Education, Ayers, Obama, and “the great march”

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Wandriann” asked recently [emphasis mine]:

How in earth is it possible that ”˜Middle America’ combined with the solid US institutions does not make this weird kind of thing [the current Democrat agenda and methods] impossible?…Is this still the bill of the sixties, the luciferic, youthful rebellion against age-old common sense and wisdom? Has the ”˜great march through the institutions’ finally succeeded?

The short answer is: yes, especially in our press and our public education system.

It’s my impression that more people are aware of the press’s Leftward drift than of the extent of the change in the schools, although I could be wrong about that. There are also alternatives readily available to the liberal/Left press, such as Fox News and periodicals such as the Weekly Standard, National Review, the Washington Examiner, and sometimes the Wall Street Journal, as well as blogs such as this and larger ones.

The takeover of the educational system has been more insidious. Yes, there are private schools that offer a more conservative option, but that requires a commitment of money and an amount of effort that most people are neither willing nor able to expend. Also, what happens in a school system not only happens to our youngest and therefore most easily molded citizens, it also occurs (at least for the most part) outside of the awareness of their parents, unless the parents happen to be monitoring what’s going on very closely by reading textbooks and assignments and quizzing their children. Even then a great deal of it can be missed.

Paradoxically, the school systems that are considered the best and most modern, with the smartest student bodies—for example, in districts near universities—are often the worst in this regard. But the problem has infected the public education system as a whole. How else could a man such as Bill Ayers become a highly regarded educator, and his curriculum one of the most popular and influential in the field?

Sol Stern, who has written extensively about Ayers and education, was on Ayers’s case on this subject even before Obama was a candidate for president and the Ayers connection became an issue for that reason. Here Stern is in 2006 on how terrorist Ayers came to see the educational system as another way to steer this country Leftwards, and an effective and legal one at that (I will quote at some length because I think it’s important, but reading the whole thing is even more informative):

Ayers’s spectacular second act began when he enrolled at Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1984. Then 40, he planned to stay just to get a teaching credential. (He had taught in a “Freedom School” during his pre-underground student radical days.) But he experienced an epiphany in a course taught by Maxine Greene, a leading light of the “critical pedagogy” movement. As Ayers wrote later, he took fire from Greene’s lectures on how the “oppressive hegemony” of the capitalist social order “reproduces” itself through the traditional practice of public schooling””critical pedagogy’s fancy way of saying that the evil corporations exercise thought control through the schools…

It hadn’t occurred to Ayers that an ed-school professor could speak or write as an authentic American radical…Greene told future teachers that they could help change this bleak landscape by developing a “transformative” vision of social justice and democracy in their classrooms. Her vision, though, was a far cry from the democratic optimism of the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr., which most parents would endorse. Instead, critical pedagogy theorists nurse a rancorous view of an America in which it is always two minutes to midnight and a knock on the door by the thought police is imminent. The education professors feel themselves anointed to use the nation’s K”“12 classrooms to resist this oppressive system. Thus Maxine Greene urged teachers not to mince words with children about the evils of the existing social order. They should portray “homelessness as a consequence of the private dealings of landlords, an arms buildup as a consequence of corporate decisions, racial exclusion as a consequence of a private property-holder’s choice.”…

All music to Bill Ayers’s ears. The ex-Weatherman glimpsed a new radical vocation. He dreamed of bringing the revolution from the streets to the schools. And that’s exactly what he has managed to do.

It’s also instructive to take a look at what passed (and passes?) for a doctoral dissertation in the field of education at the prestigious Columbia Teachers College back then (and probably now as well). Stern certainly has:

In record time Ayers acquired an Ed.D. with a dissertation titled “The Discerning ”˜I’: Accounts of Teacher Self-Construction Through the Use of Co-Biography, Metaphor, and Image.” There wasn’t much biography, metaphor, or image in the 180-page text. Ayers’s research consisted solely of a few days spent interviewing and observing the classroom practices of three nursery school teachers he knew personally.

