We have previously discussed the rising anti-intellectualism in the GOP race from the rejection of basic science principles to the demonification of academics and higher education. Rick Santorum this week ramped up on the attacks on colleges and universities with a speech that seemed to call for voters to avoid supporting — or even attempting — college. Santorum appears to be proudly embracing the pledge of Will Rogers that “America is becoming so educated that ignorance will be a novelty. I will belong to the select few.”
Santorum explained to an enraptured audience in Naples, Florida how “the left” long ago took over universities to indoctrinate young people for the purpose of “holding and maintaining power.” It was all part of the plan of the liberal overlords, he suggested, and “we’ve lost our higher education, that was the first to go a long time ago.” Now, Obama is pushing college which Santorum portrays as a type of entry drug to liberalism:
“It’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go to college,” said the former Pennsylvania senator. “The indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America. And it is indoctrination. If it was the other way around, the ACLU would be out there making sure that there wasn’t one penny of government dollars going to colleges and universities, right? . . . If they taught Judeo-Christian principles in those colleges and universities, they would be stripped of every dollar. If they teach radical secular ideology, they get all the government support that they can possibly give them. Because you know 62 percent of children who enter college with a faith conviction leave without it.”
Santorum, therefore, called on true Republicans to stop giving money to colleges:
“I’ll bet you there are people in this room who give money to colleges and universities who are undermining the very principles of our country every single day by indoctrinating kids with left-wing ideology. And you continue to give to these colleges and universities. Let me have a suggestion: Stop it.”
It was a truly Palinesque moment of attacking those who would challenge GOP positions with facts or history. Now the race to the bottom is complete with a call to just say no to education and to embrace doctrine as truth. Of course, this is not a new idea. Mao Zedong launched a Cultural Revolution based on the same notions:
Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying to use the old ideas, culture, customs, and habits of the exploiting classes to corrupt the masses, capture their minds, and endeavour to stage a comeback. The proletariat must do just the opposite: It must meet head-on every challenge of the bourgeoisie in the ideological field and use the new ideas, culture, customs, and habits of the proletariat to change the mental outlook of the whole of society. At present, our objective is to struggle against and crush those persons in authority . . . and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois academic “authorities” and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes and to transform education, literature and art, and all other parts of the superstructure . . .”
Now this is not meant to accuse Santorum of plagiarism: you would only learn about the Cultural Revolution in those colleges that he wants us all to avoid. I can deal with the re-education camps, but I am a bit afraid of what Santorum will select as his Little Red [State] Book. If it is Sarah Palin’s America by Heart : Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag, I will be the first to turn in my colleagues hiding in the attic.
Source: CBS
How we got from a slave owning white male propertied elite to a black president of modest means is quite remarkable when you think about.
Chris Hedges even makes it out to Dallas. He gave a lecture at the Unitarian Church in May.
“Note that Hedges went to Colgate and Harvard”
So he knows, first hand, what those kind of schools are like… He’s spot on, power centers for the Elite.
And he’s exactly right to say that the Elite care neither for Liberal nor Conservative ideologies. They just pick the “team” they’ll be the most successful with.
Elaine,
“I’d say this nation has always been run by the elites. It’s nothing new.”
Myth-buster.
Apparently he is honoring the Nancy R creeds……..Just say No….
Santorum: Just Say No To Education
You’ll know nothing and forever be free….
Jill,
I’d say this nation has always been run by the elites. It’s nothing new.
If enough conservatives follow Santorum’s advice and refuse higher education they won’t have any money to contribute to Colleges/Universities anyway. No worries. Stay home folks … after all, home schooling was good enough for Lincoln.
