Author Archives: Ron Lipsman

Quoting Obama as We Fly Off the Fiscal Cliff

fiscalcliffMany pundits on both sides of the spectrum postulate that we’re going to plunge off the fiscal cliff in part because that is what Obama wants us to do. But too little ink has been devoted to an explanation of why he would harbor that desire. The answer is contained in his most memorable phrase – one whose precise meaning is almost never examined carefully by the American public

On October 31, 2008, Barack Obama declared: ‘We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.’ Actually, despite his reputation for eloquence, the President has uttered precious few memorable phrases. But the 2008 utterance was indeed memorable. Why? It does not appear that anyone has ever asked him to clarify exactly what transformation he envisioned. From what to what? By what means? And to what effect?

The Left was content that one of their own would occupy the White House and surely, after policies advocated by the new president were implemented, America would look more like the statist, redistributionist, multi-cultural, multi-lateral, Euro-style social welfare state of which they dreamed. The Right understood the remark in exactly the same manner – but in place of joy at the prospect, they were filled with foreboding. However, a huge percentage of Americans – presumably in the middle politically – paid the quote little mind except as it saw Obama’s election heralding the advent of a post-racial, post-partisan, cool new administration, about which they were quite pleased. Those people didn’t give the political ramifications a second thought. And so, amazingly, Obama was not asked to explicate the altered nature of America that he envisioned and which he was determined to bring about.

Even more amazingly, four years later – now that the vision is abundantly clear – a plurality of America is either not paying attention or subscribes to the vision. Furthermore, the vision is brought closer by falling off the cliff. For the vision certainly involves: far higher taxes, even greater government spending, an eviscerated military, government control of business, a ‘fairer’ distribution of wealth and a diminished America. All of which are abetted by our falling off of the fiscal cliff. So why in heaven’s name should Obama strike a deal with his Republican arch-enemies to forestall our plunge? A precipitous dive off the cliff suits his interests, promotes his vision and furthers his transformation of America. Put on your swim goggles and put in your ear plugs. We are all going to be more than a little bit poorer when we hit the water.

This article also appeared in The American Thinker at:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/12/quoting_obama_as_we_fly_off_the_fiscal_cliff_comments.html#disqus_thread

Is the Left Swallowing What Remains of Traditional America?

The results of this fall’s election have raised the alarm that the profile of the American electorate has slid unalterably to the left. The most cited reasons are: shifting demographics, an imbalance in the technical capabilities of the two parties that advantages the Democrats, and the inevitable effects of a century-long march by the Left through the country’s cultural institutions. To elaborate on the latter, the assertion is that now that the Left virtually controls all the opinion-molding organs of American society – but especially the media and the educational system, the people increasingly succumb to the progressive brainwashing to which they are subjected.

The corroborating evidence for these theories is strong: the groups who instinctively support the Left (blacks, Hispanics, single women) form an increasing proportion of the population; there is no question that the Democratic ground game, fund-raising and techno operations significantly outperformed those of the Republicans; and even a cursory acquaintance with the thoughts of the nation’s youth confirms the leftist brainwashing that permeates our schools – from kindergarten through graduate school.

And yet! The House of Representatives remains under Republican (if not conservative) control, thirty states have Republican governors and if one counts counties, the Republican majority is even more striking. However, much of this strength originates in those counties that are outside the nation’s major metropolitan areas. Therefore, the question that I would like to address here is whether those areas – where devotion to the conservative ideals of traditional America remains strong – are also being subjected to the same progressive forces that have turned America’s cities and (many of their) suburbs into leftist bastions.

I will base my analysis on personal observation. I live and work (even though I am retired) in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. The county in which I reside (Montgomery) is as left leaning as virtually any county in America. Moreover, Maryland politics are as blue as they come. We have two ultra-left Senators, an ultra-left Governor and a State legislature that has gerrymandered the State’s congressional districts so as to convert the delegation from its long-established, roughly evenly split configuration into a nearly uniform Democratic majority. One of the recently gerrymandered districts includes the two mountain counties of Western Maryland, which are rural, traditional in their culture and staunchly conservative in their politics. I own a second home in one of those counties and spend much of my time there. The local joke is that when the fiscal collapse in Annapolis and Washington – toward which the profligate spending in those two capitals is inexorably propelling us – finally occurs, we are going to dynamite the interstate in order to insulate ourselves from the chaos emanating from liberal America. Would that a solution were that simple!

