Fighting the Hydra requires more than just fighting back - The Critical Insurrection

When fighting a Hydra, don't just fight back - The Critical Insurrection
Given the nature of the pro-regressive insurrection (see previous post) being waged against America - not the one being charged by Nancy Pelosi & the House Democrats, but the one they've been waging upon us through weaponized ideologies such as CRT (Critical Race Theory) - I urge a word of caution, that when fighting a Hydra, you have to do more than simply fight back. Because if you only cut off a head, like Common Core, while the other heads distract you into fighting them, each stump will grow two even more vicious heads, as with SEL & CRT. Most of all, the heads seek to distract you from discovering that as you cut one off, and cauterize its stump, it can't grow even one back, and continuing to do that, until you've severed the last head, and cauterized its' stump as well, then the immortal beast will actually die. All the distractions are there to keep us from realizing the actual target.

For instance, years ago when we were battling against Common Core, we began to be told that America needed to wage a campaign against bullies, because there were bullies, bullies everywhere around us, when in reality, other than those in Congress, bullying was no more of an issue then, than it ever had been before. But that distraction did enable SEL (Social Emotional Learning, an astonishingly flawed and ignorant concoction of 1990's educratic thinking), to grow into prominence through federal, state & local legislation, such as,

"...Federal policy has begun to incorporate social, emotional, and behavioral factors into education accountability metrics (e.g., ESSA: Every Student Succeeds Act), and school climate initiatives, antibullying work, positive behavior supports (e.g., PBIS), and discipline reform are increasingly influencing the day-to-day practice of schools and communities...."

, and as SEL became fully implemented as the central 'lens' of 'Critical Pedagogy', it helped CRT to grow into the very real threat which it has become today. So as you see the hydras writhing its several heads of 'Whiteness', 'diversity', and even 'Marxism' in our faces to distract us, remember that while those do need to be fought, we have to remember to finish the job, and that until we do that with each one, they will not only regrow, but multiply.

I'm going to keep these first few posts as short and to the point as my feeble powers of restraint can manage (I know, too late... sorry, best I can do), and as there are many excellent sources available either free online, or for minimal expense in books (I've added a page of links to books, online resources and videos, to the top of my blog 'Behind CRT'), I won't attempt to recreate the detail-wheel here, but I do want to highlight what I see so often being missed, because as important as those details are, the particular issues of the moment, aren't the revolution that's being waged against us, and missing that is why every apparent 'victory!' that the Right has celebrated over the last century, has resulted in its being replaced by at least two more fearsome heads in our culture and institutions, and as the creature now has us backed up to the edge of the cliff, if we fail to finish each fight, our 'victories' will end up flipping Reagan's dictum around to 'they win, we lose'.

I urge you - look beyond what is being waved around to distract us into still another fight. Focusing only on CRT is not enough. Focusing only on SEL, is not enough (do that, and you'll miss the Trauma-Informed Schools that are preparing to strike. H/T Marilee). Focusing on Marxism is not enough either, as any one thing which causes us to focus in too narrowly on only one particular or another, is keeping us from taking in the full nature of the beast, and without a good grasp of either the particular issue's nature, nor the full scope of its reach, those who're adept at using detailed definitions to evade and deny inconvenient facts, will find it exceedingly easy to dismiss the concerns we raise ('CRT?! That there's a college course, this is High School! We don't teach no college courses here! Ya'll need to git educated!').

We're like hunters walking along with our eyes on the ground following an unfamiliar set of tracks, thinking that the strange leathery tree trunks we keep bumping into, are isolated and random oddities, and it isn't until we begin looking upwards that we finally begin noticing that they're not as isolated as they seemed, and as we're looking up, and up, and up at what each one is tending towards, we finally begin to see them all as being legs of the gargantuan beast standing over us, with its multiple heads ready to strike at us, or perhaps just to flatten us under its weight.

The Hydra's wokery is not just in the schools, it's in the foundations and NGO's, it's in the 'Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Officer's that are popping up like weeds throughout the corporate world.. it's in the military, in the media, sports, entertainment, our churches, it's even in medicine now - can you name me a single institution or walk of life that it doesn't infest? Please? No, focusing on each issue as separate things is going to get us crushed. We need to see the bestial nature that's present in them all, we need to develop the ability to perceive that presence no matter what façade it's hiding behind, and then decisively confront it.

The good news is that there are telltale traits that help us to recognize and identify its presence and track its progress, whether the current head before us is CRT, SEL, Common Core, Marxism, or one of the many others. Someone that I've been fortunate enough to work with in the effort to halt this systemic madness, Dr. Mary Byrne, has been crisscrossing Missouri, speaking out against CRT - her presentation is full of substance, well presented, and I highly recommend your attending. There are three particular points which are actually in, or are at least implicit in her presentation, which I think are critically (ahem) important in recognizing, defending against, and combatting the 'tentacular monstrosity' we're facing:

1. Every Politically Correct and Woke effort that shocks and outrages you, while leaving you feeling that you shouldn't or can't respond to it, is intended to demoralize you.
2. Mis-identifying what America is and originally was, removes the restraints of Truth from those who seek to undermine your confidence and destroy it, which is their mission.
3. “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” - IOW: Divide and Conquer

So let's look closer at these points.

1) Demoralizing - This first point is one which is served by all of the 'critical theories' and the various '[race, sexuality, etc.] Pride!' & 'Spirit Murder!' type campaigns associated with Critical Race Theories, and they are intended to instill a sense of guilt in everyone else. Shelby Steele identified that point here, in how to push back against those in power who're promoting it,

"...“I think they have to begin with the understanding that Critical Race Theory is a device designed to capture white guilt. It has no other meaning, no other purpose, no other function than that. It wants to capture, to once again accuse whites of racism,” Steele said.

Steele went on to explain that once CRT was used to convince everyone that structural racism had bled into every aspect of American life, the goal was to use the guilt it created to advance black Americans by creating entitlements for them. “It’s a structural systemic society-wide problem and to the extent of its breadth, it owes us as blacks entitlement,” he added.
“What bothers me most is that the whites — we have been doing this now for 70 years, and whites still don’t get the point,” Steele continued. “You are being had. You are being shaken down over a history that you had nothing to do with, and there has to be some standing up there.”

As those who brainwash captives know all too well, if you can get someone to repeatedly feel guilt for something they had no hand in, they become demoralized. Pay special attention to the point of that word, of the 'moral' being removed from you - there's far more to being demoralized than the superficial appearance of being depressed. Without the moral certainty of being aligned with what is right & wrong, a person is left with nothing more than the sensations of the moment to be guided by, the materialist and animalistic pleasure & pain, which leaves you with no sense of having anything that's worth aspiring to or defending. The notion that all values are of equal 'value', means that all of our values - that which we actively pursue or try to hold on to - are only of physical sensations and tastes with no higher element of truth or wisdom to raise them above what is false and foolhardy. That materialistic notion is not an 'ideal' of Tolerance, it is the viciously intolerant means of wiping out three thousand years of slow and painful progress in the West, so as to return us to the life and rule of brute force. When we even innocently accept that premise, and are repeatedly being hit with that 'ideal', the person who accepts that, cannot help but lose their respect for themselves and for others as they have already lost their respect for the nature of being Human. Not surprisingly, such a person as that is far more easily manipulated into doing whatever it is that 'those who know best', want them to do, for this or that shallow 'benefit' or reward.

