May 09, 2011
Last Friday, a new CNN survey showed that 80% of Americans believe the economy is in poor shape. Who could argue with them? With unemployment ticking back up to 9%, home values still sliding, surging gas prices, lackluster confidence on the part of consumers as well as business leaders, and an apparently out-of-control national debt with no visible signs of solutions that are agreeable to both sides, we seem to be stuck in doldrums for the long run.
Last Friday, a new CNN survey showed that 80% of Americans believe the economy is in poor shape. Who could argue with them? With unemployment ticking back up to 9%, home values still sliding, surging gas prices, lackluster confidence on the part of consumers as well as business leaders, and an apparently out-of-control national debt with no visible signs of solutions that are agreeable to both sides, we seem to be stuck in doldrums for the long run.
Here is the shocker in the same survey: 55% of Americans blame former President Bush and the Republicans for the mess we are in!
For better part of three years, Democrats (with the help of the ever-willing media) have stayed on the message that this is a mess they inherited and it is apparently paying off. Never mind that they controlled all branches of the government for the past two and a half years and the Congress for five! Never mind the fact that real estate bubble which caused the crisis is a product of not only overzealous Fed meddling in the economy with their easy credit policies but decade-long stiff congressional Democrat opposition to answer the alarm bells rung by Bush, Treasury Secretary Snow, Senator McCain, and others primarily on the Republican side! Never mind the fact that what exacerbates the crisis is trillion plus dollar annual deficits thanks to Democrat spending (yes, Bush spent too much also but his deficits averaged a little over $200 billion per year over his eight years -- with the lion share attributable to his last two years when Democrats controlled the Congress and economy went in to recession affecting the revenues)! Never mind the fact that corporations of all sizes are making big profits but no one is willing to invest -- as business confidence surveys and interviews with CEOs indicate because of fiscal uncertainties, ill-advised anti-business laws under the guise of financial and healthcare reforms, and a nightmarish regulatory environment under Democrat rule that has added more job killing regulations over the past two and a half years than any other previous Administration!
So, what are we to take away from this survey? Democrats and their allies in the complicit media and academia have succeeded in dumbing down the public in general so that they are brain-washed by empty rhetoric. When public schools purposefully abdicate their responsibility to properly educate the students under their charge, outcome is predictable.
Under classic education, there are three phases to the academic development of any individual: the learning phase, the logic phase, and the rhetoric phase.
The first phase takes place in elementary level where students are taught to simply take in (learn) facts. Public schools do a pretty good job with this phase -- except it is not always necessarily facts but politically correct made-up facts that they teach young students who do not know any better! We have early to mid 20th century cultural Marxism that has thoroughly infiltrated our schools via the Marxist sympathizing teacher unions to thank for that.
That is where the educational process pretty much ends for most public school students who do not either excel by their own capabilities or have actively interested parents. The logic phase when students are supposed to be taught critical thinking skills and to question facts before accepting them as truths, and the rhetoric phase when they are supposed to learn to polish their arguments do not get the attention they are supposed to. This academic unpreparedness is then carried on to the college level where further indoctrination takes place.
The reason for this shameful failure is as simple as recognizing the dynamics involved in being indoctrinated by Marxist ideology. Critical thought process is the natural enemy of any system based on collectivism.
Is it any wonder when you consider that old dogs have been up to new tricks for better part of a century? Likes of Gramsci, Cloward, Piven, and Alinsky figured out decades ago that their Marxist ideals could only be realized by the educational process over a long period rather than at the point of a bayonet. It is the ones on the side of free minds and free societies that have been asleep at the switch.
Kerem Oner blogs at defendourconstitution.blogspot.com
American Thinker