However, in the last decade and a half, during my frequent sojourns in Western Maryland, I have noticed the following ominous developments. These impressions are based on my own observations and from extensive conversations with the locals who reside there more permanently:

  • The county’s school teachers and administrators, largely imported from the nation’s virulently liberal colleges of education, are increasingly left wing and have begun to inculcate the local school children with the same leftist propaganda that envelops students from all over the country.
  • Locals routinely sample the national media (movies, TV, and of course the internet) and the messages transmitted therein are very different from those emitted by increasingly scarce local radio stations.
  • The foundation of religious worship, while still strong, is not as strong as it used to be.
  • There was always some outmigration of youth as they came to adulthood, but it is more prevalent now – and even if the prodigals return, say after college, they infect the area with the more ‘cosmopolitan’ beliefs that they absorbed in their absence.
  • The homogeneity of the county – WASP, of course – while still strong, is again not as strong as it used to be. The arrival of several big box chain stores has brought in some workers who don’t fit the profile so well. This migration is not as extensive as in some rural areas – in the Midwest and Southeast, where a huge influx of ethnic minorities fleeing high unemployment in places like California has radically altered local demographics. Of course, there is no a priori reason why a change in ethnic population composition needs to entail a loss of the ideals and principles that have defined traditional America – devotion to individual liberty, confidence in free markets, belief in American exceptionalism, and reliance on a morality grounded in religion. But it is undeniable that since America changed its immigration laws fifty years ago to shift the bulk of legal immigration from Europe to third world countries, the folks who come here do not have the background in British tradition and Western Civilization that underlies those fundamental principles. They are much more susceptible to the siren call of collectivist state security rather than rugged individualism – natural fodder for the overwhelmingly leftist Democratic Party.
  • Finally, I see some signs of fatigue, demoralization and loss of confidence. There seems to be a sense that the country has moved away from the founding principles that have animated the peoples of Western Maryland. Moreover, they see themselves as somewhat out of touch with ‘mainstream’ America and they worry that the trends indicate a growing divergence.
The last bullet is, for me, the most troubling. If you feel that you are beaten, then you are beaten. Sadly, there is too much of that feeling out there in conservative, traditional America. But it is far from ubiquitous. Both in Western Maryland and across our beloved land, there are many conservatives who have not given up, who believe that America will come to its senses and cast off the quasi-socialist, America-denigrating, statist secularists who are currently running Annapolis and Washington. Is there reason for such optimism? In Western Maryland or anywhere in the US? Will the conservative cause eventually triumph and return America to its traditional moorings? Do I believe that or have I given up? Well, it depends on which side of the bed I get up on in any given day. Whichever side it is, the view is a lot better in the mountains of Western Maryland than it is in the DC suburbs.
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This article also appeared in The Intellectual Conservative at:

Mass Higher Education: Good or Bad?

 

Mass higher education refers to the phenomenon, promoted aggressively by President Obama, whereby a tremendous proportion of the eligible population enrolls in the nation’s colleges. It presumes that any American high school graduate who desires a higher education should be able to pursue one. Furthermore, it operates under the assumptions that this is a worthy goal, that such a desire should be inculcated into the youth of America and most importantly, that the vast majority of enrollees are capable – under suitably hospitable conditions – of completing a college degree.

The country has certainly embraced the movement toward mass higher education. When my generation entered college (approximately half a century ago), roughly one third of high school graduates went off to university. And that was more than triple the percentage that did likewise another fifty years earlier. Today, depending upon whether one counts two-year college enrollments, the fraction is somewhere between three-fifths and three-quarters. If the promoters of mass higher education have their way, that fraction will exceed four-fifths and perhaps approach nine-tenths within a generation.

The purpose here is to examine whether this objective is good for America or not. Before defining the phrase ‘good for America’ and then investigating whether mass higher education is indeed good for America, it is worth pointing out that the movement toward mass or universal higher education in the twenty-first century bears some resemblance – albeit with significant differences – to the nineteenth century movement to ensure that all American youth received an elementary education (at least six and often eight years of schooling) and to the twentieth century movement to require all American students to complete high school.

