Obama’s Civilian Troops Were Trained by Ayers
The blitzkrieg of changes that Obama has implemented — the nationalization of auto companies and banks, the demonization of the bourgeois (auto executives, physicians in private practice, insurance executives), the arm-twisting behind closed doors — are of the kind we’d expect of Hugo Chavez, pal of Obama’s pal, Bill Ayers.
But young people, educated in a system that allowed Bill Ayers to become a “distinguished professor” of education, heed the siren call of Obama’s Organizing for America and MoveOn.org. I saw them collecting information and signatures at one of the fake town halls given by my Democrat Congressman Hank Johnson here in Atlanta on August 10.
In fact, it seemed that out of the tiny percentage of people in their late teens or twenties at this gathering, which exceeded the overflow hall showing the proceedings on screen, most were Obama zombies. None would give their full names to me; some were from outside the district. All insisted that they had signed “nondisclosure agreements.” One hostile girl with pink hair admitted to being paid for her efforts. One young man who gave his first name only smirked when I told him I write for PJ Media: “Isn’t that the place that had Joe the Plumber on?”
Obama would like us to forget about Ayers, whom he dismissed as some “English professor.” We are to forget that they attended New York colleges at the same time, ended up in Ayers’ hometown of Chicago, sat on educational foundations together, had mutual friends, and held a kick-off political campaign in Ayers’ home.
Obama would also like us to ignore the language written by a euthanasia society that calls for five-year reviews of “end-of-life” plans in HR 3200. Those who rightfully see such provisions for what they are endure ridicule, much in the manner of those who condemned communists. Those writing op-eds about life “not worth living” today display a lack of awareness that their language mimics the language of Nazi doctors who got their practice runs for the Holocaust by quietly gassing the very young, the mentally challenged, and the handicapped in the privacy of their hospitals. They too had medical “review committees” of white-coated bureaucrats signing orders for death.
But history teachers will tell you that even Advanced Placement high school students are under the illusion that the concentration camps were places that the U.S. sent its own Japanese citizens.
When I write about Bill Ayers, I am often greeted with the retort that the focus on one kooky professor is a waste of time, that we have bigger problems.
But were it not for the “Destructive Generation” instantiating themselves in our schools, the election of Barack Obama would not have been possible. Had we had a generation who understood history, we would have had voters who understood the vacuity of his rhetoric and the implications of “spreading the wealth.” They would have understood how his writings on Saul Alinsky displayed his propensity for stirring up racial animus, demonizing the opposition, and threatening executives with “pitchfork” mobs (that he would rouse up). We would have seen how his teaching a course on “critical race theory” would naturally lead to a nomination of a Supreme Court justice who sees herself as a “wise Latina woman” who can “empathize.”
They would have seen that Obama’s alliance with Bill Ayers, who has been working on behalf of “education” in Venezuela, would lead to a cozy meeting with Hugo Chavez. While Venezuelans protest against a government takeover of the schools, we allow Bill Ayers to spread his poison to future teachers while paying him an annual salary of $126,000.
Like South American dictators who promise peasants a few hectares through redistribution, Obama promises such things as “free” medical care, education, and new cars to his followers. Like Chavez, he appeals to the peasants — literally the illegal ones streaming into the country, promising rights of citizenship.
The historian Richard Pipes notes that the Russian revolution succeeded in large part because of the uneducated peasants. And in this country, the early communists targeted immigrants who spoke no English and were unacquainted with American values.
Today’s communists, like Bill Ayers, work in our schools aiming to keep American students in the same level of ignorance and tribalism as the peasants of Russia and South America.
They began their nefarious deeds in the 1960s. With help from the Soviet Union, they fomented hatred of the United States and then successfully groomed a generation to colonize the schools. The SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), of which Ayers was a member, spelled out their strategies in their position paper, the Port Huron Statement. Employing the old Soviet strategy of “boring from within,” they focused on “an overlooked seat of influence”: the university. Divested of their history, literacy, and ability to reason, their students became the mob that elected Barack Obama.
I am not the only one to witness the increasing inability of college students to reason. Douglas G. Campbell, writing in Academic Questions, relates a common experience in the college classroom. The former career military officer, while discussing military culture, was accused of being “brainwashed by the military” by a student who had no experience in the military or knowledge of it. When asked what informed her opinion, she could not reply. In frustration she repeated the classroom mantra, that she was “entitled to my opinion.” When she broke into tears, accusing Campbell of being a Nazi, she gained the sympathy of her classmates. I’ve had a similar resistance to facts and logic in the classroom.
Campbell cites a couple of books on pedagogy that he had to read in a mandatory program at his college. One by Stephen D. Brookfield, Becoming a Critically Reflective Thinker, advocates a Marxist methodology called “critical pedagogy,” by which “students are helped to break out of oppressive ways of thinking and acting that seem habitual but that have been imposed by the dominant culture.”
