TWO BIG LIES
By Rita Kramer
Looking through this week’s crop of print, from the New York Times to its counterparts on the European scene, it struck me that in the world of ideas and attitudes that effect political action, there have been two great propaganda victories since the middle of the last century. Two Big Lies, one domestic and the other international.
Here in the United States we have witnessed the dismantling of an entire education system, from kindergarten through university, as its purpose has been redefined. The function of schooling is no longer seen to be the transmission of the culture of Western civilization, the history of its achievements and struggles, its literature and arts, of the evolution of the institutional framework of democracy and the cultivation of the skills required to understand and extend it. The function of the schools is now generally agreed to be achieving social change. The schools have become an agency for the pursuit of radical egalitarianism. One influence has been the movement known as Multiculturalism, which maintains that all cultures are equal, those characterized by obedience to religious fanaticism and those where individual freedom has led to technological, medical and other life-enhancing advances. Another has been bilingualism, according to which immigrants need not adopt the language and culture of the country they so eagerly sought to enter but should be encouraged to retain the language and customs of the countries from which they came, making it less and less likely, incidentally, that they participate in the mainstream to a degree that would enable them to succeed in this country. Where language and customs used to be retained as a private matter, in the home, it is now considered the role of the school curriculum to encourage separatism and a sense of belonging to a specific subgroup rather than to the nation.
It is not even questioned today that the purpose of higher education is to achieve “diversity” in its student body even if, despite the Constitution’s prohibition of discrimination on the basis of race, it means awarding extra “points” to members of one race to make sure they are admitted despite having lower grades. To reread Cardinal Newman or Robert Maynard Hutchins on the function of the university is to be reminded of what liberal education once meant. It was about becoming familiar with what Matthew Arnold referred to as the best that has been thought and written. To reread the Constitution is to be reminded that men and women are supposed to be treated as individuals and not as members of a race.
Today the argument is mainly about how best to enforce diversity and few seem to remember that a half century ago the aim of legislation was to deal with people as individuals and not as members of any group. It was about equality of opportunity, not equality of results.
Redefined as agencies of social change, our schools, colleges, and universities have lost their original mission. It was academic, not political.
The other Big Lie of the age is the imaginative construction of a people called the Palestinians. They started out as Arabs, akin to the Jordanians of the Hashemite Kingdom, before a mythology began to accrue to them. Displaced by the war raged by the Arabs against the new state of Israel, they could have been accommodated in Arab lands, just as the Jewish refugees from Egypt, Syria and other Arab countries were absorbed by Israel. But it was far more useful for their Arab brethren to keep them in camps (by now cities with infrastructures and institutions supported at huge expense by the U.N.) where their smoldering frustration could be supported, encouraged, and publicized so that, turned against Israel, it could be deflected from their true oppressors, their fellow Arabs. And they could excite the sympathy of the world as victims of an occupation. Few of their parents or, by now, grandparents had lived in the barren area that is now Israel until Jews began to settle there in the early years of the twentieth century, bringing modern agricultural methods, irrigating the land, providing medical advances and raising the standard of living. And many of them left only because the leaders of the Arab invasion assured them they would be returning within days of an assured victory. Then as now, the Arab agenda is to destroy Israel, to “push it into the sea.” This rhetoric is ubiquitous in the press and public pronouncements of every Arab country—even those that, like Egypt, have formally made peace with Israel. But that is news that is not considered fit to print not only by the New York Times but almost any publication in Europe, with its long-established traditions of anti-Semitism.
So by now the world accepts the myth of the martyred victims of an unjustifiable occupation (undertaken, as it happens, in self-defense, not a campaign of conquest), “freedom fighters” justified in blowing up children, women and civilian men to rid themselves of the Israeli presence and be rewarded with a state of their own from which they can pursue that end more efficiently.
The press is a marvelous thing. It can inform and educate. It can also repeat a lie until everyone comes to believe it. Schools are for achieving racial balance. There is a people called the Palestinians who are victims of the Jews.
Cultures are all equal eventhough their achievements may not be so. As human constructs they all reflect the underlying truth of our common conditions on this earth. How can we forget that our "great" Western culture was both at the starting point of great technological breakthroughs, and of great mass murders all perpetrated in the name of unscientific truths that we held to be self evident even when they were not proven (eg. persecutions against scientists for heresy, nazism...). All cultures have gone through periods of ignorance. Forgetting this by pretending that the "great" Western culture is better is not doing much good to us all. It is merely proving that we still have a long way to go to truly become civilized. As far as our educational systems are concerned, I would agree that one of their objectives is to achieve excellence. But excellence should not only be seen in terms of academic performances graded with test scores. The excellence of our educational systems is based on the type of society those who have gone to school have helped create. Therefore, academic excellence is linked to social progress. Schools were created to bring about better societies. Schools and societies cannot be seperated, nor can it be thought that they should be.