Note: Anyone claiming to be an 'expert' who tells you that no value is of more value than any other value, has just told you that their expertise is of no value - treat them accordingly.

What Shelby Steele puts as "...You are being shaken down", a P.T. Barnum might've put more like this: 'You can't cheat a moral man, so... get him to feel immoral, and that sucker is all yours.' .

Don't accept the guilt that they're handing out - and don't make the mistake of thinking that it's easy to refuse it. Most decent people are inclined to politely defer to others - how often have you said "Oh, sorry, excuse me", over something such as reaching for the same item on a shelf, or having gotten to a door first? As you did nothing wrong, you don't actually sorry, it's simply a common means of demonstrating politeness and minding your manners. There's of course not only nothing wrong with that, but it's a vital habit which demonstrates your presumption that the other person is worthy of being treated respectfully, and such civility is exceedingly important as a societal norm. It's difficult for most decent people to practice what in normal situations would be seen as bad manners. The proponents of CRT and its like count on our reflexive use of manners, and as a polite response is extended to those who are truly unworthy of that respect, it will be maliciously twisted by them into a chokehold of obligatory guilt, and they know that they can count on your not withdrawing from it, out of fear of appearing rude.

You've seen that scenario playing out across the flaming summer of 2020, in something like this:

BLM: "Black Lives Matter!"
You: "Well of course they do, I certainly agree, and I'm very sorry that you've been treated so badly. Every life is valuable, and..."
BLM: "That's racist!"
You: "Oh! I'm so very sorry, I didn't mean..."
BLM: "You 're inherently racist and promoting 'whiteness' and..."

IOW, while empathy is laudable, and in some contexts, sympathy, if you permit yourself to be beaten up with it, as Shelby Steele put it, "You are being had. You are being shaken down..." Don't allow your decency to be flipped into a chokehold against you.

2) Mis-Identification -The second issue, is to get you to go along with misidentifying what America and Western Civilization are, which requires dividing, if not atomizing, the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian nature of that which it developed through. I noted in a post way back in 2006, that although America didn't begin with the very religious minded Pilgrims, America absolutely was and still is the fruit of the Greco/Roman & Judeo/Christian marriage which joined those ideals into one flesh, so to speak; each complements the other, and it's through their union that the nature of Western Civilization emerges.

It is ludicrous to say that America was not founded on Judeo-Christian principles, as those principles were explicitly used, studied, and implemented by those who founded it; but neither is it possible to say that America is a Judeo-Christian nation while then trying to minimize or ignore its Greco/Roman nature. The Greco-Roman philosophers and political figures that I typically focus on, share more than a hyphenated relationship of historical happenstance with our Judeo/Christian half - the Bible contains numerous passages that echo the fundamental Roman dictums of law, such as 'hear the other side', and the Greek's love of wisdom ('Philosophy' is the love of wisdom), such as Proverbs 8-9, and much more that is central to the nature of our Western understanding of Natural Law and Justice. Western Civilization isn't simply a patchwork of parts awkwardly tacked together, but is the result of the union of its parental sources, and it is that one flesh that the forces arrayed against us are focused upon putting asunder.

Out of that union came what first became known as Liberalism (not what typically goes by that name today), which in part grew out of the ideas that Thomas Hooker used to form history's first written constitution from (Solon, the Spartans, Rome's tables, were of a different matter), in the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which was implemented around 1639:

"...the Connecticut founders did something different from their Puritan ancestors: the British monarch was not acknowledged as the authorizing agent of the document, as he was in the Mayflower Compact. There is no mention of the monarch anywhere in the agreement. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut lists a fundamental right – and one that was not an Englishman’s right – the right to create the form of government under which one shall live...."

, ideas which were later expanded upon in John Locke's 2nd Treatise on Civil Government, which amounted to efforts to translate the West's Judeo-Christian religious ideals of what is good and true - that every individual is of equal value before God, valuing even their power to choose to disobey God - into a framework of practical Greco-Roman political philosophy, which required subordinating power to rational systems of law, steadied by ethical and moral understanding, and anchored around Property as an objective result of our ideas in action.

That system, our system, requires the influence of both halves of the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian traditions - their ideals inform the mechanics, and the mechanics lose their cohesion & purpose without the defining limits of those ideals - the whole cannot function properly without all of its parts.

These are critically important points for us to remember... which is why they are dismissed, ignored and/or ridiculed by those we've foolishly entrusted to teach them to us.

A prime example of what results from excluding one or more of those 'parts', is on display in the evil twin of that original Liberalism, which I collectively refer to as Pro-Regressivism, which is what our modern Left is the rotten fruit of. Through multiple waves of influence from Rousseauism, Utilitarianism, Positivism, Marxism, Pragmatism, Progressivism & Economics (and not a little bit of Libertarianism) they each seek to alter, exclude, or replace one or more parts of our whole, and the resulting mutation seeks to divide the West's ideals through a twisted reflection of them. That mutant is hell bent on rationalizing the use of power over others 'for their own good', or 'for the greater good'', which conveniently entails reducing property to a status of mere physical possessions, severed from those rights that are inherent in our nature, and which can then only be secured by the power of force alone, as directed by those experts 'who know best'.

It is also critically important to recognize the pivot of foundational ideals which CRT is a culmination of, that of turning away from the traditional Western pillar of Truth, to the modernist pillar of Power. If you look past their superficial virtue signaling, you'll see that power centric ideology in action - and always inciting action - which is behind every 'value' which they've been instilling into the minds of students, especially of college students, since at least the 1990's. That pivot is what you can see has just been performed in this, from Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, first edition (2001), by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic:

"... critical race theory calls into question the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and the neutral principles of constitutional law.” pg 3,
, and that
“...Crits [Critical Race Theorists] are highly suspicious of another liberal mainstay, namely, rights....”p. 23.

This is an attack on the heart and soul of America, and the West, and it is nothing short of a progressive insurrection. See:Critical Race Theory: A Two-page Overview

And finally,

3) The issue is never the issue - The third, and in some ways the most important point (at least as concerns fighting back), comes from what former Communist activist, David Horowitz, pointed out as being a central mindset and tactic of the Left, in relating this anecdote, that:

“Saul Alinsky, the radical organizer and mentor of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, used to ask his new followers why they wanted to become community organizers. They would respond with idealistic claims that they wanted to help the poor and oppressed. Then Alinsky would scream at them like a Marine Corps drill instructor, “No! You want to organize for power!” That’s the way the SDS radicals at the University of Texas approached the abortion issue—as a means to power, or, in Margaret Sanger’s words, to remake the world. As a writer in the 1960s radical SDS publication New Left Notes put it, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”

, and what 'the issue is never the issue' means, is that we need to be aware that when, for instance, we are told that men can identify as women, or that all whites are racist, neither transgenderism nor whites are the issue, but are only a tactic that's being used to sow division, and to prevent reasonable discussions between those who might recoil at those thoughts, and those others who might see some aspect of it that they'd like to discuss - and preventing that discussion, is the point of phrases such as 'Black Lives Matter!', 'Men can have periods!', 'Believe all Women!'. That is the revolution that is always the issue, and driving that forward, severing one person from another as bitterly as possible, is their preferred manner of employing that tactic which was already old when Caesar made it famous as:

"divide and conquer"

, and it's the tactic which Marx made central to his misosophy (the hatred of wisdom, as opposed to Philosophy, which is the love of wisdom), which in his hands was class conflict, and in the Critical Racist's is racial conflict, but in all of their hands, they seek division by fundamental conflict, so as to conquer.

