"You are no longer obliged to tell the truth if you don’t feel like it"

Tuck checks out the filter as Goomp looks on during Pool Opening Ceremonies Sunday. What do you suppose the "carbon footprint" of this domestic amenity that has brought so much pleasure to the extended family through the years might be?

"Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?" asks a psychologically projecting Al Gore without irony atop a Time Mag soapbox this morning. Dr. Sanity has some answers (see below), but first let us wallow along with the Gorester in his slough of despond over what His fellow Americans such as ourselves have wrought by electing GWB -- twice! -- instead of His Holiness:

The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of massive and well-understood evidence to the contrary, seems to many Americans to have reached levels that were previously unimaginable.

A large and growing number of Americans are asking out loud: "What has happened to our country?" People are trying to figure out what has gone wrong in our democracy, and how we can fix it.

Previously unimaginable? Asking out loud? Aren't they terrified of being snatched from their homes in the dead of night and "disappeared" into the Gulag? Oh, never mind. Dr. Sanity, with reference to Sigmund, Carl and Alfred's "Wednesday Weekly Whacky Awards," notes that the promulgation of falsehoods has been the very essence of the leftist project from way back when:

. . . Read what some of our "finest" educators and psychiatrists have said over the last 50 years about education. If you can make it though to the last quote, then you will begin to realize why K-12 education has evolved into K-12 indoctrination -- indoctrination into the leftist mindset . . .

[Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the Prussian University head of philosophy & psychology who influenced Hegel and others] was instrumental in creating the "climate of collectivism" in philosophy (as Stephen Hicks has referred to it) that prevailed in Germany during the late 18th and throughout the 19th century. In this counter-enlightenment climate, the state was worshipped as the source of all reality and that which brought meaning to life. Hegel, building on Kant, Rousseau and Fichte, would go on to write, "It must be further understood that all the worth which the human being possesses -- all the spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State."

Hegel's heirs went on to divide into left- and right-wing camps. The charge of the left was led by leftists like Karl Marx, who transformed Hegel's "dialectic of Spirit" into an economic and social system that depended on a godless dialectic of "oppressors vs oppressed." The right-wing Hegelians tended to stress the omnipotence of the state and were less willing to abandon a deity. For more than a 100 years, the two camps have been battling it out, each trying to impose their utopian vision onto the human species.

Dr. S. offers three examples of the educational establishment's totalitarianist mindset. We'll quote just one, and you can head over there and to Siggy's for more, if you can stand it:

“This is the idea where we drop subject matter and we drop Carnegie Units (grading from A-F) and we just let students find their way, keeping them in school until they manifest the politically correct attitudes. You see, one of the effects of self-esteem (Values Clarification) programs is that you are no longer obliged to tell the truth if you don’t feel like it. You don’t have to tell the truth because if the truth you have to tell is about your own failure then your self-esteem will go down and that is unthinkable.” Dr. William Coulson, explaining Outcome Based Education (OBE)1964

No wonder home schooling has taken off. We recall our own sister's concern about the content-free, politically-correct, self-esteem-driven curriculum prevalent in the middle school of her Boston-bedroom-community town during her own children's school days. Fortunately for her, for her kids -- our totally awesome nephews! -- and for the American way, the indoctrination didn't take, and her sons are free and independent thinkers uncowed by politically correct imperatives. We can't help but wonder, though, just how effective the Gramscian infiltration of collectivist indoctrination has been with these last couple of American generations. The younger generations' distraction by the lowest-common-denominator culture of celebrity and self-absorption may ironically be their salvation.

Comments

[sigmund, carl and alfred]

The onslaught of ideological deceit is a different kind of tsunami- and just as devastating to a society.

[hnav]

it is sad...

what can one do?

i am at a loss...

[Gayle Miller]

One only has to read Gore's unbelievably chaotic reasoning and prose to realize what a bullet this nation dodged by electing George W. Bush in 2000!

I have said for many years that Albert Gore is clinically insane. Functional to an extent, but still, his choochoo has been off the tracks for a very long time.

One must bear in mind the man's history. He was RAISED by his father to be President of the United States and his father was reputed to be the antithesis of warm/fuzzy parenting.

Make a list of public statements by Al Gore and then examine the extreme disconnect from reality that each of them exemplifies.

Listen to him speak and while he is speaking, watch his eyes. The man is unhinged.

His "people" keep saying that he isn't considering a run for the presidency in 2008. If that is true, it's a good thing. If he does start to think about running, someone needs to dissaude him.

[Teresa]

Gore lecturing the rest of us about logic...

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Okay I needed a good laugh.

[goomp]

"Displacement is the separation of an emotion from its real object and its redirection toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in order to avoid having to deal directly with what is frightening or threatening. It is a very useful type of psychological denial which distorts and obscures reality." These words by Dr. Sanity explain the weird functioning of the politically correct liberals.

[noapology]

Sissy, I tried to trackback to you, haloscan said it went through, but I guess not. Oh, well. Great perspecitve, as usual. I'm sending folks to read this one. Beautiful Chelsea Grays.

[plum]

Wait a minute. . . you're opening your swimming pool not just before school lets out -- but before Memorial Day? In New England?