On the basis of research such as this as well as his family connections, Ayers was on his way to becoming influential not only in the field of education in the city of Chicago, but in the country as a whole [emphasis mine]:

With his Teachers College credential in hand, Ayers landed an ed-school appointment back in Chicago, where his father was CEO of Commonwealth Edison and nicely plugged in to the city’s political establishment. These days, Ayers carries the joint titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. One of his several books on the moral imperative of teaching for social justice is a bestseller in ed-school courses. Like many other tenured and well-heeled radicals, Ayers keeps hoping for a revolutionary upheaval that will finally bring down American capitalism and imperialism.

That was written in 2006; now Ayers must feel he’s finally got it, in the person of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, et. al., although you might say it’s been more of an evolution (devolution?) than a revolution. But that was exactly the aim of the Long March of Ayers and others—and he is hardly alone—through our educational system.

And if I sound like a paranoid McCarthy-esque alarmist, so be it. The evidence is in; just take a look at the reading lists of so many public schools today as well as the curricula, and you will see it. And we also see the fruits of the labors of Ayers and company in our young people’s relative ignorance of history and civics; the dwindling of the teaching of the Western canon as it has been “reframed” as the works of oppressive white men; the dominance of the tragic view of this country as a force for evil, one for which constant apologies and sacrifices are necessary; and the decline of critical thinking and the rise of moral relativism and post-modernism.

All of these trends are now amply demonstrated in our educator-in-chief, President Obama, as well as his wife Michelle, who’s only been really proud of America in her adult life since it began to take her husband’s ambitions seriously.

Whatever Obama’s direct connection to Ayers (and I continue to think it’s greater than we know), his philosophical connection is clear. The patience of the 60s radicals has been rewarded at last, and this accounts at least in part for the fact that they—and Obama—are so unwilling to compromise their radical agenda at the moment, even in the face of mounting opposition. They know best, after all; they’re our teachers, and we the students.

[NOTE: And speaking of Ayers and education, he and his cronies had big plans for our re-education back then. And if that failed, there was always murder:

And speaking of murder, yesterday was the fortieth anniversary of the Manson gang murders, a very sad chapter in American life. Let’s revisit the commentary of Ayers’s wife-to-be—and current Northwestern University law professor—on the subject.]

Obama’s hypocrisy: even worse than you think

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember that recent speech in which Obama told the opposition to shut up? In my post on the subject I wrote:

But what I see in this video that is new is the naked, unashamed need to silence the opposition, especially ironic in a man who posed in his campaign as the great listener, the great uniter, the great champion of dialogue. And I use that word “posed” advisedly: it was a pose, and now there’s no need for him to pretend any more.

It turns out that I was wrong—about the need to pretend, that is. In fact, Obama still feels the need to pretend, and did so in that very same speech!

The word “two-faced” doesn’t even begin to express it. Dr. Obama and Mr. Soetoro, anyone?

Advising Obama: “if only Stalin knew”

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a growing strain of op-ed pieces that involve giving helpful advice to Obama on how to rescue his administration by tacking back towards the center.

Yesterday I mentioned Peggy Noonan’s, which contained the following apologia and guidance for the President:

[The Democrats and the DNC] are mocking and menacing concerned citizens. This only makes a hot situation hotter. Is this what the president wants? It couldn’t be. But then in an odd way he sometimes seems not to have fully absorbed the awesome stature of his office…You cannot allow your allies to call people protesting a health-care plan “extremists” and “right wing,” or bought, or Nazi-like, either. They’re citizens. They’re concerned. They deserve respect…

The president should call in his troops and his Congress and announce a rethinking. There are too many different bills, they’re all a thousand pages long, no one has time to read them, no one knows what’s going to be in the final one, the public is agitated, the nation’s in crisis, the timing is wrong, we’ll turn to it again””but not now. We’ll take a little longer, ponder every aspect, and make clear every complication.

You know what would happen if he did this? His numbers would go up.

Maybe earlier they would, but I’m not so sure anymore. Many people at this point would see any tacking to the center as a temporary and strategic move on Obama’s part and distrust it, although it would certainly be more welcome than the policies he’s pushing right now.

