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4.11.2004
Educate them and they will come There are several trends that I feel are contributing to the slow and painful decline of liberalism in America. The most important, though, is our lack of commitment to good, high quality public education. Liberalism, or free thought is bad news for people wishing to create large groups of like minded people. Liberals are not prone to indoctrination. Liberals demand proof and evidence for claims made. Liberals are not easily swayed by emotional or illogical arguments. In short, liberals are poor believers, uppity workers and bad consumers. The great equalizer and the first step on the path of opportunity in an enlightened age is learning. The fact that we, for reasons of politics, or greed, or petty intolerance deny some children in our society or others access to the best education we can provide is a tragedy far beyond any terrorist attack. I believe that I am no better as a human being than any other born on the face of this earth. I have no innate capacity to learn that is not also bestowed on people living in the poorest slums in the world. What great inventions or medical cures, musical masterpieces or new concepts have been lost because the person who could have brought them to us was lost to poverty, starvation or ignorance? We squander immense amounts of human capital by not reaching all minds and tapping them for new ideas. Why do we seem so apathetic towards educating our own people here in our own country? Is it simply because, when you control a person's mind you control their pocketbooks? Is it that simple, is it that cynical? Education is not a commodity but a right. It should not be determined by the abilities of ones parents to pay for a child's education. That only creates cycles of poverty. So why the push to divert funds from public to private? Why do we fund education through property values which can only lead to stratification of school quality based on income? Why haven't we had a major investment in education infrastructure in what seems like thirty years or more? Why are we putting warning labels on good knowledge? The only answer that seems reasonable to assume is that for the sake of controlling minds we tolerate this. For the sake of selling goods, selling religion, or selling political agendas we tolerate an uninformed public. I should not say that we are simply uninfomed, we are bombarded with information on a continuous basis. We learn that Dodge trucks have Hemi power and a backseat DVD player for the kids. We know that this is the last season of Friends. We know that when the time is right, twenty-four hour Cialis is right for you. I guess we know things. But do we know that the Flood Story of the Bible is pre-dated by a flood story recorded in the The Epic of Gilgamesh? You would if you had studied ancient history? Do we know the follies of British colonialism in Burma and elsewhere? You might if you had read Burmese Days or studied Imperialism. Do we know why something is Digital? We would if we had studied electrical engineering or physics. When people become educated good things result, secularism, democracy, and freedom. Though not always a direct result of education, I would say that these things are some common by-products of an healthy and educated people. | |
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