The “dominant culture” that Brookfield refers to is the Western one. It relies on standards of truth, objectivity, and fairness. It uses the syllogism, where a premise based on truth leads logically to a conclusion. Our “dominant culture” also emphasizes fairness, such as notions that people of a certain race are not inherently wiser or that those who demonstrate merit should be rewarded.
But in our schools, from kindergarten through graduate school, a different culture reigns. From textbooks, to teaching strategies that encourage collective thinking, to dorm room indoctrination, students are pressured to give up independent, logical thought for nonsensical theories, group work, and consensus building. They are bullied emotionally and pressured with grades to adopt the thinking of the classroom. At the same time, they are denied exposure to the Western heritage.
Bill Ayers, much admired by fellow education professors, eschews content and discipline. He bristles at the idea of being restricted by a curriculum, policies, or assessments and openly uses his classroom to promote his radical communist views by assigning books that promote communism. His own books are used by professors in colleges of education. A tamer version of his pedagogy is popular among teachers, who while not openly advocating communism nonetheless focus on “social justice” issues through collective thinking.
Conservatives who have seen through these techniques but simply dismiss these kooky professors do so at their peril. They may be protecting their own children through homeschooling and private education, but they are reaping the products in the voting mobs that elected Barack Obama.
Now we are faced with, among other things, the prospect of “death panels” under socialized medicine.
The health care town halls and tea party rallies are the pulse signs of an American spirit that has not yet died. But these gatherings are populated largely by those who are in, or approaching, the age of mandatory “end-of-life” counseling proposed in HR 3200.
As a baby boomer, I viewed such a session at my “town hall meeting” as a group of fresh-faced Emory medical students debated an experienced orthopedic surgeon.
One young student, a Doogie Howser type, cocksure in his white coat, was convinced that he was on the right side of compassion and “social justice.”
The surgeon, who was not wearing the doctor’s coat, argued against the government encroachment into the relationship between doctor and patient. He admitted that there are problems with health care currently, but argued quite logically and ethically against the extreme measures of the bill. He cited his experience of working in a government (VA) hospital. He said that competition means good service for patients and gave examples and reasons.
The med student accused him of “trying to make a profit.” (The good doctor had said he treats at least a couple of children of illegal aliens a month for free.)
As the surgeon understandably became increasingly frustrated in the debate, the med student used techniques that are now common in the classroom: emotional sabotaging tactics under the cover of “conflict resolution.” Acting as if the surgeon were an unreasonable child (or more likely senile), the student said, “Let me crystallize this …” The tone was condescending. It would have been a comic scene were it not for the fact that this future doctor does not seem to understand how HR 3200 violates the Hippocratic Oath.
(The several doctors who spoke at the tea party rally in Atlanta on August 15 all invoked the Hippocratic Oath. But they were all middle-aged. No medical students showed up.)
The medical student at the town hall did say to the experienced orthopedist, “I respect your opinion,” but he dismissed the opinion.
Obama himself on television and through expansion of government programs, like Americorps, encourages our young people to “volunteer” in “community service” programs paid for with tax dollars.
While the economy tanks, the government job sector is growing. Young people are encouraged to educate themselves for jobs in nonprofits and government agencies. They build up their academic resumes with “community service” that does nothing for their intellectual growth.
The visions of modern-day brown-shirted civilian troops have predictably been dismissed as evidence of overworked imaginations of right-wing extremists.
Well, maybe they won’t be wearing brown shirts. Maybe they’ll be wearing white coats.
Maybe the student doctor who showed up in costume, er his lab coat, doesn’t have the crippling student loan debt that almost every other med student has. Perhaps he’s waiting for the “student loan bailout”. What’s wrong with making a profit, or a decent living for that matter. I might have been inclined to probe his obviously upper middle class upbringing and ask him who has been footing his bill for the whole of his spoiled brat life. If I were his parents, I’d cut im loose and tell him to come back when he’s had a taste of trying to make ends meet without Dad’s credit card and Mom’s second-hand BMW to tool around in when he’s not attending his private medical school.
One young man who gave his first name only smirked when I told him I write for Pajamas Media: “Isn’t that the place that had Joe the Plumber on?”
Well ridicule is the price you pay for sending a plumber to cover a war.
Well done, Mary. You have a clear eye for a ‘baby boomer’.
If only there were more than just you in academia.
If only there were more academicians to write as well.
If only there were more outlets for your writing.
If only there were citizens left who can read.
Oh! There we are back at teachers again! Long past time to put the blame where it belongs, on teachers (unions, faculties, curriculae).
So long past time it’s generations too late…..
