Out Of The Ashes

Anthony Esolen, a professor at Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire and recently of Providence College, Rhode Island, has written a stinging critique of modern education and American society in general titled Out Of The Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture published by Regnery Publishers, 2017.

It's a short book - 203 pages – but contains much wise social commentary and observations on everything wrong with American education, if there's any such thing. Esolen is not one to beat around the bush. If you don't agree with him it isn't because he is opaque. For instance, chapter one is titled, Giving Things Their Proper Names: The Restoration Of Truth Telling. It is divided into several sections with their own headings, one of which is Are We a World of Liars?

“In a word, yes.

It is almost impossible in the modern world not to accept lies as a matter of course. We are told that a woman can make as good a soldier as a man. Except for the rare amazon, that is a lie”

In the same vein a few pages later: “Here is a quick and generally reliable rule to follow. If people have always said it, it is probably true; it is the distilled wisdom of the ages. If people have not always said it, but everybody is saying it now, it is probably a lie; it is the concentrated madness of the moment.”

Most of what he says in the book is glaringly obvious, but it is so seldom spoken or written that it becomes heroic when written or spoken audibly. When referring to teachers who have acquiesced to imparting depravity, he writes:

“It will not do merely to restrain them in this or that regard. They are not fit to teach your children the multiplication table. They are not fit to be near them at all. Every moment that your children are in their presence, they will be breathing the putrescent air from the diseased heart and spirit of the instructors, in an institution whose walls stink of it, it has lingered there so long.”

Just a few years ago, in the memory of almost everybody, a statement like,“First let us establish that there are such things as the sexes.” would have met with everybody's assent. Most people reading it would be wondering why such a thing would need to be established at all. Now such a proposition is not just questionable, it might even be “controversial” or hate speech or some kind of micro aggression.

Esolen is such a hater (maybe even a Neanderthal) that he writes:

“We are taught from the time we enter the indoctrination centers that the only differences between men and women are trivial matters of plumbing. It is not true.

When the European missionaries came to the new world to evangelize the natives, they did not find creatures of a different species. They found human beings, male and female. They did not find any tribes in which the women met in council, hunted the large animals, smoked the peace pipe, trained up their daughters in savage displays of physical courage and endurance (the “sun dance” of the Plains Indians, for example) and established elaborate hierarchies of honor. They did not find any tribes in which the men took care of small children, gathered roots and berries, made themselves up with pretty decorations to delight their women … and made “nests,” as it were, as clean and neat as possible, for the sake of the little ones, and because that is the way they liked things best.

They found men and women. That is what you will find wherever you go in the world.”

I can't disagree with any of his assessments about the shipwreck of the schools or his suggested remedies. The one thing I think is absolutely essential that isn't mentioned and is never mentioned by anybody in the reformist camp is the necessity of prohibiting government involvement of any kind in schooling or anything else having to do with forming thoughts, opinions or beliefs. No matter who is in charge, be it Aristotle, Pythagoras, Isaac Newton or Erasmus, they won't always be in charge, and the forces of coercion will always seek control. All compulsion should be eliminated. Certainly there will be parents that don't send their children to school or teach them themselves, but there always have been and always will be unfit parents. Compulsory schooling has always been about teaching children the “right” things, not about education.

This is a book that will be appreciated by anybody interested in the social, cultural, educational and intellectual collapse of society and its possible remedy.

Satan's Workshop

Hardly a week goes by that there isn't a story about some kind of lunacy or depravity being peddled by the government school establishment. Some of it is crazy in an amusing sort of way if you aren't the victim, such as the boy who got suspended for biting a pastry into the form of a gun, even though it looked nothing like a gun.

Many other things are pernicious, such as countermanding the moral authority of the parents and teaching the children things that they find abhorrent. Several years ago there was a controversy over some books called Daddy's Roommate and Heather Has Two Mommies. These were blatant homosexual propaganda, but today they are used in many schools even if the parents object. Why this is even a subject to be taught in school would be a mystery were it not for its social engineering purpose.

