What a viscous circle. We don’t want them educated because we can’t pull the wool over their eyes. They shouldn’t be allowed to vote because they aren’t educated.
Then the states decide what is to be taught but it’s way too left leaning and even babies are being indoctrinated! Education isn’t liberal leftist rhetoric, it’s just enlighte…
What a viscous circle. We don’t want them educated because we can’t pull the wool over their eyes. They shouldn’t be allowed to vote because they aren’t educated.
Then the states decide what is to be taught but it’s way too left leaning and even babies are being indoctrinated! Education isn’t liberal leftist rhetoric, it’s just enlightenment.
The conservative group doing a number on the school district where I work is not the majority view. But they are taking over! I’m sure they believe they know what is best for the misguided souls. I might be out of a job for saying things like people are mammals! It’s why we have to vote in local elections. To be heard!
"For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”
You should see the GOP attacks on public education in Kentucky. It's exactly the same thing that RR started. Cut funding to Education. Then sell the 'right to work ' laws to break unions. Without critical thinking, people don't vote in their own best interest
Yep! We have the “right to work” law here in Texas too! We have teacher associations instead of unions. Which are basically insurance companies to protect teachers from administrators and parents alike.
Voter suppression is well documented in Texas. But the republicans keep voting for the things that don’t benefit them anyway! The reason is usually it’s the way we’ve always done things. But who knows, we’re gerrymandered out the wazoo! The votes do not reflect the majority, just the republicans.
I’m a broken record and probably people avoid me, but vote vote vote!
Here in NH, we have a Repub quadrafecta (Gov, House, Senate, and Executive Council. The last is an advisory board. We now have a RTW bill in process too.
My daughter and I were talking recently, wondering how in the world 2 states, about the same size, similar geography, similar origins, similar issues, adjacent to each other could be so different when it came to values and legal systems. Neither of us had to name the states- we both knew we were talking about Vermont and New Hampshire. No matter how much we read the history and follow the present, it makes no sense. If New England ever seceded, we'd have to figure out a way to leave NH behind. (This is not a serious proposition; more a New England joke. Or perhaps wishful thinking....)
In Europe, too, there are very active groups now championing what amounts to a re-creation of Salazar’s Estado Novo regime which kept the country preserved in aspic for 42 years until 1974; or, if we are more fortunate, something more like De Valera’s Ireland, in which change becomes more viscous (yes) and fly-papery while every possible means is used to extend the outreach of religion-as-social-control. I’ve just received a petition emanating from a Polish women’s group opposing the candidature as Judge at the European Court of Human Rights of one Aleksander Stępkowski, said to be the founder of an association called Ordo Iuris with policies reported to include a total ban on abortion, action against sexual minorities reminiscent of Nazi judenfrei zones, the criminalization of sex education, a restriction of or ban on divorce and withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention of 2011 (Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence) which Erdogan’s Turkey intends to renege on, while the Polish Sejm is now debating similar action, an interesting correspondence between different users of religion as politics—see:
The trouble is that the defenders of a fossilized social order grounded in identity myths are in reality promoters of systematized hypocrisy and endemic disorder. They seem to have been shoehorned into America’s judiciary, while in Poland the far-right government has taken the opposite line, purging the judiciary…
Peter, the situation in Poland and the eastern European zone that lies between (and has been historically contested over by) Germany, Austria, and Russia is becoming scarier and scarier. And many of these nations are members of the EU, which gives the would-be and actual autocrats political cover. In the meantime, there are riots in Belfast, apparently initiated mostly by "Loyalists" (pro-UK, anti-Unionists) who object to the closer associations of NI with the Rep of Ireland and the creation of trade barriers between NI and the UK--the direct result of Brexit. It would seem that we are back to 1975 again.
Ah, the old autocratic empires -- who knew we'd miss them so much? Despite much inequality and injustice, the Hohenzollerns, Romanovs, Habsburgs, Ottomans all managed to limit ethnic/internal conflicts until things began deteriorating in the late 19C. In many ways the legacies of Great War matter more than those of WW2. The former settled many important issues, but those who felt victimized, and didn't accept the results of 1918-19, gave us another, still worse global conflagration. Then communist regimes embalmed ethno-national problems for a half century, which were unleashed again after the Cold War.
You may if you like call this sympathizing with the enemy, but as far as I'm concerned it means know-your-enemy and feel for said "enemy" as a human being, even if he or she behaves like something straight out of hell... I've just added another comment about the origins of much violent resistance to change...
Unless we have a little more fellow-feeling for those who cause us and the world so much trouble, we'll never get anywhere in developing a sane relationship with them.
A hearty No Thank You to any rehabilitation of Salazar, whose regime oppressed Portugal for decades and committed countless atrocities in Africa. Watching the European fascists rise again from their graves is far more frightening than the scariest zombie flick.
B Davidson, In the Eye of the Storm
M Dhada, The Portuguese Massacre of Wiriyamu in Colonial Mozambique
Peter, unfortunately I'm not sure that the Chief Justice of the ECHR can reject national nominations. There have been loonies in the past on this and all other Euro Courts in Brussels and Luxembourg.