But the more basic error Noonan makes is that she assumes that the recent program of character assassination of the health care protestors isn’t what President Obama wants. There’s no evidence whatsoever to back that up, and plenty of evidence from his own mouth that he is fully on board with the program.

But Noonan (and certain others) who fell for Obama hard during the campaign now find themselves suffering the pangs that disappointed lovers often feel, and a similar reluctance to face the truth that they were hoodwinked and used by a con artist.

Happens all the time, I’m afraid. It happened during the Stalin years, as several commenters on the Noonan thread have pointed out (see this, for example). The phenomenon then was called “if only Stalin knew,” and was predicated on the belief that the bad stuff was happening outside of Stalin’s awareness and orchestrated by his underlings, and that if only Good Old Joe knew about it he’d stop it.

It seems laughable now. But as I said, hope dies hard. Very hard indeed. And this is especially true of many of those who voted for and supported Obama in the hope that he’d be the uniting and reasonable centrist he promised.

What was going on with them then, and what is going on now? If I wanted to be crude, I’d say that their bullshit detectors were and are seriously out of whack. Or, if I wanted to be more kind, I’d call it the need to believe in the goodness of this particular smooth-talking politician. Oh, and the fact that’s black, and that voting for him was a chance to strike a blow against racism in this country once and for all, didn’t hurt either in creating a false belief system based on wishful thinking about Obama.

Just today we have another piece cut from the same “if only Stalin knew” cloth as the others. It’s by Doug Schoen, who was an adviser to President Clinton who counseled Bill on his successful mid-course correction. As Schoen describes it:

When I first met with Mr. Clinton following the devastating 1994 mid-term election, he put it to me this way:

“I’m way out of position. I was elected as a centrist, and now I’m perceived as a liberal Democrat. I’ve got to change that, and I’ve got to put some space between myself and Congress.”

And change that we did — with a bold new agenda that included a balanced budget that protected Medicare and Medicaid, protection of the environment, frank acknowledgement of the limits of government, bi-partisan welfare reform and tough anti-crime legislation.

Mr. Obama still has time to avoid repeating the mistakes of the first Clinton term, but it will take a fundamental and near-term shift in ideology, approach and commitment to regain the momentum he earned after a campaign in which he promised policy objectives similar to those offered during the 1992 election.

Anything wrong with this picture? Plenty, in my opinion. It relies on what you might call the “old template,” the idea of Obama as a Clintonesque politician who is somewhat to the Left but more fundamentally a pragmatist who is flexible in his ideology and responsive to the wishes of the American people.

That was one of my hopes during the campaign, although I always considered it to be a long shot. But I abandoned that dream long ago; the evidence is too great that Obama is an ideologue who is deeply committed to a far Left agenda. Nearly every step he has taken as President reveals this fact, and those who don’t see it or at least strongly suspect it at this point are deeply into denial. That would include the advice-giving Mr. Schoen, who is a good Party apparatchik who doesn’t quite get what he’s dealing with:

Let’s be clear, the Republicans do not have any policies and they do not have any ideas. Their agenda is based totally on opposition to the Democrats and so far this is proving to be successful. But with a bipartisan, centrist agenda that emphasizes growth, low taxes, fiscal prudence and common sense policies, Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats can isolate Republicans — whose approval rating has fallen to a record low — while preventing the loss of 40-50 vulnerable Democratic House seats won during the last two Congressional elections, and as many as seven in the Senate.

Schoen offers good advice, advice that Clinton took and it propelled him to a second term. But Obama’s not listening. He already knows these simple and actually rather obvious facts, and is ignoring them. Obama has a very different agenda, although he doesn’t mind having people such as Schoen perpetuate the “if only Stalin knew” narrative to serve as cover.

Eleanor Clift shows what happens when a person drinks too much Kool-Aid

The New Neo Posted on by

That person ends up writing this sort of claptrap, picking up where the DNC video left off.

Pravda could not have done any better in its bad old days as an organ for the USSR. But the journalists [sic] who wrote for it at least had an excuse of sorts: they lived in a totalitarian society and they were writing for the only game in town—except for equally-compromised Izvetzia, that is.