“Had we . . . had we . . . had wee . . . ”
Had we a conservative population that didn’t believe Orly Taitz, we would not be burdened by the time suck of ignorance and accusation.
Now and Then: I’m having trouble understanding your crudely stated point. (What on earth is “time suck” supposed to mean?) Is it that you consider conservatives ignorant? We want to run our own lives rather than having a small circle of government bureaucrats make decisions for us. The government does a terrible job of running programs. Government officials do not know what is in your best interests and should not be making your decisions. Government “solutions” only generate greater problems. (One example would be welfare. Liberals insisted on it for decades out of “compassion” for the poor. It has instead created government dependency and has not only not solved poverty but intrenched it further.)
I used to be liberal, buying into the mantra that if we had a social problem, the government should pass a law/set up a program, etc. It doesn’t work out that way. Life is not that simple.
…and our national media covers almost none of this.
“They began their nefarious deeds in the 1960s. With help from the Soviet Union, they fomented hatred of the United States and then successfully groomed a generation to colonize the schools.”
DO NOT FALL ASLEEP! CHECK YOUR BASEMENT FOR PODS!
I have watched the deterioration of university education and participated in classes that you discribe. One book that was required reading in every economics class was based on a fantasy assumption the author admitted in the introduction. But it was new, exciting as a SciFi movie with all the garnish of making them feel wiser and more compassionate than their parents and past generations of thinkers.
Thank you Mary Grabar for speaking out. We are now confronted by ideals that have shown over and again that the genocide of those who dissent and those who might dissent is the final phase of their plan. We need people to react and insist that men in congress serve America and not their greedy self-interest.
Excellent article.
Theree are time I wished I had taken the GI bill for futher education. I wish I were mor literate, however my understanding of what I readand what is often “said” “heard” as truth is obvious to anyone who had a secondary education out of the 40`s and 50`s. Working with a really fine landscape arcitect years ago was a delighrful,enlightening experience. Fred and both agreed “The Graduate” was turning point in the cultural, “sismic” change that was to come and now is. This change brought about change not by reason but by intimidation. Now intimidation hs become the norm and valid reasoning has been dismessed as western”White men” thinking. I hope those that follow as we pass from this life on earth do not see what is taking place and begin an other revolution of change by truth and grace. Not by lies and treachery.
Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School. This really is no secret.
Mary is right in her explanation of the problem. Now, what can be done about it?
We have been banging this drum for a very long time, I am glad to see that someone is finally paying attention to the fact that Bill Ayers has been working – underground – for a very long time indoctrinating our children against us.
I’ll give you something else all of us should be very concerned about: ACORN’s involvement in the cencus. ACORN spokesmen have said they are going to use averaging to account for the “people in the shadows”.
We all know that “people in the shadows” refers to illegal aliens. YES, illegal aliens. The people that are in this country illegally.
IF ACORN is successful at this, you can look at redistricting for future elections.
What does that mean?
Everyone that is saying “wait until 2010″ or “wait until 2012″ are kidding themselves. If Obama pulls this off, our votes will count for nothing.
As a member of the Baby Boomer generation, I watched as idealistic young people were taken in by the free love culture, anti-capitalist, and all of the things that can be applied to the current crop of young people out there today. These minions of the 60s culture are real and have been taught by an element who were in turn taught by the likes of Ayers, Alinsky, and other activists in general who were born in the 60s movement. The teachers and professors who understand the importance of getting to the young as soon as possible. The old Catholic axiom is still true today. Give us your child until a certain age, and they will be Catholic forever. Ayers and his disciples practice the same method by populating the classrooms with their followers.
I fear we are too little, too late. Based on the responses coming from those who will be tasked with taking care of us, I sure don’t want to be around to be his or her’s first older patient.
While attending grammar school in the fifties, I remember the mandated air raid drills for a Russian Bombing attack; we were to crawl under our desks and cover our head with our hands and look away from the windows.
I remember thinking how lucky the teacher was to have such a nice oak desk, there was much more protection. I had recently survived an encounter with a broken milk bottle with a few stitches, so I had a healthy respect for all the glass in the ever present wall of windows. I wondered about the flying glass, if these nuclear and hydrogen bombs were as powerful as they say, the flying glass would be a real danger. Such is the imagination of a child raised in the atmosphere of every father being a young vet.
We were raised in fear and terror of the Marxist Agenda, we stared in disbelief as Krushchef took off a shoe and pounded it repeatedly on his desk at the United Nations. Such a display would have earned corporal punishment at school or at home. In an age when children were expected to have respect for teachers and parents.
A few years later, at Universities we saw the Communist groups and the subversives like the SDS campaign on campus, they usually attracted the older, poor intellectual and the less cerebral undergraduate. Looked upon as undesireables, they were considered a necessary evil for a well rounded education.