As mentioned above, the phrase 'Black Lives Matter' was not chosen to support the lives of blacks. The founders of the group, 'trained Marxists' that they admittedly are, sought to sow division into our lives by choosing words that were sure to draw sympathy from most, while pitting them against those who'd rationally affirm that sentiment by extending it more broadly into all of our lives. The moment that happens, a tripwire is triggered and any attempt at having reasonable discussion, are framed as either 'All lives Matter' or 'Black Lives Matter', which they've spun into mutually exclusive & opposing positions which are deliberately insulting to the other, which at least one side of which will eagerly find great offense in. 

Through the expert fanning of those rhetorical flames over the last year, our divisions have been magnified beyond all measure to the point firestorms of destruction having flowed abundantly from. BLM and the other profa ('antifa' & BLM are Pro-Fascists) have exploited the misery that was certain to follow from the conflicts they so carefully arranged for, and that is who they are.

Summing up and taking aim

So to restate the three points from above into something to keep in mind, and to look for:

1. Every outrageous PC & Woke statement of relativism & toleration, of 'diversity, equity & inclusion', demands your acceptance and 'allyship' of them in order to demoralize you.
2. America is a nation of ideas that are rooted in the pursuit of Truth; its Pro-Regressive opponents (including many nominally on The Right), are rooted in & upon the pursuit of Power, and as such Lies are seen as useful tools for undermining your confidence, and ultimately bringing America and Western Civilization to an end.
3. Always remember that this is active in every issue, and that: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” - IOW: Divide and Conquer

It's not enough to only fight back against them, we have to strike it at its root and cauterize the stump to prevent it from re-growing, and that requires actual arguments, not just the returning of insults & smackdowns. To do that we need to know, and be able to have and hold, an ideal that we can look up towards, one which is worth fighting for, and anything which undermines that, furthers the Pro-Regressive revolution. Leftists are at their most effective when they hit upon a word or phrase of bait that everyone leaps at, and any and every repetition of it divides us into being for or against it, and the more effective bait are those which trumpet a virtue that they're designed to destroy.

In just one or two shallow words as those mentioned above, they seek to hit propagandistic gold of satisfying superficiality, that leaves most people either uninterested in, or fearful of, looking beneath the surface for any further argument or deeper meaning. As they deploy a phrase as "The issue", it distracts and diverts all opposition into one rhetorical dead-end alley after another, where having already spun the most likely objections to make dissenters sound foolish, the Left is able to keep all opponents boxed up and arguing on and on over their superficial labels, and as its opponents never quite grasp the nature of the issues that have been arrayed against them, the revolution continues to advance.

There's something about our modern way of thinking that has made us susceptible to this strategy, even to the point of most otherwise sensible people assisting the radical left in peddling their activism as if it were education, and that is what is enabling them to bury us under layers and layers of 'diversity, equity & inclusion'. 

There's more involved in holding onto our ideals while engaging with and fighting the hydra, and it needs to be identified in order to be able to secure America within American's minds, and that includes recognizing the means by which our minds are sometimes changed for the worst by the very methods that we've assumed will improve us for the best. We need to relearn how to reach into the depths, even as we're being urged to hurriedly skate across the surface of all that we're being told.

Over the next few posts we'll get into that, and how to start turning issues like CRT back against those who're baiting us with them.

Behind the Actual Insurrection - Critical Race Theory and Beyond

Despite obvious appearances and its heated denunciations of 'White' this & that, it's not Whites that the proponents of CRT (Critical Race Theory), SEL (Social Emotional Learning), & their associated EIEIO's are primarily targeting. That may be hard to swallow, especially for those who've personally taken arrows from the target they've painted on their backs, but as I'll get into below, the issue becomes less, well... black & white... as you take notice that you don't have to be white to be considered by them to be a white supremacist. Thomas Sowell, John McWhorter, Andy Ngo, and others of Black, Hispanic or Asian ancestry, are all condemned as being or furthering white supremacists - even MLK's 'will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character', is now frowned upon for enabling 'Whiteness'. 

If that seems odd to you, wait until you take a closer look at the sorts of thinking which proponents of CRT will tell you amounts to spreading 'White Culture':

Smithsonian Wokery

• being on time
• thinking linearly (you know, like insisting that 2+2=4)
• valuing the nuclear family - Mom & Dad and kids living in one home
• thinking that freedom of speech is valuable
• thinking that race is and should be unimportant
• thinking that a man does not actually become a women by choosing to identify as one, and that surgically altering their appearances doesn't transforms the substance of one gender into another. Ditto for a women identifying as a man.
• thinking that Justice is not served by acting unjustly
• ... and so on, etc., etc., etc.

Being guilty of thoughts such as these, is what the rabid leftists say are traits of 'Whiteness' and are therefore furthering the cause of White Supremacy. Obviously, these traits are not exclusive to 'whites', but are habits, observations & ideals (of what?) that are open to all - so where's the sense in labeling them as signs of 'Whiteness'? Yes, the notion is bigoted, and yes, most who say such things self-identify as being racists, but while racism is their means, it is not their ends. 'Whiteness' is just the latest euphemism for what they are targeting, and they use that because it is the simplest, most inflammatory, and divisive means available, for the Pro-Regressive left to sow dissension and division amongst us. What their actual ends are, is ending what 'Whiteness' & 'White Culture" refer to, which is Western Civilization in general, and America in particular, and they are deliberately targeting, subverting, and actively working to bring them down - and the only thing new about any of this, is how open they have recently become about it.

America was the first nation in history formed from and based upon ideas; ideas of limited government dedicated to upholding freedom of speech and our other essential individual rights, and the understanding that for all individuals to be treated equally before the law, Justice must be blind to their wealth, creed, race and status. Not surprisingly, America, having established the highest ideals ever set for a nation to live up to, hasn't succeeded in living up to them all, but if you can be honest and take your eyes off of our very human failures for a moment, it soon becomes apparent that because those have been our ideals, The West in general, and America in particular, have succeeded in lifting ourselves and the world up higher than ever before in history, and as long as we hold to these ideals, the sky's the limit... and yet every one of those ideals are under direct attack today.

Since the summer of 2020, supporters of CRT, and others of the Pro-Regressive Left have been cancelling and spewing hatred towards those who've either dared support or behave respectfully towards those ideals, or towards the American flag which represents them, or our Constitution which supports them, America itself which implements them, and the Greco-Roman/Judeo-Christian culture which preceded and enabled them. 

This week, the democrat party led by Nancy Pelosi in our House of Representatives, began bringing about formal proceedings to charge that a group of sightseers and confused cos-players with little more than a single stun-gun and a buffalo hat to share between them, began a riot that amounts to an insurrection:

By their own words,
the Left is insurrectionary

Insurrection: "A rising or rebellion of citizens against their government, usually manifested by acts of violence"

If that is the case, then what shall we call our political and academic leaders on the Left who openly led others in shouting that they wanted to 'burn it all down!'. These leaders, smiled and made condescending comments, encouraging their followers, so that when they weren't able to seize, occupy, or destroy private property, they'd burn it down in 'peaceful protests' with firebombs, and brutal assaults in riotous mobs armed with clubs and guns, even our monuments have been violently pulled down and torn up - is there no House Hearing on those incidents? If what a random group of demonstrators without a plan or clue between them can be charged with insurrection, and warrant a full House investigation into their lives, then what of what the leaders of the Democrat Left who have been engaged in doing that, and far worse, for well over a year?

