Come for the Politics, Stay for the Pathologies



Thursday, April 9, 2009

Goodbye Columbus

Apparently Brown University’s faculty found Christopher Columbus’s “overseas contingency planning” objectionable. Their faculty voted to replace the campus Columbus Day holiday with a “Fall Weekend,” holiday, saying:

The faculty of the Ivy League university voted at a meeting Tuesday to establish a new academic and administrative holiday in October called "Fall Weekend" that coincides with Columbus Day, but that doesn't bear the name of the explorer.

Hundreds of Brown students had asked the Providence, R.I. school to stop observing Columbus Day, saying Christopher Columbus's violent treatment of Native Americans he encountered was inconsistent with Brown's values.

Also today, Rasmussen released the results of a poll showing that only 53% of American adults think that capitalism is better than socialism. The age breakdown is predictable:

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

What do these stories have in common? Everything.

They both reflect the results of a generation of liberal-socialist propaganda spouted by teachers at all levels of education. As I wrote in Government-Education Complex part 2, what enters the classroom in one decade emerges as mainstream 15 years later. Social engineering has been taking shape in America’s class rooms for decades. While promoting principals such as relativism, collectivism and multiculturalism, basic principals of our American culture are left wanting. As Dr. Sanity has noted:

The moral case for capitalism is not taught in our schools, nor is it argued much in our culture. In fact it has been more or less universally accepted by the intellectual elites that systems such as communism and socialism are "morally superior" to capitalism (hence more "socially just")--even though in practice such systems have led to the death and enslavement of millions...”

When you combine the social engineering principals of political correctness and social justice you get results like Brown’s “Fall Holiday” decision and Rasmussen’s survey results: a rejection not only of the explorer that made the building of our great country possible, but the political philosophy that made it a great country.

PS: if the students are outraged by the savagery of Europeans over 5 centuries ago, presumably they are equally outraged at the atrocities committed by Islamo-fascists today – as they are still utilizing essentially the same methods of torture and death in the name of religion as the Spaniards did. Only, as noted, after 5 centuries the rest of the civilized world has moved on to a better place.

PPS: Since the O hasn't apologized to anyone in days, he can apologize to the native Americans that Columbus brutalized. In case he's having apology withdrawal.