Little did we know that they were plotting to infest the education system and subvert its mission from education to the process of Progressive Marxist Indotrination. Their goals have come to fruition, they have destroyed the allegiance to America that was present when those survivors of World War II were teaching world History and Civics. The syllabus is now designed to subvert all conscious thought to implementing and serving the Marxist Revolution. Stalin would be amazed at the progress of his American Liberals or Useful Idiots as he endearingly referred to them.
Ayers is the prototype of the American Liberal Communist or Useful Idiot, but he has been very successful in implementing the Communist Agenda in the schools. He is no idiot, he wrote a nice book for Obama, he has accomplished his plan with chilling efficiency. Our public education system is riddled with Communists that are always striving to further their subversive goals of the Marxist Revolution.
The result has been, with the help of massive funding by George Soros, the election of a Progressive Marxist President and the Revolution continues with his initiatives to further the Revolution while consolidating power and control.
Vivo, N&W et al will now stuumble over each other to prove the writer’s contention and not ever see themselves. Beautiful Mr. Ayers! Well done indeed!
Along these lines and reinforcing Ms. Grabar’s point, the book ‘The Closing of the American Mind’ by Allan Bloom is a must read. It’s an excellent account of the decline of academia and critical thinking in America.
I get the impression these young university students are simply parroting what they’ve been taught and not really thinking critically. They really don’t have the experience or knowledge base really think things through. Accusing the doctor of “trying to make a profit’ is stupid frankly. Of course he’s trying to make a profit, that’s how he feeds himself and his family! Nobody gives him food, clothing and shelter, he must earn it.
Children will adopt the practice of critical thinking if given the example. They will relegate magical thinking to the realm of humor, poetry and fantasy, where it rightly belongs, but this essential mental development requires true leadership on the part of someone willing and able to show them how gratifying it is to think for oneself when dealing with the real world.
There can be no love of freedom without love of reason in the first place.
Brain-dead teachers can only destroy the civilization they refuse to recognize. Bill Ayers got the reputation of “a distinguished professor”, but he never earned it.
His personal history is one of systematic destruction, a silver spoon child who never grew up, and wants to make sure nobody else does, either.
An appointee of the Obama administration at the FCC, Mark Lloyd, Chief Diversity Officer (cough) is on tape praising Oogoe Chavez’ glorious revolution.
It isn’t too hard to guess that Obama is frustrated (look at some of O’s statements) that the airwaves in the United States still carry voices that deride his administration.
Or to think that, ideally, within the Obama ethos, that the federal communications bureaucracy/machinery can be enlisted to make life very difficult for free speech over the airwaves, included, but not limited to, government imposed technicalities & rules to limit broadcasting license renewal.
Exactly as Oogoe, Mark Lloyd’s esteemed role model in Venezuela has been doing.
As for the agenda of Billy Ayers, reportedly, Jeff Jones, a co-founder of Billy’s in the Weather Underground, is now affiliated with the Apollo Alliance that (according to statements by Harry Reid) had a big hand in writing the Stimulus package. Harry, and it would seem much of the Senate, is too brain dead to know what the hell they’re signing.
It’s an interesting idea that the entire machinery of the federal government is now enlisted in effecting Billy Ayers’ agenda.
As an education professor myself, I agree with most of this article. However, I’m something of an advocate of critical analysis in the classroom. In fact, I use “critical theory” as a tool to refute the left’s agenda. For example, I dissemble words and phrases like “diversity,” “social justice,” and others in order to help students discover their vapidness and how they are simply used as political tools.
I’m a big advocate of turning the left’s rhetorical tools against it.
Good work Mary.
We need to defeat and defund his brownshirt monsters.
If he passes his illegal healthcare bill we must refuse to enforce it.
Losing is not an option.
So, what do we do about the situation?
Going to any 9/12 meetings?
we have a sitting president that has self proclaimed communists (czars) advising him. The press gives him a pass. If ACORN does the census, there will be hell to pay come voting time. Our vote will not mean squat! The press gives him a pass. I could go on and on. I have no solution. The whole thing is down right scary. I was raised in a free country, I no longer feel it will be the case for my kids and grandkids…
Most of the nutcases seem to be in Washington and the NE…We live in a very red state and our town hall meetings are relatively sane. We have no large unions, radical universities etc…One would not know there was anything going on anywhere else if not for UNEMPLOYMENT!!, and lost investments!!
We tanked when the effects of Barney Frank and the Democrats lowering the qualifications for home loans “came home to roost”. Our investments hit rock bottom, our retirement flew away.. The deficite has tripled, and still Washington keeps spending. what are we missing ? Where is the sanity?
Again, if ACORN does their thing, you should be leery of 2010 I agree with #13.. TAMMY.
… I have been watching Glen Beck’s show the past week and it is amazing …and not to be missed. What an eye opener.
