Private schooling: bad. Sacrificing generations: good

In most areas of the world, schools have opened. Children of all ages and sizes and descriptions have returned to their classrooms, public and private. Homeschool families have resumed full activities (some never stopped for the summer!). So, to welcome them all back to school we read a negative article about you selfish louts who do not send your children to the public (government) schools.

The piece starts with this quote:

“You are a bad person if you send your children to private school. Not bad like murderer bad—but bad like ruining-one-of-our-nation’s-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what’s-best-for-your-kid bad. So, pretty bad.”

I’m not making this up! Neither is this a shock statement to get the readers’ attention. This is what the author of this piece (Allison Benedikt) believes.  

There are a few things to notice here. No, I will NOT attempt a full-scale analysis. I will leave that to the reader. Just a few quick hits.

First, it was published in Slate (http://www.slate.com/). Slate is more than slightly left of center in it’s political and cultural biases. Anti-capitalist and anti-American rhetoric is not hard to find in its pages. They are so politically correct and up-to-date that they recently announced (August 8, 2013) that they will no longer refer to the NFL team in Washington as the Redskins. It’s a racist slur, they claim.  

Next, the piece in question (about bad people and private schools) is called a “Manifesto.” That makes alarm bells go off in my head. Manifesto? As in Communist Manifesto? Like the Humanist Manifesto? Like the UnaBomber's Manifesto? OK, it’s true that not all manifestoes are inherently evil. The Declaration of Independence, in fact, is a manifesto. But, the association with the “bad” ones is hard for me to dismiss. And a manifesto is an assertion of rightness. To publish a manifesto is to say, “I’m right; you’re wrong.” Benedikt is not only not right. She honestly doesn’t have a clue. We haven't even looked at any of the content of the manifesto, yet. We’ll take a quick peek now.

Third, this Allison Benedikt is a socialist/marxist/communist. Please read this quote.

I am not an education policy wonk: I’m just judgmental. But it seems to me that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve. This would not happen immediately. It could take generations. Your children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good. (Yes, rich people might cluster. But rich people will always find a way to game the system: That shouldn’t be an argument against an all-in approach to public education any more than it is a case against single-payer health care.)

It will take generations to fix this problem, Benedikt asserts. In the meantime we (probably meaning “you”) should send the children anyway; sacrifice them for the common good. Now, where have I read that before? Oh, right, throughout Marxist literature, that’s where. Rich people will always “game the system.” Class envy, anyone? I wonder whose definition she’s using for “rich.”

Here’s just one quote (from a National Socialist source):

But the Nazis defended their policies, and the country did not rebel; it accepted the Nazi argument. Selfish individuals may be unhappy, the Nazis said, but what we have established in Germany is the ideal system, socialism. In its Nazi usage this term is not restricted to a theory of economics; it is to be understood in a fundamental sense. "Socialism" for the Nazis denotes the principle of collectivism as such and its corollary, statism-in every field of human action, including but not limited to economics.
"To be a socialist," says Goebbels, "is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole."
By this definition, the Nazis practiced what they preached. They practiced it at home and then abroad. No one can claim that they did not sacrifice enough individuals. (The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff 1982).

The Soviets, the Chinese Communists and hordes of other folks tried this experiment, as well. Generations sacrificed. Not much positive has arisen.

I can’t even imagine what words of wisdom Benedikt might have for those so arrogant and unpatriotic as to homeschool. Suffice it to say that no positive answers (for anything) reside here. 

NOTE: For a totally different view, emphasizing parental responsibility, one might read here.

Is It 1984 in the US?

Viewed from afar (we currently live in the Czech Republic), events in the USA seem to indicate a nation slip-sliding into political and religious repression. A catalog of some of the political repression can be found in an article in the Washington Times (May 29, 2013).  

Websites listing persecution of religious groups have customarily focused upon foreign countries. Today, increasingly, the United States is among the leading nations in indices of offending nations, as this listing at Persecution.org indicates. (See this piece also).

In a sense all of this was academic, as Sandra and I sat in Prague and read about what was happening in our home country. The Czech Republic, of course, has it’s own history of political and religious repression, through the oppressive regimes of the Nazis and the Soviets. Today, however, religious freedom is the reality. Christianity is not particularly popular amongst the Czech citizenry, but neither is it repressed.

So, we traveled to the US at the end of May. During our visit we spent several days with our younger daughter in Connecticut. It was with shock that I saw, in numerous places, the billboard pictured here. The message is, “If you see something, say something.” The picture is fuzzy, due to rain on the day I snapped it, but the intent is clear: rat out your neighbor. Do you think that’s a harsh assessment? Consider this: the various billboards and other media (this is actually a national campaign launched by Homeland Security Czarina Janet Napolitano in July, 2010) do not indicate what sort of behavior is suspicious. 

Numerous “public safety” lists have been released with the identifications of groups who are to be considered “hostile” or “threats” to the security of the state. Included on many of the lists are returning veterans and  Christians. Are these the people who should be reported? 

A book review of The Whisperers, by Orlando Figes, states “Moving from the Revolution of 1917 to the death of Stalin and beyond, Orlando Figes re-creates the moral maze in which Russians found themselves, where one wrong turn could destroy a family or, perversely, end up saving it. He brings us inside cramped communal apartments, where minor squabbles could lead to fatal denunciations; he examines the Communist faithful, who often rationalized even their own arrest as a case of mistaken identity; and he casts a humanizing light on informers, demonstrating how, in a repressive system, anyone could easily become a collaborator.”

Is the US headed that way? Will informers be heroes; patriots? Will families be destroyed by mistrust and suspicion?

As Americans ponder the implications of such government policies and initiatives, its no wonder that sales of George Orwell’s works are skyrocketing. According to an article in the International Business Times  

Sales of George Orwell's 1984 have shot up following revelations that the United States' National Security Agency (NSA) is accessing data on people around the world.

Sales of Orwell's novel have risen by 6,000% since the Guardian revealed the allegations of former NSA sub-contractor Edward Snowden.

In the dystopian novel, all citizens are constantly spied on by an inner elite party in the government. Banners reading "Big Brother Is Watching You" cover the city and citizens are monitored by the Thought Police, who punish people for independent thinking.

Is this 1984 in the US? Is this the atmosphere our Founding Fathers anticipated when they created this "experiment in democracy"? Certainly this attitude among the leaders of our nation needs an adjusment. Even more certainly, this is a call to prayer - for both the leaders and the people. May God have mercy on this nation.