Grabar: Conservatives, End the Apology Tour
My good friend, English professor Mary Grabar, has an excellent article published on the American Thinker website which I encourage Newsreal readers to study in depth. Â It is a learned examination of the currently-fashionable idea that conservatives must distance themselves from “extremists” within their ranks and also a discussion of the origins of this unfortunate idea. Â Mary writes:
“The Left has succeeded in altering the education and media institutions. Â The effort began in earnest in 1962, when the 59-college-students-strong Students for a Democrat Society gathered at Port Huron, Michigan. Â In their position paper, “The Port Huron Statement,” penned by Tom Hayden, they outlined a strategy for instituting a new “political synthesis” outside the normal political channels, and instead through the educational institutions. Â Their renamed communist goal of “participatory democracy” was implemented subsequently through “participatory learning.” Â These people, like Weatherman co-founder Bill Ayers, have overhauled the educational system. Â Ayers is now “distinguished” professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and he is spreading his radical gospel to future teachers…”
I encourage you to read Mary’s entire article here.
Mary Grabar has written a superbly insightful piece. I have even downloaded it for future rereading. Grabar legitimately takes to task Stephen F. Hayward’s peculiar allegation that present-day conservatism might be brain-dead. The dude apparently and needlessly suffers from low self-esteem. Conservatives have no reason to feel inhibited by the second raters of our leftist dominated intellectual institutions. As for “entertainers” Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck—they more often than not easily compete with their more credentialed detractors.
When you boil this all down I can’t help remembering what Ben Franklin said.
When asked ,”What have you given us Sir, he replied, A republic Ma’am, if you can keep it.”
Mrs. Grabar has updated this to, “What are we losing People?, to which we should reply, America , if we allow it,”
That is a great article, and it takes every man woman and young adult to stand up and take part in their own little way with what gifts they have been given from God. Most ofmy ideals and thought have not.. I say again NOT come from the media, books, movies, culture in general, but from seeing firsthand what oppressive govts have done. I listened, and remembered the lessons my grandparents and parents taught me. I was able to feel and be included in the emotions of the numerous WWII vets I took care of. It is these people that that I have drawn my ideology from more than what is bombarding us on a daily basis. Perhaps I’m not of the norm, but from what I see in my son (now 18) I would have to say that I possibly am.
I do agree that we must, as a duty to liberty, act with our own gifts and apply them to further the conservative message. Even during my English conversation classes here in south America I bring up many conservative ideals for discussion. For far too long, as the author pointed out, many have just sat idly by “hiding” in our homes out of disgust for the situations whilst not doing anything to change this. Our writing, musicians, producers, etc.. all aught to be charged to task and work diligently to spread the word. We need to be just as infectious as the left. I know I’m doing my part…. are you?
Traditional conservatives need to come together nationally to define a new party based on the Constitutional limits defined by the founding fathers.
We need a conservative congress. No moderates or Rockefeller Republicans allowed.
We need to find ways to unite Christian conservatives, both Protestant and Catholic, in this country under a common non-denominational banner that can focus the voting power of the single largest majority constituency in this country, in support of a traditional American framework based on the founders’ intent.
We need to undo the cultural Marxism and the destruction wrought in its name. Before it is too late.
I am enamored by literary rhetoric, but is that enough to correct the problem?
I have said this before but it is related to tis discussion. The field of art history was established during the turbulent era of two centuries, ago, when revolution, renaissance, enlightenment and science was given a privileged position. It was given a charter to enable some causes and a charter for disabling others, also. They could anoint, ignore or render unworthy.
“The expansion of the field of art history was brought about by the larger leftist politicization of U.S. academia, connected to the civil rights movement, feminism, and other attempts to combine teaching with social justice. The history of the visual studies as a university subject can be linked to the “culture wars†of the 1980s, when there was a great deal being published on the question of the relationship between art and the humanities and mainstream American culture. The profound transformation that has occurred in the culture of the student population over the last twenty years has created favorable conditions for the introduction of a new subject into the curriculum.†(Margaret Dikovitskaya, “Visual Culture, The Study of Visual After The Cultural Turn, Chapter 2, p. 85â€)
With all of the entrenched elements of the left in the media, education and the courts, the new field of Visual Studies is an opportunity to establish a new shift away from the larger leftist politicization. Visual Studies and Visual Culture are similar in that they aim to provide an interdisciplinary platform for students whether they are interested in becoming scientists, anthropologists, sociologists or whatever, because visual observation is crucial to knowledge in science, artistic expression and almost any other field. They are not, now, encumbered with a desire or need for indoctrinations, intimidation and warfare. They arrive at the universities with a technical capacity in imaging and are able to produce and view enormous quantities of images because of the predominance of the electronic media and steady growth, transparent methods, ease of the use of technologies and visual literacy that has produced a sophistication that is unprecedented in any of the years of art history with all its disciplines and trappings that dominate it’s staid field. A lively new dawn has broken the day with visual culture.