What’s Clift’s excuse? Is she a believer in the truth of what she writes? Or does she know she’s writing manufactured propaganda, and considers it necessary to further The Cause? Or is she mostly interested in furthering her own career at Newsweek, understands what she has to write to do so, and has no interest in the philosophical issues involved?

Obama drunk with power: is a Sedition Act next?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s often said that you can see what politicians really are about when they’re with cronies and supporters, because they don’t have to clean up their act as much. Sometimes they even forget that they’re still in public, and say very revealing things.

It’s also often said that power corrupts. That’s one of the hazards of becoming President of the United States—which after all is nothing if not a position of great power, especially for those Presidents who also have large majorities in Congress.

And then there are the perks of the office itself. The constant deference shown by underlings. The luxuries, the hundreds to do one’s bidding, the trips and the private airplane and the opportunity to pontificate at will. The knowledge that, even after leaving office, money will never be an object because of the ability to command big bucks as a speaker.

This is compounded by the fact that those who achieve the office of the US Presidency are hardly shrinking violets or humble souls to begin with, as a rule. And we all know—in fact it was a running joke during the campaign—that Obama is one of the most imperial and narcissistic candidates ever to run for the high office, what with his special seal and his reference to epiphanies and the eager and worshiping crowds chanting his name as though in a trance.

This tendency of Obama’s could only be expected to grow once in office, a position in which the president is isolated from the realities of the world and the public, and is surrounded mainly by sycophants and those dedicated to keeping on his good side and protecting their own jobs, often by telling him only what he wants to hear.

So I suppose it should come as no surprise to see the behavior Obama exhibits in the following tape of a speech he made to supporters of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds in MacLean, Virginia.

No surprise, indeed; but it should send a chill down the spine of every American, Left or Right, Democrat or Republican or Independent or Green or of any other party, who hears it:

Note the body language: the leading with the chin and the little smile at the end. This is a man in love with power who is angry at being defied, a man who has absolutely no interest in freedom of speech if it goes against him (no, that was too mild; he has an absolute antipathy to freedom of speech if it goes against him, and this has a long history with Obama—see this and this).

This is a man who says he takes responsibility while constantly blaming his predecessor, and does it in a way unbecoming a president—and in a way that no president before him has done, because of their respect for the office itself. This is a man who wraps himself in the mantle of the power of the presidency, saying “I am the President” at every turn (see this for my previous commentary on that ingrained habit of Obama’s). This is cockiness rather than accepting responsibility, something Obama has yet to do.

The verbal tendencies demonstrated in the above video are habits of Obama’s, and they are no accident. They represent his modus operandi: rhetorically pretending to take responsibility while at the same time shucking it (I’ve talked at some length about this ploy of his, here).

But what I see in this video that is new is the naked, unashamed need to silence the opposition, especially ironic in a man who posed in his campaign as the great listener, the great uniter, the great champion of dialogue. And I use that word “posed” advisedly: it was a pose, and now there’s no need for him to pretend any more.

Have we ever in recent history had a President who gives a message like this of the need to silence opposition rather than allow it and then answer it? If so, I certainly don’t recall it, and I’ve lived a long time through many administrations, ones I’ve liked and ones I haven’t. The closest I can come to this was Richard Nixon, but even he was never as global in his condemnation nor as naked and open and unashamed in his desire to silence the opposition.

Note that I wrote “in recent history” in the paragraph above. I did that for a reason. The closest parallel I can think of is the Alien and Sedition Acts passed under the administration of John Adams. Actually, not the “Alien” part of the acts, which only applied to aliens, but the “Sedition” part:

The Sedition Act (officially An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes against the United States; ch. 74, 1 Stat. 596) made it a crime to publish “false, scandalous, and malicious writing” against the government or its officials. It was enacted July 14, 1798, with an expiration date of March 3, 1801.

The opposition was fierce, and the act was so unpopular that it was largely responsible for the permanent downfall of the party sponsoring it, the Federalists. I hope that will be a lesson to Obama and the present-day Democratic Party, who are going down a terrible path that now includes demonizing the opposition, and asking people to report to the White House all “fishy” communications that “misrepresent” Obamacare.

