commitment and prioritizing. Every school day, we discussed at least three things he learned that day. It helped us monitor what he was being taught, counter with our beliefs when necessary and created a space for quality time and parental influence. One of us was always available to attend events, parents' conferences, fund raisers etc.
He grew up to be a delightful young man with a heart for giving, excellent critical thinking skills and self reliance. Best investment we EVER made.
Where there's a will, there's a way.❤️🙏🏻
Thanks for sharing your experience Sue! You counted the costs and made a decision to put your child’s education ahead of your personal wants. And the thing is that it is temporary. You didn’t have to sacrifice for a lifetime but only for about a decade and that sacrifice has paid off for your son’s lifetime. This is what we need a lot more of.
why should people who don't want a government school education for their children have to be at a funding disadvantage? It's only because of the unequal playing field government has created. The tax funds need to be able to follow the children.
> why should people who don't want a government school education for their children have to be at a funding disadvantage?
They shouldn't. That said, "should" and the corollary "should not" most often describe desired states, as opposed to what "is". And at the moment -- irrespective of my desire that education funding be tied directly to students -- it simply *is* the case that the government has effectively claimed a semi-monopoly on education via taxation.
I would be *delighted* for that to no longer be the case.
fixing this might be the most important political change we could make long term.
Agreed, and I've thought so for a very long time.
> The reason I went with 20 percent of Christian families pulling their children is I think it is reasonable to think that there are that many who from a financial perspective could immediately make the change.
Fair enough. I am almost certainly not as well tied into the gestalt and knowledge of that group of people as you.
> The bigger point is that for Christian parents we must value our child’s education more than luxury items or convenience.
I don't think it applies to just Christians. I am neither a parent nor a Christian, but I would no more willingly send a child to the American Public Education System than I would feed them raw plutonium machining swarf.
So, needless to say, I fully support your position. :D
Watch how quickly the supply of charter schools and other options will increase, when people become free to choose how their children are educated with their own tax dollars! If the best argument for public schools is that they'll close down if people have options, I think that tells you the size of the problem.
"Unfortunately, despite the problems with public schools we can’t get a statistically significant number of Christian parents to take this step."
Because the governments, Federal and most states, have ensured that the playing field between government schools and private or religious schools is unequal. We must demand that taxpayer money follows the students to whichever schools they freely choose from. And without government strings as to educational content. Home schooling while a great option, will never have the market share of "public" schools because of the financial disincentives where you pay for others' schooling and have to pay again for your own children's.
You are mistaking state day care for state schools.
I would argue that state schools are state daycares
While I loathe the Frankfurt school and their French follow-ons, there is perhaps a grain of truth in Foucault's critique of Power. Of course, he was interested in destroying everything, including the family, rather than building, truth, or beauty. Tolkien had a far better take: that Power is the One Ring which corrupts and enslaves all who touch it.
Great article.
29% of registered Democrats in this district voted in the primary.
Who finances a person like Nixon?
Who votes for such a person?
What motivates ( educates) them?
Part and parcel of the assault on this country by the WEF/Transnational gangsters who own THE MSM. Balkanization of the US?
Un gato muy malo.
primaries have such low turnout that they get dominated by lunatics. seems a fundamental flaw in the US system (and the US voter).
Which is a flaw I hope to exploit in '28. :D
WARMEK FOR PREZ!
At the very least, the campaign is going to be *epic*.
I don't like the 'caucus' style primaries in my current state. Unless you formally belong to a party you have no say in bringing candidates forward. They thrust forward the same people each season and you are forced to choose between Party Chump A and Party Chump B and do not have any choice in their presentation.
Open primaries have their issues as well. I don't know if any are better.
Nixon won, but Vindman outspent her 20-to-1. The plan was to put Vindman in the seat as the Anti-Trump candidate, but it seems Crazy Woke is beating TDS by a wide margin.
On the plus side, Angie Nixon will not win in November. Right?
Right. This is Rubio's old seat. Moody won 80% of the vote in the Republican primary. The dems could only come up with nixon vs vindman. A 🤡 beat a 🤡.
Yes, fortunately. Only my crappy Orlando district and about three others in the state have higher Dem voter rolls than Republican so should be easy win if voters show up.
