Reflections From a Murky Pond

The simple fact that America’s government-run school system is broken and that educational failure is their sole legacy can’t be truthfully argued against. The only arguments that can be engaged in are: why? who’s to blame? and how do we fix or remake it?

It’s easy to blame technology. After all, why should teachers actual teach what students can use modern technology to do for them instead?

But They Didn’t Teach Us That In Ethnomathematics!

I don’t think it’s fair to blame technology though since the average child in America could recite chapter and verse of the Liberals’ politically correct versions of history and sociology how America was wrong and how the country was based upon the evils of: racism, xenophobia, homophobia, religion, nationalism, and capitalism.

Oh yes! Religion (except for Islam post 9/11), nationalism, and capitalism are taught as “evils” in the modern (re)education camps the Liberals demand we call schools.

That same child could also likely parrot his “teachers’” chimera that teaching math and science and testing on those subjects is racist because it can’t take into account the differences in cultural backgrounds of non-White students. He or she could also offer strikingly similar rationalizations as why all the “teaching” was done to the lowest common denominators in his or her class.

No. Technology may be an enabler in this educational failure but it’s not the cause. The cause is the Liberals’ desire to indoctrinate children into their anti-American ideology.

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Much like the cries of racism and complaints about ad hominem attacks, recently we’ve been hearing a lot of cries for civility in political discourse. There’s a certain subset of the residents within America’s borders who want a more polite and staid approach to deciding the course of America.

It seems that politics has gotten too raw and real for some people.

This, of course, begs three related questions: who are these people crying for increased civility, what is it that they actually want, and why do they want it so much?

Who’s Crying For Civility

I see two disparate and unrelated general segments of America’s population crying out for an increase in civility in political speech and argument. They are respectively the apolitical drones and the Leftists, the Liberals and Progressives. Each makes similar outcries but for seemingly different reasons and with different real goals.

What Do They Really Want And Why?

The apolitical people just want things to go quietly. They’re uninvolved in politics, fervently wish to stay that way, and are both bothered and scared by the passion that is being shown by many others. Whether from cynicism or self-centeredness, they do not want to pull their heads out the oh-so-comfortable sand and become involved and the fire of current political discourse is preventing them from doing this.

The staid, stuffy, and easily ignored ways are what these drones want to return to because they don’t want to open their eyes and choose a side.

The Leftists, these Liberals and Progressives, are quite different.  They are awake, aware, involved in the political process, and they have a definite direction that they want to take America in. Their cries for civility are really two things: cynical attempts to silent their enemies and cries for validation and acceptance.

The willfully uninvolved will just have to stop their ears better and learn to keep their heads down.

For many of the Left, their cries are just dog-whistles for censoring the American people. They don’t really want civility, as their very cries for it often show, so much as they want to stop any dissent against their foundations of their agenda.

For others on the left it is a matter of crying out for acceptance and validation. They’re looking for some affirmation that, even though their enemies disagree with their core ethos, they are still respected and approved of.

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Sadly for those who’re crying out for increased civility, I don’t see much chance of- or value in its return any time in the near future. The divide in America is not too deep; it’s to fundamental. It doesn’t allow for the luxury of civility anymore. It’s not a political divide; it’s an ethical and moral divide.

We’re not going to be silenced. We’re not going to engage in carefully managed debates over minutiae of methodology when we want to change the goals and systems. And we’re very much not going to respect our enemies when we find the core beliefs that underpin their goals and actions to be utterly abominable and abhorrent.

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You hear a lot of people, mostly Liberals and Progressives, whining about supposed ad hominem attacks. They just don’t, from what I can see, have a firm grasp on what that term means.

Ad Hominem

A Hominem ( Latin for  “to the man” ) is short for argumentum ad hominem, a logical fallacy that is an attempt to negate the validity of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it.

While Leftists of all sorts do get abused regularly be citizens of the Civilized World, especially Americans, I see only a small minority of the occurrences being truly argumentum ad hominem.

In political discussions and across the blogosphere – neither a place known for staid and polite discourse – I see comparatively few instances where people have tried to negate the validity of a Leftist’s claim by pointing out the Leftist’s negative characteristics or beliefs.

I have, on the other hand, often seen examples of what I’ll call argumentum ad factis ( Latin for “to the facts” ). Very often people try negate the validity of Leftists by pointing out the negative characteristics of their arguments.

It’s not the same thing to say that they’re wrong because of their arguments (“ad factis“) as it is to say that their arguments are wrong because they said them (ad hominem).

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