An especially appropriate excerpt from my most recent book, The Illusion of Knowledge...
Like Adam and Eve, Americans have choices. We can make ourselves smart, or we can remain dumb. As Americans, we enjoy the highest degree of freedom in the world, but our awareness of what it takes to effectively exercise it and preserve it is seldom measured or understood. If freedom came in the form of coins, America has enormous stacks of them. But we have an annoying habit of keeping them on the front porch and pleading for the passerby to come help themselves. That uniquely American condition is what I call a State of Free Dumb. We have raised a generation of snobs who think everyone on the planet has the same lifestyle, the same opportunities, the same sense of kindness as Americans. In fact, many suggest we could be more "like them" forgetting that America was founded by refugees from Eurocentric attitudes of aristocracy and indebtedness. We hear politicians constantly say "Every other industrialized nation in the world" has nationalized healthcare or free college tuition. Of course they conveniently omit the fact that those same countries have a much lower standard of living and much higher taxation policies. Our kids have lived in a protective bubble that has created a false sense of security and awareness. They don't know what they don't know. The kids of the Boomer Generation spent the majority of their time under the watchful eye of a proxy family made up of TV programs and public education. Both of which promoted progressive theory of moral relativism and collectivist government. The result was to promote peace, prosperity and vacuous intellectualism. This has opened the barn door for our longtime nemesis, the deterred but never defeated forces of collectivism. So now our society is fighting battles of survival on two fronts: We are struggling to meet the expectations and needs of our family here in America. And we are fighting to preserve our civilization and way of life from outside forces that have always resented us and want to destroy the American legacy. We have militants amongst us, and more actively trying to penetrate our borders. None of them wear uniforms or expose their real intentions. Most of them think of themselves as righteous warriors for justice and redemption. They are convinced they are normal and everyone else is abnormal. And they are relentless! They are like zombies, they just keep mindlessly coming at us. No matter how often their falsifications and misleading claims are exposed, they just keep attacking anything normal, struggling to make their form of existence the new normal. |
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