That is infuriating, isn't it? Whether you're outraged by it, or outraged by my outrage over it, you're infuriated either way, right? Take note of that.

Because this too, in typical Pro-Regressive Leftist fashion, is a distraction, a mere sideshow in comparison to the real insurrection that they have been waging against America for well over a century, not in our streets, but in our schools, and within the minds of its teachers and our children.

Those who're aligned with what is now being identified as CRT, and the notions of Social Justice and its like which they grew out of, are waging a far more deadly, virtual insurrection, against the culture and history of America, and they are waging it on all fronts in our nation today, and in doing so they have come to occupy vast territories within our children's minds.

What's worse, far too often these insurrectionists are being given aid & comfort, enthusiastically so, by those who they are intentionally attacking.

To truly and effectively fight back, we've first got to realize that for a nation of ideas, the real battleground is not in the streets, but within the American mind, and to engage in that battle effectively, across occupied territory, we've not only got to identify and raise a standard for what is right and true, but we've also got to be able to see through their camouflage and flush them out of their hiding places, and we've got to stop making it easy for their falsehoods and lies to advance upon us, and our fellows.

That is, you might say, of critical importance.  And, hopefully not surprisingly, it's going to take several posts to sketch out.

We'll start looking at how to take away their cover and begin reclaiming our lost ground, in the next post.

Farewell to a friend - The Doubtful Roots of Progress

"Far best is he who knows all things himself;
Good, he that hearkens when men counsel right;
But he who neither knows, nor lays to heart
Another's wisdom, is a useless wight."
Hesiod, as quoted in Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics

"...Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away..."

Farewell to a friend - The Doubtful Roots of Progress
In the 21st century, we typically like to see ourselves as living the superior lives which civilization has been longing and struggling to progress to for thousands of years, but... have you noticed how uncomfortably difficult it can be trying to find examples of that progress in anything other than technology? Especially amongst those who're most convinced that they're the epitome of progressive thinking?

Case in point, I reconnected last year with an acquaintance of mine from the 1980's, back when I played in a regional rock band and he was a popular local D.J., "Dice Martin", in Vegas - but unfortunately he disconnected us again earlier this month because he disliked that I disagreed with one of his postings. Understand, my replies didn't use profanity (not that that would've bothered him), or attack him or insult him, or ridicule him - though those were S.O.P's for the continual stream of pictures he posted, captioned to insult Republicans, Conservatives and Tea Partiers. When you add to those the additional comments he & his friends made to them, each one ever more inflammatory than the last... and I can't help asking: what was so inflammatory, to him, about someone simply disagreeing with them?

Whatever it was that made this self described supporter of the 'progressive left' so intolerant of other views, is in no way confined to Dice himself, as we'll see in a moment, rather he is reflecting what is progressively becoming the dominant view across the country - demonize the opposition and shutdown discussion or debate - and I can think of few more appropriate ways to describe it than as I do: ProRegressivism.

Person to Person
The last post of Dice's that I was able to see was a split screen picture that showed three pundits from the left with college degrees, and three from the right who either didn't go or dropped out, accompanied with comments to the effect that everyone on the Left were scholarly icons of wisdom, while vilifying Republicans, Conservatives and Tea Partiers as:

A)"... knuckle dragging drop outs and idiots...",
who ,
B)"... are GUILTY of treason ande sedition when they supported shutting The US Govt down last October..."
, whose disagreements with Obama were:
C)" these (racially motivated, right wing, incoherent) rants."
And about the Ukraine:
D)"...Not a peep when in '08 putin went into Georgia on Bush's watch....not one word."

To which I replied that

A),"as the colleges had gotten out of the wisdom business decades ago, trading tens of thousands of dollars in debt for dated and often substandard skills wasn't necessarily a mark of the wisest person in the room",
B) "he ought to look a bit closer at congress's power of the purse and how all sides have used it in the distant and recent past to rein the other branches in."
C) that "IMHO few rants are more racially motivated, or weak and fearful, than when a clear difference of ideas can only be responded to with accusations of racism rather than dealing with the merits of the ideas in question",
D) I noted that "I and many others had indeed 'peeped' many words at the time, condemning his actions as well as his inaction's."

Dice came a bit unglued at this and expressed his true feelings for tolerance and respect for the opinions of others, with

"Fuck you- Rot in Hell asswipe! Another piece of shit who don't know what he is talking about- in the ashcan of history----chumps-----", and he added one final friendly wave with "You won't matter when we get face to face"!.

As I was responding that I'd been face to face with him before and saw no reason to worry about that mattering, he unfriended and blocked me.

So. Progress, eh? But if cutting off debate in civil discussions and demonstrating absolute in-toleration for opposing political views are examples of the progress that 'progressives' have progressed to... I guess it's up to us to tell them that the progress that they're making is going in the wrong direction.

Now I hope you won't be surprised to learn that Dice isn't a mean guy and he isn't a stupid guy. He isn't lazy, he has his own insurance business in Florida; he isn't (in his mind) unpatriotic, and he isn't, at least as it is commonly recognized today, uneducated. What's worth noting here is not whether or not someone was on the Left or the Right side of an issue, but whether or not their positions further Progress or Regress. What's also worth noting here is a certain something that isn't there, a lack of understanding of what Progress is, what it requires and what cannot be engaged in without reverting into regress.

What this most emphatically is not, is a partisan issue... or even a non-partisan affair - this is a matter of societal ProRegress, and it is a problem for us all.

More than an Academic Question
See if you can see the resemblance here, between what Dice demonstrated, and this recent article in the Harvard student journal, The Crimson, by Sandra Y.L. Korn who's been posting in a similar vein since 2010, "The Doctrine of Academic Freedom - Let’s give up on academic freedom in favor of justice" ,

"Yet the liberal obsession with “academic freedom” seems a bit misplaced to me. After all, no one ever has “full freedom” in research and publication. Which research proposals receive funding and what papers are accepted for publication are always contingent on political priorities. The words used to articulate a research question can have implications for its outcome. No academic question is ever “free” from political realities. If our university community opposes racism, sexism, and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of “academic freedom”?

Instead, I would like to propose a more rigorous standard: one of “academic justice.” When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue."

This is a student supposedly in pursuit of a Liberal Education... does that mean something? Indeed it does, in general it means being able to engage, free from the threat of force, in the deliberate examination of opposing ideas in pursuit of acquiring the knowledge and understanding most likely to help yourself become fit for living in liberty with others. And yet she, like Dice, believes that opposing views are not only not to be tolerated, but she's even advocating in favor of using all available power to end the active discussion of opposing views in the academy, in order to suppress dissent, in order to promote 'Academic Justice'. That my friends, is Pro-Regress.