Few would dispute the merit of the nineteenth and twentieth century goals. Therefore, how can the drive for twenty-first century universal higher education not be an equally worthy objective for the United States?

In order to respond, let’s be clear about what it means for a major political/cultural/educational phenomenon to be good for American society. There are two aspects: the nature of the process itself and then its outcomes. To be good for America the process must be: legal, moral, accessible to all and consistent with the historically established, political/cultural mores of American society. More importantly, to be good for America, the process’s outcomes must be characterized by: increased prosperity, a more cohesive citizenry, improved moral health of the body politic and the strengthening of the fundamental principles which undergird the American experiment. If, on the other hand, the phenomenon yields: more poverty, a less competitive country in the global market, a fractured population, moral decline or other deleterious, unintended consequences, then it is hard to see how it could be deemed good for America.

So is mass higher education good for America or not? Here are some arguments in favor of a positive response:

  • Certainly the Founders believed that a well-educated citizenry was essential to the success of the Republic that they created. That’s a view that has been shared over time by the nation’s leaders and citizens. More education produces a population better able to participate fully in the nation’s political processes, better positioned to contribute to its economy and more liable to make important scientific, financial, medical or artistic discoveries that enhance the quality of everyone’s lives. Therefore, how could increasing the percentage of the population with a college education not prove a benefit to America?
  • Statistical analyses repeatedly confirm the direct correlation between the amount of formal education and total lifetime earnings. In short, more education translates into more riches.
  • The nation has passed from an industrial age to a new techno-information age. We need a better educated citizenry to both cope with changes in society the new age has wrought as well as to produce leaders who will take our society down exciting paths to be forged in the new age.
  • Education civilizes the human savage. Better educated people are, in general, less violent, more thoughtful and more disciplined than their less educated counterparts. That assertion might be difficult to justify. But, to pick a perhaps extreme example, in a study done by the National Center for Crisis Management, it was found that only 4% of serial killers were college graduates. (Roughly 23% of the population has a college degree.) Yes, college graduates do commit felonies; but it is a common perception – which probably has substantial merit – that an educated person is likely to be more ‘civilized’ than his less credentialed neighbor. He may or may not be smarter or happier, but he is better behaved.
  • Finally, it is not uncommon to hear the opinion that a well-educated person is, because of his exposure to myriad ideas and narratives, more likely to be tolerant, understanding of cultural differences among people and able to function more effectively in the polyglot nation that is the USA. Once again, it might be that a college graduate is not any happier or wiser than a high school graduate, but he brings a set of attitudes, gleaned from the college experience, that makes him a more open-minded and ecumenical citizen than his less educated counterpart, which helps him to foster a more cohesive, just and fair-minded society.

It all sounds rather impressive. But, alas, there is another side to the story. Applying the second most powerful law of nature (Einstein is reputed to have claimed that the first is compound interest), i.e., the law of unintended consequences, we encounter the following downsides of mass higher education:

  • Dumbing down and flunking out. Once upon a time, in order to earn a college degree, a student needed to have significantly above average intelligence, the willingness and capacity to work hard, healthy doses of patience and perseverance, and the ability to defer gratification. Perhaps a quarter – but likely much less – of the population possesses all those traits. Moreover, it is clear that no more than a third can have the first one – with or without the rest. So if we are going to push 75% (or more) of the youth toward a college degree, then at least one (and probably both) of the following must happen:
    • The course content required to earn a college degree will be significantly dumbed down;
    • There will be an enormous amount of dropping out, i.e., students failing to graduate.

In fact, both phenomena have been manifest for years and they will occur with increasing frequency. These eventualities will, on the one hand, drastically demean the value of a college education and, on the other, seriously demoralize and stigmatize a sizeable portion of American youth.

