Our nation is in a struggle, a struggle over the very
definition of the values upon which we were founded on. To the right, freedom
means having the ability to live life and achieve what you can based on the
merits of individualism and personal responsibility. To the left, freedom means
an entirely different thing. They are creating a world where opposing the most
abhorrent behaviors is becoming an act of bigotry. To the left, personal
responsibility and the merits of individualism are frowned upon and a collective,
group think behavior is rewarded. Freedom then, becomes freedom from having to
take responsibility for your actions. Freedom is being free from
morality.
The right believes
America to be a nation based on Christian values, and the notion that there is
a higher sense of morality. A universal right and wrong, if you will. The left
has been seeking to re-define what is morally right by introducing concepts
like moral relativism into our
education systems. Moral relativism posits the idea that morality is only a
social construct and that values are not universal in nature but rather,
cultural and based on personal choice. In other words, there is no set of
values that are superior to another because there is no universal, absolute
morality.
The origins of
this thinking can be traced to psychology and Darwinian evolution. The theory
of evolution of course suggests that mankind has no divine connection and has
evolved from apes. Therefore, he is just like any other animal in the sense
that his behavior isn’t the result of any free choices, rather a result of
evolutionary processes. The study of human behavior is undertaken almost
entirely from this perspective.
B.F. Skinner
wrote, in Beyond
Freedom and Dignity that there are two predominant views concerning human
behavior, scientific and pre-scientific. Pre-scientific refers to the belief
that man is in control of his behavior and can freely choose based on the
notion that we have “free will.” The scientific view on the other hand,
suggests that’s man’s behavior is traceable to the evolutionary history of our
species and dependent upon environmental situations. Skinner suggests that the
study of human behavior should focus exclusively on the latter as opposed to
the former. Below is Skinners quote in its entirety.
“In what we may call the pre-scientific view (and the word is not
necessarily pejorative) a person's behavior is at least to some extent his own
achievement. He is free to deliberate, decide, and act, possibly in original
ways, and he is to be given credit for his successes and blamed for his
failures. In the scientific view (and the word is not necessarily honorific) a
person’s behavior is determined by a genetic endowment traceable to the evolutionary
history of the species and by the environmental circumstances to which as an
individual he has been exposed. Neither view can be proved, but it is in the
nature of scientific inquiry that the evidence should shift in favor of the
second. As we learn more about the effects of the environment, we have less
reason to attribute any part of human behavior to an autonomous controlling
agent. And the second view shows a marked advantage when we begin to do
something about behavior. Autonomous man is not easily changed: in fact, to the
extent that he is autonomous, he is by definition not changeable at all. But
the environment can be changed, and we are learning how to change it. The
measures we use are those of physical and biological technology, but we use
them in special ways to affect behavior.” (Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity)
When it comes to
the lefts influence in education, no argument needs to be made. Conservatives
are well aware of the fact that our public schools have become public
indoctrination centers. What may be lesser known however is the extent in which
the fields of psychiatry and psychology have played. For instance, John
Dewey has come to be known as the father of modern education. He was not
only a psychologist but a Fabian socialist who saw a need to move away from the
traditional learning of reading, writing and arithmetic to create a new
socialized citizen.
The
new school system envisaged by Dewey was to take over the functions and
compensate for the losses sustained by the crumbling of the old institutions
clustered around the farm economy, the family, the church and the small town.
“The school,” he wrote, “must be made into a social center capable of
participating in the daily life of the community . . . and make up in part to
the child for the decay of dogmatic and fixed methods of social discipline and
for the loss of reverence and the influence of authority.” Children were to get
from the public school whatever was missing in their lives elsewhere that was
essential for their balanced development as members of a democratic country.
He
therefore urged that manual training, science, nature-study, art and similar
subjects be given precedence over reading, writing and arithmetic (the
traditional three R’s) in the primary curriculum. The problems raised by the
exercise of the child’s motor powers in constructive work would lead naturally,
he said, into learning the more abstract, intellectual branches of knowledge. (Walters,
International Socialist Review Vol. 21, 1960)
This is interesting because as of now, a whopping thirty-two million Americans cannot read
above a fifth-grade level. Furthermore, nineteen percent of all high school
graduates can not read at all. Also, consider this fact. American high school students
ranked 24th
place out of twenty-nine countries in basic math skills in 2014. The fact
that John Dewey was a psychologist isn’t merely a coincidence. Most
psychologists/psychiatrists ascribe to Darwin’s theory of evolution and
view man as an animal that needs to be trained. Their influence in education is
just as far reaching as John Dewey’s. For instance, the first president of the
American Psychological Association, G. Stanley Hall is quoted as saying the
following by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights.
These are the same three things that John Dewey seemed
to think children no longer needed. As mentioned earlier our illiteracy rates
are through the roof and many parents are becoming increasingly frustrated with
the common core math that their children are bringing home.
Psychiatrist G. Brock Chisholm,
co-founder of the World Federation for Mental Health is quoted as saying the
following.
The last sentence brings us back to the original
idea in this article. The left does not share our view of morality. To them the
notion of a universal right and wrong which restrains our animalistic instincts
is slavery. According to many in the field of psychiatry true freedom means
exactly what the underlines statement suggests, and what was mentioned earlier.
Freedom from morality. Therefore, there is a struggle of values between
the left and right. The right, being mostly Christian and believing in absolute
morality believe that people should seek to control their behavior and that
freedom, as defined in America, is possible because people are able to do so
based on that universal morality. The left believes that morality is
authoritarian in nature and represents oppression. To them there is no God,
therefore letting loose the animal instincts which enslave us to
pre-conditioned behavior, as opposed to free thinking and self-control, is the
true definition of freedom.
In conclusion I think a quote from the book Toward
Soviet America will tie all of this together nicely. The connection lies in
the fact that Communism is also atheistic in nature and applies science to the
study of human behavior from the Darwinian perspective. In fact, according to
the film The Bloody
History of Communism, Ivan Pavlov was directed by Lenin to apply his
techniques of classical conditioning against the Russian population. In all
communist societies populations who refused to go along with communist ideals
were targeted for re-education or extermination. People who held onto religion
and traditional ideas concerning family were considered mentally defective and
were treated by none other than psychiatrists to correct their behavior.
A U.S. Department
of Education; implementation of a scientific materialist philosophy; studies
revolutionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic and other features of
the bourgeois ideology; students taught on the basis of Marxian dialectical
materialism, internationalism and general ethics of a new socialist society;
present obsolete methods of teaching will be superseded by a scientific
pedagogy. The whole basis and organization of capitalist science will be
revolutionized. Science will become materialistic, hence truly scientific. God
will be banished from the laboratories as well as from the schools. (Foster, Toward Soviet America)
Be sure to check out my latest book to learn more. Psychopolitics in America: A Nation
Under Conquest
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