Massachusetts has blazed new horizons in insanity by asserting that students are to be treated as the sex they claim to be, not their chromosomal sex. What is this but teaching mental illness? If a white student claims that he is black, is he to be accommodated? The “transracial” student would actually be on firmer ground since there would be no chromosomal difference.

What could damage a child more than teaching him that perception is reality? In later life, the person might think he has money in the bank that isn't there. Is the bank going to acquiesce to his perception or give him a jolt of reality?

A few years ago, I was walking back from lunch with a friend of mine, Chris Mileto, and pontificating about how government schools were bad and should be eliminated. He summed it up very succinctly by saying “The public schools are the workshop of Satan.” Many people know this in some form, but think that they can reform the schools or get rid of the bad people running things and everything will be fine. It won't be.

I have never heard any “reformer” say that compulsory schooling is the problem. The government has no business or authority compelling parents to send their children to school. Does the government have the authority to compel a certain diet? How about gym classes or dancing lessons? Almost anybody can see a problem with compulsory church attendance, but compulsory schooling has been around so long that people see nothing wrong with it. No amount of reform will solve the problem. Once compulsion is removed, all authority over curriculum evaporates, and voila, diversity in education. Diversity is the highest good, right? Why not a little diversity in thought?

Hilaire Belloc pointed out the problem eighty-four years ago in a book called Survivals and New Arrivals.

“A universal and compulsory system of instruction has for its first and main effect uniformity. It produces to a pattern. It fills the millions of a nation (at the age when the mind is being fixed) with one set of ideas to the exclusion of others. No mere limited freedom of choice in text-books and teachers can prevent this effect, when the whole system is subject to State regulation, super­vision, examination and test..... It is not the particular form of the system, it is its universal character which is of this effect. On reflection we see that it must be so. A body of national teachers will come into being and will be informed with a corporate spirit. They will be trained all in much the same fashion to the same fixed “standards” and with the same ends in view. They will teach under the shadow of a vast bureaucracy and to ends set them by an army of inspectors, examiners and department officials.

You have, therefore, here one essential condition of the "Modern Mind"; its lack of diversity; its mechanical deadness.....

Universal Compulsory Instruction contains also on its compulsory side, as well as in the matter of its uni­versality, a force making for the creation of the "Modern Mind." Compulsion, long continued, breeds acceptance; and the acceptance without question of such authority as it meets - especially that of print - 'blind faith" we have said, "divorced from reason" - is a very mark of the "Modern Mind."

.... The Parent does not choose his child's instructor nor the nature of his teaching, both are imposed by the Civil Authority. The child goes daily to and from that institution, has its whole life coloured by it, knows that its attendance is not an order of its parents but a public command enforced by the Police.... It is at once teaching and law, and those subjected to it are inoculated from their earliest years with a paralysis in the faculty of distinction - of clarity in thought through analysis. Look around you and note the incapacity for strict argument, the impatience with exact definition, the aversion to controversy (mother of all truth) and the facility in mere affirmation. Herein lies their root.”

Although he was talking about England, the same result would occur anywhere. George Orwell wrote about "Thought Police", but there is very little need for thought police when the state is teaching the citizen almost from infancy what to think.

Leonard Read was the first person I ever read who argued against compulsory schooling. When the idea of abolishing compulsory schooling is first encountered, it sounds crazy to almost everybody because of its long practice. It is the taproot of everything that is wrong with American schools.

The schools don't need to be reformed, they need to be abolished and the state needs to be forbidden any authority over teaching whatsoever.

Frederick Douglass And Modern Slavery

Drapetomania was a supposed mental disorder that caused slaves to run away from their masters. Anyone paying attention to the emigration of many Americans to freer countries might think that drapetomania is striking the wealthier classes.