  • As a consequence, the American college degree is cheapened. But American higher education has been the model of an advanced education for the world . As we degrade its worth, we harm not only our youth, but also our country’s reputation. And of course, the youth we hurt the most are the nation’s most talented students as we dilute the superior product that they deserve and require.
  • We also cheapen the high school degree. We inadvertently signal its worthlessness by implying that its recipients cannot rely on it to make their way in life – it is at best a stepping stone on the path to the gateway that is really important. It is therefore no surprise that the high school dropout rate is the highest it’s been in three generations.
  • Technical and trade schools, and other vocational alternatives to college have been deemphasized in the US. These schools used to train a significant portion of our blue collar workers and para-professionals. Enrollment at such schools has dropped precipitously in recent decades because students who would have normally gone there are now encouraged to go to college.[1] The resultant constriction in the number of suitable workers has contributed to the decline of manufacturing in America?
  • The dumbing down of the American college curriculum has resulted in the proliferation of garbage courses, programs and degrees on campus. (See virtually any program that has the word ‘Studies’ in its title.) The vaunted institutions that were American universities have been turned into something more akin to a reality TV show. Of course, there is still much serious stuff on campus – e.g., in the sciences, but it is tarnished by the garbage that coexists beside it and commands equal respect.
  • In order to service the hordes of students crashing the door, the academic support staff at US universities has exploded in size. These people contribute little to the fundamental mission of the university, i.e., teaching and research. What they do is…
  • Drive costs astronomically higher. It takes a small fortune to pay and house all these useless employees. Thus, the cost for a four-year college degree is now obscene.
  • And because of that cost, students take on crushing debt to pay the freight. It is estimated that the average debt is $20,000-$25,000 per student – whether they graduate or not. One starts life with a car loan to pay off – and no car.
  • So Uncle Sam rides to the rescue with generous government loan programs. Taken together with the fact that – because most universities can’t balance their budgets with just tuition and endowment funds – academia relies critically on government grants tied to faculty research, it can be legitimately claimed that the feds have in some sense taken over higher education.
  • But that goes hand in hand with the overall leftist takeover of the culture of the university – a topic intimately familiar to readers of this journal. The near total domination of leftist thought on the vast majority of American campuses is abetted by the infusion of youthful fodder from the nation’s high schools at which liberal brainwashing is far advanced. One of the most pernicious downsides of mass higher education is that the brainwashing that commences at government schools in grades K-12 is now augmented and perfected at the university.
  • A side effect of which is the blight of affirmative action – whose need is justified by the huge influx of students, many of whom are from minority communities. The one place in American society that should be devoted to diversity of opinion, an open clash of ideas and the search for knowledge is instead dominated by racial preferences, uniform group think and willful ignorance of inconvenient truths.

In summary: five pros, eleven cons. Maybe mass higher education is not such a great idea after all. In fact, the attempt to convert the nation’s universities into diploma mills to service virtually all of the country’s youth is an intended goal of the progressives who control the educational establishment. The attempt finds favor among a large percentage of the population that is blind to the unintended consequences. If instead we retained the high level of academic achievement and personal responsibility that should be required for an individual to complete a higher education degree, then there would be more productive ways (for society) to direct many of the nation’s youth after high school. These include the military, trade schools, internships, apprenticeships, work in the family business or an entry level job in almost any business, or work for religious, charitable or other voluntary organizations. At the very least, we should recognize that too many of our youth are emotionally and socially unprepared at age 18 to seriously pursue an academic degree. Instead, many of the above alternate choices could supply young people with the maturity to pursue a degree later – when they would have a better chance of succeeding and also when they might not be as pliable in the hands of the progressives who control higher education. But I doubt that President Obama would endorse that idea.

[1] This trend has reversed very recently.
This article also appeared in The Land of the Free at:

The Math Gene: A Ticket to Wealth or Nerdiness?

To say that a person has the Math Gene[1] is to attribute to him an unusual propensity to handle numbers and the advanced algorithmic processes by which experts manipulate them. Although, among the people who possess these special talents, there is no biological or neurological evidence for any of it. And yet, those of us who exhibit these traits are easily identified among the general population.

My gene became evident at a young age and has remained conspicuous during all of my professional life. Throughout my journey, I have naturally and consciously surrounded myself with others like me. This is not surprising. Human beings always seek companions and colleagues who not only think and behave like they do, but inhabit a world of ideas, attitudes and habits similar to their own.

