by
Gadfly
Today’s
essay is inspired by a short eBook,
The #1 Mistake Most Everyone Makes When
Reading the Bible, recommended to me by a close friend and mentor. That mistake is interpreting passages without
the proper context for the passage. This
common practice can also explain how acculturation without context substitutes
for a system of education in modern America.
As a consequence, we now have at least three generations of Copernican
drones.
My
very first blog
article, “Cogito Ergo Sum (‘I Think, Therefore I Am,’ Descartes),”
published on August 9, 2012, introduced the notion of a Copernican drone. Here is an excerpt from the article:
I realize
that many potential readers may be incapable of comprehending the reflection
and analysis in these blog entries. Most of these people are what I call Copernican drones, and some are the
product of a public-school educational system that spends more time prescribing
what to think instead of how to think. These Copernican drones lack the functional capacity to
pollinate the world with enduring ideas based on their own creative thinking or
critical analysis. Nicolaus Copernicus only published one book in his lifetime—On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres--and it sparked a
scientific revolution. In the introduction to his book, there is a discussion about
Copernicus’s reluctance to officially publish his analysis and theory of the
solar system. He knew that it would receive harsh criticism--not from the
few who would take the time to digest his work first hand, but from the “drones
among bees” who claim to be experts but only repeat what other drones such as
themselves have written in newspapers and magazines (in other words, sound
bites such as those we hear on the nightly news, or read in newspapers or
magazines like the modern era’s Newsweek).
Unfortunately,
today’s Copernican drones are quick to say, “let’s agree to disagree,” either
(a) imitating what they have heard from others in similar discussions; or (b)
preventing a disruption to their comfort zone.
In their minds, a different view is not simply different but wrong. Moreover, to a progressive, such as George
Lakoff (demonstrated in his book, Moral
Politics: How Liberals and Conservative
Think), a different view is not only wrong it is immoral.
The
Copernican drone effect can be subtle. For
example, we recently watched various news sources on celebrations of the 75th
Anniversary of D-Day. For some of the
sources, the focus was on the incongruity of our current “unfit” President and
how out of place he seemed during his European appearances. Yet, an examination of the most important “optics”
would reveal that, at the multiple American cemeteries enshrining hundreds of
thousands of American service members buried across the European landscape,
their resting places were marked by a Christian Cross or Star of David. This context should remind us that the devotion
and courage of Americans who fought against the tyranny of fascism reflected
character firmly rooted in a Judeo-Christian tradition. I do not recall any recognition of this
context from any of the news sources.
How is
it that such context can be missed in relation to such an epic time in our
history? The answer is acculturation. Acculturation is how political elite shape
and condition those they wish to rule. Aldous
Huxley prophesied a conditioned
society in A Brave New World. C.S. Lewis cautioned us in his book The Abolition of Man. George Orwell understood the danger of
acculturation and warned us in Nineteen
Eighty-Four. Neil Postman provided
evidence in his book, Amusing Ourselves
to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of
Show Business. Bella Dodd wrote
about her experiences as an American communist
conditioner in her memoir, School of
Darkness. Dodd credits Archbishop
Fulton Sheen for her rescue. In a radio
broadcast on January 26, 1947, Sheen said:
Why is it that so few realize the
seriousness of our present crisis?
Partly because men do not want to believe their own times are wicked,
partly because it involves too much self-accusation, and principally because
they have no standards outside of themselves by which to measure their times . .
. Only those who live by faith really know what is happening in the world. The great masses without faith are
unconscious of the destructive processes going on (cited in an article
by Joseph Pronechen, “Did Fulton Sheen Prophesy About These Times?”) .
Acculturation
is critical to progressivism. In this
case “progress” is a verb, not a noun.
It involves social justice and other tactics to promote equality, even
coercively, in an imagined perfect future—a future created by political
elite. Its idea of the American dream is
a future created for others by those who are superior intellectually and
morally. These elite follow in the footsteps
of Eve in the Book of Genesis when she defied God by eating fruit from the
forbidden tree. She was deceived by the
devil in thinking she could be God’s equal.
The fate of progressivism, as in all former attempts at socialism, is to
arrive at a single commandment, as the animals in Orwell’s Animal Farm discovered: “All animals are created equal; some are
more equal than others.” Is it, then,
any surprise that some 2020 Presidential contenders extol the merits of
socialism while also virtue-signaling about reparations?
Individuality
is a threat to progressivism’s acculturated collective system. This is why equality is more important than
liberty. This is why morality is determined
by political elite as opposed to a natural law that is superior to the man-made
State.