A man who knew something about drapetomania - in fact he had it, even if undiagnosed - was Frederick Douglass. After his escape he wrote a short autobiography titled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. His narrative is of interest not just because of its first hand account of slavery, but because of the insights he relates that are applicable to many people today.
Many people realize that the government they live under is a criminal organization, but will jump to its defense when some foreigner criticizes the actions or policies of their government.

Douglass relates how slaves would argue about whose master was greatest even though they might hate their master.  

"The same traits of character might be seen in Colonel Lloyd's slaves, as are seen in the slaves of the political parties..... Indeed, it is not uncommon for slaves even to fall out and quarrel among themselves about the relative goodness of their masters, each contending for the superior goodness of his own over that of the others. At the very same time, they mutually execrate their masters when viewed separately. It was so on our plantation. When Colonel Lloyd's slaves met the slaves of Jacob Jepson, they seldom parted without a quarrel about their masters; Colonel Lloyd's slaves contending that he was the richest, and Mr. Jepson's slaves that he was the smartest, and most of a man. Colonel Lloyd's slaves would boast his ability to buy and sell Jacob Jepson. Mr. Jepson's slaves would boast his ability to whip Colonel Lloyd. These quarrels would almost always end in a fight between the parties, and those that whipped were supposed to have gained the point at issue. They seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was transferable to themselves. It was considered as being bad enough to be a slave; but to be a poor man's slave was deemed a disgrace indeed!"

The issue of transferability is evident in people bragging about their country, school or football team as though they are bathed in some kind of reflected glory from the entity in question. 

An incident that illustrates how slave owners and governments can brook no disobedience is related in the account of the murder of a slave named Demby. Mr Gore, the overseer, shot Demby in the head for disobedience.  

"He was asked by Colonel Lloyd and my old master, why he resorted to this extraordinary expedient. His reply was, (as well as I can remember,) that Demby had become unmanageable. He was setting a dangerous example to the other slaves,-one which, if suffered to pass without some such demonstration on his part, would finally lead to the total subversion of all rule and order upon the plantation."

This is probably why dissidents such as Sophie Scholl, Cardinal Mindszenty and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn are celebrated here, but indigenous protesters or dissidents are not.

Learning to read was viewed by Douglass as the road to freedom, but government schools have blunted the efficacy of this for many people by teaching them very early lots of erroneous or incomplete information.

"Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read....I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty-to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the least expected it. Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had gained from my master. Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read."

Government schooling is probably the greatest mechanism of control yet discovered. It is the modern equivalent of enforced illiteracy. Reading is fine as long as you don't read the wrong things. This is why the internet is a lethal menace to government's organized ignorance.

Almost everyone has heard the phrase "bread and circuses" to describe the method used by Rome to keep the populace pacified, but it works in almost any setting and with any people.

"This will be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves spend those [holi]days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their ending as of their beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation. For instance, the slaveholders not only like to see the slave drink of his own accord, but will adopt various plans to make him drunk. One plan is, to make bets on their slaves, as to who can drink the most whisky without getting drunk; and in this way they succeed in getting whole multitudes to drink to excess. Thus, when the slave asks for virtuous freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his ignorance, cheats him with a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully labelled with the name of liberty. The most of us used to drink it down, and the result was just what might be supposed; many of us were led to think that there was little to choose between liberty and slavery. We felt, and very properly too, that we had almost as well be slaves to man as to rum. So, when the holidays ended, we staggered up from the filth of our wallowing, took a long breath, and marched to the field,-feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go, from what our master had deceived us into a belief was freedom, back to the arms of slavery."

When someone tries to keep the fruits of his labor or escape government control, he is denounced as a "tax cheat" or just an over all ungrateful traitor, the same as with a slave who tries unsuccessfully to escape. Douglass attempted an escape with some other slaves, but was thwarted because of someone reporting the plan. In typical fashion, he was the bad guy for not appreciating his station in life.