It’s not for nothing that our Founding Fathers felt the overwhelming need to protect our freedom of speech, and to try their best to ensure the rights of the minority party and its supporters. President Obama seems ignorant of this little detail of history—either ignorant, or contemptuous.

And about that “high-level Republican political operative” the DNC pretends to be so incensed about

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember that phrase in the DNC video, “This mob activity is straight from the playbook of high-level Republican political operatives”?

Well, Mary Katherine Ham has unearthed the identity of that “high-level Republican political operative” [sic], and what was actually written on his website.

It’s enough to make you weep—for the fact that our country is in the grip of our current Democrat leaders and their lies, as well as the media that covers for them.

Don’t laugh quite so hard at Laffer: on Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare

The New Neo Posted on by

In the dystopia thread, commenter “ModDem” (moderate Democrat? modern Democrat? modest Democrat? modish Democrat?) writes:

If the whole idea [of Obamacare] is unconstitutional then I guess you think Medicare and Medicaid are unconstitutional? Or did you not realize they were government run programs like Reagan administration economist Art Laffer who is so dumb he said on CNN yesterday: “f you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait until you see Medicare, Medicaid, and health care done by the government”

Ha, what an idiot!

There are many out there who do not know Medicare and Medicaid are government run. And what’s more they are successful and more well liked than regular run private healthcare.

I thought I’d highlight a portion of my response to his/her claims:

…[P]lease don’t report me to the fish police! I’ll be good! I promise!

As for the popularity of Medicare and Medicaid, the poll you linked to is based on the entire system that’s in place now. If you read the fine print, the satisfaction is based on good access to treatment as opposed to managed care plans. But Medicare and Medicaid do not revamp our health care system in the manner that Obamacare would, and they depend on the entire health care system being in place for this access to continue. In other words, even Obama has acknowledged that the cost-cutting needs of Obamacare would result in more rationing (although he hasn’t usually used that r-word, of course). This would put in place the sort of managed care and long delays that have caused problems in Canada and the UK, for example (ever read about the niceties of NICE?)

The Medicare and Medicaid with which people are presently satisfied ride on the back of our present system, and are also subsidized by it. That’s another thing very likely to end with Obamacare.

Oh, and before you get too giddy laughing at Laffer, pay attention to what he actually said (love those truncated quotes, don’t we? They’re so much better than the truth). After speaking about how the costs of Obamacare have been underestimated, he then said [emphasis mine]:

I mean, if you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid, and health care done by the government; I mean the single provider I think is a real problem.

Laffer is unquestionably talking about the change in the system as a whole to single provider, which he sees as the hidden goal of Obamacare that will inevitably flow from it, and to a new Medicare and Medicaid embedded in that system. The person he is talking with then responds to him as though she understands his argument as being about the larger change, because she responds by saying single payer won’t happen with Obamacare.

Here, I’ll make it easy for you:

Combat those swatiska-carrying astroturf mobs! For the sake of your country!

The New Neo Posted on by

More has surfaced since I wrote my piece for Pajamas on the Democrats’ “astroturfer” accusations.

Here, for example, is a description of the crowds at one of those town meetings. Sound like astroturfers to you?

And let’s not forget this perverse video on the subject, put out by the DNC itself. Here’s a transcript I’ve made, the better to study it (with my interpolations in bold):

The right-wing extremist Republican [isn’t that redundant? Aren’t ALL Republicans right-wing extremists?] base is back.

[We see a rear-view of a woman standing in the crowd and yelling “…not an American citizen.”] [Yes, let’s not miss an opportunity to make it seem like the nirthers are in the majority in the Republican Party, and speak for them all].

They lost the election [and we won! We won!].

They lost on the recovery act [is this a more acceptable synonym for the now much-derided stimulus act?], the budget, and children’s health care.

They’ve lost the confidence of the American people after eight years of failed policies that ruined our economy [which the Democrats had nothing whatsoever to do with], and cost millions of jobs [and those jobs lost under Obama’s watch? Bush did it! Bush did it!.

