Blood Drunk Apoligists: The Lost Fools of Modernism

I was on 700 WLW with Matt Patrick on August 10, 2011 indulged in the topic of whether or not Bert and Ernie of Sesame Street are in fact homosexuals. However, on a more serious note, the topic of the day was school levies and whether or not they should be passed or declined as a way to force change. Prior to my appearance Matt had received many callers that proclaimed passing a school levy is the “patriotic, and caring” thing to do if one loves their community. I argue the opposite.

Channel 9 News always in my opinion, does a fantastic job of covering topics. Brendan Keefe’s I-Team stories are great benefits to our city in the hard reporting that he does. However, and this is the nature of television versus talk radio, there isn’t much time to get into the heart of a matter, because attention is spent on the visual appeal of the stories. In an attempt to bring balance to the story of why schools are failing all over the state, Channel 9 is sitting down with various superintendents all over Cincinnati to put a face to the requests for more money. Channel 9 sat down with the new Fairfield superintendent to explore the topic of why funding was needed for his district.

As seen in that interview, the direction of the story took an emotional turn. It was never asked, why is Fairfield unable to balance its budget based on the current tax supply. It is often discussed that federal money is declining, and state money is also on a downward trend, especially in affluent school districts. So it is only natural that financial expectations must be scaled back, but that is not what’s happening.

I had an argument with family members and friends about a year ago, who are functioning along the same assumption as the school superintendents, the reporters, the teachers, the unions, the radical protestors in London, school board members, parents, protests in Greece and everywhere else, that the world will always continue on as they always believed it would, like their own educations ensured them of a continuity in social existence that was as solid as concrete. The foundations of everything they have been taught since childhood is at stake because their beliefs are failing!

One person who considers themselves “worldly” said to me, “manufacturing jobs are leaving America. That’s a fact. America has to serve “high tech” interests. We have to get used to the fact that our role is changing. We must start saving for our children’s college now, so they can compete in that marketplace!” His utterances were straight out of the union playbook. The talking points are the same everywhere, and predictable.

“But how can you save for something that the cost is raising at an insanely dramatic rate? Is college worth 50K per year? Should 4 years of college cost 200K? Should kids go into debt to go to college? Should public education that is preparing all these kids for college charge 9 to 10K per pupil to educate? Does public education need a teacher with a master’s degree to teach 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, grade? Can public education afford to pay all their teachers over 50K per year?

At this point in the conversation fury builds in the eyes of the apologists, for they do not have answers to these questions. In fact, they find themselves caught in their own dreamlike haze. “Without college a kid has no chance! If you don’t have a degree, you are doomed these days!”

“That’s what you’ve been told,” I’ll reply. “But businesses are learning the hard lesson, which over the past 20 years that a college educated person does not guarantee them a job ready employee. In fact, many young people are proving to not be mature enough to handle the rigors of life until their 30’s these days, and it is costing companies billions of dollars in lost productivity each year, to deal with the learning curve of these immature college graduates who lack common sense, because it has been “taught out of them,” during the education process.

I have a name for these types of people, the ones who argue the obvious; I call them “Blood Drunk Apologists.” The trouble with these types is that they have drunk the blood (metaphorically speaking) of left-wing education concepts and are under the spell of a social order designed to be everything to everybody. They started drinking this blood in their own education process so it is difficult for them to see the truth of the situation now as adults. They are under a kind of voodoo-like spell that prevents them from seeing the truth even when it is right in front of them, because they have built their entire lives around a preconceived notion regarding social structure.

I’ve always questioned education and the methods. When I was a younger guy I wanted to be an archeologist or an anthologist because my interests were in the “big picture” studies of civilization. But I was also interested in politics. I was also interested in other sciences. I was also interested in fiction and literature. I was also interested in fast cars. I was also interested in adventure and danger, and like I mentioned before I looked for jobs in my teens that allowed me to explore all those things at the same time. I read a lot, and it was in those books and the studies of civilization that I was insulated from the spell that was cast on the world around me. While I was reading heavily, the person who was arguing with me about the current state of education was walking around with his pants down around his ankles being paddled by his fraternity brothers in college. Others who have argued with me about this topic were stepping off a bus in boot camp and having their heads shaved and forced to do push-ups each time they answered a question wrong to their drill sergeant. These soldiers signed up for the military so they could qualify for the GI Bill, which would help them go to college, so they could grow up and get a good job!.

There are a lot of ways that people arrive at the pain of adulthood, where at some point they drink the blood of orthodoxy. It is usually brought about by pain, where the instigator of the pain is also the one who provides the relief from the pain, making the victim falsely trust their antagonist. By drinking the blood, they find the pain of life is eased.

Proudly I have advocated to those I care about that such a life of blood drinking is unnecessary, even foolish. Because all one has to do is study history, even passively to see the course of where their actions will take them. And this whole education situation is a major crisis in our country. Education is not the end all-fix all for society building. We have a whole culture of lost souls roaming around like they are under a voodoo daze, unable to think critically. And even if education did work well, it is simply too expensive. Cost controls must be put in place to reign in the out-of-control costs, because even if people determine for themselves that they do want to go to college, and do want to maintain the current direction of public education, the cost increases of 5% to 10% every year cannot continue. There isn’t money to pay for the financial expectations of education even if we taxed our citizens at 100% of their entire incomes, at some point; our society will hit that wall. Because only a very rich society can afford luxuries, and a society cannot be rich if everyone is going to school. Some people have to actually be in the trenches fighting to make something that can be sold to someone else for a profit, that’s the only way wealth is “created.”

Civilizations who forget that facts point to a right and wrong answer and pretentious arrogance that causes critical blindness find themselves extinct, and the face of the earth is a chronicle of such failures. Some of those societies fell so hard they aren’t even in our written records, but all had empires that were vast and complicated, only to be crushed by their own arrogance, because they were under the spell of the blood they had drunk all in the name of social comfort.

Debates such as this current one over education are as old as time itself on a social wheel that has spun repeated time and time again like the scratch on a turntable record. And the current direction is as predictable as a movie we’ve all seen the end of, and those who have drunk the blood and use it as sustenance are foolish enough to believe that somehow the ending of the movie will end differently because they are the current players. Such is the effect of the voodoo spell of Blood Drinking Apologists and their Ignorance of Doom.

Rich Hoffman
http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
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www.overmanwarrior.com