 "... Betsy Freeland, mother of William Freeland, came to the door with her hands full of biscuits, and divided them between Henry and John. She then delivered herself of a speech, to the following effect:-addressing herself to me, she said, "~You devil! You yellow devil!~ it was you that put it into the heads of Henry and John to run away. But for you, you long-legged mulatto devil! Henry nor John would never have thought of such a thing." I made no reply, and was immediately hurried off towards St. Michael's."

While still a slave, Douglass had a lesson in income taxation. He had learned the trade of caulking ships and was working in a shipyard making six to nine dollars a week. His master imposed a 99 percent tax on his wages.

"I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and fifty cents per day. I contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully my own; yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to deliver every cent of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because he earned it,-not because he had any hand in earning it,-not because I owed it to him,-nor because he possessed the slightest shadow of a right to it; but solely because he had the power to compel me to give it up. The right of the grim-visaged pirate upon the high seas is exactly the same."

Later on he says that he was sometimes given six cents out of the six dollars, so he wasn't taxed at 100 percent. He might also have been reminded of all the services and conveniences and freedom that were being provided by his master. After his escape, he got a job and describes the satisfaction of how it felt to keep all his earnings, something modern slaves aren't allowed to do.

"It was the first work, the reward of which was to be entirely my own. There was no Master Hugh standing ready, the moment I earned the money, to rob me of it. I worked that day with a pleasure I had never before experienced."

There are lots of books and articles about how to flee the country, get your assets out and where to settle in relative peace and freedom, but one thing hard to overcome even if you have the means to leave, is family and friends.

"It is my opinion that thousands would escape from slavery, who now remain, but for the strong cords of affection that bind them to their friends. The thought of leaving my friends was decidedly the most painful thought with which I had to contend. The love of them was my tender point, and shook my decision more than all things else" 

A man writing in 1845 was obviously not writing for readers of today, but many of the same dilemmas are confronted by modern people who are trying to get from under the oppressor's boot.

A man like Douglass could not have imagined the degree of control imposed by modern governments. It's not too far-fetched to see the day when paychecks will be direct-deposited to the IRS, and producers sent the balance by the IRS. Or maybe all debits would be handled by the IRS and anything they didn't approve of would be disallowed. This would make it difficult for modern slaves to flee if they should contract drapetomania.

Not Enough Government

Is there any problem for which more government is not the solution? I have noticed signs appearing everywhere warning that chubbiness is not a cute attribute in children. I think these are erected by some private group, but I have no doubt that even if this is a private "educational" campaign, pretty soon it's going to become my responsibility to remedy the "problem" or "crisis" of childhood chubbiness. After all, "we" can't have children getting fat because we're all responsible for everybody else's health.

With the passage of socialized medical care we now have an excuse to horn in on everybody's behavior. Every malady - real or imagined - becomes a collective problem, or "challenge" as they like to say nowadays.

Are you a dope addict or a drunk who has ruined your health with intemperate behavior? Don't worry, we're all responsible for your expenses and treatment. Picked up a venereal disease down at the waterfront bar? That's everybody's responsibility too, and not only is treatment a collective obligation, but we must have "education" to teach people how to avoid catching something that has been known about for thousands of years.

Knowing the way government programs always develop mission creep, pretty soon we're going to have to pay for psychological counseling for women whose looks are deteriorating or guys that are going bald. Maybe men can be issued a voucher for free treatments at the Hair Club For Men and women can get a subsidized membership in Curves. This sounds far fetched now, but pretty soon it will be a "right."

Not to suggest any pernicious ideas, but why is schooling free until you get to college at which time you have to start paying for it? I realize that no education takes place in most of these schools, but since that's the supposed reason for their existence, why should it stop at grade 12? Maybe you want to get a doctorate in Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame - shouldn't your freedom from want (one of FDRs Four Freedoms) allow you to study or "explore" this at tax-victim expense?

Whenever a new program is proposed or introduced and has the effect that the opponents predicted, the reply is always that things would be much worse if said program had not been instituted. When sex education was imposed in spite of vigorous objections, it ended up having the results that the nay-sayers predicted, but the answer from the educrats was that things would have been much worse without it.