Leaving that aside for just a moment, and looking past the irony clad nature of the last paragraph in that quotation, at first glance, there almost seems to be a sheen of sense to that first paragraph, doesn't there? After all, one of the arguments against the public funding of education in general and of universities in particular, is, why should someone who is paying for an education be forced to pay for divisive research and professors professing ideas which they believe to be false, hateful and opposed to what they believe is true? Except of course that she isn't concerned at all with the rights of those who are making her education possible - public or private - or even of those who might best understand what an education actually is. What she is advocating for is NOT a policy where those who are paying for the students tuition, or the alumni who contribute to the college, or those the college has hired to administer and profess the ideals of a Liberal Education, should have a voice in what the college teaches. Nope. What she's advocating for is 'empowering' those who are the recipients of those seats and funds and services, so that they should be able to demand that they be used against the judgment and interests of those who are providing them! As she says:

"The power to enforce academic justice comes from students, faculty, and workers organizing together to make our universities look as we want them to do."[emphasis mine]

IOW, those who do not yet have even what currently passes for an Education, are to seize the power to determine what an education should be, because in their as yet uneducated wisdom they believe that they have already determined what is best, and so they should use the raw power of the mob to disrupt the process of education until the disagreeable voices cave and they get. what. they. want. Those who've had the benefit of some semblance of an actual Liberal Education, should be able to identify this as one of the oldest of political practices: "Might makes Right".

Or, in my other words, using power to negate rights and force compliance with the ideas of a favored faction - that is Pro-Regress.

"History is philosophy teaching by example..." - Abraham Lincoln"
So that was from a college student, at what's often thought of as the premier college in the nation. If you find yourself wondering what it is that they are teaching in college these days, I suggest directing your attention to an essay by a college professor, Lawrence Torcello, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology. This scholar feels that the views of Ms. Korn do not go far enough. This professor, of philosophy no less, feels that we must deal with those pernicious folks who are not convinced that our govts have either the level of understanding, or the means of effectively 'correcting' the global climate, or the political right to impose their final solutions upon us all, and he isn't content with simply demanding, disrupting and shouting down their opposing views to get his way - he wants to take matters to the next level, and put them in jail:

"My argument probably raises an understandable, if misguided, concern regarding free speech. We must make the critical distinction between the protected voicing of one’s unpopular beliefs, and the funding of a strategically organised campaign to undermine the public’s ability to develop and voice informed opinions. Protecting the latter as a form of free speech stretches the definition of free speech to a degree that undermines the very concept"

Remember, he is currently professing his 'wisdom' to a steady stream of young college students, he wants to actually put those who disagree with what he (who btw, is not a scientist, let alone a climate scientist) is so clearly and distinctly convinced to be true, in jail, for the thought crime of holding opposing views. He's got one thing right, it is undeniable that jailing people for their ideas is most definitely the next ProRegressive step which must follow from professing such a philosophy; where else could it possibly lead to?

And if you're sympathetic with his position, then ask yourself this: How do you respond to the position, that what he just described was what others such as myself see as being an example of political factions and corporate interests in our schools, entertainment, media and government, directing the 'funding of a strategically organised campaign to undermine the public’s ability to develop and voice informed opinions'? So then I can get my faction together and say 'Hey, I think this fool is wrong, can I have him charged with a misdemeanor please?' And if, like the young miss in Harvard, your answer is that I have no Right to do what you do, because I do not believe the proper Politically Correct ideas as they do (which really means that those with my views aren't in power - yet)... then you are saying that it is ok to bring down the full force of the govt upon me, but not thee, because...of who has the power to silence who - at the moment.

If that is your position, then you've not only dodged the question, but you've endorsed the course which President John Adams foolishly supported, and which far better minds argued for than the one possessed by this twit of a professor, back in 1799

" ...commonly called the sedition law, subjects to a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and to imprisonment not exceeding two years, any person who shall write, print, utter, or publish, or cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or published, any false, scandalous, malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States..."

The Federalists too had the very best of intentions with the Aliens & Sedition Acts, and they also had what our professing fools do not: the excuse of not having seen it abused here before. We, on the other hand, have a number of examples from the philosophical classroom of history, such as ProRegressive Democrat President Wilson using similar acts to jail thousands of Americans for the crime of disagreeing with his administrations policies.

That my friend, is a step backwards, aka: Regress. And if you are for that, you are Pro-Regress.

Missing the point
My point is not that there is spin in politics or disputes about what climate scientists say the science says, or about what the scientists say politicians say about climate science, but that there is something missing from the views of my friend Dice, from the Harvard student, and from the Professor of 'philosophy', and what is not there, is what enables them to feel perfectly fine about cursing a friend out for disagreeing with them, enables them to feel justified in denying others their freedom of speech, and enables them to advocate jailing those who disagree with their views - and that it is perfectly acceptable, advisable and even admirable for them to do so.

What they are lacking, what their understanding does not have, is not just civility - that's an effect, not a cause - these things they lack are what makes it possible for otherwise intelligent people to advocate actions as progress, which are clearly Pro-Regress.

So what is it they lack, is it simply a lack of knowledge? Simply a matter of knowing who knows what's best? That is after all, the reason why we send our kids to school and on to college, to fill them with the knowledge which good judgment requires, right? Would new books and better tests do the trick? But unfortunately it is no longer as easy as saying what James Madison once said:

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives"

Part of the problem is that modernity has introduced an ambiguity into what the word 'knowledge' now applies to - there's what is in reality true, and there's what people accept as being true, and many if not most moderns not only do not differentiate between the two, but in any (acknowledged) conflict between them, actually lean towards favoring the later (see Keynesian economics). In this day and age, simply knowing what 'reliable authorities' have told you is so, isn't enough.

Knowledge, in the sense Madison was referring to, expects there to be a standard which new information is held up to and that it must integrate into a deeper understanding of what you know to be true. That classical sense doesn't tolerate the urge, which we all feel at times, to allow what you wish were true to override those contradictions you worry might be true, without verifying what actually is true. Modernity, however, encourages us to embrace contradictory information as being 'true' for a variety of excuses ( and not just factually, for instance what movie characters are more enthused over today than those who are 'conflicted'?), ranging from popularity, to some form of cultural 'authenticity' or political acceptability, aided by one form or another of the modernist philosophical position that we cannot actually know what in reality actually is true.

Modernity isn't comfortable with unambiguous statements such as 'the fact is', nevertheless, the fact is that if you tolerate 'knowing' contradictory positions to be true, then you are well on your way to truly knowing nothing at all. What you Know has to be what you can conform your will and your passions to, and not the other way around, and attempting to do so, attempting to put desire over reality, is the essence of being intemperate, which, again in the classical sense, has consequences. As Edmund Burke, remarked :

“It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

Intemperate? How does that figure into anything, the word's been out of fashion for a hundred years or more, hasn't it? Well, words have meaning... and what they mean remains even if you change the words you refer to that meaning with. Push a word out the front door, and its meaning will slip in again, unrecognized, through the back door... but you'll no longer have the knowledge to know how to deal with them. See if you hear the sound of the back door slamming in this recent article, entitled "Politicians are good liars 'because they convince themselves they are telling the truth', study reveals", reports that a study, '"Liars or SelfDeceived? Reflections on Political Deception", by a political scientist named Dr. Anna Galeotti, found that for politicians such as Bill Clinton,

: ‘Self-deception is a type of motivated irrationality - the art of believing something simply because it is desired to be true when evidence points to the very opposite.

, and that,

"Because of this, politicians not only lie convincingly, but are still convinced they are telling the truth even after they have proved to have lied, the report added."