But Stuart, I don't know, but you may be quite right about ECHR nominations, which is why Polish women are resisting this one; but aren't you confusing EU institutions with the older postwar Council of Europe ones?
true Peter, i only know the former well. Image the political turmoil if the nomination is refused...akin to the battle over "rule of law" budgetary criteria recently which ended with the usual "fudge" and non-application of any such parliamentary impositions!
Remember that interview of the son of David Dukes, KKK, where he was being groomed to be the next leader one day. He said that he went away to uni and his new friends could not believe his racist, supremacy views. They gently guided him, educated him and he left the KKK. Education is what should be supreme as well as humbling.
Penelope, I do believe in the ability of human beings to change: I've seen it happen, in people of all ages. The question is not merely education, but how a person becomes ready to open up to a way of thinking he/she/they are unaccustomed to. It sounds as if Duke's son perhaps had already begun questioning his father, and the people at his school were able to exert care in exposing him to new ways of thinking. I wonder how we can encourage this kind of approach. I see so many posts (here and elsewhere) that simply use a bludgeon.
And there is the other side: I knew an intelligent woman who, out of an emotional needs to belong I suppose, or a need for structure, let herself get sucked into a fundamentalist evangelical pseudo-Christian cult. It was one of the weirdest groups I've ever met. My neighbor was a student in a highly regarded college at the time, graduated cum laude, but only because she was able to create papers that had internal consistency while not reflecting what was going on in the world at all. And her degree was in art.
Years later she left the cult without realizing until afterward that she had been in a cult. Everything she has done since has been with the same ferver she brought to her involvement in the cult, even things that have nothing to do with cult-like characteristics. This does not appear to be the result of lack of training in critical thinking, but it seems just the opposite: the underpinnings of her thinking do not allow her to test the results of her reasoning.
Yow, Denise! What state do you live in, where you see conservatives taking over the local school boards and you worry that your job would be at risk if you stated publicly that humans are mammals?
What a viscous circle. We don’t want them educated because we can’t pull the wool over their eyes. They shouldn’t be allowed to vote because they aren’t educated.
Then the states decide what is to be taught but it’s way too left leaning and even babies are being indoctrinated! Education isn’t liberal leftist rhetoric, it’s just enlightenment.
The conservative group doing a number on the school district where I work is not the majority view. But they are taking over! I’m sure they believe they know what is best for the misguided souls. I might be out of a job for saying things like people are mammals! It’s why we have to vote in local elections. To be heard!
Thank you Heather! For continuing to enlighten!
Orwell. 1984. Summed it up well.
"For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”
You should see the GOP attacks on public education in Kentucky. It's exactly the same thing that RR started. Cut funding to Education. Then sell the 'right to work ' laws to break unions. Without critical thinking, people don't vote in their own best interest
Yep! We have the “right to work” law here in Texas too! We have teacher associations instead of unions. Which are basically insurance companies to protect teachers from administrators and parents alike.
Voter suppression is well documented in Texas. But the republicans keep voting for the things that don’t benefit them anyway! The reason is usually it’s the way we’ve always done things. But who knows, we’re gerrymandered out the wazoo! The votes do not reflect the majority, just the republicans.
I’m a broken record and probably people avoid me, but vote vote vote!
Here in NH, we have a Repub quadrafecta (Gov, House, Senate, and Executive Council. The last is an advisory board. We now have a RTW bill in process too.
My daughter and I were talking recently, wondering how in the world 2 states, about the same size, similar geography, similar origins, similar issues, adjacent to each other could be so different when it came to values and legal systems. Neither of us had to name the states- we both knew we were talking about Vermont and New Hampshire. No matter how much we read the history and follow the present, it makes no sense. If New England ever seceded, we'd have to figure out a way to leave NH behind. (This is not a serious proposition; more a New England joke. Or perhaps wishful thinking....)
The state bird of New Hampshire is the black fly.
My daughter and her family live in KY. I follow KY politics from the other side of the state line. Depressing.
And without fair and decent education people don’t learn to think critically.
Ditto in Florida.