The same was true of the financial disaster. The crash wasn't caused by know-nothings monkeying around with the economy - no-  total ruin was averted by the prudent measures taken by omnicompetent bureaucrats to right the mistakes of private parties.

The government and the news organizations are in a meretricious relationship, and it never fails that we are instructed in the proper interpretation of events. Several years ago, when the government was trying to gin up AIDS hysteria, Magic Johnson became a vehicle to use in the effort. There were pronouncements that "Now we know that anybody can get AIDS."  Probably just about everybody already knew that without being told.
The annual flu scare is starting now so you had better rush out and get a flu shot because the CDC says that you should.

With the aforementioned passage of socialized medicine the government now has an excuse to meddle in almost every conceivable activity. Diet is the most obvious area open for control since everybody has to stay healthy so we don't cause any unnecessary expenses, but what about auto maintenance? If you're driving around with bald tires or defective brakes you might wreck or cause someone else to - better have some mandatory auto inspections.

Perhaps you have unrecognized health hazards at your house - dirty air filters on your HVAC system, pathogens lurking in your carpet, bugs, rats, moldy shower curtain, combustible materials near an ignition source, improperly secured swimming pool, over-temp refrigerator, cat walking on counter tops, ad infinitum.

At the grocery, maybe they can program the scanner to calculate the fat, salt, sugar, alcohol and caffeine content of the items scanned and forbid the sale at a certain aggregate. You could be required to enter the number of people you were buying for so the machine could compensate - crazy, I know, but you can never out-crazy the government. Putting government in charge of medical services really does give it an all purpose excuse to forbid or mandate just about anything. It won't happen immediately, but it won't be at snail's pace either. When you go in for any reason, the "medical professional" (now a government agent) will be able to perform a drug test to see if you're endangering your health. Maybe every office can have a police precinct to haul violators to jail. It's all our business now. With government control of health, there is absolutely nothing that is none of its business. As the saying goes, "He that pays the piper calls the tune."

This health bill is going to be found to have all kinds of "penumbras" and "emanations" associated with it.
It really turns the keys to the Temple over to government.

Forty years ago, who would have thought that in just a few years the government would be telling you what kind of windows to put in your house, or what the picket spacing should be on your railings, the acceptable measurements for the rise and run of stairs, flow rates for toilets and shower heads, the required surface area of handrails, what kind of light bulbs are allowed, acceptable door widths, counter heights, switch heights and on and on? Some places prescribe the maximum allowable height for grass.

There is no subject about which government doesn't judge its competence superior to all others. This would be crazy even if the smartest people went into government employment, but they don't. Whenever there is a disaster of some kind there will be the usual "investigation" and the findings are always going to be a "failure" of some private person or entity.  It's never going to be found that there was too much regulation or that the existing regulations contributed to the problem.

Some children are smarter than others, at least that's the way it was when I was in school, but now it's believed that if we just have the right teachers, books, audio visual aids, class size, uniforms, school year length, metal detectors, hall marshals and on and on, we can get equal outcomes. It is never going to be admitted that some people are race horses, some plow mules, some mustangs and some jackasses.

This is because the jackasses are in charge.

Contagious Passivity

There was a story recently about a six-year-old girl being molested by a TSA stooge while the parents looked on "helplessly." This is a perfect example of what Edward S. Herman called "normalizing the unthinkable."
He says:

"Doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on "normalization." This is the process whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as "the way things are done."

Anybody living in the U.S. has to have noticed an acceleration of this trend. If these parents had been told five years ago that soon the TSA would be legally molesting children, they would probably have called you crazy. The unthinkable is rapidly becoming normalized and if you object, you're some kind of paranoid kook.

Americans might not be any more timid and sheep-like than other people, but they seem to accept any outrage if it's supposedly for their safety or to fight terrorism, or back in the old days; to fight Communism. Any bogeyman will do to justify asserting ever-increasing control over the land of the free and the home of the brave.