I cannot recall being led around by my nose in college. Academia has indeed been “dumbed down”. Where is Jane Fonda??? She should be at Obama’s right hand
How do we stop this? How do we stop Obama and ACORN?
Who gave over their dear children to be miseducated by these creeps in the first place? The parents of America! This dereliction of duty needs a proper explanation. Decades in which a sensible academic alternative could have been launched, perfected, and expanded were largely wasted.
This is the most disturbing part of this of all:
We’re not only going to get a generation indoctrinated into the virtues of Big Government, they’re going to be dependent on it. There will be a tipping point, followed by a series of dominoes falling. The end of it will be when the Chinese stop buying our junk paper. With nobody left inside or out to provide useful goods and services, the left-wing wet dream of massive starvation and mayhem will finally come to pass.
Stock up on ammo while you still can.
Up to what age? Once they’re out of college, it takes a real, serious psychological crisis to let go of the junk dogma that’s been so familiar and comforting for your entire life.
I think some of that will happen, I just don’t know what percentage. I’ve been rather gobsmacked, as has our author, at how resistant to deprogramming some of these otherwise rational and intelligent 20-somethings are.
There’s only one hope that I can see, and that is that libertarianism provides a culturally attractive alternative to socialism. Culturally speaking, conservatism is comatose and on life support. It’s not going to be a cultural force in the next decade, if ever again. The only game out there that can appeal to the brainwashed is Randianism.
If that fails, you’d better be prepared to shoot or be shot.
My daughter who is a psychiatrist trains medical students and my son-in-the law is a professor of engineering. Both share similar problems with their students. First is keeping the students interested. They have to resort to slide shows and other multi-media presentations. Secondly, it is a challenge for them to keep their students off of the cell phones and computers when they should be listening to lectures. These are higher education students who will soon be going out into the world with limited ability to persevere in their education and to fully think creatively and critically. Interestingly, they are so sure of themselves in spite of a lack of rigor in their application to learning.
Who gave over their dear children to be miseducated by these creeps in the first place?
Oh, programs along lines of The Great Society where parents were led into some kind of lalaland thinking that they could slack off and “government” would raise their children.
It would seem that a lot of parents these days only engage the school when they get all up in arms over some alleged mis-treatment of poor janey or poor johnny.
Rarely addressed, worthy of a PhD thesis (or 10) is the idea that, on so many levels, government insertion into private lives is in fact the root cause of many depredations and ills of our current society.
While it seems that Barry (and Billy) won’t be happy until every single bit of your personal responsibility and freedom is subject to their personal control and discretion.
No sh!t sherlock
Don’t trust anyone under sixty-five!
Yes, they are all Communists, just like the movement in the late 60s. A fake doctor stood up at the townhall of Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee Yes
“Between complete Socialism and Communism there is no difference whatever in my mind. Communism is in fact the completion of Socialism; when that ceases to be militant and becomes triumphant, it will be Communism.” William Morris (1834-1893) English Utopian Socialist. In a lecture to the Hammersmith Socialist Society, 1893.
Make no mistake about it, these Communists that have and are infiltrating our government and education systems are not driven by the premise of serving the American Public. They and our Commander in Wee Wee are interested in one thing, advancing the Communist Front and they are using our tax dollars to subvert the tenets of Freedom and Liberty. We are the ones that are paying billions to Acorn and other subversive groups to destroy America. We are the ones who give two billion dollars to George Soros so that he can explore for oil and gas off the coast of Brazil in the interests of a clean environment.
We are financing this Traitor in the White House to destroy America and install the Obamanation of Damnation so that we will have a heavenly Dystopia of fear and Totalitarianism straight out of an Orwellian nightmare.
Yes we are being led like sheep to the abattoir of Obamanation and he and his henchmen the Union Goons, Thugs of Acorn, and Black Panthers will soon be armed and exerting their control over the civilian population.
I refuse to submit to the yoke of Communism and the chains of slavery.
“The state is not ‘abolished’ it withers away.” Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) German Communist. “Anti-Duhring”
From E. Kellogg: Spartacus’ Address To The Gladiators At Capua
…And so, my fellow Gladiators must you, and so must I die like dogs. O Rome! Rome! thou hast been a tender nurse to me. Ay! thou hast given that timid shepherd lad, who never knew a harsher tone than a flute-note, muscles of iron and a heart of flint, taught him to drive th sword through plaited mail and links of rugged brass and warm it in the marrow of his foe; to gaze into the eyeballs of the fierce Numidian Lion as a boy upon laughing girl. The strength of brass is in your sinews, but tomorrow some Roman Adonis, breathing sweet perfume from his curly locks, shall with his lilly fingers pat your red brawn and bet his sestarces upon your blood. Hark! hear yon lion roaring in his den? Tis three days since he has tasted flesh; tomorrow he shall break his fast upon your flesh and a dainty meal for him you will be! If ye are beasts then stand here like fat oxen waiting for the butcher’s knife! If ye are men, follow me! Strike down yon guard, gain the mountain passes, and there do bloody work, as did your sires at old Thermopalye! Is Sparta dead? Is the Grecian Spirit frozen in your veins, that you crouch and cower like a belabored hound beneath his master’s lash? O comrades! warriors! Thracians! if we must fight, let us fight for ourselves! If we must slaughter, let us slaughter our oppressors! If we must die, let it be under the clear sky, by the bright waters, in noble and honorable battle.