I must agree with John Davidson; action speaks louder, and more effectively, than words…Ken Kelley has offered a promising body blow to the progressive incursion within academia…I’m not familiar with the program’s aims or means of attaching itself to accepted curricula offered to students…but if it is broad-based and readily and easily merged with existing curricula, and promoted from within and with-out, then this would be a worthy tool to return critical thinking and conservative values to academia…I have heard no mention of ” visual studies ” from Horowitz…
Margaret Dikovitskaya has taken on the universe of the most powerful elite and their establishment, not me, and has been establishing this new field for the past ten plus years in the universities by teaching their principal academics which began at Central European University how to do this. She took on the Art Historians during the nineties in their principal periodical October and blew them out of the water with a penetrating and very critical set of earth shattering questions to the society of the international community of Art Historians and produced a must read: “Visual Culture, The Study of Visual After The Cultural Turn.” The “Turn” is not an event. It is a long term and gradual recognition of the societal influence of all visual media beginning with film and video, TV and Internet plus all visual activities.
My kid is 22 years old and he studies economics at a state university. He’s a free market disciple, but the homo agenda has attracted him. He’s mentally ill and so are many, many young people. There’s no moral anchor, their peers and friends have something missing in the ability to relate. Empathic respect is absent. I place this disability on myself as well as a public educational program that was born in my generation and has blown reasoning skills to the wind. Teachers can’t pass basic knowledge and subject matter tests, how can they impart knowledge and learning to students? Let me say it another way. Your kid is stupid and knows little of the skills or knowledge he/ she will need to keep life going in a developmental staircase toward adulthood. If your kid is working toward a technical education, there is a chance for success. Sports are more important than academics. This is your and my fault for not having intervened years ago at the first signs of indoctrinating/ babysitting/ politically correct/ self flagellation. Your student will be able to construct a good definition of “social justice” but won’t be able to keep a job. As for me, I ask for transcripts prior to hiring a college grad. Any hint of leftward leaning- women’s studies, social engineering, political activism and that resume goes into the trash. Screw them, sorry.
Thank You Mary Graber…I have been preaching this sermon for months.
Not only is Bill Ayers a Professor of Education at the University of Chicago, he is VP of the largest Teacher’s Association in this country, AEA…the American Education Association. He is the Vice Preasident of Curriculum. That ought to scare all parents.
Barack Obama, through various organizations/boards he and Ayers have shared, has to be aware of Ayers agenda.
As I commented last week, even when Ayers was building bombs in the 60’s/70’s, he was interested in education. In the 60’s, he taught at an alternative school in Ohio and was a community organizer in a Cleveland, Ohio ghetto. Ayers may have given up bombs, he has not given up his plan for educating our youth.
Ayers has met with Hugo Chavez about the education system in Argentina many times. Everytime I think about this issue, I see Hitler youth goose-stepping and Chinese students repeating their allegiance to “Dear Leader”.
I will speak anytime, anywhere about what I understand to be the educational plan for our students. Contact Mr. Swindle, he can find me if he searches hard enough.
WAKE UP PARENTS, DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR CHILDREN ARE BEING TAUGHT?
With all due respect, as I am a practicing Orthodox Christian, this should not be, nor does it need to be a faith-based agenda. This absolutely must be a conservative movement that does not provide the left with a lightening rod for name calling and dismissal of the effort. This is the success of the conservative movement across America right now, the Administration is flaying about desparately trying to use Rush and Beck and Fox as a lightening rod to focus the hatred of it’s Democrat base, but their base is fleeing them to vote conservative. Do not squandor this tide of illumination of conservative principles. All Americans whether secular or religious have a vested interest in the Constitutionality of what the Obama Administration is producing. And, I guarantee you, because I monitor tea party bulletin boards across the nation, the roar of voices to change the bias of our national educational agenda is turning, and it will be a plank in the conservative platform of 2010.
Please excuse me Argentina, Hugo Chavez is the dictator et al of Venezuela. This is the second tome I have made this mistake…Mea Culpa!
I do have one question that’s been easting at me for some time now. Who knew Chavez first, Ayers or his adopted son Chesa Boudin? The child Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn raised after his parents went to prison. Now there’s a name for an internet search…Chesa Boudin.
The way Bill Ayers needs to be handled is this way: He needs to be run out of the education establishment by a conserted national movement to shine the light on his nefarious activities and to demand congressional hearings against him for subversion, terrorism and fomenting the overthrow of the Constitution. We need a tea party movement that advocates vehemently for the enforcement of the Smith Act and a revival of the House subcommittee on unAmerican activites.