In fact we mathematicians stand out. We don’t think and behave like the vast majority of our fellow citizens. John Q. Public knows us when he sees us, and – at the risk of overgeneralization – here are some of the more striking of our singular characteristics:

  • We’re often socially awkward. We generally don’t pay much attention to clothes, fashion, or what’s in or hot or cool. Our homes, cars and bodies are often unkempt, and we do poorly at small talk. We tend to be introverted, soft-spoken and not terribly athletic.
  • We excel at abstract thinking, but are notoriously weak at practical affairs.
  • We are amazing problem solvers, especially those of the abstract or theoretical variety; but please don’t ask us to change a tire or balance a checkbook.
  • We sometimes find it hard to look you straight in the eye, and we are easily embarrassed when we find ourselves the center of attention.

I cannot tell you how many times in my life when, in casual conversation with someone I’ve just met, after I reveal that I am a mathematician, the reaction is: “Omigod, math was my worse subject in school; it was soooo hard. You must be a genius.” But at the same time, the one who has just uttered the confession/paean gives a furtive look at a fellow conversant which screams: “What a nerd! I wouldn’t have been like this guy for my weight in gold.”

However, in recent years, I detect another partially hidden reaction – both in stolen glances as well as in meekly asked follow up questions, like “So do you have a software or consulting company? I bet that you do OK?”

This is a result of society’s increasing fascination with technology and the seeming nerds who have pioneered its development. The names Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Sergei Brin and Mark Zuckerberg come to mind. Which leads to the question posed in the title: Is the Math Gene a ticket to wealth or nerdiness?

Alas, if there is a definitive answer, it is far closer to the latter than the former. Of the four names cited, only Brin can lay any claim to be a mathematician, and in fact his academic pedigree is more computer science than mathematics. Indeed, I know of only one academic mathematician — a former professor at Stony Brook University – who parlayed his math talent into a fortune. There might be others, but I doubt very many. For the qualities that I have identified, which characterize mathematicians, are not those that equip a person with the skills needed to acquire great wealth.

Although the depiction of Mark Zuckerberg in the opening scene of The Social Network suggests some of the math nerd characteristics that I’ve specified, it would be a mistake to suppose that those traits helped Zuckerberg to attain the phenomenal wealth that he enjoys today. No, the traits that enabled him and the other great modern technological entrepreneurs to do the things that garnered massive wealth for them were otherwise. They certainly include: extraordinary creativity and originality – as opposed to mere problem-solving skills; a willingness, indeed eagerness to take great risks; an aggressive, self-confident and strong-willed personality; persistence and single-mindedness; an ability to read people and gauge their desires; and an inclination to defy convention and a lack of concern about what others think of them.

Not exactly the characteristics of your typical mathematician. But, if I might address a wider audience than just the normal Notices’ readership: Not to despair all ye parents and grandparents of a budding mathematician. Your progeny will not be cool, not trendy, probably not a leader of men and almost certainly not rich. But a life of mathematics will yield: the satisfaction of cracking numerous mathematical puzzles; a professional life of honesty, fulfillment, a sense of doing something worthy and occasional serenity; a camaraderie with others who are similarly endowed; and the respect, if not admiration, from the people one serves.

So if your kid can swing a golf club as well as he can juggle numbers, and if you think that he would prefer riches to the contentment of a life filled with numbers, then take away his calculator and jam a putter in his hand. But if he does have the Math Gene and you encourage it to flourish, then I promise you that he will lead a life in which he enjoys what he does for a living, often feels the joy of solving problems – even if they are theoretical and not practical, and finally, through teaching and research, he will take pride and pleasure in his role in the advancement of human knowledge.
[1] The title of this essay The Math Gene is the same as the title of Keith Devlin’s fascinating 2001 book.  But the essay takes a different point of view. Whereas Devlin’s book deals with the nature of mathematical thought, the workings of the human mind, and an intricate comparison of innate mathematical ability with innate language ability; this essay deals solely with the nature and behavior of mathematicians themselves — in particular, their social manifestations and economic motivations.