Of course this was written 1500 years after the fact, but Spartacus inspired his men and was a great leader. Soon we will need leaders and inspiration to stand against the tyranny that is engulfing us.
“Acting as if the surgeon were an unreasonable child (or more likely senile), the student said, “Let me crystallize this …” The tone was condescending.”
Not at all surprising. I had an eco-Nazi undergrad walk into my cubicle uninvited and critique all of the paper products (printer paper, notebooks, note pads, post-its) and office equipment that I use for their environmental friendliness. He even went through my trash and gave me a lecture on what should/shouldn’t be thrown in the garbage. He went through the entire building leaving post-it notes on everything he considered to be wasteful (the copier, the water dispenser, the toaster oven, various pieces of lab equipment). Some of us manage to grow out of this type of insufferable, crusading arrogance (I did, but not until my 40s), but just as many never do (Berkeley is full of 60-year old infantile narcissists). It’s one thing for a generation to desire to change the world by doing good, and something else entirely when they want to impose their idea of what’s good upon the world.
Dear moderators, there may be an anomaly in the cyber world, but more than likely I just made a mistake; however, the post for #31 was written by me.
Zook it is reassuring to hear from someone like yourself. We may find wisdom in President Grant’s advice to the Indian Chiefs who came to Washington from Montana and Wyoming to plead for their people who were starving on the reservations.
In his infinite wisdom he told these stone age tribesmen, “You must endeavor to persevere.”
They thought over this biblical-like advise on the long train ride home and immediately went on the warpath.
Sine you are not a stone age tribesman, I can only say, “Please endeavor to persevere.”
good article.except bill ayers was the barney fife of the bomb making world.scanning through some of his writings,i suspect he is the same way in accademia.
way bigger fish to fry than that guy.
good news from LA on charter schools:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd-schools26-2009aug26,0,4203620.story?track=rss
The left has successfully infiltrated and now controls not only Academia, as the piece describes, but mainstream media, Hollywood, and the public sector (government workers). This, combined with the fact that the parasites now outnumber the producers — in large part due to the left’s efforts — means that this country is in serious trouble.
Clones, drones and thugs on iphones.
The future is now.
“Divested of their history, literacy, and ability to reason, their students became the mob that elected Barack Obama.” A chilling and accurate observation, but today’s Ayerbuilt zombies on elite university faculties may contain the seeds of their own destruction, as Harvard Prof. Ruth R. Wisse wrote in an Opinion Journal op ed a couple of years back:
“Student response to [Harvard President Lawrence Summers's] ouster suggests another long-term outcome. Although the activists of yesteryear may have found a temporary stronghold in the universities, a new generation of students has had its fill of radicalism.”
More on the subject in my blogpost “His fatal flaws were honesty and a desire to do the right thing”:
http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2006/02/_his_fatal_flaw.html
Truth be told, I believe the only school worth its tuition, not yet infected with the multicultural virus is the California Institute of Technology, otherwise known as Caltech. My son spent 5 productive years in their undergrad and grad program, filled with scholarship and rigorous academic discipline, mercifully free of lunatic profs posing as academics.
On the other hand, MIT can go either way, as its students are unfortunately bombarded with the lunatic profs who hail from the Humanities. The jury is still out though since science and engineering do remain top dog on campus. I believe my son escaped just in time having graduated in 2007 because things can only get worse in wacky Cambridge with Obama in the White House.
On the whole the liberal arts schools are a TOTAL waste of time and money, and the Ivies are a disgrace. They are run by profiteering whores who have succumbed to Arab money on many fronts. Yale’s disgraceful capitulation to the suppression of cartoons is just the latest example of a sinking, stinking Ivy ship.
Is it any wonder that Ayers (and other domestic terrorists!) is recognized as an ‘educator’ in the cesspool which we call higher ed?
#35, Bill Ayers, then and now, may be a small fry dork with daddy issues and a knack for glibness, in short, have all the personal characteristics of the quintessential con artist…
…but the ideas & the Marxist ethos have been around for what seems like forever and keep rearing their ugly heads, despite being shown, time and again, to be antithetical to the well-being & liberty of humankind.