Bill Ayers has no place in the teaching of my children or yours. He is a Marxist fruitcake and his teaching methods are DIRECTLY correlated to the erosion of our educational standards and the substandard results thereof. He is still building bombs and throwing them at people.
“My country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty…”
Oh boy. Here it is again. What we must do to “earn” the favor and condescending approval of the left so that they give their stamp of approval. Instead of a revolutionary spirit, we must seek to operate within the culturally Marxist paradigm which inevitably leads to the loss of what we half-heartedly want to maintain.
I will offer that the very roots of cultural Marxism, multiculturalism, political correctness, in America is based in the effort to destroy orthodox Christianity in this country, as the basis of its conservative majority of yore. And to turn the populace from the worship of a God as a precondition to creating the worship of a state. The cultural Marxists knew, rightly so, that there was no other way to destroy capitalism in America.
I strongly advocate for the vision of the founding fathers, wherein religiousity was promoted as a virtue in the populace, and all conditons made optimum for the promulgation of religion in society as the basis of our culture – albeit a religion chosen freely by each man or woman and not mandated by the state.
The Islamists of the West are actively promoting the creation of a theistic state in the West that is not based upon choice. The left is promoting the religion of humanism as a non-optional basis for a new society. You and I, sir, are in a war for survival, whether we like it or not. It is not a war of our choosing, but is being forced upon us.
Ultimately, you are going to come to the point where you can no longer appease them without complete capitulation of all you believe in, or death. Why on Earth do we believe that this is going to end otherwise without some sort of faith on our part, in the foundation upon which our republic rests?
The overwhelming majority of this country is Judeo-Christian. We are the largest voting block in the country for the defense of America. It is time we find a platform to unite upon that serves the founders well, elucidate it fearlessly…
… and force the left to capitulate to it as a matter of overwhelming logic and rightness.
I am on the same page as Jonathan and appreciate his
erudition. The Patriot Post which can be googled
for contact information is a good resource for
conservative action. Mark Alexander the editor has
a geat piece “Light Of The Universe” in the recent
posting. If you wish to read and encouraging message
visit Patriot Post, The Voice of Constitutional
Conservatism. There is no aspect of life untouched
by the invidious infection of communism, it is a
stealth disease that kills without warning, that is
if we as conservatives do not cry out and wake
up our world to our impending doom. The founders
gave us the vote which is powerful, use every means
to educate our citizens of its value and hope it
will be enough to cleanse our government of all
leftists, overtly and covertly there, elected by
misrepresenting themselves and hence the electorate.
The leftists in charge of our schools have made sure
of producing graduates unable to understand what
government is and does and what the citizens
place in society is as the idea of obligation and
responsibility has been erased from the collective
mind. If it proves out that our system of government
has been so subverted and even a Constitutional
Convention can not help then a meeting of all of
the States should be held to determine what action
should be taken for redress. Hopefully the ballot box
is powerful enough to work for us but knowing how
deceitful and criminal the mind of the leftist is there
may be unforseen problems in the way for honest elections, pray it is not to late.
Ayers was responsible for the bomb at NYC Police
Headquarters where my father worked, he was
Lt. John C. Ward just off duty and heading out
the front door and down the street about fifty
yards when the bomb went off. A minute earlier
he asked one of his co-workers if he was going to
the subway, they could as was often the chance
ride together but the man said he had to use the
restroom and for Dad to go ahead. Re-entering the
building gun in hand Dad saw that the upper floar
had collapsed and the restroom his friend was in
was now on the lower level, kicking down the door,
Dad found this Officer on the throne with his
newspaper still open but covered in copious
amounts of dust, Dad had a great sense of humor,
as in his official report his question was
“just what was that you said you had for lunch?”.
Happy no one was killed a real desire to catch the
bombers ran hot through all of NYPD, their familys
and friends. Ayers was beyond lucky not falling into
the hands of quick justice. Forgiveness is a tough
requirement of the Christian ethic, back then just
out of the Army and of a vengeful nature I am sure
if Dad had not survived Bill Ayers would not be the
problem he is today, actually after his capture
he was pretty much forgotten about, it was assumed he
would receive his just deserts. I remember older men
stating that people like Ayers if left to go on they
would eventually bring others to grief. The difference
of then and now is that those men meant what they
said and took personal responsability for the safety
of their fellows and a person like Ayers when
found were dispatched without ceremony and without
any regrets. How times have changed and how emasculated
Americans have become, the problem is when is it
right to forgive, is kill them all correct and let
God sort them out or let miscreants die in prison, I
am still unsure. I am not unsure about the need to
act and for the movement right to go ahead as quickly
as is possible.
“Merry Christmas”