This essay also appeared in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society at:

Explaining the Romney Debacle

Exploring the reasons offered for Romney’s defeat — while citing relevant words from two recent books by Gelernter and Crowley that essentially predicted it

Conservatives are stunned by the outcome of the just concluded presidential election. They had rationalized Obama’s 2008 victory as an understandable aberration by the American people. Weary of the deleterious effects of the Bush presidency (two inconclusive wars, profligate government spending, the confusing message of a supposedly conservative administration advancing big government programs and, of course, a dangerous economic meltdown); smitten by the purportedly optimistic, post-partisan, unifying message of a largely unknown and untested neophyte – aided and abetted by an adoring media; and anxious to allay once and for all its heartfelt guilt over American slavery; the people understandably engaged in a risky, indeed somewhat reckless act of installing the least qualified individual ever to occupy the Oval Office.

But after four years of: shrill partisan posturing; failed Keynesian policies that prolonged the economic crisis; weak-kneed foreign policy that heralded a sharp decline in American prestige and power; a massive expansion in the Federal debt and deficit that threatens our children and grandchildren’s prosperity; and a draconian explosion in federal regulations (including Obamacare) that are crippling American business – after all that, surely the American people would recognize the folly of their decision to entrust the presidency to an amateur, pseudo-socialist. Surely they would rectify the mistake.

Wrong! America doubled down on the wretched hand that it dealt itself in 2008.

And so the soul searching has begun. How could this happen? What is the cause? Here are the most commonly offered ‘after the fact’ explanations:

  • Demographics. The size of the groups who support the president’s leftist policies – namely, blacks, Hispanics, single women and young voters – has reached a point wherein they constitute a natural majority. This tilt will only intensify in the future.
  • Schism. The split in the Republican Party between TEA Party conservatives and more moderate establishment types depresses Republican voter turnout and, until it is resolved, it will fatally cripple Republican presidential possibilities.
  • Ground Game. The Democrats are doing a much better job of energizing their base and getting it to the polls – both in early voting and on election day.
  • Cultural Shift. The character of the American people has fundamentally changed. No longer are we the heirs of the founding generation. We have become more like our European cousins. In short, we no longer subscribe to the Founders’ principles, to wit: liberty is paramount, above equality; government should be limited, its influence superseded by that of individuals, families and communities; markets should be free, government only enforces the rules of play, it does not interfere in the game, that is, in the commerce of the people; democracy only works when it is grounded in the moral guidelines of a religious people, not because of any abstract belief in the ‘goodness of man’; and America is exceptional, a beacon of freedom to all mankind. We have reached the point wherein more than half the population believes in the precise opposite of the above five principles.

In fact, the last explanation – Cultural Shift – is decidedly not ‘after the fact.’ Furthermore, while the first three reasons all have substantial merit, I believe it is the last that is the most telling. This is because, difficult as it might be, each of the first three ‘excuses’ could be overcome. First, the demographics don’t lie. But as many have pointed out, the Hispanic and black communities are inherently conservative and with the right approach, Republicans might be able to wean them from their hypnotic obeisance to the siren call of the Left. Next, the Democratic Party has been completely captured by its left wing. What is to say that conservatives can’t take an equally firm grip on the Republican Party? Third, improving a ground game is merely a technical/logistical matter.

In the same vein, one might assert that America has had religious revivals before. Why not another that would shift the cultural foundation back to its traditional moorings? Indeed the likelihood of that is minuscule compared to the possibility of a reversal in any of the other three explanations. In fact, many cultural conservatives believe that we have already experienced an actual cultural/social collapse from which it is probably impossible to recover. Furthermore, to return to the thought at the beginning of the previous paragraph, this explanation for Romney’s defeat was not really discovered only after the election. Many conservatives had been exploring this idea in various venues – well before the election. Two excellent examples of such Cassandra-like warnings can be found in America Lite by David Gelernter and What the (Bleep) Just Happened by Monica Crowley. Both are extremely well written and well researched books. Gelernter focuses primarily on the state of higher education and the role it has played in the transformation of American society. Crowley, on the other hand, while she connects the dots to past administrations, focuses her attention largely on the Obama years and how it represents the culmination of a century-long process by which the progressive movement has subverted traditional American society.

Here are some relevant quotes from the two works. The reader may ponder, based on these trenchant observations, whether there is any hope for a preservation of America in its traditional incarnation.