Acculturation
without context depends on the imposition of values by political elite. Tilling the soil of the human mind and heart to
be receptive to these imposed values requires the removal of any traditional
values that are not congruent with the progressive perfect future. Hayek made this observation in his book, Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism:
Man is not born wise, rational, and good,
but has to be taught to become so. It is
not our intellect that created our morals; rather, human interactions governed
by our morals make possible the growth of reason and those capabilities
associated with it. Man became
intelligent because there was tradition—that which lies between instinct and
reason—for him to learn. This tradition,
in turn, originated not from a capacity rationally to interpret observed facts
but from habits of responding (pp. 21-22).
Lee
Harris of the Hoover Institute (and gay) wrote an intriguing article, “The Future
of Tradition,” which essentially challenges the rationale for same-sex
marriage. By imposing this
nontraditional norm on the majority, political elite have artificially changed
tradition, even if it is disruptive to the natural order and stability of a
civilized society. Harris also wrote a
compelling article
about the roots of anti-Americanism—no surprise in that it has its basis in
Marxism.
In my
opinion, Marxism is the dominant ideology driving modern acculturation in
America. Most Americans are completely
unaware. Many of those who actively affiliate
with socialism, such as the Communist Party USA (www.cpusa.org),
have little to no understanding of socialism’s history and its brutality—they
lack context, and they are Copernican drones.
Acculturation
is the antithesis of education. The Latin
root for education is the verb “educare,” which means “to draw out.” To educate or draw out, then, means that an educator
(i.e., parent, teacher, minister, coach, etc.) facilitates the cognitive and
emotional maturation of an individual, enabling the individual to see and
understand and then to explain and to anticipate.
Education
enables an individual to learn to interact with others and to understand how
one’s behavior affects others and vice versa.
Over time these interactions become norms and customs, such as
manners. Manners are what we
traditionally understood as habits for constructive interactions with
others.
Education
develops an individual capacity to observe and then to process information for
sense making. This is why two
individuals can observe the same thing and have different perspectives about
it. This is good. It represents the diversity that allows these
two individuals to respectfully explore the differences in their
perspectives. Hegel called this dialectical
reasoning, which enables closer approximations of the truth, the ultimate objective. The process requires active dialogue.
Thomas
Kuhn, in his seminal book, The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions, explains the challenge in advancing science
(essentially the journey “to know”) is the pesky paradigm—the mental frame for
observing and processing information. According
to Kuhn, “When paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm
choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses its own
paradigm to argue in that paradigm’s defense” (p. 94). It is possible, through respect and active
listening, to be unbounded by paradigms.
This can happen by treating the other person with respect and dignity. Agreeing to disagree is a retreat from
science.
How
bad is acculturation without context in America? On Tuesday, riding Denver’s light rail to
Coors Stadium for a Rockies game, a 1970 graduate from West Point and retired medical
doctor, sitting across from me, made an interesting comment: “I have not
personally read the Mueller Report, but I am damn glad the House is conducting
hearings to find out what happened in the Trump Russia Scandal.”
Really?
Mustering
as much politeness as I could at the spur of the moment, I responded, “I have
read the report. Mueller’s logic on
obstruction was convoluted and, in my opinion, deliberately crafted in a way to
give Democrats an opportunity to prosecute the President in the court of public
opinion. A complicit media provides powerful
amplification for this purpose.” (Note:
according to the latest polls, 50% of Americans believe Trump
coordinated with Russia—even after the Mueller report found insufficient
evidence for this finding).
In the
privacy of my mind, I thought, “Here we are casually cruising on public
transportation on our way to America’s great pastime, complete with hot dogs
and beer, while other Americans are working feverishly to remove a duly elected
President.” This spontaneous encounter was
a clear example of a comfort zone and effective acculturation without context.
Germany
was an intellectual and cultural center of the world until Hitler gained power
with the consent of the people. In It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis wrote
about how fascism emerges in America. The
left loves to suggest that Trump is the main character in It Can’t Happen Here. After
all, he lies. He’s a dictator. He’s imperialistic. Yet, ask for a single example and you hear
crickets.
Fascism
(or communism) can happen in America.
It happens through acculturation without context.
Bishop
Sheen was prescient in asking, “Why is it that so few realize the seriousness of
our present crisis?” The crisis is not
Trump. Trump is merely the visible
symbol of values contrary to the acculturated left. Unfortunately, the acculturated left controls
the public narrative. The public
narrative controls public sentiment.
Public sentiment controls decisions at the ballot box.