IOW the liar becomes mastered by their lies, or more eloquently put:"...men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters....", which applies every bit as much to the electorate who votes for those deceptive policies which they know can't be true ("If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan"), but still really want them to be true. But the interpretation of such actions as being intemperate and bringing consequences, is only going to follow from the older understanding of what knowledge is. Taken through the more modern sense, it'll be given the spin that we should be more tolerant and understanding towards the liar, and the lie, since they don't really know what they are doing.

Which is a view that understandably still strikes many people the wrong way, such as one fellow who responded to that article's title with words to the effect of:

"Oh come'on, what is this bs! Of course they know that they're lying!"

Which, while I completely understand such a common sense reaction and I certainly don't excuse politicians or any others who are in fact lying, the common sense view of things misses the reality of the squishiness we've allowed to creep into what we call 'Knowledge'; and that reality, and its consequences, goes to the very heart of modernity.

For instance: why is it that Bill Clinton's infamous statement that "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'Is', is.", wasn't laughed out of court and/or slapped with a contempt charge? Under James Madison's conception of knowledge, it would have been. Under Modernity's formulation... such a statement is actually taken into consideration. Why? What makes that possible? It's not just 'old' vs 'new', there's another ingredient which actively separates the two understandings.

Look at it this way, I can't tell you how many smart and knowledgeable people, friends & family that I know, who still think nothing of behaving as Dice did. Is it really just a matter of not knowing the facts or intentionally lying about them? You probably have friends and family too that, although you're frustrated with them, you still can't quite bring yourself to call them completely ignorant or deliberate liars... am I right?

Well if you don't think that those members of your friends and family are complete fools or bald faced liars... then there must be something else that they are doing, or failing to do... the question is, what?

One of the questions we've stopped asking, is: knowledge of what? And how well, and how deeply, will that knowledge they acquire in school really be known? Or once known, be regarded by them as being consequentially True? Knowledge is of course incredibly useful, beneficial, and oh so advisable to pursue and expand, but bubble tests and 'fill in the blank' level worksheets only serve to transmit data, they don't develop knowledge. It is not enough simply to acquire and catalog a mass of disintegrated facts, mentally piling them on high into towering tables of data, each one unaware of the contents of the one next to it - such dragon hordes might help you score nicely on the SAT, but they are not the same thing as knowledge, and they are very nearly barriers to wisdom. Data doesn't become knowledge until it is integrated, and if that data is not integrated through understanding its relation to other data and the principles which support them, then it will be integrated through those feelings and preferences you have towards the data itself... and how well wisdom follows from that can be gauged by a quick look around you today.

What we are missing is what is behind the conception of knowledge that Madison and his time took for granted, and what we've accepted in its place is the modern philosophical view which presumes that substance is more likely to be found in polls, than whatever it is that the polls are being taken about.

Doubting the Value of Critical Thinking
My point is that there is something vital that is missing from how particular views are held by my friend Dice, and by the Harvard student, and by the Professor of 'philosophy', and what it is that is not there, is what enables them to feel just fine and dandy about cursing a friend out for disagreeing with them, enables them to feel justified in depriving those who don't agree with them of their freedom of speech, and enables them to righteously advocate jailing people for the crime of not agreeing with them, and whatever it is that they lack, is what is enabling them to believe that it is perfectly acceptable, and advisable, and even admirable, for them to be doing so.

Part of what they lack is the habit of questioning what they do and don't know, substituting instead, the easy flattery and convenience of artificial Doubt.

Huh?

Here's what I mean. Doubt arises naturally when our mind detects a conflict, a contradiction, between what we know, and what we are being presented with as being so, and your immediate reaction is "Oh, I doubt that!", followed soon after with the reasons for your doubt "That doesn't add up with this, this and this, so tell me, how does that make sense?", and you're off to reassessing and perhaps correcting, and so strengthening, your knowledge, and understanding. Such doubts are the result of your knowledge, are healthy and should pretty much always be pursued.

But Artificial Doubt, such as what drives modernity's vaunted 'Critical Thinking', is not something that results from our knowledge, it is prompted by no detection of conflicts or contradictions, but only by your pretending to find something to doubt.

This tendency, which has a hand in what the good Dr. Galeotti calls 'self deception', is the hallmark of Modernity and it began with Descartes' "Method of Doubt",

“I thought it necessary that I reject as absolutely false everything in which I could imagine the least doubt, so as to see whether, after this process, anything in my set of beliefs remains that is absolutely indubitable.”

If the test of truth is whether or not you can imagine the least doubt about that something, and nothing other than your imagining it prompted your doubt in the first place... doesn't that make what you imagine, prefer, wish, determine what you do or don't doubt, and the ultimate test of what you will accept as being true? You do see the problem there, don't you?

Worse, there is nothing positive involved in such artificial doubts. Artificial doubt begins with the end result and pretends to find controversies in it which 'need' to be resolved. You haven't detected a flaw, you only pretend one is there... somewhere... on the shallow surface of the data you have in mind at the moment. For instance, a doubt based approach would begin, begin with mind you, as they do in most textbooks and worksheets everyday in our schools, from a perspective of artificial doubts picked off the surface of an issue, such as this recent example:

"Do you think the Bill of Rights is outdated?"

Based upon what?! The students haven't even investigated our particular Constitution, let alone the idea of laws in general, on what basis are they to 'think' if they are outdated or not? The only basis they'll have for their 'doubts' are their feelings, and where will students, especially young students, feelings about government and law likely come from? On top of that, the worksheet goes on to instruct them to:

"Omit two and add two...[amendments]"

Again, based upon what?! They have no knowledge to draw upon, they have nothing they can draw upon but their own ability to artificially and arbitrarily doubt something, anything, about the 'Bill of Rights'.

That is not a means to knowledge, but only a bold step towards its dissolution.

To start with artificial doubts, is to start without any real problems, without any real contradictions and without any real goals; and so what you are seeking is not resolution, but confirmation of the doubts you only imagined to begin with - it's resolution is as artificial as it's instigation. The result of this is not stronger knowledge, but just the opposite. Even those times when you might succeed in acquiring more facts, you necessarily believe them less. When everything is doubtful, nothing is really Known or believed - it might be accepted... but that's data, not knowledge, which are not nearly the same thing.

What this amounts to in practice, is that if you don't like it, it's doubtful - if you do like it, its not doubtful. This is not only an impractical method for thought, it works to corrode confidence in all of your knowledge (see "In Praise of Prejudice" ). This root method of modernity is even often put forward as the basis of the Scientific Method (which it is not)... and you wonder about why we live in such an uncertain age?

Natural doubts, and true questioning,on the other hand, results from and begins with the substance of the issue, such as 'What are Rights?" and would works its way down and in towards the essentials of what it is you are trying to understand. Along the way real doubts will arise, and can be addressed, strengthening understanding, not trivializing it. Such an approach would work on developing an understanding of human nature, social organization, government, Law and Individual Rights first, and only then, after the basics had been grasped, should students work their way back up to considering our Constitution in such a critical way. Whether or not additional amendments should be added to it, or taken away, would and should be the very last step in considering our form of government, not the starting point.

But wait, there's less!
Still though, while self deception and deliberate deception certainly exist, for most every day folks, self deception doesn't quite fit the bill because it isn't deliberate self deception that most people are engaging in, right? But they don't need to deceive themselves, not if the standard which they've accepted as being 'True', was substandard as a standard to begin with, and has left them exposed to even more issues.

