Email is a checkbox- every day, many times per day- and if I skip the scheduled sorting, things get out of hand quickly. But the glut includes all sorts of goodness, from every corner of the digital universe, much of it from readers, but also mailing lists to which I never signed up.
Sorting them (unsubscribing) is also a thing that needs doing, maybe not every day, but a few times a month, and more during heated election cycles. And people, that’s the polite word for them, find it amusing to sign me up for things using my email. Queer things, for example, which is fine because I embrace content diversity, which, ironically, the sort of people who think doing this to me is funny typically do not.
Some of these “newsletters” or whatever they call themselves are worth a look, and more than a few are worth keeping. Some of them are marketing, like the thing I received from Tom Sowell’s Substack.
Tuesday was like most others. Up early to write and curate content, socials, lots of coffee, feed and walk the dog, email, and this: Taxpayers Funding the Slogan Factories. It’s a tease. Sign up for free for 7 days, but I don’t need to go any further than the foreplay. That’s the bit of leg and panty “text” they show you, hoping you’ll pull over and pay for the rest. The subhead is: Public money sustains classrooms that manufacture identical slogans instead of independent minds ready for real work.
Taxpayer dollars fund classrooms designed to produce young people equipped with nothing more than repeated chants, but not the ability to think independently or be prepared to do meaningful work.
A field we’ve frequently sown, but one that reminded me of something I say a lot, but in a different way. To the left, diversity is a room full of people who look different, but all think the same way. To me, and to you, and to many, it is any room, regardless of what anyone looks like, where people are allowed to think differently.
Diversity is more cultural Marxist pablum alongside the other horseman of the socialist apocalypse. Equity, Inclusion, Belonging. None of which apply to anyone if they don’t confine their thinking to the confines of the tiny blue bubble that’s the most darling Marxist shade of red on the inside.
There are plenty of things wrong with the government schools, not the least of which is their poor academic performance, but that’s just a side effect of the poison. And no, it’s not just the cloistered political dogma. It is the vehement opposition to independent thought.
They aren’t just teaching them woke bullshit; they refuse to teach them to think in a way that would expose it as such.
I, you, the majority of our readers, have zero objection to this. In fact, just about every sure-fire cure we concoct for failing public schools includes teaching kids critical thinking and debate. Literacy, numeracy, and how to question everything.
What occurred to me when I saw the headline to Sowell’s Substack was not new but rekindled.
Why am I fine with teaching people to question everything I believe, but not them?
Public education is ideologically captured, almost entirely by the political left. The smartest people, by their own thinking at least, in almost every room. So smart, in fact, that they don’t dare allow anyone to challenge their recruits unless pouting, yelling, and calling someone a racist bigot counts as debate.
There is plenty wrong with public education, not the least of which is the cost for the return on investment, but why do “they/them” refuse to teach your kids to challenge everything else they’ve been taught in the K-12 system?
The obvious reason is that they can’t.
At some point, even the most blinkered Marxist acolyte might discover that the math doesn’t work, and that history isn’t wrong. Socialism only has one conclusion. It looks a lot like Mr. Jones’ house in Orwell’s Animal Farm, and there’s never enough room at the table for the pigs, and only a few of them.
We are not the same as those Lefties for many reasons, but that is likely the most important. We believe our system can withstand the scrutiny of young, curious minds. So much so, we want more of them because we believe it will only strengthen the case for negative rights, limited government, and human flourishing.
The Democrats don’t dare to let anyone think for themselves because it puts their grip on power in jeopardy.
If you can’t think of a great reason to show up in November to vote against Democrats, that seems like a pretty damn good reason to me.
