Getting Real

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Increasingly, I find it impossible to read a newspaper, listen to NPR, or even to check out what my favorite columnists are opining these days.  Part of my lack of interest stems from my cultural, moral, and spiritual detachment from life in these United States.  But this personal secession is only a part of my indifference.  After all, my future is being damaged every day by the perverted children who make up 95% of the American political class at every level, from the superintendent of district 205, who is throwing away a great deal of tax money in a largely successful campaign to destroy the minds and character of local children, to the inarticulate brats who lie in Congress and play their nasty games in the White House.  At the very least, I should care something about the police and fire protection I am paying for or the security of my retirement accounts.  Then why is it so difficult to care?

The answer is quite simple, really.  The truth is that political reform is impossible so long as we accept the terms that have been imposed on us by generations of servile Americans and the masters who exploit them.  If I can find the time, I am going to spell out several sets of conditions that must be eliminated  if we are to hope for any productive change.  And, if I can find the energy and inspiration, I shall point out a few plain truths that should be obvious, whether the subject is welfare, foreign policy, criminal justice, or education.  I make no claim to originality or brilliance, only to a certain Machiavellian insight that has been with me since I can remember.

For the sake of simplicity, I am going to sketch out, as a preliminary, a few rules that should be obvious to everyone.  The important part is to treat them as if they were universally true, when, in fact, they may only work 99% of the time.  Rule number one:  There are no unintended consequences, at least not in the sense that neoconservatives have used the phrase.  People who pass welfare legislation are seeking power.  While they may not entirely intend to degrade and enslave welfare recipients, they certainly do not wish them to be free and independent.  The same rule applies, mutatis mutandis, to every government program, whether it is educators who stupify the students or military officers who use their services as indoctrination programs to inculcate feminism, multi-culturalism, and homosexualism, even though they are quite aware of the disastrous consequences to our preparedness.

Rule number two:  People enter politics to benefit themselves.  If a politician seems to be sacrificing his interest to the public good, it is always an illusion.  He is either being blackmailed or he has an interest we have not yet perceived.  Remember:  For the sake of argument we can admit no exceptions.  Even politicians who have ideals will always sacrifice them to the exigencies of power.  You can almost always figure out what is going on when, for example, Orrin Hatch betrays every principle he has ever claimed to stand for.  It may not be true that no one can run for office unless his party has documents or photographs that could ruin him, but it is never safe, in any given instance, to think otherwise.

Rule number three:  The sole purpose for seeking higher office is to increase bribability.  If, for example, a city councilman goes for $500 s vote, a state legislator will require several thousand, a congressman tens of thousands.  I am speaking in terms of dollars, though, in fact the bribes can take many forms:  women, drugs, junkets, favorable write-ups in major papers, access to more important power-brokers, or even the flattering attention of great men.

Finally, rule number four:  Policies and programs are never aimed at doing the good their sponsors profess but only at advancing the interests of legislators, administrators, and the special interests who pay the bribes, whether those interests are Wall Street investment houses, labor unions, or minority ward heelers.  There is, in these United States today, no such thing as good legislation.

Well, then, let us start with the problems of District 205.  The main complaint is that Rockford schools are being ruined by an arrogant and ignorant anti-white superintendent, who refuses to protect teachers from the violence of students, who squanders tens of thousands of dollars on boondoggle conferences and has responded to state cut-backs by firing teachers only to replace them with her friends.  The superintendent is obviously an uneducated harridan who hasn’t the faintest idea of what a real education might be.  She may have never met an educated man or woman in her entire life.  But who chose her?  An elected school board that generally backs her up all the way and responds to criticism with the arrogance we have come to expect from the lowliest public officials.  One board member is an ex-teacher, who naturally champions higher pay for the almost entirely worthless teachers of the district.  Another–and I find this hilarious–is the shining light of Rockford’s Libertarian Party, who claims his life was changed by LP presidential candidate Ed Clark.  And yet, this Libertarian has made common cause with leftist board members who have devoted themselves to the expansion of government and the destruction of education.  If the emptiness of Richard Weaver’s title (imposed by the publisher) needed to be exposed, our school board chairman, David Kelley, has done it.  If “ideas have consequences,” a libertarian would oppose the fraud, waste, and mismanagement of the school district.  Instead, he aids and abets the criminals.

But, why blame poor Dave Kelley?  Nothing in his background as construction foreman has prepared him for dealing either with education or with school board politics.  He is hopelessly unqualified for his position and makes a fool of himself whenever he opens his mouth, but, then, who elected him?  The voters in his district.

So long as stupid uneducated people select unqualified candidates to hire and supervise the arrogant and crooked educrats who run our school systems, nothing whatsoever can be done.  The problem is not this particular superintendent:  Every superintendent in 25 years has been almost equally stupid, uneducated, arrogant, and wasteful.  The problem is not this particular board:  Every board in the past 25 years has been equally obtuse and pliant, even when they claimed to be standing up for the taxpayers.  (The exception that proves the rule is a board member who could read a balance sheet–Stephanie Caltagerone–but she was hated by the district, whose goons planted porn on her computer, and by fellow board members.) Without any real education themselves, school board members cannot have the slightest idea of what to do.  But these ignoramuses and dummies actually control the largest employer and largest budget in Rockford.

The problem does not lie in the mere fact that public education is public.  100 years ago, community schools in northern Illinois were parsimonious and effective.  But with school consolidation, the centralization of power, the growth of “professional” teacher training, a nightmare was created.  What is the solution?  It is quite simple.  First, decertify the unions.  Then delegitimate the pseudo-professional education degrees.  Downsize the districts to something like an area that could be served by a current elementary school, abolish the state board of education, and eliminate the US Department of Education.  At this point, local neighborhoods will be able to decide if they want public schools, what the goals of their schools should be, and what kind of education they wish their children to receive.

Will they choose wisely?  Probably not.  They are still Americans, after all, and thus incorrigibly stupid.  Will some neighborhoods light upon a few educated men and women who can help them establish decent schools?  Certainly, and those schools, when they succeed, might be imitated by well-meaning parents in other neighborhoods.

What I have sketched out is not a reform of the schools. That can only be done by disciplined and educated men and women who understand the purpose and function of schooling.  But the demolition of the entire system would clear the way to make reform possible.  Any well-intended attempt to reform the schools–and, believe me, as teacher, headmaster, scholar, and “education expert,”  I have looked at hundreds of them–is a waste of time that will probably–inevitably–make matters worse.

But, since this demolition will only take place sometime after the thundering arrival of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, there is absolutely nothing to be done with public education except to vote against bond issues and oppose every school board candidate who has any agenda except budget cutting.  Parents who actually care about their children, unless they happen to live in one of a very few bourgeois districts, will either send their children to private schools or else teach them at home.  Of course, Rockford’s private schools are for the most part only whiter and safer imitations of public schools and home-schooling is far from an ideal solution, even in principle.  But, even though protecting children from predatory savages is not a primary goal of education, it is a minimum prerequisite.

There, you see how simple it is?  From now on we do not have to entertain any fantasies about “”No Child Left Behind,” Charter Schools, Vouchers, or the “Effective Schools” movement.  When a discussion starts in the media, turn it off, blank it out, and go read a good book to a child.,

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