Why We Lost Western Civilization

Articles: Winning the Long War:

The simple answer is that the "progressives" incrementally turned public education into collectivist indoctrination. Allan Bloom sounded this alarm strongly and unequivocally with "The Closing of the American Mind", but the standards had already sunk so far that only a few could hope to begin to understand what he was saying.

This article is EXCELLENT and well worth the time to read it.

Some "cheat sheet" on the subsequent paragraph, the article is generally easy to read, don't be put off ...

• ethics -- right/wrong, What we would have learned in Sunday School, from our parents, and nursery rhymes in a free country. Today what is taught is environmentalism, political correctness, re-distribution (robbery, or "fairness") and the worship of man and the state. 
• epistemology  -- the study of knowledge, what is known and what is knowable. Western civilization arose on the idea of perfect and transcendent  forms (Plato) and a rational universe -- typically assumed so because it was created by a God that is reasonable (a God of order). "irrationalism" essentially says; "it all happened randomly, and except for being skeptical and possibly believing your senses when they are not in conflict with "progressive" dogma, whatever you think is as good as what anyone else thinks." 
• metaphysics -- religion/theology being the former name and what most readers of this blog will at least have heard of. If there is a God that is reasonable, he has a purpose for us, so our mission is to find that purpose and do it well as we worship him. It there isn't a God, this whole idea of "finding what you were intended to do" is rubbish. There is no "intention". Life has no meaning or purpose, which is nihilism".

I spent 16 years in state schools prior to ATTEMPTING to read "Closing of the American Mind", and then studying on my own, and then attempting again, then studying some more, and repeating a couple of times. I feel that I now understand a good deal of that book. My "cheat sheet" above would have not been possible without decades of self-study and hundreds of books and articles.

The state educational establishment relative to Western Civilization is much like the Catholic Church was prior to the reformation relative to the Bible. They really don't want you poking around on your own, you are likely to come up with some questions that are going to be VERY hard to answer!

The reason that I often come close to despair is that there are so few Americans that can even really read and understand well enough to even grasp the danger. The advancement of technology is a two edged sword. Will this descent into darkness be a millennium? Could it be shorter because the technology can empower renaissance  as the printing press once did? or will the technology enable "Big Brother" to lock the culturally lobotomized drones in a "Matrix" forever? I certainly don't know, but I know the danger is very real and very urgent. Read ... and maybe weep.

 "Civilization -- all of it -- is currently under the domination of progressive collectivism in ethics, authoritarianism in politics, irrationalism in epistemology, and nihilism in metaphysics. The architects of this calamity have paved the road to the devil's dominion over several generations. Their recent boldness, moving in for the kill on the last, crumbling bastion of principled resistance, America, shows that they believe ultimate victory is at hand, which, in human terms, means we face a thousand years of darkness."

and this gem is so on target it must be seen ... 

Men capable of living independent, confident and self-reliant lives grounded in their own skills, their own interests, and their own minds, are a threat to the authoritarians, mainly because what such men naturally crave -- more freedom -- is precisely the opposite of the desire progressivism seeks to foster in every child, namely the desire of a helpless dependent for perpetual security, to be provided by the all-knowing, all-caring über-parent, Government.

You OWE it to yourself to read this article. You are still alive in one of the brief flickers in history where the level of freedom for this to be seen is allowed! Savor that knowledge before the Gulag!

'via Blog this'