Now, desperate [methinks there might be a wee bit of projection here; who’s sounding desperate themselves?] Republicans and their well-funded allies [more projection—or perhaps you’ve never heard of Soros, or the fact that Obama and the Democrats have been exceedingly well-funded lately] are organizing angry mobs [if I were a Democrat I wouldn’t emphasize the word “mob” because of the Chicago mob associations, but maybe that’s just me], just like they did during the election [shadowy reference to just what, exactly?].

Their goal? Destroy President Obama [yes, no doubt they’re out to kill him with those pitchforks they’re carrying] and stop the change Americans voted overwhelmingly for in November [was there a landslide for Obama that I missed? And was Obamacare as written in the present bill the proposal Americans were evaluating at the time of the election?].

[Voice of DeMint saying “It will break him” and then Rush Limbaugh saying “I hope he fails”] [What meanies.]

This mob activity is straight from the playbook of high-level Republican political operatives [more projection here? No, of course not; Democrats and Alinsky-esque community organizer Obama would never think of doing such things!].

They have no plan for moving our country forward [no plan we’ll pay attention to or consider, anyway].

So they’ve called out the mob [once again, it’s an odd image for those supporting Obama the Chicago politician to conjure up—not just “a mob” but “THE mob”].

[Seemingly the same woman as before standing with placard, saying “And I want to know why you people are ignoring his birth certificate.”] [:You just can’t get enough of a good thing, can you? Let’s hear it for those birthers and how much we can emphasize them instead of quoting the things the people at the town hall meetings actually said in criticism of Obamacare].

Call the Republican Party [shows phone number of the RNC]. Tell them you’ve had enough of the mob [there’s that ill-advised mob reference again. Go figure. It must take one to know one].

The GOP’s reaction to the video was rather creative:

At the end of the video, the DNC instructs people to call the Republican National Committee to express outrage. Callers who dial the RNC’s main number to voice their concern about the DNC’s charges are told to press 1, which sends them to the DNC’s main switchboard.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those swastikas turn up one day at some town hall or other, perhaps carried by undercover Democrats to make it seem as though Nancy Pelosi is telling the truth.

This is the level of political discourse we’ve come to—under that well-known uniter, not divider, President Obama.

[ADDENDUM: Here’s more from Bird Dog.]

Choose your dystopia: Obamaworld

The New Neo Posted on by

There was a discussion in the comments section here a while back about just what type of tyrant Obama might end up being. Commenter “huxley” wrote:

Stalin and Hitler were aware of how people approved of them, but no more than that. When it came to kill inconvenient people, neither hesitated.

Wake me up when Obama is functioning at that level.

It’s true that Obama is not in the mold of either of those epic tyrants of history. He’s following a very different template.

As a young teenager of about twelve or thirteen, I read the novels Brave New World and 1984. I was absolutely terrified to the point of nightmares by the latter, but the former seemed more odd than frightening.

Yes, I could see that the society described in Brave New World was a dystopia. But compared to the far more horrific world Orwell’s imagination had created, Huxley’s vision seemed relatively pleasant, with the feelies and the soma and the sex. It was much lighter, and contained a certain amount of humor, an element notably absent from the exceedingly dark 1984

As I grew older, I came to understand that the two books described twin tyrannies, the yin and yang of dystopias (“Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice”). There was Huxley’s (the author, not the commenter!) clamp of a science-controlled society on the human spirit, and then there was Orwells’ brutal stamp of the boot on the human face forever.

Freedom is what’s missing from either vision. Yes, if I was forced to choose, I’d choose Huxley’s world over Orwell’s. But both societies are nightmares.

Obamaworld is not like that of 1984 (except for his habit of Orwellian Newspeak); it’s a kinder, gentler universe more like that of Brave New World, where people are ministered to for their own good, soft music plays in the background, and we’ve got sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Meanwhile, liberty is just as dead in that world as in the other. And it’s hardly necessary to kill people for that to happen.

obamaworld.jpg