The errors of preference which practicing artificial 'Doubt' as a standard introduces, further encourages a narrowing of the scope of your attention and understanding, as well as what you require as verification for it ('Oh, I doubt I need to bother with learning all of that stuff'), which bears a strong resemblance to self deception. What results from restricting the depth of understanding you seek on a given matter, is that it conveniently requires your attention to extend no further than what it is that you prefer to believe.

Our minds, like our muscles, are more than happy to go slack on us. When your 'doubts' are not prompted by conflicts in your understanding, and no conflicts in your understanding need to be resolved in order to dispel these artificial doubts you go through the motions of applying, then you shouldn't be surprised to find that what you choose to call 'truth' no longer requires of you the effort of integrating your understanding.

Not only do favorable sounding truths become believable when you are unaware of what would make them unbelievable, but if you are feeling no need to doubt that something is true (or false) then Truth becomes something that requires no greater depth, or soundness, than the absense of your doubts about it.

That squishily skeptical, vaguely cynical sense which most people have towards most issues in our daily life, is the doubtful bounty of modernity,and the rot of it permeates our culture today.

Don't doubt the benefits of Questions
Has Doubt driven scientific progress? I doubt it. I suspect that, when actually followed, it actually slowed progress. What has driven scientific progress, is what cannot not drive progress, and somewhere between Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon in the 1100-1200's, and Francis Bacon in the 1600's, there emerged a general scientific method, which has been summed up as,

"...a repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and the need for independent verification. He recorded the manner in which he conducted his experiments in precise detail so that others could reproduce and independently test his results..."

, or for everyday use, methodically questioning and verifying the answers your questions logically lead you to. Rinse. Repeat. More often than not, once the clutter of doubt is brushed away from actual scientists journals, you find that it wasn't arbitrary doubts which drew them on (more often than not they slowed them down), it was the careful application of good honest questions - what do I understand this to mean? How well do I understand it? Do I understand, rather than assume, what this means?

Questions are based upon knowledge, and whether that knowledge is strong, or weak, the act of questioning draws you on to making real progress through positive understanding, and not from negative, empty, doubts. And more than that, questioning strengthens your understanding without leaving you defensive against someone else's questions, or their doubts, because having questioned your own understanding, you have the answers... or the desire to seek them out. What the moderns have accepted as being 'Knowledge', lacks what  'Critical Thinking' cannot provide: Understanding, and the fearless unquenchable curiosity which the desire for, and means of attaining understanding, naturally fosters. What its absence supplies instead, is hostility and baseless self righteousness ("There can be no doubt! It's settled science!") and not only the tendency to resort to using force instead of reason, but a satisfaction in doing so, which the actions of Dice, the Harvard student and the Professor trumpet more loudly than their 'tolerant' words ever will: 'Might makes Right, and that more might makes you more right!'.

Doubtful Progressives
Dice didn't have any doubts about what he wanted to be true and feeling no need for further understanding, he certainly didn't feel he needed to seek any greater 'understanding' of what I was saying, in order to conclude that it was false, hateful and even evil. The fact that he disliked - doubted - what I had to say and wanted it to be 'true', was more than enough for him.

The Harvard Student didn't need to bother with considering the requirements of honesty, of understanding or of valid knowledge, she didn't need to worry about whether or not it was right, or even sensible for her to demand that teachers obey the demands of students, it was enough for her to not doubt her own zeal for what it is that she wanted to be true - and for her it was beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is right.

The 'philosophy' professor didn't need to worry about what powers it would be wise to extend to govt, or how it could be controlled or corrected once given to it; he simply finds that what he clearly prefers to be truthful is beyond doubt, and so concludes, logically, that it must be accepted as the right thing to do.

On the face of it, the idea that knowledge will forever govern ignorance seems all very right minded and such... but when the test of knowledge is that it is beyond your ability to doubt, then whether or not this information is in reality true, doesn't come into question. And how likely is it that you or they will ever discover any deeper and more complete answers, if those who do question or disagree with the accepted positions, are forbidden from challenging those positions?

My point is not that there is spin in politics or disputes about climate science, but that there is something missing from the views of my unfriended friend Dice, from the Harvard student activist, and from the Professor of 'philosophy', and what is not there in their understanding, is what enables them to feel perfectly fine about cursing a friend out for disagreeing with them, enables them to feel justified in denying others the freedom of speech they demand for themselves, and enables them to advocate jailing those who dare to disagree with their views - and that it is, beyond a doubt, perfectly acceptable and advisable for them to do so.

And while I do think it is far more pronounced on the left than elsewhere, I've seen plenty of the like from Libertarians and from the Right as well, and that is the larger point to this current series of posts: When I'm speaking of Progress vs Regress, I'm not simply referring to political matters, but to the lack of understanding of what Progress is, and what it is not, and what Progress is not compatible with, which is very much a bi-partisan, tri-partisan, and non-partisan affair. What otherwise intelligent people lack, makes them oblivious to the fact that the positions they are advancing, have far more to do with Regress, rather than with Progress. And to disperse that obliviousness, we've got to take a trip into the past....next post.

Do you know whether you're pursuing Progress or Regress?
* We need to make Progress in understanding what Regress is - pt.1
* Farewell to a friend - The Doubtful Roots of Progress - Progress or Regress pt.2
* Is History, history? - Progress or Regress pt.3
* Beyond the rants: Culture, Seinfeld and the Ferguson Riots - A Society of Culturettes - Progress or Regress pt.4a
* Savagery has a History in the past and the present - Progress or Regress pt.4b
* The Materialist's inversion: When power is not forced to serve Truth, truth is abandoned for Power - Progress or Regress pt.4c
* Goodby 2014: From Gruber to Ferguson, Evil is the new Good - The History of Progress begins with its absence, part 5 a,b, c & d

Critical Thinking in action: The Sikh temple shooter was a white male, ergo: it's all Conservatives & Rep. Bachman's fault!

We've had another example this weekend, of people who were most likely unarmed, being shot by someone who had no regard for an individuals rights - not their right to life, nor their right to think or worship differently, or of any other right or regard for the laws protecting them; all were brushed aside to satisfy one persons appetite to kill, the appetite to force his way upon others, even to the point of murdering them.

Curiously, this self evident information has been absent from the media and conversation I've had the displeasure to observe raging about, once again.

The fact is that the one bit of relevant information that was possible to be known, before any of the other facts were discovered, was this - that a person with no regard for individual rights, took the lives of others, because he wanted to and thought he could.

Which is why, I suppose, it has not been reported, or even hinted at, in any of the initial reports by the media, or in the initial responses from the Twitterverse or Blogosphere. What were their initial assumptions? Apparently their thought process went something like this:

1. The gunman was a White, middle aged, bald guy.
2. Michelle Bachman recently spoke about dangers from Islamist radicals.
3. Therefore, the gunman was a Conservative whose actions were caused by Bachman's 'fear mongering'

Though not a valid example of a syllogism, it is a very disturbing, and common, example of what might be called a Sillyogasm - feelings asserted at random in order to reach a desired climax. I won't bother with the reams of logical fallacies involved there, but instead focus in a bit on what it tells us about the thought process that must have been used, in order to assemble them into something that they actually thought was actually a thought.

To put it mildly, their conclusion does not follow from their premises. Rather, their conclusion obviously preceded the premises, which were arbitrarily selected in order to inflame and advance a political agenda, in spite of the information which they did have available before they formed their conclusions (such as the fact that the point of Conservatism is to conserve the Individual Rights of all Americans, as they are secured through our Constitution), prior to their having any real information about the attack, for them to consider.

