Throughout history, bad ideas such as those espoused by Marx have taken hold in the public arena and become institutionalized. This occurred despite the inherent violence required by a system in which individuals are forced to be subservient to the state. I’ve discussed issues like this previously, but I find it continues to be relevant today.
The iconic socialist revolutionary, Che Guevara, made the case that in a true socialist revolution, large swaths of the population had to die.
Sociopolitical Disaster
Is it possible or not, given the present conditions in [the Americas], to achieve socialist power by peaceful means? We emphatically answer that, in the great majority of cases, this is not possible. The most that could be achieved would be the formal takeover of the bourgeois superstructure of power and the transition to socialism of that government that, under the established bourgeois legal system, having achieved formal power will still have to wage a very violent struggle against all who attempt, in one way or another, to check its progress toward new social structures.
—Che Guevara, Tactics and Strategy of the Latin American Revolution, 1962
You may recognize that doctrine being applied eight years after it was written in Pol Pot’s regime. More than 20% of the population died horribly in the reeducation camps where they were sent to learn how to think correctly. Or die. Actually, mainly die.
The point I am laboring toward is that once bad ideas infest the educational system, they invariably jump the intellectual barriers and end up in the political system.
It is thus that the low-information processors have so tightly embraced the Chicken Little idea that the sky is falling due to the degradation of the environment, and that the governments of the world have responded by spending hundreds of billions of dollars fighting a fiction.
This despite all the flashing fluorescent signs that the idea holds no water. If it did, why the pivot from “global warming” to the catch-all broader notion of “climate change”? And why is there a steadfast refusal by leading climate alarmists to publicly debate scientists who dispute the theory?
But that is just one small example of a long list of bad ideas that have crossed the blood-brain barrier.
Here’s another. Not all that long ago, some bright light decided that voluntarism should be injected into the schools. For example, making it a class project to read to old folks or play with stray dogs down at the local animal shelter. Harmless enough activities designed to “teach” the young to be more civic-minded. Well, that idea has morphed from a one-off activity to being mandatory for graduation.
And rather than providing the simple lesson that people can do a bit of good in their local community by volunteering, it has become indoctrination to advance Marx’s mantra.
We know a nice enough family back in the States that can never just go on vacation. Rather, they feel compelled to head off to some backwater to do good works, paying for their “holidays” with donations dunned from friends and family members.
The Epidemic of Bad Ideas
Slapping together an abbreviated list of the bad ideas now sweeping aside intelligent thought across the land—both in the US and in most countries where people have too much time on their hands—we come up with:
Mother Earth Is Dying
What a dismal and stupid perspective. And doubly stupid because the same morose idea has infested the human imagination time and time again over the millennia. In the past, Gaia’s purported assassins have taken the form of overpopulation, a new ice age, air pollution, swine flu, holes in ozone layers, dying bees, or whatever the hell.
Speaking as someone who has visited all points of the compass on planet Earth, if there’s a problem humanity faces, it is underpopulation. Case in point, my partner Olivier Garret’s sainted mother lives in the countryside about 20 minutes from Paris. Despite the area being populated since men and apes were dating, there are rolling green hills and forests as far as the eye can see.
Dear readers in England might get a kick out of this illustrative quote from Paul Ehrlich, the dimwitted father of modern doomsday predictions:
By the year 2000, the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people… If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.
—Speech at British Institute for Biology, September 1971
Proving how hard it is to kill off bad ideas, to this day, Ehrlich remains the president of Stanford University’s Center for Conservation Biology.
All Cultures Are Good
You have to be naive in the extreme to accept this notion as true. Is an Islamic theocracy on par with living in a secular democracy where, for example, women have basic rights?
Is African tribalism as an organizing system as valuable as one based on the rights of the individual to pursue life, liberty, and happiness? Is the Indian caste system really okay?
In my opinion, the idea that individual cultures should be preserved like museum pieces is one of the most dangerous ideas afflicting modern man. That which separates us does not make us stronger.
Capitalism Is Bad
Wake up and smell the Starbucks! Or some other brand determined to unseat Starbucks by offering better coffee at a better price. Though far from perfect—and, sorry to break it to you, but like Santa Claus, there is no such thing as a perfect economic system—minimizing government interference in the free exchange of goods and services works best at elevating the quality of life for the greatest number of people.
Conversely, despite Marx’s quip, the systems that work worst are invariably based on some group of elites using the cover of “public good” to pull the levers on a command economy.
Political Correctness
Talk about a slippery slope. Today, virtually any action or word can be seen to “micro-aggress” against some sensitive soul. In response, universities and governments feel compelled to take active measures to protect those same souls.
The end result has to be a Gordian knot of soul-draining policies, regulations, and other complexities. Oh wait, why should it be a Gordian knot? Why not Gordiana or some other gender-neutral name? Sexist bastards!
White People Are Bad and a Dying Breed
And that goes double for white men, eeeww! Sorry toots, but in the US, 75% of the population is Caucasian, and just under half of that number are men. And it’s not just in the US that whites make up the demographic majority by a wide margin. That is also the case in Canada, Australia, the UK, Europe, Russia, and many other countries.
It may surprise you to learn that here in Argentina, the number is closer to 90%, and it’s even higher than that in Costa Rica, among many others.
The idea that white people will effectively fade away anytime soon crashes and burns in the face of demographic facts. Regardless, as I’ve mentioned before, focusing on the color of a person’s skin in making policy is, per my comments above, looking for ways to separate us humans, and so I am 100% against it. As far as the notion that white people are somehow bad, that’s just naked racism.
The US on a Slippery Slope
I could go on. However, as the sun is high in the sky, it is time to move on to other tasks.
As I slide toward the exit, I will sum up by expressing my concern that parts of the world, in particular the United States, are now cartwheeling down the slippery slope toward disaster.
A disaster caused by the epidemic of bad ideas that have germinated in the educational system and subsequently taken root in the halls of political power.
Of course, not everyone has been equally infected. Individuals with common sense and an inclination toward facts and the scientific method are largely immune and can only view with alarm the zombie-like madness caused by bad ideas.
With the body politic so deeply divided, I really don’t see how a serious sociopolitical crisis can be avoided.
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Article by David Galland, Garret/Galland