S.M.,
Hedges is saying something much deeper about higher education than, don’t go to an elite school. He is talking about what happens at those schools, how the power of the elites is consolidated at them, how ideas about social justice and real thinking are shut out. He is asking students who go to those schools to stop playing ball with this ugly, cruel ideology. It’s destroying our social fabric. Some students are doing just that, even at Harvard! Some protest Yoo but others can’t wait to take his class. Just think about that. A man who justifies torture is teaching Constitutional Law. Come to think of it a man who did teach that same subject is actually engaged in torture himself. So we should ask the question, how does this come to be. We should try to understand why students can’t wait to take one man’s class and other people are clamoring to vote for the other guy. What is going on? How did we come to this point as a people, as a nation?
Santorum wants to be the leader of the American Taliban.
Santorum must be one of the most blissful guys in America.
Ignorance is bliss
If we don’t get rid of this education thingy people might learn:
(Wikipedia). Then those libruls in power would stop us from “bomb bomb bomb … bomb bomb Iran” …
Clearly Santorum is nuts, but lets talk about the broader problems at colleges. College isn’t what it claims to be. It claims to be about “providing a liberal education.” Never mind that’s what K-12 claims to do, but colleges can’t even do that very well anymore.
Students are taught, much as they have been in high school, not to think, but rather to simply repeat formulas and other trivialities. As Woodrow Wilson said, “We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” (Harpers Mag, May 1980) You could argue this is the real purpose of college and school in general.
The cost of college has increased far faster than the rate of inflation and the quality of even the “half-education” it provides is proving ever increasingly shallow.
Think I’m overstating it? The average elementary and secondary level student spends about 50 hours a week in school. Then the teachers pile on homework because apparently that’s not enough. The presidents solution to the problem? Longer school days! What a prick.
I could go on, but I’d just be rambling (more so). We really need to rethink what makes a school truly liberal though. Santorum is right about one thing, you’d have to be out of your mind to send donations to these schools.
Hedges prepped at Chaffee.
I was a fraternity mascot at a midwest college where a dog was treated right. The problem with American college level education is the rule that the prof is always right. If they believe in something then that is how one gets an A grade. The internet will change some of this because now the student has access to information other than the textbooks assigned by the teacher, or the alternative textbooks socked away on the bottom shelf in the library.
Note that Hedges went to Colgate and Harvard.
Jill,
I think Jefferson would agree with that.
This is interesting propaganda. First, saying that Obama wants everyone to go to college misrepresents the facts about Obama’s position in favor of Obama. Secondly, in a weird way Rick somewhat agrees with an actual leftist, Chris Hedges. Hedges points out that elite colleges have been used to consolidate power for elites. The important difference in the criticism is that Hedges shows elites don’t have a “liberal” or “conservative” ideology, they have a ruthless, unthinking desire for power and money. The answer Hedges and Ricky give are also at odds.
Ricky, like all of the ruling elites, hopes to keep our population as distracted and ignorant as possible. They would not be able to hold onto power with that ignorance and obfuscation.
Hedges calls on liberals to quit obeying the orders of elites. He calls for young people who have every privilege to work for justice, to start thinking for themselves and to care about others. He calls for more knowledge for all, whether this comes through traditional universities or self learning. He calls for a society which is dedicated to the education of everyone. That is a population who cannot be manipulated. It is the basis of ethical and intellectual integrity. No elite, not Ricky, not Obama is for an ethical, informed population. But that is exactly what we need to be.
Santo Rum knew his audience in Naples, Florida. It is populated by old farts from the middle west, who were successful and mostly at business or good blue collar union jobs, who, got suckered into sending Johnny and Jennie off to expensive colleges. What good did it do them? The carpenters union which sustained gramps sitting there in the audience was better than the white collar job Johnny got at Union Pacific with little or no benefits or job security. And Jennie could have just relied on the concept of marrying well, but no, she became a librarian at some school that does not appreciate her.
Ta hell wid college. Keep at em Santo Rum.
Of course you want future voters to be uneducated, Rick!
Stupid people are easier to control. Easier to manipulate into doing what you want them to do. Like vote for a dim-witted Jesus Nazi such as yourself.