Domestic Enemies

Ran across this cartoon, which says in one frame what I and many others have been saying for decades. In fact, let me quote one of those people once again:

Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. This report is concerned with only one of the many causes and dimensions of the problem, but it is the one that undergirds American prosperity, security, and civility. We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur–others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments.

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. – From the introduction to the 1983 report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education entitled A Nation at Risk: the Imperative for Educational Reform.

Almost 40 years ago it was blindingly evident what was happening. Anyway, here’s that cartoon:

Pat Cross, The College Fix, “The Enemy Within,” 11/26/21

Discuss.

6 thoughts on “Domestic Enemies

  1. Consider the bell curve of the distribution of talents.

    IF the splendor of your society is fundamentally defined by those with the greater blessings of talents, then you’d best get the hell out of their way. It seems to me though, that a society dependent upon elite capability is brittle, and not at all resilient.

    On the other hand, it occurs to me that perhaps America’s greatness had another basis: it fostered conditions under which the mediocre, educated to ordinary high school 1899 standards can thrive abundantly, and the talented simply went off the scales.

    I suspect it’s the latter, and if the conditions that have changed, I suspect there is both obstruction and parasitism involved. We, the most productive people ever, are carrying a huge burden, and are funding our own oppression.

    Basic cognitive hygiene is called for, and it goes a very long way.

    1. I never figured out how to port my Disqus comments over to here, and I’m stuck using the WordPress commenting tool. Apparently this one has no edit function. My programming capability is limited to Programmable Logic Controllers and Human-Machine graphical user interfaces.

  2. It has been blindingly obvious what’s happening, and where the push has come from. And it’s been happening a LOT longer than 40 years. I recall reading about a bunch of pro-communist German “academics” and philosophers who, fleeing Germany pre-WWII, were barred from the USSR / reassigned to the USA, and ingratiated themselves into our own universities. Fast forward to the Cold War, when it was becoming obvious to even any naif who could (and would) actually consider evidence that communism was a dead end, and yet our own “educational” system added even more coal to the boiler that we might speed up its adoption here. That was deliberate; no matter how they spouted Party lines, I cannot imagine the Kremlin did not know how much of a failure communism is, nor realize exactly what kind of sabotage they were inspiring here. Like crabs in a bucket, if they could not win, they could at least try to make us lose from spite.
    The democrats and the left of my father’s day mocked McCarthyism as a boogeyman and a red herring. My generation doesn’t know what McCarthyism even is. My sons’ generation is being taught that McCarthy was a piker, and that Marx was a god.
    The Soviet Union never managed to defeat the United States during the lifetime of the former. But they did introduce a poison to our nation that is proving to be dangerously close to fatal, even 40 years after the death of the evil empire which administered it 50 years before that.
    The old guard left in America hates us for living while their ideological sponsor withered on the vine. The new left has been taught that Lenin failed because he did not destroy enough of the old society to ensure the success of the new. It is a malignant combination of revenge and religion.

    1. “I recall reading about a bunch of pro-communist German “academics” and philosophers who, fleeing Germany pre-WWII, were barred from the USSR / reassigned to the USA, and ingratiated themselves into our own universities.”

      The Frankfurt School, resettled at Columbia University.

      Your comment contains pretty much everything I’ve written here over the last 18 years.

  3. Kermit is correct. A lot of what is currently happening can be traced back to post WWII and the numbers of Nazis that were ‘allowed’ in for their technical skills. Along with them came a number of Communists, who were ‘allowed’ to continue their proselytizing, and kept afloat by the FBI informers… sigh

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