In Europe, too, there are very active groups now championing what amounts to a re-creation of Salazar’s Estado Novo regime which kept the country preserved in aspic for 42 years until 1974; or, if we are more fortunate, something more like De Valera’s Ireland, in which change becomes more viscous (yes) and fly-papery while every possible means is used to extend the outreach of religion-as-social-control. I’ve just received a petition emanating from a Polish women’s group opposing the candidature as Judge at the European Court of Human Rights of one Aleksander Stępkowski, said to be the founder of an association called Ordo Iuris with policies reported to include a total ban on abortion, action against sexual minorities reminiscent of Nazi judenfrei zones, the criminalization of sex education, a restriction of or ban on divorce and withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention of 2011 (Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence) which Erdogan’s Turkey intends to renege on, while the Polish Sejm is now debating similar action, an interesting correspondence between different users of religion as politics—see:
https://visegradpost.com/en/2021/03/24/marek-jurek-yes-to-family-no-to-gender-a-citizens-bill-for-poland-to-pull-out-of-the-istanbul-convention/ and https://www.euronews.com/2021/04/01/istanbul-convention-poland-moves-a-step-closer-to-quitting-domestic-violence-treaty
Also: http://en.ordoiuris.pl/who-we-are
The trouble is that the defenders of a fossilized social order grounded in identity myths are in reality promoters of systematized hypocrisy and endemic disorder. They seem to have been shoehorned into America’s judiciary, while in Poland the far-right government has taken the opposite line, purging the judiciary…
Peter, the situation in Poland and the eastern European zone that lies between (and has been historically contested over by) Germany, Austria, and Russia is becoming scarier and scarier. And many of these nations are members of the EU, which gives the would-be and actual autocrats political cover. In the meantime, there are riots in Belfast, apparently initiated mostly by "Loyalists" (pro-UK, anti-Unionists) who object to the closer associations of NI with the Rep of Ireland and the creation of trade barriers between NI and the UK--the direct result of Brexit. It would seem that we are back to 1975 again.
Ah, the old autocratic empires -- who knew we'd miss them so much? Despite much inequality and injustice, the Hohenzollerns, Romanovs, Habsburgs, Ottomans all managed to limit ethnic/internal conflicts until things began deteriorating in the late 19C. In many ways the legacies of Great War matter more than those of WW2. The former settled many important issues, but those who felt victimized, and didn't accept the results of 1918-19, gave us another, still worse global conflagration. Then communist regimes embalmed ethno-national problems for a half century, which were unleashed again after the Cold War.
D Fromkin, A Peace to End all Peace
R Gerwareth, The Vanquished
K Lowe, The Fear and the Freedom
M Mazower, Dark Continent
D Reynolds, The Long Shadow
T Snyder, Bloodlands
You may if you like call this sympathizing with the enemy, but as far as I'm concerned it means know-your-enemy and feel for said "enemy" as a human being, even if he or she behaves like something straight out of hell... I've just added another comment about the origins of much violent resistance to change...
Unless we have a little more fellow-feeling for those who cause us and the world so much trouble, we'll never get anywhere in developing a sane relationship with them.
Admittedly, a horribly difficult challenge.
A hearty No Thank You to any rehabilitation of Salazar, whose regime oppressed Portugal for decades and committed countless atrocities in Africa. Watching the European fascists rise again from their graves is far more frightening than the scariest zombie flick.
B Davidson, In the Eye of the Storm
M Dhada, The Portuguese Massacre of Wiriyamu in Colonial Mozambique
Peter, unfortunately I'm not sure that the Chief Justice of the ECHR can reject national nominations. There have been loonies in the past on this and all other Euro Courts in Brussels and Luxembourg.
I might add that I spent a year coaching the Justices of the European Court of Justice in collective decision-making and team management.
But Stuart, I don't know, but you may be quite right about ECHR nominations, which is why Polish women are resisting this one; but aren't you confusing EU institutions with the older postwar Council of Europe ones?
true Peter, i only know the former well. Image the political turmoil if the nomination is refused...akin to the battle over "rule of law" budgetary criteria recently which ended with the usual "fudge" and non-application of any such parliamentary impositions!
Remember that interview of the son of David Dukes, KKK, where he was being groomed to be the next leader one day. He said that he went away to uni and his new friends could not believe his racist, supremacy views. They gently guided him, educated him and he left the KKK. Education is what should be supreme as well as humbling.
Penelope, I do believe in the ability of human beings to change: I've seen it happen, in people of all ages. The question is not merely education, but how a person becomes ready to open up to a way of thinking he/she/they are unaccustomed to. It sounds as if Duke's son perhaps had already begun questioning his father, and the people at his school were able to exert care in exposing him to new ways of thinking. I wonder how we can encourage this kind of approach. I see so many posts (here and elsewhere) that simply use a bludgeon.
And there is the other side: I knew an intelligent woman who, out of an emotional needs to belong I suppose, or a need for structure, let herself get sucked into a fundamentalist evangelical pseudo-Christian cult. It was one of the weirdest groups I've ever met. My neighbor was a student in a highly regarded college at the time, graduated cum laude, but only because she was able to create papers that had internal consistency while not reflecting what was going on in the world at all. And her degree was in art.
Years later she left the cult without realizing until afterward that she had been in a cult. Everything she has done since has been with the same ferver she brought to her involvement in the cult, even things that have nothing to do with cult-like characteristics. This does not appear to be the result of lack of training in critical thinking, but it seems just the opposite: the underpinnings of her thinking do not allow her to test the results of her reasoning.
To be heard yes, not to be "herded"
Yow, Denise! What state do you live in, where you see conservatives taking over the local school boards and you worry that your job would be at risk if you stated publicly that humans are mammals?
(She mentioned-TX)
Thanks, Barbara. You're right. She did mention Texas in a comment to herself, below the one I replied to. I should have dug a little deeper. Thanks!