PJ Media

Mary Jackson,

We don’t want our kids “rebelling” just for the sake of being contrarian. That isn’t real intellectual formation, although it might fit in well with how adolescents are emotionally pre-disposed.

We just want them to have the ability to think, is all.

When I was a Jesuit seminarian in training, at one point I was in a masters’ program in Philosophy at Loyola of Chicago. I was one of those grad assistants who had to teach a survey/intro course to the history of philosophy. College freshman and all that attends. Mind you, in those days I was a Marxist (the decided bookish kind, not the knuckledragging activist kind). I could have used my perch to indoctrinate, but that never entered my mind. I stuck to the course material, the syllabus, and encouraged all viewpoints for discussion. To me, it would have been unethical to propagandize students.

But the kind of Gramscian cultural Marxists who have infiltrated the academy are sleazebags. They have no discernible ethics, save the ethics of expediency and advancing the revolution. I despise them, and they are one of the reasons (among many) why I left the Left in 1987. That, and finally coming to see that there is no possibility of a workable socialist utopia in this life. Like it or not, evil is a permanent fixture of this world. Many human beings are kind, loving, and spiritual beings. Not perfect mind you, but striving. But there are AND ALWAYS WILL BE feral, evil human beings who will destroy every attempt at communal spiritual advancement. The ripple effects of their deeds spread harm through the earth and history. We are basically selfish beings who will never be perfect. Socialism and Marx (or Muhammad) will not save us.

I think the main reason why I left the Left is part of the same reason we need our kids to be truly educated: critical thinking skills. Being able to look at a problem from a variety of angles and see merit in the arguments of the other. That is what happened to me. The writings of Michael Novak played a huge role in how I even slogged my way through my ten year sojourn into Marxism. His critiques of socialism and Liberation Theology compelled me to try to find a way around them. Believe me, I really went at it. I plunged into developmental psychology, psychotherapy, genetics, and (as best I could absorb it)neuroscience to see if human nature could change. I found that Novak was right. It cannot change or be changed. Evil has an organic basis.

That exploded utopian thought. Socialist thought, from Rousseau to Marx and on down to the Frankfurt School and to Antonio Gramsci, has a telos. And that telos is Utopia. It’s a dream and ontologically unrealistic.

But the kids won’t go on that kind of journey if they are intellectually stunted and thoroughly indoctrinated.