In other words, they stated their conclusion and guessed about which examples they could 'think of' that might be made to support it; in other words this is an example of what our schools teach as 'Critical Thinking' skills.

Seriously.

Have you ever cracked open even a grade school level 'science' textbook? The basis of the all important 'Critical Thinking' skills which our schools are so focused upon, such as how to formulate an hypothesis under the 'scientific method' (here's a good example of this), are typically actually taught in the classroom by exasperated teachers, in this manner:

Teacher (facing the blank stares of students who don't understand their 'Hypothesis' worksheet) - 'Just make a guess about what you think will happen. Write down why you guessed it. Then write down how you'll know you were right, and what would show you were wrong.'
Kids - 'What should we guess about?'
Teacher - 'Anything, anything at all.'
Kids - 'Like what?'
Teacher - '[slight pause while silently cursing the idiots who mandated that the 'Scientific Method' be taught out of the blue to kids with no solid knowledge to build upon] It's up to you, just pick something... 'which cookies people will like most'... whether 'flipping a coin will come up more often heads or tails'... just make a guess and support it.'

(Yes, this is an actual example from our recent experience with 6th grade science homework.) An hypothesis is typically described as

"An hypothesis is a statement or explanation that is suggested by knowledge or observation but has not, yet, been proved or disproved."

, but doing that, scientifically, requires first off, a foundation in knowledge of the phenomena being observed, an informed understanding of what is happening, and then a plan to test the soundness of that understanding. Do you see even the possibility of that in this actual classroom example above?

The lessons that are actually learned from these exercises have nothing to do with Science or 'Critical Thinking', what is learned from them, is that you should make guesses about what you feel is right, and then find 'evidence' to support it.

Want to test my 'hypothesis'? Look at the reactions in the Media, Blogosphere & Twitterverse!

If you haven't seen them yourself, you can find examples of this non-sense in the screen shots of actual comments that Ginny Kruta has provided in her post here, or in Doug Welch's sampling on Liberty News, such as those congratulating Michelle Bachman for the murders that were obviously committed due to her 'Christian hate speech', and that:

'It may be time for Fed Law Enforcement to look at those who may use speech to incite violence,, ie Michelle Bachman, Limbaugh Fox, Beck---"

Did these peoples immediate reactions touch, in any way, upon what could actually be known, beyond the simple fact that people, Sikhs, had been shot dead? No. As I already mentioned at the top of this post, the only relevant information that could be known, was never even raised, and I've seen no evidence that any of those concepts (Individual Rights, Conservatism, Constitution) have been understood or applied or 'factored in' to their thinking processes.

I see no indication of any actual thought having been given to these tragic and horrible circumstance, I see only the rantings of hysterical children demanding their ice cream, gun control and the elimination of uncomfortable thoughts. What I see in their 'thinking', is the collective mass reaching for the results that they wanted to assert, such as

• 'Guns are bad and Gun Control is needed!'
• 'Conservative whites are caused to kill muslims by Christian conservatives!' (tip: Sikh's are not muslims)
• 'hate speech' causes gun owners to kill!'

, which they immediately set about spewing out towards everyone they could manage to splatter with their thoughts.

Aside from the obvious idiocy of blaming anyone other than the shooter for the deaths caused by his shooting at them, the lack of actual thought displayed here is staggering. Their willingness to use words devoid of understanding, as little more than useful filler in padding out their assertions, is indicative of such a lack of education, that it could only have come from one place: our educational system.

In other words, what is expressed in these 'thoughts':

1. the presence of guns in the environment causes people to die and conservative speech causes conservatives to want to kill,
2. Conservatives own guns,
3. therefore, guns must be banned and conservatives must be shut-up.

, are an expression of 'Critical Thinking' which is critically devoid of anything remotely resembling informed and methodical thinking - which is exactly what IS taught AS 'critical thinking' in our schools, day in and day out. Only a daily immersion in a 'thinking method' for a period of 6, 12, 14, 16 years or more, could cause a person to not think, in such a deliberate manner, to not think about the essential concepts that are so critical to what it is you are attempting to think about. You either have to deliberately avoid thinking of them, or be so thought-impaired, that you simply habitually skip over, any consideration, of anything, that might divert your attention away from what it is you want.

What that used to be called, was being driven by appetite, which was once the very definition of being a child, and which school was, once upon a time, designed for the purpose of raising you above. Obviously, that is no longer the case.

In the rush to have their desired conclusions, there are simply no thoughts given to what conservatives are, only to what they want them to be, the possibility that banning these things (guns) or that speech (Conservative, Christian, etc) might conflict with what Rights are (specifically those defended by the 1st & 2nd Amendments) are simply brushed aside, if even that amount of effort can be granted them, not even what might constitute 'hate speech' is considered (which is apparently any thought that isn't in strict compliance with politically correct dogma), these are all entirely, and seemingly intentionally, left unconsidered, in their rush to promote and advance their preferred political agenda.

Because they want it. Appetite driven. Children.

This is nothing new. I'll spare you my typical references back to developments such as 'The Frankfurt School', Dewey, Hegel, Rousseau, etc, and just offer up this snippet from 1991, from "Jam Today at Last!", Richard Mitchell's skewering of the farce that is the teaching of 'Critical Thinking' skills in our schools,

"... So at last they came up with critical thinking, distinguished from mere thinking in that it was, well, critical, you know. They didn't put it this way, because they're not too good at figuring out what they mean, but they obviously did sense (aha! another substitute for thinking) that critical thinking ended up with something that was not in the "thinker" until after the thinking had been done, and the mere thinking was a way of declaring what was already in the thinker. And thus it was that they ended up, for awhile, trying to teach logic as though that were thinking. They did know, after all, that logic reached conclusions, which made it seem comfortably similar to Dewey's notion of thinking as "problem-solving activity."

It did not occur to them, apparently that logic was also uncomfortably like problem-solving in that it could reach only those conclusions already implicit in its givens, and the teaching of it was, in any case, no fun at all. As far as we know, logic is no part of the standard curriculum in any of the public schools.

The term "critical thinking" made the school people feel pretty good for awhile; it suggested a technical proficiency not unlike that of the sciences, and implied, in those who said they could teach it, an expertise for which schoolteachers have in general not been celebrated. But there was a problem; it was that word, critical, which the school people in the Affective Domain construe as meaning something very like hostile. You can hardly blame them; any truly critical consideration of what they do in the schools must end by being, at the least, not flattering. There is worse. If school children were brought into the habit of critical thinking, might they not become critical? Might they not, by logic alone, notice incoherence and in consistencies in their schooling? Might they nor begin to question some of the supposed social truths and goods which are preached to them as worthy and feelings? There is, after all, nothing more galling in any teacher's class than the smartass who makes sense..."

Whatever may be discovered in the coming days about the shooting in Wisconsin, my hypothesis is that what will be most relevant to the rest of us, is what will likely remain unconsidered:

• That this man had no regard for the rights of those he went to kill.
• That the people who were killed, had no ability to defend themselves.
• That the concepts of Individual Rights, careful and deliberate thinking in conjunction with logical method are not taught in our schools.

Does these premises follow from one another or lead to a conclusion? Is there something important left out?(there is). I'll leave that for you to think about, and only suggest that it is critical that you do so.