And the current President of the US, despite his repeated attempts to distance himself from “a guy in my neighborhood”…”I was only 9 when Weatherman were doing such and such” (actually Obama was 14 in 1975 when some of that stuff was still going on…) seems uncomfortably on board with re-distributive impulses and class warfare ideologies.
Since these people are not troops nor were they trained by Ayers, I assumed the rest of Grabar’s usual paranoid fantasy was on the same level so I stopped reading
40. tanstaafl:my point was is that ayers is an ineffective chump,and is only really useful as a pinata for the right.
alot more dangeous people are quietly doing their work while all the attention is paid to littlemisscan’tplot.in the end,a nobody that nobody listens to.
Government run schools will always been one of the most important planks of the Communist Manifesto. Sometimes I wonder if the Democrats have used the 10 planks as a check off list.
This is such an excellent article and comment collection, really a cut above the norm even by PJM standards. Thank you all.
In keeping with the theme here, if you haven’t yet seen Bill Whittle’s latest video, you really should: http://www.pjtv.com/video/Afterburner_with_Bill_Whittle/___MSNBC_%26_The_Great_Liberal_Narrative%3A_The_Truth_About_The_Tyranny_of_Political_Correctness/2343/
Sorry for the bad link above. Please navigate to Bill Whittle’s section in PJTV instead.
Ayers and Obama have a very close relationship. It has been well documented. Hopefully, journalists will continue to probe and investigate it. It will be important again to independents in 2012, because by then Obama will have a record. His current tac hews pretty close to the Ayers/Alinsky path. Take over industry, take over banks. Make people beholden to government rather than themselves.
The general public dismissed the very close relationship, because the mainstream media dismissed it. They did all they could to keep the Obama skeletons in the Obama closet. Fox News covered it, Milt Rosenberg of WGN radio covered it, but it fell on deaf ears. No one was listening.
If Hillary were the nominee, most if not all the skeletons were already out there. Obama was an enigma. But my gut tells me Hillary would have still whipped McCain.
I started doing some research on Obama’s Civilian Army. My fellow PJMs, check out IONS (institute of noetic sciences). You guys may be better researchers than me, but if you check out the board of directors it is quite interesting. My theory is the apollo alliance is shaped from this group of people. Check it out.
What you say is definitely true, but as one who no longer teaches at universities, I have to say that part of the blame also lies with the commodification of higher education through the heavy reliance on a consumer-driven model that places too much weight on teacher evaluations. Many faculty members buy into the whole leftist project, there is no doubt. But those who don’t are afraid to rock the boat too much or (what amounts to the same thing) to challenge their students to think too critically, lest they end up savaged on their student evaluations. Students are comfortable regurgitating the same leftist cant they’ve been fed since elementary school. Being challenged to use logic and to back up what they say with facts is too much for them, and the faculty members who challenge them will often find themselves attacked on teaching evaluations. So many faculty members start to go along to get along. This was quite obvious to me at some of the institutions where I taught, where other faculty members often talked tough about grading and standards, but caved in rather than risk poor teaching evaluations from their students.
I finish high school last year so I know how dumb young people can be most of them will grow out of their uninformed left wing politics I am sure. However as I sat in the current events class being the only conservative to speak up most of the time. It was amazing to me. All their arguments were based on how they felt not on facts or logic.
Please read and comment my blog
I question the elision of the early ’62 Port Huron SDS with the Bill Ayers approach in the same organization when he joined some five or six years later. While Ayers (and Dohrn and Klonsky) all had stalinist politics of one sort or another, early SDS was far more eclectic and, of course, received its founding financial support from the anti-stalinist League for Industrial Democracy which sent a young (but already well known anti-stalinist socialist) Michael Harrington to the founding meeting at Port Huron to engage the new radicals. Granted they did not get on well with each other but that was not because of any orientation towards Moscow or Beijing. How the stalinists like Ayers and Klonsky destroyed SDS is another story altogether.
The Democrat Party is a criminal enterprise.
Our church has a Montessori school renting a couple of rooms. The director received, unsolicited, a large package a couple of weeks ago. It was from the U.S. Census, published by Scholastic, and contained 10 (3′ x 4′) 2-sided maps of the US showing population sizes, age groups, etc. A teaching packet was also included, with the stated aims- “to
1) help enlist students as vital census advocates
2) convey the importance of 100% census participation
3) allay concerns some parents or guardians may have about the census due to misinformation or language barriers
4) boost the effectiveness of the once-a-decade U.S. Census for the benefit of individuals, schools, families, communities and our nation.”
So very reminiscent of the Hitler Youth: have the children indoctrinate the parents.
The director, being a Constitution-reading conservative, did not want it, so I put most of the pile to a much better use-starting a bonfire.
