Dakota Beacon

            There was a time not many decades ago when life was straight forward, simpler. Values among most Americans were shared values. Those values were inculcated and reinforced by home, school, and church. That was old school.

            To illustrate, my father grew up during the Great Depression. He dropped out of school from necessity during early adolescence to help support his family. He later completed his education as an adult. Having been denied education as a boy, he resolved that his children would have every opportunity to further their schooling. In his view, and that of many of his generation, education was the ticket to getting ahead in life.

            The old school view of a college education was about learning. It was about proving you were capable enough of being educated and smart enough to learn. Eventually you received a degree attesting to those facts. A college education ensured a person had the opportunity for a productive life based on merit, ability, and acquired knowledge.

            A fundamental college education of yesteryear was not at all like that of today. What passes for a college education today resembles politically correct indoctrination replacing real knowledge. For this parents finagle to get their kids into the “best” schools with a name for the sake of making contacts that grease the skids for the kids.

            But, to tap a phrase from the character Marcellus in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” “There is something rotten in Denmark.” From the 1950s and decades following, things grew increasingly rotten in the American education system. For all intents and purposes, everything liberals touched turned to mud – music, sports, television, and especially the American education system.

            The residue of liberal debasement runs deep in our culture. Most importantly American government, the receptacle of the “educated,” has morphed into something quite different from the original ideal envisioned by our founders.

            For example, Congress has ceded much of its law-writing responsibility to the administrative state and the administrative state continues to consolidate its power. The unelected apparatchiks run the cabinet-level departments of the executive branch. Buried deep in these departments, they write and enforce the rules and regulations with the force of law that have wreaked havoc on American life. The mostly anonymous players who write the bills that Congress passes include a variety of bureaucrats, lawyers, lobbyists, and media personalities.

            Where do these people come from who have produced such rot in government? Who fills the staff positions that constitute the apparatchik class? The answer should be obvious to the careful observer.

            The liberal socialist hotbed of academia became the feeder network for illegitimate and corrupt government practices as early as 1896. John Dewey was an early pioneer establishing his Laboratory School. Children were to be treated as lab rats to test his philosophical and psychological ideas. His alma mater, Columbia University, would eventually produce future teachers who would, in turn, spread across America to teaching colleges raising up a trained cadre of teachers. These, in turn, populated primary and secondary schools and ultimately colleges and universities. Ivy League schools became the primary conduits for a massive, expanding, and largely autonomous federal bureaucracy.

            Truth be told, plenty of academics in Ivy League schools and other universities are not necessarily smart. There is ample evidence the current crop of academics are very close-minded and very comfortable with Marxist-Leninist ideas and practices to the exclusion of any other ideas. To wit, the vigorous if not violent rejection of conservative speakers on campuses and the intimidation of conservative professors. They are close-minded non-critical thinkers. Their views are not well-thought-out. Rather than well-reasoned and cogent opinions they conform to the drivel of political correctness. They are indoctrinated believers, what Eric Hoffer identified as the True Believer. Their teaching is the froth of mottos and slogans and secondhand thoughts. The rot that passes for higher education and liberal government should be rethought by those capable of doing so.

            One should never live in the past under the sentimental illusion of “the good old days.” On the other hand, redeeming the time by restoring the fundamental values of what is good and true is always a prized objective.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).