Gelernter. The quality and content of the education provided is a clear indication of the quality and tendency of the democracy that provides it,” wrote Lionel Trilling in 1952. A famous report called “A Nation at Risk,” in 1983, put the nation on notice that its schools were failing. In 1987, Alan Bloom’s widely read The Closing of the American Mind told Americans that their elite colleges were grossly politicized. The facts of educational decay were intolerable and all around us, like a mountainous garbage dump across the street on a hot day, with thousands of cawing crows spiraling cynically overhead and the stench of rot invading every last cubic inch. It took a powerful act of will to ignore the state of our schools, but we summoned up the will and we did it. And are still doing it.

Those famous reports of the 1980s, and others like them, described changes that had already happened. The big change in U.S. education happened mainly during the 1970s; it was widely and reliably reported in the 1980s—and has been largely ignored ever since. For roughly thirty years we have been aware of massive, portentous changes in how we educate our youth—and we have shrugged them off. And things have only got worse. American students learn little or no history or literature or civics. “Only a third of Americans can name the three branches of government,” noted the former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor. “But 75 percent of kids can tell you American Idol judges.” We wince and move on.

So long as the educators are left-wing, the rest of the country could be 98 percent conservative and it wouldn’t matter. The left-lib blot will spread; nothing can stop it. If the educators are left-wing, the nation must fill up inexorably with graduates who are left-wing, just like their teachers.

During the 1970s, many left-wing teachers taught their political beliefs — the message of America’s own cultural revolution — to their students. Those students were the leading edge of the Airhead Army. Among this leading edge, some graduated to become teachers themselves. They handed the message on to their students. Every year saw a new group of students emerge for whom the message of the revolution seemed less like radical left-wing politics and more like simple truth. In modern America, the left gets its way not by convincing people but by indoctrinating their children.

Crowley. We’ve had all kinds in the presidency, but Obama represents a first. All previous presidents had guiding political philosophies, which they all bent—to some degree or another—when it became too difficult politically to stick to them or when the American people resoundingly rejected what they were doing. Some of them pressed on anyway, but all of them at least acknowledged the American people and registered their discontent. All previous presidents had at least some degree of responsiveness to the people they led. Not Obama. This president is driven by such a devout and fervent ideology that nothing—not big majorities of the American people, not the Constitution—can stop him. We’ve seen other transformative presidents—Lincoln, FDR, Reagan—but none of them attempted to transform the nation into something wholly unrecognizable as America—until this one.

This was the essence of Obama’s Declaration of Dependence. Instead of treating them [government programs] as temporary helping hands to only those in need, the redistributionists saw the programs as gleaming opportunities for the massive expansion of government power as well as leverage to build a permanent Democratic majority. If they could maneuver the programs into ever-growing entities that covered ever-growing numbers of people, those same people would become ever dependent on government and, therefore, ever grateful to the party and ideology that made that assistance available to them.

The redistributionists have always kept their eyes on the prize. They have played the long game. And they have carefully cloaked another truth: since the balance between government power and liberty is zero-sum, the more power the government amasses, the less liberty there is for the individual. Their massive spending is deliberate: it is a coldly calculated move to destroy the fiscal health of the country in order to justify a constantly metastasizing state. It’s like the classic 1958 horror/sci-fi flick The Blob. The Blob starts out as a tiny jellylike substance. But it quickly grows and grows, until its mass is enormous and completely uncontrollable, consuming everything in its path of destruction.”

We blindly and willingly gave the keys to the kingdom to a stranger who then blindfolded us and took us on a socialist joyride. What a long, strange trip it’s been—and not in the good Grateful Dead way. As all of the Obama weirdness and destruction unfolded, most Americans began to feel like the coed at the frat party who drinks too much wine out of a box, goes home with the guy she thinks is Ryan Reynolds, only to wake up instead with the Situation. But unlike our fictional coed, in our drunken political stupor we actually married the guy. And the divorce is going to be really, really expensive.”

The particular horror is that we are allowing the theft of freedom to be done to us by our own government. While we luxuriate in abundance, complacency, and apathy—many of us knowing nothing else—Obama and the kooks are maneuvering us quickly into bondage. Once we are truly bound, the relationship between the individual and the government will be changed irrevocably: the individual will have dwindling and ultimately meaningless “freedoms” and the people will be led toward European-style dependence; we will be an enslaved mob…If people believe they can vote themselves a raise, they will. And once that mentality finds its way into the middle class, then America as the land of the free will be history.