Zook,
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Please keep up the good work.
The students who rate YOUR classroom performance seem to think you are a prof who “bristles at the idea of being restricted by a curriculum, policies, or assessments and [that you} openly use (your) classroom to promote (your paranoid christian, conservative) views by assigning books that promote (conservative values)”. I think your screed, here, is simply an effort to justify your receiving the worst student evaluations I have ever seen. The fact that you still get part time teaching positions, given your abysmal ratings. must have something to do with the fact that the places you teach are, to most serious academics, places no one has ever heard of.
Reporting to you from deep behind The Marijuana Curtain, I have also observed the indoctrination of children, in this case to turn them into eco-nazis. The schools in California cover their walls with large signs with slogans such as “Go Green!”, “Recycle!”, and “Save the planet”. It’s so commonplace that most people don’t even notice it.
At a local school, one day they dressed all the kids in identical green t-shirts and had them march around the school yard for a “Save the planet” walk-a-thon, listening to propaganda barked through loud speakers during an event that lasted for several hours. That was a chilling spectacle.
These are government schools indoctrinating kids instead of educating them. The end product are educated ignoramuses such as the moonbeam chasers who staff of the Apollo Alliance, the thinktank guiding policy in Washington.
By the way, if the Apollo Alliance were accurately named, it would actually be called the Dionysian Axis — they are emotion-guided national socialists — eco-nazis.
The young man in the white lab coat who inquired if the older doctor was working for a profit would not seem to know what that means.
I am sure he has been supported all his life and has not held a job of any sort. But if he has, he apparently doesn’t consider his salary as a profit. Likely he considers it his “due”.
As to the reduction in quality of our schooling, the education standards now have most freshman entering college take remedial english and math. In my opinion that is because the high school education is devoted to social issues.
I think your gut reaction about Hillary beating McCain is probably true, Jeff. And although I have the same kinds of differences with Hillary as I do with Obama where matters of policy are concerned, I’d much prefer Hillary were president because the public would have known what they were getting when they voted for her. Likewise, if she was pitching healthcare reform, the public would have understood it was some kind of HillaryCare 2.0, so there’d be none of the deception involved with acting as though it was something new and significantly different than it was the first time she tried to bring it out in 1993.
RE #12/squirrelhunter: [...] Mary is right in her explanation of the problem. Now, what can be done about it? [...]
We are living under occupation by tenure – kick the bums out of cubicles.
Well, considering they want to make the Census part of the ‘education’ curriculum this year, I am curious at what grade level do they start giving out Obama Youth knives?
The indoctrination has filtered all the way to the elementary school level, where science teachers discuss “global warming” as though it is accepted truth, english teachers ignore great literature to immerse kids in lousy pop culture books that enforce a belief in American evil, and math teachers play games with students instead of drilling them in the basics.
I fight every day to keep these vampires from infecting my children. Teachers, like journalists, have poisoned their profession and my immediate response when I meet a teacher is distrust and dislike. They no longer serve as beacons of learning and light; they are instead the forgers of the chains to bring us into slavery.
I think it is time that Bill Ayers and those like him in acadamia lost their jobs. Every last one of them.
And don’t allow any of them to teach in any public school at any level from here on out. Let’s do it – let’s take back our schools.
I do not know what plant this woman is smoking, but I work in a primary care doctor’s office, and her statements about health care are simply untrue! Under the government-run health plan, Medicare, patients choose their own doctors, hospitals, labs, dialysis centers, etc. In contrast, those insured under private insurance have little choice. The private insurers even stipulate what medications that doctors can prescribe for their subscribers. Further, the private insurers deny care when patients are ill. We have to petition the private insurers to agree to treatments that their subscribers need. We get denials all of the time. Talk about death panels! It is proven that stress is bad for our health. Imagine being sick with a life-threatening illness and then having to deal with the stress of fighting with your health insurer to cover your care! Imagine doing that when you are in your 70s or 80s! I deal with these issues on a daily basis for patients who have dropped Medicare and have private insurance. Private insurers also pay primary care doctors less than Medicare-some up to 50% less! A health insurance corporation’s job is to maximize profits for its shareholders, they can do that best by rationing and restricting coverage to their subscribers. That is not in the best interest of a patient’s health!
Mr. Rockford,
Actually, the “parasites” outnumber the “producers” because greedy corporation CEOs can make higher profits by shipping American manufacturing jobs to China, Indonesia and India, etc. Mechanical engineering graduates can no longer find jobs in America because most of the manufacturing is done overseas! Incidentally, they have also transferred customer service, accounting, and even radiologist jobs offshore. The last time that I checked, the majority of corporate executives counted themselves among the “Right”. Do you consider these CEOs patriotic when they strengthen China’s booming economy at the expense of our own?