One of the ways - perhaps the primary way - in which this attitude is inculcated is through government schooling. Many people have written about the dangers of allowing  government to indoctrinate the youth. The first person I ever read that took up an intransigent position against government schooling was Hilaire Belloc. Belloc of course is long dead and when he was writing most of his readers probably thought he was seeing imaginary dangers. More recently I ran across arguments by Sheldon Richman, Marshall Fritz, Jacob Hornberger and others who argued for a separation of school and state. They have moved public opinion closer to seeing that putting government in charge of thought is a bad thing.

This seems much more important than fighting battles against the TSA, EPA, FDA, or any of the other evil and intrusive alphabet agencies. As long as the government is in control of forming the minds of the youth, fighting all these other battles is like trying to purify a stream downstream from a sewage dump. Get rid of the cause and the effect will go away. This does not mean that all people will be clear-thinking if we can just get rid of government control of schooling, but it will eliminate a disease-causing agent.

Walter Karp wrote an article for Harper's Magazine back in 1985 called Why Johnny Can't Think, that illustrates perfectly the problem with government schooling. The problem is not just with the schools, but also with the textbooks. Private schools and homeschooling are miles ahead of the Hitler Youth atmosphere of government schools, but the books are geared mainly to government customers. A friend told me that the first inkling he had that he'd been brainwashed was when he started reading about WW II armored engagements and found that most of the action was between Russia and Germany. He had not heard anything about the Russian front in school.

Teaching error is not the only problem with government control of schooling (schooling is not education and teachers are not "educators") and probably not the most important one. The government-run Day Prisons that are presented as schools induce a sort of gullibility and a contagious timidity in the inmates. After twelve years of being told to be quiet, stop chewing gum, stop running, no smoking, do this, don't do that; a student has about as much ability to think independently as an organ grinder's monkey. For all the blabber about thinking outside the box, that's the last thing that schools want in their students.

The outrages perpetrated by the TSA and other government agencies are bad, but they can be reversed at the stroke of a pen. The damage inflicted by the schools is probably in most cases irreversible.

Destroying The Mind

 A recent story about a Warden of a Chicago Day Prison prohibiting the inmates from bringing their lunches from home has people in an uproar. It is indeed evil and presumptuous to arrogate to yourself authority over other people's children, but this has been happening for years; why the outrage over this instance?

Children in the government-run day prisons are all now effectively wards of the state, with the parents being relegated to providing a place to sleep and some food and clothing. For years the parents have been thwarted in their efforts to determine what their children are taught. If the parents don't approve of sex education or the political slant of various courses, it's tough luck.

What is more important - what is put into the mind or what is put into the body? It is much easier to correct maladies of the body than of the mind. If someone is taught a demonstrable error - such as two plus two equals five - it is much easier to correct that than if they are taught something like the idea that people in the time of Columbus thought the earth was flat. They in fact did not think it was flat, but I was taught this as a child and I have no doubt they're still teaching children this nonsense. We were also taught that Juan Ponce de Leon was looking for the fountain of youth, which he wasn't. It is very hard to disabuse someone of something like this that "everybody knows." A more recurring example is probably that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation.

Government schools have probably never been about educating anybody since most people can't be educated anyway. I don't know that I've ever met an educated person, but if so, they have been few and far between.
Even back in the time of Marcus Aurelius, he could write: 
"From my grandfather Verus I learned good morals and the government of my temper.
 
From the reputation and remembrance of my father, modesty and a manly character.

From my mother, piety and beneficence, and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich.

From my great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally."

It appears as though the Emperor's concerns were weighted more toward intellectual matters than dietary.

Whenever I see the yellow paddy wagons disgorging the inmates from the day prisons, I cringe to think how difficult it will be for them to ever attain a grasp of reality.What is being fed them in the cafeteria is not nearly as pernicious as what is being fed into their minds.

Parents should fear those that can destroy the mind more than those who harm the body. The body is easier to repair and is of little value when operated by a diseased mind.