The problem with the red states where I've lived, NC, AZ, and FL is that with few Democrats having a chance of winning, Liberals and RINOs go undercover as conservative candidates. Maria Salazar, the representative for Miami Beach, is barely a Republican. She talks like a MAGA Trump supporter but votes like a conservative Democrat.
My current rep is Maxwell Frost. I agree with your assessment of Maria Salazar and trend towards RINOs in uncontested areas but at this point I would gladly take a RINO over a 20 something progressive socialist.
Yes, but at least with the 20-something progressive socialist you know what your getting.
That’s mainly because she has one particular agenda to push- amnesty for illegals. It seems she thinks all illegals are Cuban.
Seems like the elevation of the trans movement fulfills the assault on the three pillars.
The frankfurt school moved to the USA & implemented their plan to destroy western civilization. Their cousins remained in eurabia & did the same. So far, the cousins are winning.
I think the second to last letter of your title needs to be an 's' as in ism. Great essay as ever.
It’s a very good layout but misses an essential element: the concept of discourse that the French poststructuralists introduced. Interestingly, in this they were Nietzschean. Nietzsche was the first to lay down what became this Western Left’s concept of *truth*:
——What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms …——
Truth is an “army,” a thing deployed so as to seize power, and it’s built entirely of tropes. It *is* rhetoric, and nothing more. Even scientific or mathematical truths are attempts to impose power—the power of the one teaching them. Even if one tries to attain objectivity, Nietzsche says No. One is doing *rhetoric*. In order to overcome the listener, student, crowd, whatnot.
Truth, outside this grasping for power, *doesn’t exist*.
It’s the formula at the base of Derrida’s deconstruction. In academia, taken up by the Left, it ends up something like: “Since the ‘reason’ and ‘science’ and ‘ethics’ they teach are just power plays, we will answer with *our own* power plays.”
Add this to the Frankfurt School Marxist element, shift the focus of “the Left” from economic classes to oppressed identity groups—et voila! You have our current fake-ass Left.
That shift away from class and toward identity was also determined by the pesky fact that orthodox Marxism, by the 1980s, had been proven simply wrong. So academic leftists put identity groups into the blank that used to read “proletariat.”
How does it end? Like this: “I’m going to go to Harvard to *speak my truth*.”
Yes, the Frankfurt School was key. But the Nietzschean shift in epistemology also was.
Of course Nietzsche would’ve loathed it. His philosophy was finally seized and weaponized by the very resentniks he hoped to overcome. Poor fellow.
“God is dead, you said, but look what happened to you!”
“What?” Nietzsche says.
“That barista over there, with the nose ring and blue hair, that’s your Overman!”
“But … but she’s a woman!”
“Oh, but she isn’t! Ask her.”
Good addition.
The Workers Revolution was too benign, this new, fashionable version of Marxism is using a new foot soldier. They are leaning into those with questionable psychological balance. Truly ill people to shout down the reasoned.
When you get on a subway and you encounter a person wearing a pink pirate shirt, gold shorts, and no shoes picking and eating their scabs while yelling at the lights in the car, what do you do? You typically move to another car, it's too much stimulus. The garish are their foot soldiers now because they KNOW that the reasoned will move aside. Hell, the true leaders of this new Marxist movement don't even socialize with these people, they are pawns. A clone army conscripted for Palpatine.
However, in order to fight this new army back we must enter the gutter with them and become comfortable with the garish and face them. To paraphrase Commissioner Gordon, "In a moment like this, I hope you have a friend like I did, to plunge their hands in the filth so that future generations can keep theirs clean."
The war between freedom and subjugation in this country has never been more in the balance. In the past, the Marxists were a vast minority, but this system of education has created a lot more. Now the numbers are tipping. I fear if we wait two more political cycles it will be too late to come back from.
That was the entire purpose of the Frankfort school and Marcuse in particular. Finding the oppressed and convincing them they were oppressed is the origin of identity politics. The change needed to happen at the societal level, because capitalism actually provides for economic benefit and therefore why the Soviet model wouldn't work in the US.
Agreed. I'm making the point that the selected foot soldiers have devolved into very, very twisted psychosis. Not just the oppressed...but the deranged. Like I said, reasoned ones, or pre-reasoning individuals don't want to engage with them because they are afraid of the unpredictable result. This allows them to pass through without resistance to multiply and coerce the weaker minded in our society.