Posted by: Tom on April 7, 2003 12:24 PMRegards!
Tom
If all cultures were equal, people would not be leaving all they know and all they've ever known to escape those cultures. Or, perhaps, it might be more honestly shown by an equal number of boats going to Cuba as from Cuba.
Posted by: Peter on April 7, 2003 03:55 PMIt is somewhat of an indication going to a conveniance store in any city in this country, who's running them? Koreans, Sikhs, East Indians, Middle Easterners, South Americans, etc.
If we are to assume that all cultures are equal then a trip to the countries of origin of those shopkeepers and find people born in the USA in equal numbers.
It does, of course, take an intellectual to ignore the stark evidence of observable human movement. Fortunately Cuban peasants are somewhat smarter than intellectual multiculturists and tear their asses north every chance they get.
Actually, multiculturists do not believe the drivel they spout. Actions speak much louder than words and they stay HERE, rather than going to those equal or superior cultures,,,damned shame, they might just be the biggest pain in the ass since the invention of the hemorhoid.Someday the Libs will gather up the courage to act on their convictions...nah. Find some wealthy Libs that send their kids to urban public schools. Forgive me for not holding my breath.
My God, Tom, are you on crack?
"Cultures are all equal even though their achievements may not be so." That's the same as saying that cultures cannot be compared, that there's no way to say "this one is better than that one." Which is the most arrant nonsense I've heard in half a century. If it were true in any objective sense, there would be no differences among the attainments of the many human cultures -- which is diametrically opposed to the facts. Not even if you were to restrict your claim to esthetic matters alone would it hold water.
Your attempt to lay the horrors of Nazism at the door of Western Civilization is too disingenuous to be taken seriously. But then, having postulated a patent absurdity as your starting point, you could probably prove that the Universe is a giant kumquat made of team spirit if you put your mind to it.
"Forgetting this by pretending that the "great" Western culture is better is not doing much good to us all." Except that it protects us from accepting barbarities such as government-enforced religions, female chattelization, clitoridectomy, conversion by the sword, and the pervasive tribalism of the other cultures you claim are equal to ours.
"[W]e still have a long way to go to truly become civilized." By what standard? I thought all cultures were equal; if so, how would one engineer a change for the better? But let's lay that to the side for a moment. Do you propose to tell us that you know what constitutes "truly" civilized behavior? How would it differ from the Anglo-American ethic of individual liberty, equal justice before the law, and benevolence toward those whose troubles are not of their own making? If you plan to propose socialism or any variant thereof, be prepared to be laughed out of consideration.
"Schools were created to bring about better societies." Oh? I seem to recall that schools were created to teach young people the teachable academic subjects they need for competence in life. In fact, the attempt to compromise that mission for social engineering purposes is at the heart of the failure of our schools, and their transformation into dangerous, ruinously expensive places of incarceration and indoctrination for our children.
Your relativism and meliorism are a queer fit to one another. If all cultures are equal as you claim, then what point is there in having schools? After all, when all are ab initio equal, there's no way to become better -- so what would the educational effort be for?
Your post displays the kind of mushy refusal to define, to measure, and to assess against an objective standard that typifies left-wing beliefs and attitudes. There is such a thing as "objectively better" and "objectively worse," and until you grant that and come to terms with it, you'll be lost at sea with no way to pick a direction.
Posted by: Francis W. Porretto on April 7, 2003 04:09 PMBy the way, I should add to my original post a connection between the two things I wrote about. Ignorance of history and the corruption of language result in people believing anything they're told often enough, true or not. Slogans replace ideas and propaganda takes the place of knowledge. Nowhere has this taken effect more successfully than in the acceptance of the myth that there is a distinct people called Palestinians who have been displaced from their ancestral land, now occupied by a usurper bent on destroying them and that therefore they are justified in murdering innocent men, women and children. Unless perhaps it was the myth that the French perpetuated about themselves in World War II-- that they were conquered, resisted, and liberated themselves.
Posted by: Stephen Rittenberg on April 7, 2003 08:08 PM---Rita Kramer
I guess it depends on the individual Tom. But, I for one do not think all cultures are the same. I'm from a minority group where members glorify the past. I don't think they are right.
I'd rather not be burned slowly or starve to death because I don't have perfect vision.
Permit to post words that are better than my own, but reflect my feelings:
What are the marks of a sick culture? It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn't the whole population.
Posted by: set on April 7, 2003 10:32 PM-Robert Heinlein, Friday
Thank God for Tom's post - it proves that in the midst of the disgusting and ignorant white supremacists populating your shallow, greedy culture, a sane voice still remains.
Posted by: Florian on April 10, 2003 06:44 AM